Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) – The Hoover Institution has published I Saw the Angel of Death: Experiences of Polish Jews Deported to the USSR During World War II, edited by Maciej Siekierski and Feliks Tych.
During World War II, several hundred thousand Polish citizens were deported from their homeland by Soviet authorities and sent to the gulag, where many died. For sixty years, the Hoover Institution Library & Archives has preserved the testimonies of more than 30,000 Polish survivors. Among these are 171 accounts of Polish Jews who suffered both German and Soviet occupation; were transported hundreds or thousands of miles to suffer again in brutal Soviet forced-labor camps; and were eventually released, escaping to the Middle East.
“The great bulk of the testimonies of Polish citizens, former prisoners, and deportees . . . was recorded in early 1943 in Iraq and later comprised the archives of the secret Documents Bureau of the Second Polish Corps,” Siekierski explains in his introduction of the volume.
These testimonies are now collected and published for the first time in a scholarly English translation. The accounts—recorded shortly after the events the witnesses describe, with their memories still fresh—reveal many of the systematic horrors of World War II, clearly indicating the genocidal essence of the Soviet camp system and illustrating its mechanisms. They offer extraordinary information and insight on the activities of the Polish resistance movement, Jewish religious and community life, working conditions, the experiences of women and children, and more.
“A lot of information is repeated in these documents, and on occasion even literally, especially as pertains to the circumstances of arrest and the conditions of transportation to the place of detention. This repetition points to the scale of the phenomenon and to the uniformity of the procedures used by the Soviet political police, as well as to the centralized character of the activity,” Tych writes in his introduction.
These testimonies form a vital historical record for systemic human brutality that should never be forgotten. But they also paint a portrait of unwavering perseverance amid the struggle for survival.
Advance Praise for I Saw the Angel of Death
“The testimonies included in this book, available for the first time in English translation, describe the experiences of Jews of eastern Poland from September 1939 through 1943. The authors, among the small percentage of Polish Jews to survive the Second World War, were ‘lucky’ to avoid falling victim to the Nazis by being punitively deported eastward by the Soviets instead. Mainly civilians, these individuals, adults as well as children, describe their difficult lives and their struggles to remain alive in Soviet camps and special settlements. [This book] provides invaluable insight into an understudied aspect of the Polish and Jewish experiences of World War II.”
—Katherine R. Jolluck, senior lecturer, Department of History, Stanford University
“The importance of publishing for the first time the complete ‘Palestinian Protocols’ in English cannot be overestimated. These firsthand depositions, testimonies, and statements of 171 Polish Jews, caught in the firestorm of the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Poland, 1939–41, are precious documents of Holocaust and gulag history. They also underline the fierce determination of Polish Jews to survive despite murderous attacks by the Germans, frightening obstacles to flight to the east, and internment in Soviet special camps, where they were brutalized beyond imagination. Only the Sikorski-Maisky agreement of July 1941 made possible the amnesty of tens of thousands of Polish Jews, including most of these Polish Jews, and their fraught transfer to Tehran and then to Jerusalem, where their statements were collected. Documenting the trials of the survivors in their own words is a fitting testimony to those millions of Polish Jews who perished.”
—Norman M. Naimark, Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies, Stanford University, and senior fellow, by courtesy, Hoover Institution
About the Editors
Dr. Maciej Siekierski, a former research fellow at the Hoover Institution, is curator emeritus of the European collections at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, specializing in Poland and Eastern Europe.
Dr. Feliks Tych (1929–2015) was an eminent Polish historian, director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (1996–2006), and author or editor of several books in Polish on history and the Holocaust.
For coverage opportunities, contact Jeffrey Marschner, 202-760-3187, jmarsch@stanford.edu.
