Operation Vistula - Deportations and Repressions

Deportations and Repressions

According to the order of the Ministry of Recovered Territories "the main goal of the relocation of 'W' settlers is their assimilation into a new Polish environment, all efforts should be exerted to that end. Do not apply the term 'Ukrainians' to the settlers. In cases when the intelligentsia element reaches the recovered territories, they should be settled separately and away from the communities of the 'W' settlers."

The operation was carried out by Operational Group Vistula consisting of about 20,000 personnel commanded by General Stefan Mossor. This personnel included soldiers of the Polish People's Army and the Internal Security Corps, as well as functionaries of the police Milicja Obywatelska and the Security Service Urząd Bezpieczeństwa. The operation commenced at 4 a.m., April 28, 1947. The expellees comprised about 140,000 to 150,000 Ukrainians and Lemkos still remaining after the 1944-1946 forcible repatriation of Ukrainians from Poland to the Soviet Union (Ukrainian SSR and Siberia), and the inhabitants of

• Polesie
• Roztocze
• Pogórze Przemyskie
• Bieszczady
• Low Beskid
• Beskid Sądecki
• Ruś Szlachtowska

The process of deportation itself was swift and brutal as the deportees were often given only a few hours to prepare and get the limited belongings they were allowed to take, and they were transported in crowded boxcars. The food supply was irregular, the sanitary conditions were poor, there were many delays along the way. The entire process was accompanied by considerable violence. Some deportees died in transit.

Members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, including clergy (both Greek Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox), were sent from collection points to the concentration camp in Jaworzno called the Central Labour Camp, and was a branch of the formerly German concentration camp Auschwitz. At the latter camp, almost 4,000 persons were held, including 800 Ukrainian and Lemko women and dozens of children. The captives, of whom 200 died in the camp, were subject to harsh interrogations and beatings despite the fact that no active members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists were sent to the camp. For the latter, show trials by the extraordinary Operation Group Vistula Tribunals or regular military tribunals were held, and over 500 were sentenced to death and executed.

The remaining expellees were resettled over a wide area in the Northern (Warmia and Masuria) and Western Territories acquired by the People's Republic of Poland following the Potsdam Agreement, were they were not to constitute more than 10 percent of the population in any one location. Operation "Vistula" itself was officially ended as early July 31, 1947. Operation Vistula closed officially with a ceremonial bestowing of decorations on what were deemed the most deserving Polish soldiers, held on the Polish-Czechoslovak border. The last resettlements took place as late as 1952, in the western part of the pre-1939 former Polesie Voivodeship.

A consequence of Operation Vistula was the almost total depopulation of Pogórze Przemyskie, Bieszczady and Beskid Niski. The relocation of the population put the UPA forces in Poland in a difficult position: deprived of human and other resources, the outnumbered Ukrainian partisans were unable to uphold their own armed resistance and guerrilla against the communist Polish forces. Nevertheless the UPA continued its fight for a few more years. After the last relocations, the UPA's activities on Polish territory died out, while some Ukrainian insurgents fled to Western Europe, notably to West Germany, and the United States.