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2024 Week 28: Trains #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

 At 2 a.m. on the 10th of February 1940, Janina Stepek and her three children, Jan, Zosia and Danka were woken up by loud knocking at the door of their home in Eastern Poland. It was the Soviet Red Army and Ukrainian Militia, the Soviets having invaded Poland some five months earlier. The family were ordered to pack what they could and be ready to leave within thirty minutes. One officer, in an act of kindness, told Janina to pack as much as they could for cold weather. They were taken by cart to the nearest train station, along with the entire population of the village. There they discovered that the inhabitants of many villages had been similarly forced to leave their homes. After several hours in the freezing cold, they were bundled on to cattle trains. Each wagon took fifty people, crammed together. There was no toilet, there was a stove in the centre of the carriage and there were some shelves which could be used as beds for some. The doors slid shut and locked everyone in, leaving only small vents for air. No-one knew where the train was going to.

The deportation of Poles to Siberia, courtesy of swoopingeagle.com

The train stopped only every 7-10 days. Meanwhile the people inside cut a hole in the floor to use as a toilet, with blankets pinned up for privacy. The situation proved too much for some, especially the very young and the very old. When the trains did stop and the doors were opened, the first task of the passengers was to carry out the dead. Then they were permitted some time outside to beg for food from local people, after which they were returned to the wagons and locked in once more.

After three weeks the train finally arrived at what would be the Stepek's home for the next year and a half. They were over 2000 kilometres from where they'd started, near the Arctic Circle in the Archangel region of northern Russia. There they were forced to do labour, logging trees, joinery and keeping track of timber production. During this time they were all malnourished, lost weight and suffered illness. Half of those from the wagon had died before arriving there, others died in the camp.

However, all four Stepeks managed to survive the labour camp and, in June of 1941, the situation changed when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

As a result, all the Poles who had been deported to the Soviet Union were allowed to leave their camps with a view to joining Polish officials in the south of Russia. However, with no resources and being malnourished, the Stepeks had to improvise to survive the 3,500 kilometer odyssey that this entailed.

Ironically much of the journey was spent travelling on cattle trains once more. This time, however, they were free. After four months travelling without maps or any sense of direction, they found themselves in Tashkent, in present day Uzbekistan and there they met Polish officials who would arrange to take them to freedom across the Caspian Sea to what is now modern day Iran. 

Their journey was not yet over.

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