Abstract

The memoirs of Poles who were deported to Siberia constitute a highly valuable, but also an exacting historical source. Those who witnessed the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 and the occupation of its eastern territories preserved detailed memories of those days, but were unable to share them with the general public until many years later. For many inhabitants of Poland’s Eastern Borderlands, the Soviet occupation was only a prelude to their tragic deportation deep into the Soviet interior. Their accounts and memoirs describing the events after September 17, 1939 can be treated as an introduction to the core narrative of their wartime experience, which centered around their deportation to the East and the hardships of their exile. However, these excerpts provide valuable information about daily life in eastern Poland before 1939, including in Volyn. Records of childhood memories in the Borderlands, the young lives interrupted by the war and deportations were analyzed to produce valuable observations. The image of the homeland emerging from the Siberian memoirs was heavily influenced by subsequent events in the lives of their authors, including deportations to Siberia or Kazakhstan, and the irreversible loss of their childhood home. These accounts constitute a valuable source of knowledge about the processes of remembering the events that preceded great trauma (occupation and deportation), and reconstructing the memories of mostly happy childhood or youth.