Also targeted were professionals, merchants, the intelligentsia, and those who did not accept Soviet passports. Roughly 80 percent of these deportees were Jewish; the remainder included Poles, Belarusians, and Ukrainians.
In December 1939, the USSR and Germany agreed to repatriate refugees from their respective occupied Polish territories. Those in the Soviet zone who wished to return to the German zone were required to register with the German authorities and vice versa.
164,000 people applied to leave the Soviet zone, but Germany accepted less than 70,000. The NKVD ordered the deportation of all refugees who registered to return to their homes in the German zone but who were not accepted by German authorities.
This deportation relied on coordination between Germany and the USSR in order to compile accurate deportation lists that identified the names and addresses of those who took refuge in occupied eastern Poland.
Two registration campaigns in the spring of 1940 collected this information. While the Soviets registered people in the borderlands for identity papers, a visiting German repatriation commission gathered data from those who wanted to return to German occupied Poland.
Refugees who wanted to return west after seeing the conditions of Soviet occupation lined up to submit their information to the German commission, which operated with Soviet authorities present. The commission continued to collect names even after the exchange quota was reached.
Deceit characterized the execution of this deportation as well, with deportees rounded up in certain locations using false air raid drills and others told that their deportation train was headed west and not to the USSR.
The USSR classified these deportees as “special settlers-refugees", and they were exiled to special settlements in Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Arkhangelsk, Yakutsk, Komi, and the Altai Krai. #WWII
