The Polish Operation of the NKVD in 1937–1938 was a Soviet Great Purge-era mass operation against purported Polish agents in the Soviet Union, explicitly ordered against Polish spies, but interpreted by the NKVD as relating to "absolutely all Poles". It resulted in the sentencing of 139,835 people and the execution of 111,091 Poles, and those accused of working for Poland. The operation was implemented according to NKVD Order № 00485 signed by Nikolai Yezhov. Not all, but the majority were ethnic Poles according to Timothy Snyder: 85,000 is given by him as a "conservative estimate" of the number of executed Poles. The remainder being 'suspected' to be Polish without further inquiry.
NKVD personnel gathered Polish-sounding names from local telephone books in order to speed up the process. In Leningrad alone, almost 7,000 citizens were rounded up. A vast majority of them were executed within 10 days of arrest. In the fourteen months after the adoption of Order № 00485, 143,810 people were captured, of whom 139,885 were sentenced by extrajudical organs, and
111,091 executed (nearly 80% of all victims).
It was the largest ethnic shooting and deportation action during the Great Terror.
more...Uncle Joe
