had remained in the General Government. It put people in a situation with no way out. They didn’t know what to do. Above all, they wanted to re-establish contact with their families. These people had suffered a tragedy with severe consequences for their lives. Their circumstances remained uncertainand thus unstable.
A second group consisted of those who had been separated by compulsory measures on the part of the Soviet regime. Those measures were ruthless and often cruel. Salomea L. knew a couple of which the husband was first suspected and then deported as a speculator. The wife was later deported toanother location, and they did not meet and could not communicate with each other. In the initial period, contact between deportees was difficult, if not impossible. There were no lines of communication. This made the group in question particularly bitter. Later, the situation of the deportees eased. There was regular contact with family and friends, who could send packages and necessary consumer goods. The deportees settled down to some extent, and some did not fare at all badly. Salomea L.’s deported acquaintance [15(29)] eventually found employment in the town. He was not only given the possibility of living in the town, but also a job in a factory and an allotment of food and clothing.
Nevertheless, families whose members had been separated or deported remained discontented, contrary to the generally positive mood of the working population.
In the early days, the first thing that caught one’s eye in the street were the long queues outside the shops. Queueing for various foodstuffs was the plague of all working people in the initial period. Later, consumer goodsappeared one by one, and the queues gradually disappeared. Life became almost normal again. People were cheerful, they strolled through the streets in their spare time and on their days off, and before the Days of Awe there was a larger volume of customers in the shops as people tried to cover their greater need for consumer items.159
