Award-winning director and screenwriter Janusz Zaorski says members of his own family were sent into exile in the east of Russia during the war years.
Janusz Zaorski , pictured, says members of his own family were sent into exile in the east of Russia during the war years. Picture: film.interia.pl
'I knew a lot about it through my family,' he told Polish Radio. The film, to be released this week, is called Siberian Exile (Syberiada Polska) and is based on a book by Zbigniew Domino. The cast included noted actors Adam Woronowicz and Marcin Walewski.
'The deportations from what had formerly been Eastern Poland began in February 1940, following the division of Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939,' said the Polish news website thenews.pl
'Historians are still divided as to the numbers of Polish citizens deported by the Soviets. Moscow figures cited 330,000, yet Poland's wartime government-in-exile claimed over a million.
'Stalin declared an amnesty for his Polish prisoners following the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany in 1941. As a result, Poles were allowed to form an army from among the deportees, a force that duly fought under General Wladyslaw Anders as part of Britain's 8th Army'.
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Let the world know more about the forgotten holocaust.