It gives me great pleasure and honour to welcome Jagna Wright to the list.
As you may already know, together with Aneta Naszynska, Jagna produced a
very moving TV documentary in English called "A Forgotten Odyssey".
If you haven't been to the www.AForgottenOdyssey.com website yet, following
is the summary of the film - which is being taken to the Cannes Film
Festival next week!
--
Stefan Wisniowski
Moderator, Kresy-Siberia
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"A Forgotten Odyssey" is the story - as told by the survivors - of what
happened after the Soviet invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939 under the
Nazi-Soviet Friendship Treaty.
These are the stories of the survivors of the forced Soviet annexation of
eastern Poland, when entire towns and communities were brutally deported to
Siberia and Kazakhstan to Soviet forced labour camps. By the time the Nazis
attacked their Soviet allies in 1941, perhaps half of the labour camp inmates
had died from disease, starvation, and the harsh labour conditions.
Because the Soviets were brought into the anti-Nazi Alliance, the remaining
survivors were given an amnesty and many made their way across the vast and
foreboding Soviet landscape to join the freed Polish Army being formed in the
south. This army became a key element of the Allied forces in the European
South-East, and was evacuated though Iran to join the battle with the Nazis in
Africa and Italy.
However, despite the defeat of the Nazis, Poland's Soviet enemies ended the
war on the side of the victors. The 110,000 citizens and soldiers who had
escaped from Soviet Russia went on to be refugees from a pre-war Poland who
could never return home to their former homeland, which was left in Soviet
Communist hands after the war.
Their Forgotten Odyssey never reached its destination, and they remained a
people in exile throughout the world.
