Gwałt i rabunek. Co przynosiła Armia Czerwona w Polsce

A taboo subject. This is a fitting description of nearly five decades of historical memory of the Red Army after the war. For years, it was portrayed as an allied force that was supposed to liberate us from Nazi occupation and later bring about a system of people's democracy. The Red Army and the NKVD, of course, implemented Moscow's political directives related to the elimination of representatives of the Polish Underground State, but that is not the subject of our story today. The subject is what the Soviet Army did to the ordinary, innocent people of liberated Poland in 1945 and 1946. Already in the first months after the Germans were driven out, its soldiers committed hundreds, if not thousands, of robberies, murders, and rapes on Polish soil. The victims were liberated Poles, often entire families. The self-proclaimed government under the banner of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) was helpless, having been brought in on Soviet tanks. The Polish communists owed their power to the Soviets, so they were reluctant to intervene. The escalation of the Red Army's feral hordes of crimes occurred in two waves. First, during their invasion of Polish lands and the eastern frontiers of the Reich, later incorporated into Poland in the autumn of 1944, and then after the capture of Berlin and the German surrender. In the summer of 1945, hundreds of thousands of soldiers passed through Polish lands on their way back east. This episode was produced in collaboration with the ZNAK HORYZONT publishing house, which published Andrzej Brzeziecki's book "Ostróda '46. How Poles Defeated the Soviets." Today, we divide the material into two parts. In the first, we will present little-known facts from the postwar period of Polish history and the actions of the liberators. In the second, the author of "Ostróda '46" will be my guest. I invite you to support the channel on my PATRONITE: https://patronite.pl/Historiajakiejni...