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Old newsreel on Poles finding refuge in Persia during WWII


An old newsreel on Poles finding refuge in Persia (now Iran) during WWII. Just one minor error that I noticed in what the commentator was saying - the Poles were not pushed out of the Soviet Union by the Nazis - they were released by the Soviets, as they had been prisoners in the Soviet Union right up until the Soviets were attacked by their ally, Nazi Germany. This then necessitated agreements with their new allies, whom they'd been formerly attacking and imprisoning. It seems during WWII, any mention of this embarrassing fact was omitted.

Anyway, I was quite excited to find this newsreel on YouTube. My Dad was one of those who made it to Persia as a 14 year old. Actually, he was probably a little younger, but saying he was 14 got him into the Cadets, which didn't make him old enough to fight in the war, but did mean he got vocational training as a welder.

For more about my father's family's story, see my experiences of motherhood and conservatism, where I explain how thinking about the way my grandmother died during WWII helped push me from liberalism to conservatism.

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