Have you heard of this term "Sybirak" before?
We hadn't.
It comes from the Russian word Sibiriyak which refers to a person who lives in Siberia. To Poles, it refers to the group of people who were imprisoned or exiled in Siberia and those sent to Arctic Russia and Kazakhstan in the 1940's.
Kresy-Siberia refers to those Poles from the eastern borderlands (kresy), such as our family, who were deported to Siberia. The Kresy were the lands settled by ex-servicemen that fought for Poland in World War I and against the Bolsheviks in 1920. This included Ignacz Ferenc, brother-in-law to our Babcia, Lucyna. Ignacz' farm was located in the small hamlet of Ostrow and here he lived with his wife Zofia (Lucyna's sister), mother-in-law Francizsca and three children Ryzsard, Alicja and Bogdan.
The ex-servicemen may have been given the land, but life was not easy as the kresy lands were war-torn and full of craters and shells. Eventually, their work paid off and they raised their families and were happy.
Until 1939.
