Editing Bolesław Bierut (section)

===In the Soviet Union===

On 1 September 1939, [[Nazi Germany]] [[Invasion of Poland|attacked Poland]]. On 6 September the Polish military command issued a radio appeal for all able-bodied men to head east;<ref>
Compare:
{{cite book
 |last1                = Meade
 |first1               = Teresa A.
 |author-link         = Teresa Meade
 |series               = Palgrave Studies in Oral History
 |chapter              = The War Years in Warsaw and the Soviet Union 1939-1945
 |title                = We Don't Become Refugees by Choice: Mia Truskier, Survival, and Activism from Occupied Poland to California, 1920-2014
 |date = 26 November 2021
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=vmtREAAAQBAJ
 |location             = Cham, Switzerland
 |publisher            = Springer Nature
 |publication-date     = 2021
 |page                 = 129
 |isbn                 = 9783030845254
 |access-date          = 28 May 2022
 |quote                = [...] the Polish people who found themselves in the Soviet Union after the Polish government on September 6, 1939 issued an order (over the radio) for all able-bodied men to evacuate the city and start to join the 'regrouped' Polish army, because the government claimed that the city of Warsaw, already under constant bombing by the Nazis and completely surrounded by them, was not going to be defended and the government did not wish the men to fall into the invaders' hands.
}} 
</ref>
Bierut left Warsaw for Lublin, from where he proceeded to [[Kovel]]. Eastern Poland was soon occupied by the [[Red Army]] and Bierut was about to spend a part of [[World War II]] in the [[Soviet Union]]. From early October, he was employed by the Soviets in political capacities, including vice-chairmanship of a regional election commission before the [[Elections to the People's Assemblies of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia]]. The two assemblies, once established, voted for the incorporation of the previously Polish territories into the respective [[Republics of the Soviet Union|Soviet republic]]s.<ref name="Eisler siedmiu 48–56">Jerzy Eisler, ''Siedmiu wspaniałych. Poczet pierwszych sekretarzy KC PZPR'' [The Magnificent Seven: first secretaries of the PZPR], pp. 48–56.</ref>

Bierut spent the rest of 1939, 1940 and the first part of 1941 in the Soviet Union, in [[Kiev]] and Moscow, working, making efforts to sanitize his record as a communist and searching for Fornalska, whom he met in Moscow in July 1940 and again in May 1941 in [[Białystok]], where she had moved with Aleksandra. The mother and daughter were evacuated to [[Yershov, Saratov Oblast|Yershov]] in the Soviet Union after the June 1941 outbreak of the [[Operation Barbarossa|Soviet-German war]], but Bierut ended up in [[Minsk]].{{Ref label|a|a|none}} From November 1941, he was employed there by the [[Nazi Germany|German]] occupation authorities as a manager in the trade and food distribution department of the city government. In the summer of 1943, Bierut arrived in [[Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)|Nazi-occupied Poland]], likely dispatched there as a trusted Soviet operative. He came to join the leadership of the [[Polish Workers' Party]] (PPR), a new communist party founded in January 1942. He may have been recommended for the job by Fornalska; parachuted into the [[General Government]] in the spring of 1942, she was in charge of the PPR's radio communications with Moscow.<ref name="Eisler siedmiu 48–56"/> Bierut became a member of the party Secretariat on 23 November 1943.<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1                = Brzoza
 |first1               = Czesław
 |title                = Polska w czasach niepodległości i II wojny światowej: 1918-1945
 |trans-title          = Poland in Times of Independence and World War II (1918–1945)
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=HGoqjwEACAAJ
 |series               = Volume 9 of ''Polska w czasach niepodległości i II wojny światowej'', Stanisław Grodziski, ISBN 8385719350, 9788385719359
 |year = 2001
 |publisher            = Fogra
 |publication-date     = 2001
 |pages                = 362–364
 |isbn                 = 9788385719618
 |access-date          = 28 May 2022
}} 
</ref>

While there are many accounts and stories relating to Bierut during the 1939–1943 period, not much is known with certainty about his activities and the accounts are often speculative or amount to hearsay.<ref name="Eisler siedmiu 48–56"/>