Tag: Gulag

Highlights, Women

Polish Gulag woman-prisoner befriended by John Paul II

By Ted Lipien In my book, Wojtyła’s Women: How They Shaped the life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church, I describe how future Pope John Paul II, whom I had interviewed in Washington D.C. for the Voice of America (VOA) in 1976 when he was Kraków’s Archbishop, became familiar with many stories of immense suffering of…

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Highlights

The Light of the Candle

Following the August 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact and the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, which started World War II, the Soviets began the first mass deportation of Poles on February 10, 1940 from the occupied eastern part of Poland. Whole families were arrested, usually early in the morning, and sent in overcrowded cattle train wagons to forced labor…

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Children, Voice of America

Polish children refugees – Time and OWI/VOA propaganda

U.S. Government Propaganda Photo By Ted Lipien Time Magazine Story In addition to misleading foreign audiences through Voice of America (VOA) shortwave radio broadcasts and domestic news outreach by the wartime Office of War Information (OWI) U.S. government propagandists had a definite impact on independent U.S. media. A short Time magazine entry on November 15, 1943 described a group of…

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Highlights, Voice of America, Women

Polish women slave laborers in Soviet Russia

U.S. Government Propaganda Photo, 1943 By Ted Lipien A U.S. Government propaganda photo showing an unidentified Polish woman and other Polish women making their own clothing at a Red Cross refugee camp in Iran was taken by the Office of War Information (OWI) photographer in 1943. A few months earlier, the women were prisoners and slave laborers in the Soviet…

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