<Li> District Galicia, East Galicia, which was incorporated into the General Government and became its fifth district . </Li> <P> During 1943--1944 ethnic cleansing operations took place in Ukraine (commonly known as the Massacres of Poles in Volhynia) which brought about an estimated 100,000 deaths and an exodus of ethnic Poles from this territory . </P> <P> The Polish and Jewish language population of the regions in 1939 totaled about 6.7 million . During the war, an estimated 2 million persons perished (including 1.2 million Jews). These numbers are included with Polish war losses . 2 million (including 250,000 Jews) became refugees to Poland or the West, 1.5 million were in the territories returned to Poland in 1945 and 1.2 million remained in the USSR . Contemporary Russian historians also include the war losses of Poles and Jews from this region with Soviet war dead . </P> <P> At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union annexed most of the territories it had invaded in 1939 . Some parts of eastern Poland occupied by the Nazis in 1939 with an area of 21,275 square kilometres (8,214 sq mi) and 1.5 million inhabitants near Białystok and Przemyśl were returned to postwar Poland . The Western Allies were unaware of the existence of the secret clause dividing Poland between Hitler and Stalin already in 1939 along the Curzon Line . </P>

Territories of poland annexed by the soviet union