they checked his identity and asked whether he had a Soviet passport. If he did not have one, he was taken away with his entire family, that is, wife, children, and often also parents, regardless of their age. A lorry would be waiting on the street in front of the gate with two NKVD soldier armed with rifles with bayonets. All the refugees were loaded onto the lorry, [12] with their luggage, and when it was completely full, they were transported to the railway station and loaded into wagons that were waiting there.
An interesting and characteristic detail should be added here: much earlier, when there were rumours about a possible deportation of the refugees, they humorously claimed that this was simply incredible, because with the Bolshevik economy as a whole being so defective that it was impossible to deliver enough food supplies to Lvov due to a shortage of wagons, the Bolsheviks would be unable to organise [a deportation] properly, predominantly because they would not have enough wagons. But it proved to be that even though the economy was not organised at all (or should I even say, even though it was [completely] disorganised) and even despite the acute shortage of both wagons and carriages, [13] the deportation was well thought out and organised. To carry out their plan to “purge” the area of refugees, as was seen, the Bolsheviks divided them into the categories of family men and “bachelors” and brought special detachments of the NKVD and the people’s militia, so that (see the opposite left page) the refugees would not find contacts among them, for some ties with the local militia functionaries had already been established.
According to the rumours, which were circulating at that time in the USSR, there were special detachments of NKVD soldiers and people’s militia used only for mass deportations. When a town was to be completely “purged” of a certain element, such detachments were brought to carry out the task and then leave.
Mobilisation of means of transport to transport refugees from flats to the railway station Entire trains of wagons had been found. They waited for as long as a fortnight in Lvov to be filled. During the day there was a mobilisation of means of transport, such as cars and carts. All this suggests that the party’s resolutions were carefully carried out (it was believed that the entire deportation was the Communist Party’s idea and decision). The campaign
d-d The announced note on the left page, verso of the previous sheet.
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