The Secret Betrayal

As a history teacher, I strive to project the human element in his-story to all my students. It is easy to forget, when students read about nations and treaties, that these mighty decisions often taken in a nice comfortable office between powerful (and distant) men, have a profound influence on the lives of normal human beings.

A good example is the Yalta Conference. We all know that it was signed in Feb 1945, towards the final days of the war, between the Big 3- President Truman of the USA, the British Bulldog PM Winston Churchill, and the ever so steely Stalin of the USSR. We have all read the textbooks and memorized the facts and terms- the allocation of post war Occupation Zones, the return of territories back to their original masters, the free elections to be held in all territories (we know of course with hindsight that the USSR never intended to follow this), the reparations of all civilians and soldiers. On paper, it is bland, mundane, words inked into paper. Political significance, of course. Nothing more.

But we sometimes forget the human element. This Yalta Conference would have severe, and fatal, repercussions on many lives. The most famous would be the Betrayal of the Cossacks at Lienz, Austria, May 1945. According to the decision at Yalta, the cossacks, and similar minorities, would be repatriated to Russia. The Cossacks were never part of the the Soviet Union. Often followers of the Tsar, they fled the Communist regime to settle on the borders of Eastern Europe. They joined the German Army in 1942, to fight against the Soviets and establish a new republic. With the Yalta Conference, they are deemed to be citizens of the USSR and would be forcibly returned to the Communists.

The British entered Lienz and requested that the 2,700 Cossacks located in the town attend a conference. The Coassacks were assured that this would be a conference. However, they were forcibly loaded into trucks to be sent across to the Soviets.

An account of a Cossack soldier
The NKVD or the Gestapo would have slain us with truncheons, the British did it with their word of honor. The first to commit suicide by hanging was the Cossack editor Evgenij Tarruski. The second was General Silkin who shot himself. . . . The Cossacks refused to board the trucks. British soldiers [armed] with pistols and clubs began using their clubs, aiming at the heads of the prisoners. They first dragged the men out of the crowd and threw them into the trucks. The men jumped out. They beat them again and threw them onto the floor of the trucks. Again, they jumped out. The British then hit them with rifle butts until they lay unconscious and threw them like sacks of potatoes in the trucks.

In other areas, Allied troops sent civilians as well as soldiers to the Russians. Often on the way back, they would hear gunshots. It would not take a genius to figure what the Russians were doing. Even German POWs were angered by the treatment of the Cossacks, and shouted at the Allied troops for their behaviour.

As history students, Marists must empathise and see the bigger significance of historical events and treaties. They are not just words- there is a direct human impact. In this case, it is sad to see the other side of WW2. We celebrate the fall of Hitler's Nazi regime, but we mus also bear in mind the death toll and human suffering incurred on both sides.