“I was just 3-and-a-half when the Russians came for us in the middle of the night, but I can still remember the sound of them banging on the door with rifles and bayonets and yelling ‘Out! Out!” Marie Wypijewski, 85, told NBC News. “They made my father stand with his face to the wall while my mother packed and dressed us in the warmest clothes she could find.”

More than a million Poles were sent by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to Siberia.

Wypijewski’s husband, Dennis, 91, said they were branded “enemies of the state” simply for being Polish. His hand trembling with emotion, he said he was shocked that “history seems to be repeating itself.”

“I admire the way the Ukrainians have resisted, they have been very courageous,” he said. “I never thought we would see something like this happening again. People being thrown out of their homes, losing everything they worked for in one night. People being taken by trains to Russia.”