Today marks the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Russian invasion of Poland in 1939 when the Red Army practically sealed Poland's fate at the beginning of World War II.
Click on the audio icon above to listen to the report by Michal Kubicki.
The aggression from the east, which followed the German Nazi attack on Poland from the west sixteen days earlier, practically sealed Poland's fate at the beginning of World War II.
Soviet Russia attacked Poland at 6am in the morning on the 17 September 1939. Survivors recall that people did not expect it to happen.
“We believed the Russians would not attack, that they would keep their word. But sadly, they stabbed us in the back, so to say,” said one survivor.
As it turned out, Germans had made an agreement with the Soviets. Russians invaded Poland, violating the non-aggression pact they had previously signed. Polish soldiers, too, were taken by surprise.
Stanislaw Matkowski and his unit were stationed on the Polish-Soviet border. “We were completely disoriented, we had no idea about the Ribbentrop-Molotow pact. We did not know if they were coming to join us in our fight against the Germans or if this was a new attack. When we started to fight and the Soviet planes started bombarding us, it became clear what was going on,” Matkowski said. (jn/mmj)