A general view shows graves of Polish Jews who died in Iran during and after World War II at Beheshtieh cemetery in southern Tehran on January 9, 2015, which is the only existing Jewish cemetery in Tehran built in 1936. In 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union attacked Poland and divided it between them sending huge numbers of Poland's elite to prisons and labor camps. As the war began with Germany in 1941, the Soviet Union decided to raise an army from among the thousands of still interned Polish soldiers and they granted an "amnesty" to all Polish deportees. The new Polish army was to be sent to the North African front to fight alongside the British through the border with Iran and tens of thousands of deported Polish families headed to Iran from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in hopes of rejoining the soldiers. Many Poles reached Iran, after thousands died along the way and many families and children stayed in Iran. AFP PHOTO / BEHROUZ MEHRI