Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

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Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 Page 66

by Anne Applebaum

39. PIL, 867/f.11/g-24, pp. 15–58.

  40. Ibid.

  41. From conversations with Mária Schmidt, Sándor M. Kiss, and Barbara Bank; also Böszörményi, Recsk, p. 49.

  42. Klaus Eichner and Gotthold Schramm, eds., Angriff und Abwehr: Die deutschen Geheimdienste nach 1945 (Berlin, 2007); also Roger Engelmann, “ ‘Schild und Schwert’ als Exportartikel: Aufbau und Anleitung der ostdeutschen Staatssicherheit durch das KGB und seine Vorläufer (1949–1959),” in Andreas Hilger, Mike Schmeitzner, and Ute Schmidt, eds., Diktaturdurchsetzung. Instrumente und Methoden der kommunistischen Machtsicherung in der SSB/DDR 1945–1955 (Dresden 2001), pp. 55–64.

  43. Engelmann, “ ‘Schild und Schwert,’ ” pp. 55–64; Norman Naimark, “To Know Everything and to Report Everything Worth Knowing: Building the East German Police State, 1945–1949,” Cold War International History Project Working Paper no. 10, August 1994.

  44. BStU MfSZ, HA IX, no. 20603, p. 2.

  45. Jens Gieseke, Die DDR-Staatssicherheit: Schild und Schwert der Partei (Bonn, 2000), p. 18.

  46. Engelmann, “ ‘Schild und Schwert,’ ” pp. 55–64.

  47. Interview with Klaus Eichner and Gotthold Schramm, Berlin, June 24, 2008.

  48. BStU MfSZ, Sekr. D. Min. no. 1920.

  49. Engelmann, “ ‘Schild und Schwert,’ ” pp. 55–64.

  50. BStU MfSZ, HA VII, no. 4000, pp. 16–17.

  51. Gary Bruce, The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi (Oxford, 2010), p. 34.

  52. Interview with Schramm.

  53. Gieseke, Die DDR-Staatssicherheit, p. 19.

  54. Interview taken from Das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, documentary film, directed by Christian Klemke and Jan Lorenzen, Berlin, 2007.

  55. Interview with Schramm.

  56. Document in Günter Tschirwitz’s possession.

  57. Interview with Günter Tschirwitz, Berlin, June 24, 2008.

  58. Richard Pipes, ed., The Unknown Lenin (New Haven, 1996), p. 154.

  59. BStU MfSZ, 1486/2, part 1 of 2, p. 11.

  60. Amir Weiner, “Nature, Nurture, and Memory in a Socialist Utopia: Delineating the Soviet Socio-Ethnic Body in the Age of Socialism,” The American Historical Review 104, 4 (October 1999), p. 1,121.

  61. IPN, 352/7. With thanks to Andrzej Paczkowski and Dariusz Stola.

  62. BStU MfSZ, 1486/2, part 1 of 2.

  63. Ibid., HA XVIII, no. 922, p. 210.

  64. Kati Marton, Enemies of the People: My Family’s Journey to America (New York, 2009), p. 118.

  65. BStU MfSZ, HA VII, no. 4000, p. 36.

  66. Ibid., Ff 39/52.

  67. Ibid.

  5. VIOLENCE

  1. Wolfgang Leonhard, Child of the Revolution, trans. C. M. Woodhouse (Chicago, 1958), p. 381.

  2. This is Timothy Snyder’s point in Sketches from a Secret War (New Haven and London, 2005), p. 210.

  3. See Tony Judt on retribution in Postwar (New York, 2005), pp. 41–53.

  4. Amir Weiner made this point during a talk at the Hoover Archive Russia Summer Workshop, July 2011.

  5. RGANI, 89/18/4, pp.1–3; from the collection of the late Alexander Kokurin.

  6. T. V. Volokitina et al., eds., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiskikh arkhivov 1944–1953 (Moscow and Novosibirsk, 1997), p. 42.

  7. Quoted in Mark Kramer, “Stalin, Soviet Policy, and the Consolidation of a Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe, 1944–1953,” p. 13, paper delivered at the Freeman Spogli International Institute, April 30, 2010.

  8. Krystyna Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943–1948 (Berkeley, 1991), p. 286.

  9. Andrzej Paczkowski has a good, short English summary of the Home Army’s formation in The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom, trans. Jane Cave (University Park, Pa., 2003), pp. 83–89.

  10. Ibid., p. 116.

  11. Ibid., p. 118.

  12. Apoloniusz Zawilski, Polskie Fronty 1918–1945, vol. 2 (Warsaw, 1997), p. 7.

  13. Ibid., pp. 458–66.

  14. Ibid., p. 45.

  15. Keith Sword, Deportation and Exile: Poles in the Soviet Union, 1939–1948 (London, 1996), pp. 144–47.

  16. CAW, Opis VIII/800/19 (NKWD ZSRR), folder 10, pp. 3 and 6.

  17. Ibid., p. 4.

  18. CAW, Opis VIII/900/19 (NKWD USSR), folder 10, p. 9.

  19. Ibid., Opis VIII/800/29/1 (NKWD USSR), folder 1, pp. 1–2

  20. Ibid., Opis VIII/800/19 (NKWD ZSRR), folder 10, pp. 6–10.

  21. Nikita Petrov, Ivan Serov: Pervyi Predsedatel’ KGB (Moscow, 2005), pp. 21–34; also Sword, Deportation and Exile, p. 14.

  22. CAW, Opis VIII/800/19 (NKWD ZSRR), folder 11, pp. 1–2.

  23. Karta, Janusz Zawisza-Hrybacz, II/1730.

  24. Karta, Henryk Sawala, II/3315.

  25. Stanisław Ciesielski, Wojuech Materski, and Andrzej Paczkowski, Represje Sowieckie wobec Polaków i obywateli polskich, Ośrodek Karta (Warsaw, 2002), p. 27.

  26. Zawilski, Polskie Fronty, vol. 2, p. 256.

  27. There are many excellent accounts of the Warsaw Uprising. The most recent in English is Norman Davies, Rising ’44 (New York, 2004).

  28. CAW, Opis VIII/800/29/4 (NKWD ZSRR), p. 197.

  29. Ibid., Opis VIII/800/19 (NKWD ZSRR), folder 13, p. 33.

  30. Ibid., folder 11, pp. 70–80.

  31. Ibid., Opis VIII/800/13 (NKWD ZSRR), folder 13, p. 33; also folder 12, p. 38.

  32. Andrzej Panufnik, Composing Myself (London, 1987), p. 131.

  33. Interviews with Szymon Bojko, Warsaw, May 28 and June 4, 2008.

  34. Andrzej Friske, Opozycja Polityczna w PRL, 1945–1980 (London, 1994), p. 9.

  35. The text of the Yalta treaty is available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/yalta.asp.

  36. Kersten, Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, p. 125.

  37. HIA, Jakub Berman collection, folder 1:6.

  38. Kersten, Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, p. 135.

  39. Ibid., p. 126.

  40. Sławomir Poleszak et al., eds., Rok Pierwszy: Powstanie i Działalność aparatu bezpieczeństwa publicznego na Lubelszczyźnie (Lipiec 1944–Czerwiec 1945) (Warsaw, 2004), p. 397.

  41. Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War, p. 207.

  42. Notes on WiN from the introduction to Jozefa Huchlowa et al., eds., Zrzeszenie “Wolnosc I niezawislosc” w dokumentach, vol. I (Wrocław, 1997).

  43. Justyna Wojcik, ed., Ántykomunistyczne Organizacje Mlodziezowe w Malopolsce w Latach 1944–1956 (Kraków, 2008), pp. 33–34.

  44. Poleszak et al., eds., Rok Pierwszy, pp. 179–80.

  45. CAW, Opis VIII/800/13 (NKWD ZSRR), folder 15, p. 31.

  46. Anita Pra˙zmowska, Civil War in Poland, 1942–1948 (New York, 2004), p. 153.

  47. Poleszak et al., eds., Rok Pierwszy, pp. 352–83.

  48. AAN, MEN/587, pp. 2–3.

  49. Karta, Memoir Archives, Lucjan Grabowski, II/1412.

  50. Jakub Nawrocki, “Do Krwi Ostatnej,” Polska Zbrojna 8 (February 20, 2011), pp. 60–62. Krupa went to prison but was released in 1965. He died in 1972.

  51. IPN, Rz 05/36/CD.

  52. CAW, Opis VIII/800/19 (NKWD ZSRR), folder 18, p. 13.

  53. Interview with Erich Loest, Leipzig, December 12, 2006.

  54. For an account of de-Nazification in western Germany, see Frederick Taylor, Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany (London, 2011), pp. 260–76.

  55. The Potsdam protocol is available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/decade17.asp.

  56. Gerhard Finn, Die politischen Häftlinge der Sowjetzone: 1945–1959 (Pfaffenhofen, 1960), pp. 26–31; interview with Wolfgang Lehmann, Berlin, September 20, 2006.

  57. Papsdorf is interviewed in Zeitzeugen, a documentary directed by D. Jungnickel.

  58. Interviews with Gisela Gneist, Berlin and Sachsenhausen, September 20 and October 4, 2006.

  59. Interviews with Gneist; also Gisela Gneist and Gunther Heydemann, “Allenfalls kommt man für ein halbes Jahr in ein Umsc
hulungslager” (Leipzig, 2002).

  60. Bogusław Kopka, Obozy Pracy w Polsce, 1944–1950 (Warsaw, 2002), pp. 147–48.

  61. Later changed to Special Camp Number One. See the website of Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen, http://www.stiftung-bg.de/gums/en/index.htm.

  62. From documents in the collection of the Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen.

  63. Jan and Renate Lipinsky, Die Straße die in den Tod führte—Zur Geschichte des Speziallagers Nr. 5 Ketschendorf/Fürstenwalde (Leverkusen, 1999), p. 177.

  64. Interview with Gneist. She worked as a messenger.

  65. Quoting from Soviet documents, Norman Naimark (Naimark, “To Know Everything and to Report Everything Worth Knowing: Building the East German Police State, 1945–1949,” Cold War International History Project Working Paper no. 10, August 1994, p. 377) gives a figure of 153,953 arrests and 42,022 deaths. Gneist and Heydemann (“Allenfalls kommt man für ein halbes Jahr,” p. 12), using Soviet and German sources, give 157,837 arrests and 43,035 deaths.

  66. Interview with Lehmann.

  67. Interview with Gneist.

  68. Bodo Ritscher, Speziallager Nr. 2 Buchenwald (Buchenwald, 1993), pp. 86–90.

  69. Ernest Tillich, Hefte der Kampfgruppe, brochure published in Berlin, 1945.

  70. Ritscher, Speziallager Nr. 2 Buchenwald, pp. 86–90.

  71. From documents in the collection of the Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen.

  72. Interview with Lehmann.

  73. Tamás Stark, Magyar hadifoglyok a Śzovjetunióban (Budapest, 2006), p. 36.

  74. HIA, George Bien collection; see also George Z. Bien, Lost Years, self-published memoirs.

  75. Stark, Magyar hadifoglyok a Śzovjetunióban, pp. 73–85.

  76. Ibid., p. 97.

  77. László Karsai, “The People’s Courts and Revolutionary Justice in Hungary, 1945–46,” in István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt, eds., The Politics of Retribution in Europe (Princeton, 2000), pp. 233–48.

  78. Margit Földesi, A megszállók szabadsága (Budapest, 2002), p. 64.

  79. Many thanks to Anita Lackenberger, who took me to Baden to see the former NKVD headquarters.

  80. Barbara Bank, “Az internálás és kitelepítés dokumentumai a történeti levéltárban,” in György Gyarmati, ed., Az átmenet évkönyve, 2003 (Budapest, 2004), pp. 107–30; see also Karsai, “People’s Courts and Revolutionary Justice in Hungary,” p. 233.

  81. István Szent-Miklósy, With the Hungarian Independence Movement, 1943–1947: An Eyewitness Account (New York, 1988), p. 136.

  82. Ibid., pp. 138–39.

  83. ÁBTL, V-113398/1, pp. 1–20; also Balogh Margit, A KALOT és a katolikus társadalompolitika 1935–1946 (Budapest, 1998), pp. 184–85.

  84. ÁBTL, V-113398/1, pp. 241–60.

  85. Szabad Nép, May 4, 1946.

  86. Kis Újság, May 3 and May 4, 1946.

  87. Sándor M. Kiss, from the preface to Géza Böszörményi, Recsk 1950–1953 (Budapest, 2005); also interview with Sándor M. Kiss, Budapest, January 27, 2009.

  6. ETHNIC CLEANSING

  1. Maria Buczyło, “Akcja ‘Wisła’: Wyp˛edzić, rozproszyć,” Karta 49 (2006), pp. 32–63.

  2. Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (London, 2009), p. 113.

  3. The Potsdam agreements can be found at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/decade17.asp.

  4. Stefano Bottoni, “Reassessing the Communist Takeover of Romania: Violence, Institutional Continuity, Ethnic Conflict Management,” paper presented to the workshop “United Europe, Divided Memory,” Vienna, November 28–30, 2008, p. 5.

  5. Eagle Glassheim, “National Mythologies and Ethnic Cleansing: The Expulsion of Czechoslovak Germans in 1945,” Central European History 33/4 (2000), pp. 470–71.

  6. Piotr Semków, “Martyrologia Polaków z Pomorza Gdańskiego w latach II wojny światowej,” Biuletyn Instytutu Pami˛eci Narodowej 8–9 (2006), pp. 42–49.

  7. Gerhard Gruschka, Zgoda, miejsce zgrozy: Obóz koncentracyjny w Świ˛etochłowicach (Gliwice, 1998).

  8. From “They rocked my cradle then bundled me out”—Ethnic German Fate in Hungary 1939–1948, exhibition catalogue, Terror Háza (Budapest, 2007).

  9. Interview with Herta Kuhrig, Berlin, November 21, 2006. Kuhrig and her family were expelled because Czech police found a photograph of her in the uniform of the Jungmädel, the Nazi youth group for very young girls.

  10. Włodzimierz Borodziej and Hans Lemberg, eds., Niemcy w Polsce 1945–1950: Wybor Dokumentow, vol. III (Warsaw, 2001), pp. 25–26.

  11. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, Namen, die keiner mehr nennt: Ostpreußen—Menschen und Geschichte (Munich, 1964), pp. 16–18.

  12. Glassheim, “National Mythologies and Ethnic Cleansing,” p. 470.

  13. Piotr Pykel, “The Expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia,” in Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, eds., The Expulsion of the “German” Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the Second World War, EUI Working Paper HEC no. 2004/1, p. 18.

  14. Borodziej and Lemberg, eds., Niemcy w Polsce, pp. 33–34.

  15. Pykel, “Expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia,” pp. 11–21; and Balász Apor, “The Expulsion of the German-Speaking Population from Hungary,” in Prauser and Rees, eds., Expulsion of the “German” Communities from Eastern Europe, p. 32.

  16. László Karsai, “The People’s Courts and Revolutionary Justice in Hungary, 1945–46,” in István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt, eds., The Politics of Retribution in Europe (Princeton, 2000), pp. 246–47.

  17. Witold Stankowski, “Centralny Obóz Pracy w Potulicach w Latach 1945–1950,” in Alicja Paczoska, ed., Obóz w Potulicach—Aspekt Trudnego S˛asiedstwa Polsko-Niemieckiego w Okresie Dwóch Totalitarnyzmów (Bydgoszcz, 2005), pp. 58–59.

  18. Helga Hirsch, Zemsta Ofiar, trans. Maria Przybyłowska (Warsaw, 1999), p. 78; Stankowski, “Centralny Obóz Pracy w Potulicach w Latach 1940–1950,” p. 62.

  19. Waldemar Ptak, “Naczelnicy Centralnego Obozu Pracy w Potulicach w Latach 1945–1950,” in Paczoska, ed., Obóz w Potulicach, pp. 70–78.

  20. See Hirsch, Zemsta Ofiar, pp. 14–146; Witold Stankowski, Obozy i inne miejsca odosobnienia dla niemieckiej ludności cywilnej w Polsce w latach 1945–1950 (Bydgoszcz, 2002), pp. 260–69; and also John Sack, An Eye for an Eye (New York, 1993), pp. 86–97. Sack’s book, deservedly controversial, contains a number of mistakes and exaggerations, but his interviews appear to be authentic.

  21. Borodziej and Lemberg, eds., Niemcy w Polsce, pp. 131–47.

  22. Barbara Bank and Sándor Őze, A “német ügy” 1945–1953. A Volksbundtól Tiszalökig (Budapest and Munich, 2005), pp. 9–34.

  23. Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (New York, 2010), pp. 323–24.

  24. Pykel, “Expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia,” pp. 11–21.

  25. Phillip Ther, “The Integration of Expellees in Germany and Poland After World War II,” Slavic Review 55, 4 (Winter 1996), pp. 787–88.

  26. Piotr Szubarczyk and Piotr Semków, “Erika z Rumii,” Biuletyn Instytutu Pami˛eci Narodowej 5 (2004), pp. 49–53.

  27. Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2001), pp. 110–11.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Tibor Zinner, A magyarországi németek kitelepítése (Budapest, 2004), pp. 19–28; also Barbara Bank, introduction to Bank and Őze, A “német ügy” 1945–1953.

  30. Bottoni, “Reassessing the Communist Takeover of Romania,” p. 5.

  31. Mikołaj Stanisław Kunicki, “The Polish Crusader: The Life and Politics of Bolesław Piasecki, 1915–1979,” Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, June 2004, pp. 196–203.

  32. Bottoni, “Reassessing the Communist Takeover of Romania,” pp. 18–21.

  33. Kálmán Janics, Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority, 1945–1948 (New York, 1982), p. 61.

  34. Ibid., p. 105.

  35. See Andrzej Krawczyk,
“Czechy: Komunizm Wiecznie Zywy,” Gazeta Wyborcza 155 (July 5, 2007), who argues that the expulsions were a crucial part of the legitimacy of the Czechoslovak communist party.

  36. Przesiedlenia Polaków i Ukraińców, 1944–1946, vol. 2, document collection prepared by Archiwum Ministerstwa Wewnetrznych I Administracja RP and Derzahvny Arkhiv Sluzby Bezpeki Ukrainii (Warsaw and Kiev, 2000), p. 41.

  37. The best short account of the ethnic cleansing operation in Volhynia is Timothy Snyder’s “The Causes of Ukrainian–Polish Ethnic Cleansing, 1943,” Past and Present 179 (May 2003), pp. 197–234.

  38. Barbara Odnous, “Lato 1943,” Karta 46 (2005), p. 121.

  39. Waldemar Lotnik, Nine Lives: Ethnic Conflict in the Polish–Ukrainian Borderlands (London, 1999), p. 65.

  40. Przesiedlenia Polaków i Ukraińców, p. 253.

  41. Ibid., p. 45.

  42. Ibid., pp. 737–41.

  43. Ibid., pp. 915–17.

  44. Dariusz Stola, “Forced Migrations in Central European History,” International Migration Review 26, 2 (Summer 1992), pp. 324–41.

  45. Przesiedlenia Polaków i Ukraińców, pp. 49, 743.

  46. Eugeniusz Misiło, Akcja Wisła (Warsaw, 1993), pp. 16–17.

  47. Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War (New Haven and London, 2005), p. 210.

  48. Misiło, Akcja Wisła, pp. 66–69, 73.

  49. Ibid., p. 63.

  50. Ibid., p. 25.

  51. Buczyło, “Akcja ‘Wisła,’ ” p. 34.

  52. Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 329.

  53. Mark Kramer, “Stalin, Soviet Policy, and the Consolidation of a Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe, 1944–1953,” p. 21, paper delivered at the Freeman Spogli International Institute, April 30, 2010.

  54. Dagmar Kusa, “Historical Trauma in Ethnic Identity,” in Eleonore Breuning, Jill Lewis, and Gareth Pritchard, eds., Power and the People: A Social History of Central European Politics, 1945–1956 (Manchester, 2005), pp. 130–52.

  55. Janics, Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority, p. 219.

  56. Bennet Kovrig, “Partitioned Nation: Hungarian Minorities in Central Europe” in Michael Mandelbaum, ed., The New European Diasporas (New York, 2000), pp. 19–81; Stola, “Forced Migrations in Central European History,” pp. 336–37.

  57. Available at http://www.ipn.gov.pl/portal/en/2/71/​Response_by_the_State_of_Israel_to_the_​application_for_the_extradition_of_Salomo.html. In 1998, Polish authorities also tried to extradite Helena Brus, a former Stalinist prosecutor who had signed the arrest warrant for General Emil Fieldorf, one of the most heroic of the Home Army leaders, after which he was subjected to a farcical trial and then executed. Brus had moved to Oxford in 1971. She refused to return to Poland, however, on the grounds that she “could not receive a fair trial” in “the country of Auschwitz and Birkenau.” The British government did not agree to the extradition. See Anne Applebaum, “The Three Lives of Helena Brus,” Sunday Telegraph, December 6, 1998.

 

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