the Polish part of the old united Austrian Church, had ca. 2,000, thus bringing the total number of Reformed in Poland to ca. 30,000 members. These included Poles of Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, German, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Jewish backgrounds. World War II persecution (1939–45) On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland and on 17 September, so did the Soviet Union. After a desperate fight, Poland was occupied by Russia and Germany and the government went into exile by the end of the month. Both the Nazis and Soviets instigated a true reign of terror in the conquered territory. These measures affected also the Reformed. In the Nazi sector the entire Anglican Synod of the Wilno Brethren (ca. 1000 members) was wiped out. In Łódź, the pastor was first forbidden to preach in Polish. When he started to do so in Czech, was arrested by the Gestapo after the Christmas Eve service in 1940, deported to the Dachau concentration camp where he was murdered. The congregation was suppressed and services ceased. The same happened to congregations in Toruń, Poznań and Lublin. The Warsaw parish survived under the leadership of General Superintendent Stefan Skierski, but, following the Warsaw Uprising, it was dispersed. Deportations, executions and forced labor decimated the church. Persecution persisted under the Soviet Union, with the Ukrainian Protestant population subject to deportations and nearly completely wiped out. The Wilno congregation was first subjected to the Lithuanian synod, and then Polish services were ordered to cease. The nobility and intelligentsia were hunted down and either executed or deported to Siberia. By 1945 the Wilno Brethren ceased to exist. Under Communist regime (1945–89) It took the Polish Reformed two years before they met in a Synod (1947). The old Rev. Skierski was chosen again as superintendent but he died exhausted and broken by the atrocities of the war. The situation of the church was dramatic: only three ministers were in Poland; the churches in present-day Lithuania and Belarus were lost to Soviets; the church in Sielec, and Tabor were seized as "German" by the Catholic population; Warsaw was completely destroyed by the Germans, although the church managed to survive. The number of members was estimated to be at 5000, or nearly 1/6 the 1939 number. Still, it was dropping even more, as the German and Czech Calvinists were emigrating from Poland. Old Calvinist churches in West Poland were taken over by the