Epistolary Sources from the Collections of the Historical Commission of the Siberians’ Union, Krakow Branch, as a Source for Research on the Fate of Siberians

Abstract

During the Second World War, between 1940 and 1941, as a result of Soviet repression, some 320 000 Polish citizens were deported to the Soviet Union. They were sent to sovkhozes, kolkhozes, collective farms and labour camps. They lived in conditions humiliating to human dignity and were forced to perform hard labour in the taiga, on the land and in mines. One important
source of information on life in exile is epistolary material of all kinds. The Siberian Association Archive in Kraków contains more than 400 documents of this type: letters, postcards and envelopes. On the basis of some of them, it is possible to reconstruct the situation of several families
in exile. They contain information about life in exile, dealing with work, conditions in exile, food, hygiene, disease, transport, death and much more.