The NKVD’s “Polish Operation,” 1937–1938

The NKVD’s “Polish Operation,” carried out in 1937–1938 on the basis of Order No. 00485, became the largest of all the “national operations” of the Great Terror. Its victims were not only ethnic Poles, but also people of various nationalities suspected of having ties to Poland.

In Polish Operation cases, sentences were handed down by the “dvoika” — the People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor of the USSR. Cases were reviewed from lists of arrested individuals, under the so-called “album procedure.”

During the operation, 143,810 people were arrested and 139,835 were convicted. Of these, 111,091 were sentenced to death — around 80% of those convicted. The Polish Operation accounted for roughly 16% of all death sentences issued in the USSR in 1937–1938: nearly every sixth person executed during the Great Terror.

Among those arrested under the “Polish line” were Jews of Polish origin. The documents from the case file of Itsik Eikhman, who lived in the small town of Obodivka in Vinnytsia Oblast, show how the repressive mechanism worked in practice.

A tailor by profession, Itsik Eikhman was a native of the Polish town of Solec nad Wisłą. He was arrested on 12 January 1938 and charged with espionage under Article 54-6 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR and anti-Soviet agitation under Article 54-10.

The grounds for his arrest included Eikhman’s service in the Polish army in 1920, during the Soviet–Polish War; his retention of Polish citizenship until 1932; and his appeal to the Polish consulate for permission to leave the USSR.

The case rested on clearly fabricated witness testimony. Eikhman did not admit guilt on the espionage charge.

On 13 February 1938, the “dvoika” sentenced him to death. In 1989, Itsik Eikhman was fully rehabilitated on the grounds that no crime had been committed.