Following Stalin's invasion of Eastern Poland in September 1939, the Soviets deported hundreds of thousands of Poles to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Judges, doctors, landowners, businessmen, reserve army officers - all these were top of the list. A large proportion perished in mines, camps or on the open wilds of the steppe.
This tragedy was hushed up during Soviet dominated Poland, but in recent times, monuments and books devoted to the deportees have appeared with increasing frequency. Many survivors are still alive today, and a medal of honour has been introduced for those that endured the tragedy. However, one of the most recent recipients of the 'Cross of the Deportees' has aroused the ire of his fellow survivors.
Wojciech Jaruzelski was dispatched to Siberia with his family whilst he was a young child. His father, a nobleman, perished in the snows, and the boy suffered from damaged eyesight for the rest of his life. It was a typical fate. Yet unlike so many other deportees - who could never reconcile themselves to life in Soviet dominated post-war Poland - Jaruzelski went on to join the communist party. Allegedly, he never admitted this to his mother, but later he became President of Communist Poland.
Jaruzelski's name remains incendiary today as it was he who declared the state of martial law in 1981. And it was under his regime that Solidarity protesters were rounded up en masse, and the priest Jerzy Popieluszko murdered. Later the President justified the repression of martial law as a means of staving off a Russian invasion, a highly debatable notion.
Was the bestowal of the medal an act of conciliation on behalf of the new government? Oddly, the current right-wing Law and Justice Party has a reputation for wanting to avenge those who suffered under the communists. And the Union of Deportees themselves are livid, asserting that they never petitioned for a medal for Jaruzelski. The only person who seems pleased is Jaruzelski himself, who thanked Law and Justice President Lech Kaczynski for putting aside previous differences.
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