[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] WW-I Deportation from Central Poland

[Richard Benert]

There is a brief treatment of the expulsion from Poland in 1914-15 in Eric
Lohr, "Enemy Alien Politics Within the Russian Empire During World War I", a
Ph.D. thesis at Harvard, 1999.  It should be coming out as a book one of
these days.

It is not possible to specify with any exactness where refugees from central
Poland (or anywhere else, for that matter) were sent, at least until further
research is done in the archives, and even then it will be incomplete
because the Russians kept only cursory records of the event.  When Germans
were expelled from Poland, they were given a deadline before which they
could "voluntarily" leave Poland at their own expense, although they
received a travel document telling them their destination.  If they didn't
meet the deadline, they were forced out and had to travel under armed guard.
(Lohr says that the incredible number of refugees clogging the railroads
soon led the military to curtail the armed guards since their weren't enough
personnel available to handle all the refugees.  So apparently, some who
didn't meet the deadline were allowed to travel without armed guard.  Not
that it made much difference!)

As to the destinations to which they were sent, Lohr indicates that the
governors of Astrakhan, Saratov, Smolensk, Khar'kov, Tomsk and Ufa were soon
(late 1914, early 1915) complaining that they couldn't possibly handle all
the refugees being directed at their provinces.  The refugees arrived in
groups of 500 to 1000, sick and impoverished.  The Interior Ministry did
provide 200,000 Rubles to help the governors, but another solution was
suggested by the Ministry--to allow the refugees to choose their own
destination!  Whether this directive was followed, I do not know.  People
were allowed to apply for exemption.  Some governors were relatively
generous (like the gov. of Lublin, who granted 1,399 exemptions-out of a
total of 1,969 for all of Poland--to sick people and families of active
soldiers), while others were not.  The governor of Lomzha deported 3,420 and
granted only 40 exemptions.

Lohr's brief account is hardly definitive.  He says nothing, for example,
about people who travelled by wagon.  His account is based solely on
archival information.  But it is useful insofar as it goes.  Look for the
book to come out!

In addition to Lohr's book, another book that should be interesting to
anyone wondering about what might have happened to expelled relatives is
Peter Gatrell, "A Whole Empire Walking.  Refugees in Russia During World War
I", (Indiana U., recent--not sure of the year).

Dick Benert
-----Original Message-----
From: LMPauling <lmpauling at utech.net>
To: blbrandt at comcast.net <blbrandt at comcast.net>;
ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org
<ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
Date: Saturday, January 04, 2003 12:18 PM
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] WW-I Deportation from Central Poland


>I have done a number of oral interviews with people who lived in the Sierpc
>area of Central Poland. The inhabitants of the villages only slightly north
>and west of Sierpc (Bialasy, Blizno, Gozdy) were not taken to Russia in
WWI,
>but those in the city of Sierpc were.
>
>One woman told me she was 12 years old at the time. They took her and her
>family to the city of Saratov where they were for 4 years. When I asked if
>there were a lot of Germans there, she said yes, but they were Russian
>Germans and she was impressed that they were big people. She spoke of being
>in a "concentration camp," but it was not fenced in. (Another man from
Dembe
>Wielki said that there were no true concentration camps but more like
>settlements.)
>
>When she was 13, she pretended to be 16 and got herself a job wrapping
>cigarettes. Then she went down river on a boat and "shoveled" rye.
>
>She was confirmed in Evang. Lutheran St. Marien Church in Saratov on 3
April
>1916 in a class of  about "300."
>
>
>Another man from Sierpc that I spoke with was taken in 1914 at age 2. They
>were taken to the Volga, Sarepta, Saratov. He said that from there they
>could go where they wanted and his family went to the village of Kromtage,
>which he described as a big village belonging to Saratov where there were 6
>Russian German families. When the Bolsheviks took over in Russia, the
>Germans from Poland were free to go home. He returned in 1919.
>
>A woman from Bialasy, a small village only about 5 miles from Sierpc, said
>that they were all ready to be deported when the Germans arrived and  saved
>them. They saw the first Russian soldiers in August 1914. (She was born
>in1900.) The deportation for this area was in January. She described the
>scene that the head of the household had built boards up on the sides of
the
>wagon to try to protect from the cold. They had put on all the clothes they
>had. One dog had been shot already. It was 10pm and they were waiting for
>the papers to come from Rypin. She even remembered the full moon. "All of a
>sudden a German soldier comes on a horse in the dark." The Russians were
>still in the yard on the other side.
>
>She spoke of the people going to "Siberia" and most freezing to death
there.
>
>These tales are just anecdotal, but they give us a glimpse of the memories
>of some of the people of this area at this time.
>
>Linda Pauling
>
>
>
>
>
> From: <blbrandt at comcast.net>
> Does anyone out there know where the Russians relocated the Germans from
>Central Poland?
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