In addition to the Yiddish-speaking Jewish majority, the population of Białystok was made up of four other ethnic groups: Lithuanians, Poles, Germans, and Belarusians.

* September 8 – Battle of Orsha: In one of the biggest battles of the century, the Belarusians and Poles defeat the Russian army.

Some researchers estimate that altogether more than 3 million people, predominantly Ukrainians but also Russians, Belarusians and Poles, were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate.

The immigrant and minority population in Latvia is 700, 000 people: Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, and others.

The Nazis also considered some percentages of young Slavs like some Poles, some Czechs and some Belarusians to be sufficient subjects for Germanisation.

While Belarusians consider it a reunification of the Belarusian nation under one constituency ( BSSR at that time ), Poles consider it the date when the city was lost.

However, the region to the east of those lines was historically mixed among a population of Belarusians, Poles and Lithuanians, with a sizeable Jewish minority.

Of the major nationalities living in the Brest Voblast, 1, 262, 600 are Belarusians ( 85 %), 128, 700 ( 8. 6 %) are Russians, 57, 100 ( 3. 8 %) are Ukrainians, and 27, 100 ( 1. 8 %) are Poles.

The Catholic minority is made up mostly of Poles, although the identifier " Pole " has also been historically applied to Catholic Belarusians.

Ukrainians and Belarusians found themselves without a province of their own, and some Poles also found themselves within the borders of the Soviet Union.

Along most of its length, the line followed an ethnic boundary-areas west of the line contained an overall Polish majority while areas to its east were inhabited by Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Jews, and Lithuanians.

" In accordance with these declarations, the Allied Supreme Council tasked the Commission on Polish Affairs with proposing Poland's eastern boundaries in lands that were inhabited by a mixed population of Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Belarusians.

According to historian Yohanan Cohen's estimate, in 1939 the population in the territories east of the Curzon Line gained via the Treaty of Riga totalled 12 million, consisting of over 5 million Ukrainians, between 3. 5 and 4 million Poles, 1. 5 million Belarusians, and 1. 3 million Jews.

Other Eastern Slav groups such as the Rusyns and Belarusians were often included as Poles in the statistics.

The Commonwealth comprised primarily three nations: Poles, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians and Belarusians ( the latter two usually referred to together as Ruthenians ).

Coupled with further population and territorial losses, in 1717 Commonwealth population had fallen to 9m, roughly 4. 5m Poles, 1. 5m Ukrainians, 1. 2m Belarusians, 0. 8m Lithuanians, 0. 5m Jews, 0. 5m others The urban population was hit hard, falling to below 10 %.

Norman Davies gives the results of Polish census of 1931 " according to linguistic criteria " as follows: Poles, 68. 9 % of the population, Ukrainians, 13. 9 %, Jews, 8. 7 %, Belarusians, 3. 1 %, Germans, 2. 3 %, and Other, 3. 1 %.

These territories were largely inhabited by Ukrainians and Belarusians, with minorities of Poles and Jews ( see exact numbers in Curzon line ).

Initially annexed by Poland in a series of wars between 1918 and 1921 ( primarily the Polish-Soviet War ), these territories had mixed urban national populations with Poles and Ukrainians being the most numerous ethnic groups, with significant minorities of Belarusians and Jews.

Hence when asked for their nationality in Imperial Russian and then Polish censuses, many of them answered " tutejszy ", meaning " local ", and were categorized either as " other nationalities ", Poles, Belarusians or Russians, depending mostly on their religion and political situation.

In the Polish census of 1931 approximately 800, 000 people declared themselves to be " locals " rather than Poles or Belarusians.

The ethnic groups living in Babruysk included Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews.

These include the Belarusians ( пісанка, pisanka ), Bulgarians ( писано яйце, pisano yaytse ), Croats ( pisanica ), Czechs ( kraslice ), Hungarians ( hímestojás ), Lithuanians ( margutis ), Poles ( pisanka ), Romanians ( ouă vopsite, incondeiate or impistrite ), Serbs ( pisanica ), Slovaks ( kraslica ), Slovenes ( pisanica, pirhi or remenke ) and Sorbs ( jejka pisać ).

In 1921: out of a total population of 23, 221 there were 12, 064 Jews, 9, 492 Roman Catholics ( Poles ), 1, 369 Orthodox Christians ( Ukrainian and Belarusians ), and 207 Lutherans ( Germans ).

The Kosiński family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers who offered assistance to Jewish Poles, often at great personal risk ( the penalty in Nazi-occupied Poland being death ).

According to the Rybno administration most active Poles during that region included Jóżwiakowscy, Wojnowscy, Grzeszczowscy families working under the guidance of politician Leon Wojnowski who protested German attempts to remain Działdowo a part of Germany after the war ; other local pro-Polish activists were Alfred Wellenger, Paczyński, Tadeusz Bogdański, Jóźwiakowski.

With the start of the German war against Poland in 1939, the German minority in the parts of Masuria attached to Poland after World War I, organised in paramilitary formation called Selbstschutz begun to engage in massacres of local Polish population ; Poles were imprisoned, tortured and murdered while Masurians were sometimes forcefully placed on Volksliste

The Hungarians and Poles had responded to the mobile threat by extensive fortification-building, army reform in the form of better armoured cavalry, and refusing battle unless they could control the site of the battlefield to deny the Mongols local superiority.

To the surprise of many of the ethnic Germans in Opole however, the local Polish Silesian population and groups of ethnic Poles also rose to oppose the planned reforms ; this came about as a result of an overwhelming feel of attachment to the voivodeships that were planned to be ‘ redrawn ’ as well as a fear of ‘ alienation ’ should one find themselves residing in a new, unfamiliar region.

Camp prisoners from all over Europe and the Soviet Union — Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes, religious and political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Freemasons, Jehovah's Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals, and prisoners of war — worked primarily as forced labor in local armament factories.

In Grudziądz, German soldiers were stationed in the local fortress as part of the Germanization measures, and the authorities placed soldiers with the most chauvinistic attitude towards the Poles there.

When the Austrian monarchy made Galicia a province in 1772, Habsburg officials realized that the local East Slavic people were distinct from both Poles and Russians, and still called themselves Ruthenians, until the empire fell apart in 1918.

The following day the Free City of Danzig was annexed by Nazi Germany and most of the local Poles, Kashubians, and Jews were arrested and imprisoned or expelled.

The atmosphere of revenge for the Soviet crimes against ethnic Poles led to the Jedwabne pogrom of July 1941, where a mob of Poles murdered around 300 local Jews in a burning barn-house.

The massacres committed by UPA led to ethnic cleansing and retaliatory killings in kind by Poles against local Ukrainians in both Poland itself and the regions to the east of the Curzon Line.

Most of the town's Jewish community was murdered by the Nazis during the war, while many local Poles were also victims of the Nazi extermination policy.

As a result the local administration discriminated against Poles.

At the beginning of the 19th century, a Polish-language school was organised in the city by Tymoteusz Gizewiusz In 1820 Fryderyk Tymoteusz Krieger became the superintendent of the school and actively defended the rights of local Poles to use the Polish language.

Poles were also admitted to the local administration.

Agreements between the Germans and Poles in Upper Silesia and appeals issued by both sides, as well as the dispatch of six battalions of Allied troops and the disbandment of the local guards, contributed markedly to the pacification of the district.

During the war the Ukrainians exterminated a large part of the local Polish population ( see Massacre of Poles in Volhynia ).

; 1939, September and October: A number of local German occupational commanders ordered in their areas Jewish Poles to wear an identifying mark under the threat of death.

In 1920, the area was used as a conduit for arms and ammunition for the anti-Soviet Poles fighting in the Polish-Soviet War directly to the north, while local Communists sabotaged the trains and tried to help the Soviet side.

The result was that the local OUN-B commanders in Volhynia and Galicia ( if not the OUN-B leadership itself ) decided that an ethnic cleansing of Poles from the area, through terror and murder, was necessary.

At first, local Poles were assured that nothing would happen to them.

On February 28, 1944, in the village of Korosciatyn 135 Poles were murdered ; the victims were later counted by a local Roman Catholic priest, Rev.