Trip To Nowhere

(Podróż do nikąd)

Much is known of the atrocities carried out by Hitler and the Nazis in Western Poland during WWII, but little has been written about the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland. Under a secret agreement between Hitler and Stalin to conquer and divide Poland between them, the Germans attacked Poland on September 1st, 1939 from the west. The Soviets attacked Poland on September 17th, 1939, from the east. In just days, Poland was completely overrun. The Soviet arrests of thousands of Polish military personnel and professionals immediately began with only some of the men able to escape into hiding to help fight the Nazis and Soviets with the Polish Underground. When the Soviet secret police (the NKVD now the KGB) came to arrest the families of this identified group of Soviet "enemies", most often it was just innocent women and children that were taken into custody. "This is when my childhood ended", says Krystyna Bałut, a deportation survivor arrested at age 10. In 4 major waves of deportations, over 1 million women and children were packed into train cars originally intended for cattle, without food, water or sanitary facilities. Traveling for weeks at a time to the remote and frigid labor camps of Siberia spanning 11 time zones, approximately half of the deportees perished within the first year. Only a small fraction of them were able to escape to Persia (Iran) once Hitler turned on Stalin and the Soviet Union joined the Allied Forces. Most of those who escaped where forced to sign papers vowing never to mention the massive deaths and deportations.

Director: Hart-Reed, Shanon

Screenplay: Shanon Hart-Reed

Film Editor: James R. Smith, Quoc Bao Tran, Valerie Vozza

Runtime: 30 minutes

Release Year: 2010

Genre: Documentary