Poland marks 79 years since WWII Soviet invasion
PR dla Zagranicy
Grzegorz Siwicki
17.09.2018 11:30
President Andrzej Duda opened memorial ceremonies as Poland was on Monday marking 79 years since a Soviet invasion of the country in the opening phase of World War II.
President Andrzej Duda lays a wreath at Warsaw's Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East. Photo: PAP/Tomasz Gzell
Duda in the morning laid a wreath at Warsaw's Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East.
At dawn on September 17, 1939, Soviet troops invaded Poland following a secret agreement with the German Third Reich.
Poland was then caught between German Nazi forces advancing from the west and Soviet forces from the east.
Following the invasion, some 250,000 Polish soldiers were captured by the Soviets, who later executed thousands of prisoners of war, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
Mass deportations of the civilian population followed, with up to 1.5 million Poles transported away into the Soviet interior, mainly to Siberia and Kazakhstan, according to some estimates.
Tens of thousands of ethnic Poles killed in the former USSR before the 1939 Soviet invasion were remembered at memorial ceremonies in Warsaw in mid-August.
(gs)
Source: IAR