An estimated 111,000 ethnic Poles were murdered in the former USSR and more than 100,000 others were deported into the Soviet interior, mainly to Kazakhstan and Siberia, as part of the so-called “Polish Operation” of the Soviet Union’s NKVD secret police in 1937 and 1938.
The New York display, at the Roman Catholic Church of St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr in Manhattan, features 16 boards telling the story of some of those who were repressed at the time.
The exhibition, put together by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), is in part based on archival material the Polish government-affiliated institute has obtained from Ukrainian state archives.
The display will next travel to the Polish Cultural Foundation in Clark, New Jersey, where it will be available from Wednesday.
President Andrzej Duda said in August that the NKVD's Polish Operation was "the worst genocidal act of Soviet state terror before World War II."
The NKVD launched its "Polish Operation" on August 11, 1937, following an order issued by its head at the time, Nikolai Yezhov.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said last year that “the Polish Operation, approved by [Josef] Stalin and conducted by the NKVD, was one of the worst crimes against the Polish nation committed in the Soviet Union.”
(gs/pk)
Source: IAR, ipn.gov.pl