Published in Wellington, New Zealand, by the Polish Children's Reunion Committee
Editor & Production: Adam Manterys
Commissioning Editors:
Photo Editor & Archivist:
Photos from the library of
Reunion Committee:
All enquiries:
1st Edition © 2004
1st Revised Edition © 2004
2nd Edition © 2008
Polish language edition © 2006
Dwie Ojczyzny: Polskie Dzieci w Nowej Zelandii: Tulacze wspomnienia
All rights reserved by the Polish Children's Reunion Committee, except for private study, research, criticism or review
ISBN 0-476-00739-9
Thank you to all who contributed their stories and articles
We also thank
Special thanks to our sponsors:
Wellington City Council
Polish Association in New Zealand
New Zealand Lotteries Commission
Embassy of the Republic of Poland
Jan Roy-Wojciechowski
Polish Fund in Australia
Polish Ex-Servicemen's Association in Wellington,
New Zealand Historic Places Trust (Tararua Branch)
This book is dedicated to the
Polish refugee children and their guardians
"As I'm getting older and think back – my grandparents are buried in Poland, my father in Katyn, Russia, where he was shot, my mother in Iran, my sister in the US and I will be buried in New Zealand"
This book developed from a wish to record for posterity a unique episode in New Zealand's history – the arrival of the first refugee group in 1944 and its successful integration into New Zealand society. This group consisted of 733 Polish children (most of them orphans) and their 102 guardians who arrived on 1 November 1944 as invited guests of the New Zealand Government.
More than 100 personal stories are included here by the former refugee children, their descendants and New Zealanders who had contact with them in those earlier years. The book was written, produced and published by the former children and their descendants, and is therefore an accurate and inside picture of the group.
Their integration is a success story. It is the success of an unintentional experiment by New Zealand's wartime Government to accept refugees into a then very insular society. It is the success of the refugee children who made this country their home and positively contributed to it. It is a success made even more remarkable by the odds stacked against them – a childhood defined by wartime exile, horror and refuge.
New Zealand's wartime Prime Minister
This book was published as part of the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the children's arrival in New Zealand. It presents the subject from their own perspective, and is open to further research from archival materials and sources shown in this book.
Polish surnames have gender endings, eg, Kowalski is a masculine name and Kowalska is the feminine version. Maiden or former names are in brackets.
Russia – Until 1991, Russia was known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) or the Soviet Union. In this book, these names are used interchangeably when referring to Russia.
Siberia – Geographically, it is the area of northern Russia east of the Ural Mountains. To the Poles, Siberia (Sybir) has a secondary meaning which encompasses any part of northern Russia or its Central Asian territories – anywhere that Polish citizens were deported to forced labour while their country was under Russian occupation.
Pahlevi – A port in Iran since renamed Bandar-e-Anzali.
Bombay – A port in India since renamed Mumbai.
Allies – Mainly includes the US and British Commonwealth countries (including New Zealand), and later joined by the Soviet Union. This alliance fought against the Axis powers in World War II.
Polish Government-in-Exile – After Poland's destruction by the German and Russian armies in 1939, the Polish Government, led by Władysław Sikorski, re-established itself in London and was recognised by the Allies during the war years.
Polish army-in-exile – The Polish men and women who fled the invaders in 1939 were regrouped that year in the UK under British command. They were joined in 1942 by the men and women evacuated from the forced-labour camps in the Soviet Union under the command of General Władysław Anders.
Polish pronunciation:
ong as in belong
ang as in angle
che as in cheap
ch as in chip
ch as in Scottish loch
dge as in judge
adze
y as in yes
w as in water
n as in new
oo as in took
she as in sheep
sh as in ship
g as in beige
v as in very
ByGerald O'Brien President, the Association of Former Members of the Parliament of New Zealand, 2003-04
With the arrival in 1944 of the Polish children refugees at the behest of Prime Minister
The duty of peoples towards each other (being our brother's keeper, an attitude fostered in New Zealand notably from 1935 onward until today's global outlooks overtook it) was further stimulated by this event. It had its echo in New Zealand's moral position at the founding of the United Nations and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which this country's contribution to both far outweighed its small population
That young children torn from their homes and families by the totalitarian forces that bestrode Europe would become a catalyst for good was certainly not foreseen by the perpetrators. Yet in the nature of these children, with their strange sadness which turned into joy as the years progressed, that is what their coming to New Zealand came to mean.
The Polish character melded well with that of New Zealanders. They humbly and freely offered to New Zealand their rugged Polish character, that "vital spark of heavenly flame", adapted to New Zealand's way of life and contributed to it grandly in all walks.
As Fraser's electorate secretary and chairperson, then later as treasurer of the Polish Hostel Board, I was fascinated to closely observe just how elated he was with the prize he had won for humanity in these children. And over the years, his expectations have been fully honoured. His commitment is confirmed in a 1945 letter to the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua's administrator, in which Fraser wrote: "With myself, the interests of the children have been the paramount and decisive consideration."
Looking back over 60 years, the desire of New Zealanders, who are all descendants of earlier immigrants, was that to the best of their ability they had met the expectations of the children in the provision of care, education and social wellbeing in a peaceful environment. When the reunification of families took place in New Zealand after post-war demobilisation, it added to national enrichment.
That so many remained over the years in New Zealand has been gratifying
This book recounts much that illustrates the character I have mentioned. It will return many of us to memories, happy and sad, and to recall those who have gone before us yet left their indelible marks. And sometimes those who did not even come here but, because we knew their children and their brothers and sisters, will reside in our hearts even though they may lie on Monte Cassino with the
Many New Zealanders have happy memories of aiding in the children's upbringing, participating in their Easter Sundays, Christmases and singing of Polish songs, and enjoying the welcome that they give in their homes.
This book provides a picture, in the former Polish refugee children's own words, of what life was like after being ethnically cleansed from their Polish homes and roots, deported to forced-labour camps in the USSR, and their subsequent escape and arrival in New Zealand. It also reveals the intensity of the children's early lives resulting from their experiences and the joy in the lasting bonds created within the group.
But the main focus is to give the reader an understanding of their life and integration into New Zealand society – growing up in the Polish Children's Camp, leaving for New Zealand's schools, finding work, getting married, having children and grandchildren… In short, all the trials, tribulations, joys and triumphs of successfully making it in a foreign land against so many odds.
It will pay tribute to the caregivers and good people they encountered along their tragic journey through war-torn Europe and the Middle East (at a time when goodness was indeed a rare luxury), the Ursuline Sisters, priests, teachers, and those other older persons who gave their services and love to this unique enterprise, which was born out of goodwill, rectitude and duty – not as a demonstration to the world of responsibility, but simply as an action in accordance with faith and reason.
But most of all, it will record for history a small but greatly significant occasion and acknowledge the blessings that have flowed from humanity's care for one another.
ByJózef Zawada
Two things stand out like huge beacons on my life's horizon. The first is patriotism (love for Poland), which was unshakably implanted in us as part of our upbringing and so strongly reinforced by the tragic experiences of World War II. This intense patriotism has been a persistent driving force in our lives, resulting in us bringing up our children biculturally, living in awareness of political happenings in Poland, and remaining faithful to our secular and religious traditions.
The second beacon is the lifelong bond of belonging to that group of Polish children which arrived in New Zealand in 1944 and initially lived at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. Our affinity was brought about by a feeling of individual isolation in a caring but alien community. Having lost our parents and country, we reacted by creating one large family. I know that whenever I meet anyone who was "at the camp", they are a special person for me–one of us and another member of our extended family.
Some of us have more memories to share with our friends from the camp than with our own families separated from us during the war. This was very evident at our reunion commemorating the 50th anniversary of our arrival in New Zealand. There just wasn't enough time to catch up with everyone.
I know that my early childhood memories have steadily diminished because I have been unable to reinforce them through normal contact with my parents, siblings, relatives and familiar surroundings. Nevertheless, we not only tried to hold on to what heritage we had but also to eventually pass it on to our children. This was done against a background of the natural assimilation forces to which exiles, refugees and immigrants are subjected.
How did we get assimilated? Once it became clear that a majority of the Polish children would remain in New Zealand, the "assimilation policy", based on the assumption that new settlers benefit most by being absorbed quickly into the majority culture, was thought to be the most appropriate for us.
However, this assimilation policy overlooks the fact that refugees and exiles are people who have been banished or escaped from their homeland, and can be extremely homesick. They have a desire to return home, and take their political and religious ideas back with them. Consequently, the last thing they want is to assimilate quickly – they need time to get reconciled to the loss
In our case, the policy, in the main, had the opposite effect to what was intended as we tried to preserve our "Polishness" in every possible way. There was a rumour that one influential member of the camp's administration had a vision of a Polish rural colony – buy a tract of land and settle the children there. But in retrospect, this would have been undesirable and in the long run impractical. It would have been unfair to us because it would have prevented us from making the most of local community life and taking part in local affairs.
Experience shows that migrants' children quite often marry outside their ethnic group, which is exactly what happened to our children. Migrants are often faced with a situation in which they can hardly communicate with their children and even less with their grandchildren. Fortunately, this has not happened in our case because we came to this country as children and had the opportunity to attend New Zealand schools, learn the English language and absorb the local culture.
Our emotional ties with Poland were originally very strong. As the known members of our families die off, our ties with Poland become weaker. Also, the political climate in Poland has changed and one of our beacons (the movement for Poland's independence) has been extinguished as Poland is now independent.
The Polish children from the camp are now facing a "mature refugee community crisis". The personnel who accompanied us, and those fathers, relatives and other Polish displaced persons who arrived after the war and created the framework for the Polish community in New Zealand, have in the main passed away.
Currently, at the forefront of the Polish community, we have the former Polish children from the camp who are now at least in their 60s. We find that there aren't enough young people to run our associations and clubs despite the determined efforts on our part. Their priorities are naturally to the land of their birth – New Zealand – and not to their parents' Polish homeland.
Though many of our children are bilingual, ie, they have a reasonable knowledge of the Polish language and most were taught to speak it as a first language, they will not always be able to pass that language to their
Today, looking back over the years, I feel that the majority of us were assimilated by the "acculturation policy", which recognises the need of the exiles and refugees to keep their own culture while adapting to the new cultural environment. It gave us a chance to keep our cultural heritage while we gradually came to terms with the social environment in New Zealand.
Now, having raised our children and with grandchildren at a mature age, how do we feel about the whole experience of growing up in two cultures? As the years went by, the Polish children from Pahiatua separated into two groups. The first became fairly quickly assimilated and have little or no contact with the Polish culture or people. The second group has remained strongly attached to Polishness by attending Polish Mass, being in the Polish Association and belonging to Polish clubs, such as the Ladies Circle, choirs, dance groups, Youth Club, Volleyball Club, Chess Club, Bridge Club and Video Club.
This group made a great effort to teach their children the Polish language and culture by maintaining the Polish Saturday schools. It has now realised that because their children and grandchildren were born in New Zealand, and that their lives have been spent in New Zealand, they are more New Zealanders than Poles.
Our community is quickly dwindling in numbers and there is a general realisation among us that the Polish Association and clubs that flourished 40 years ago are now (like the Returned Services Association) suffering from depleted membership and lack of new blood. We are now a community which has lost its young people. This has been brought about by the fact that they have to live in their society, and not in a world which we created for ourselves for the purpose of preserving our culture and continuing our fight against the oppressors of Poland.
We succeeded as a group in becoming good citizens because we had a strong patriotic and religious background – we had discipline and self reliance.
The transition period in the camp, and then at hostels for the younger children, precluded sending young children to local families for assimilation. As the children left the camp, and boarding schools and hostels, they started out on their own. For those of us who were orphans, this was an extremely difficult period of life because once we started out on our own, no one was interested in us. It was a period of loneliness and integration into "normal" life. It was at this stage that the Polish Association and community life it engendered provided a framework within which we could meet in large numbers, and satisfy many of our ethnic and social needs.
From my own experience, I conclude that foreign orphans are best brought up and assimilated if kept in a group before being released into the host society. As an ex-orphan, I would rather be brought up in an institution, such as a camp or boarding school, than be adopted out.
In the year of our 60th anniversary of our arrival in New Zealand, we look back with pride. We also look forward with the hope that our children will blend the best of our culture with our adopted country's culture, thereby enriching New Zealand's heritage.
The official front row at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Polish refugee children's arrival in New Zealand applauds one of the many Polish cultural performances of the day in the Pahiatua Sports Stadium, 23 October 1994.
(l-r)
The circumstances of the Polish refugee children's arrival in New Zealand are very far removed from the normal experience of the average citizen in a peaceful country such as New Zealand. Here is a brief historical background of the children's origins – a turbulent history of invasions, betrayals and persecutions that has moulded the Polish character, and which cannot be understood without that context. It goes some way towards explaining the children's deep attachment to the language, faith and culture of their lost homeland. For more information, the very readable Heart of Europe: A Short History of Poland by Norman Davies is recommended.
The recorded history of Poland began in 966 when its ruler accepted Christianity and joined the community of European nations. The country's name derives from "Polanie"–one of the Slavonic tribes who lived on the Central European Plain. It is bordered by Germany in the west, Belarus and the Ukraine in the east, the Carpathian mountains in the south, and Lithuania, Russia and the Baltic Sea in the north.
In the 15th and 16th centuries the Polish kingdom, in a union with Lithuania, was the largest and most powerful country in Europe. After the last hereditary monarch died in 1572, the nobility elected all future kings – some of them foreigners with little interest in the country's welfare, thereby exposing it to external aggression.
Poland soon found itself in the rare position of having several powerful neighbours squeezing its borders at the same time and being at the mercy of four emerging empires. Within a short period, it was forced to repel invasions from Sweden, the Mongolian Golden Horde, and the empires of Prussia, Russia, Ottoman Turkey and Austria. Its borders were in constant flux.
Weakened internally, the country gradually succumbed to the combined pressure from the Prussian (the future Germany), Russian and Austrian empires, which partitioned the country between them. So in 1795, Poland disappeared from the map of Europe for the next 123 years. The irony of history is that Poland, under its king Jan Sobieski, had earlier saved the Austrian Empire and Europe from a Turkish invasion.
Before its downfall, Poland, under its last king, experienced a resurgence of culture and learning, which on 3 May 1791 resulted in the proclamation
To mention a few of these luminaries – Chopin is a household name in music, Pulaski of the American Revolution has his own national day in the US and Kośoeciuszko has the highest mountain in Australia named after him. The exiles fought in other people's wars, the American War of Independence, and campaigned with Napoleon Bonaparte in the futile hope of regaining their nationhood. Those that remained at home kept the Polish language and culture alive, resisting their destruction by the occupiers.
Those dispossessed by the eviction policies of the German occupiers were forced to migrate and a group found themselves pioneering in Taranaki, New Zealand, towards the end of the 19th Century.
An independent Poland re-emerged under Józef Pilsudski at the end of World War I (after 123 years of occupation). During the following 21 years, it struggled to recreate internal unity and rebuild a fragmented infrastructure inherited from its three separate invaders. A major achievement was the building of a modern port and city – Gdynia – which was the only such undertaking in recent European history. In 1920, Poland's army stopped the USSR from invading Europe.
The clouds of war gathered again and Poland's neighbours Germany and Russia, the two most powerful military regimes in Europe, invaded in 1939, plunging the nation into chaos and despair under even worse bondage. It is from here that the history of the Polish refugee children's story begins. Towards the end of the war in 1945, Poland was betrayed by the Allies at the Yalta Conference and was ceded to the Soviet Union.
Poland regained independence 50 years later when its peaceful Solidarity movement (
During the first three decades of the 20th Century, two diametrically opposed ideologies were ascendant in Europe. On the one side, in the non-industrialised USSR, communism, with Russia as its champion after the bloody revolution of 1918, became a great political magnet for the liberation of the supposedly oppressed working classes. Communism promised the working classes a "workers' paradise" to free them from exploitation by the capitalist-dominated nations.
For a time, many workers genuinely believed in communism and were rather sympathetic towards the Russian style and its leaders – Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. This belligerent class-struggle-oriented brand of Russian communism engendered a suspicious, anti-communist mentality that lingered on for many years in the democratic Western societies.
On the other side, in industrialised Germany, national socialism (finally Nazism) gained power in the 1933 election under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. National socialism stood for German supremacy as the "master race", with racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Slavism, re-armament and state control of the economy. Though these two ideologies (Russian communism and German Nazism) opposed and hated each other, events showed that they could conveniently ignore their differences to achieve a common goal – territorial expansion. And both were ruthless when it came to attaining their ends.
When Hitler and his Nazi Party gained power in Germany, he decided to pursue a policy of "revisionism" to rectify the supposed injustices that had been perpetrated against the German people by the victorious nations after Germany's defeat in World War I. This set him on a course which led to starting World War II – first by annexing Austria in 1938 and parts of Czechoslovakia in 1939, and then by attacking Poland on 1 September 1939.
No one could imagine that World War II would give rise to so many unprecedented phenomena that affected the lives of masses of people for ever. It produced highly organised exterminations, gas chambers, genocide on an incredible scale, concentration camps, stateless people, displaced persons, millions of refugees, and the upheaval of community and family life to an extent unimaginable before.
Poland was the first country to fight against the German aggression. Unaided by its allies Britain and France, it put up a brave resistance but was quickly overwhelmed by the better prepared and equipped German army.
On 17 September 1939, while Poland was reeling under the might of the German invasion from the west, Russia, without declaring war, invaded
Having overrun Poland, Germany and Russia immediately subjected its people to a well-organised reign of terror. But there was a subtle difference between the two occupants because they had different aims. In western Poland, which was occupied by the Germans, the Nazis intended to turn the Poles into slaves. So, after incorporating some parts of Poland into the "Greater Germany", they set aside parts of central Poland for Poles but under complete German control and administration.
Eastern Poland was incorporated into the USSR and a policy of intense "russification" of the annexed area began. This was primarily achieved through breaking down the social structure in the community by mass arrests and deportations (or ethnic cleansing) on a great scale.
The so-called "enemies of the state" (those who held government jobs, politicians, merchants, teachers, army officers, artisans, "kulaks" or well-to-do peasants, soldier settlers, foresters and clergy) whom the Soviets thought might oppose them were either immediately arrested, imprisoned, liquidated or deported into the sub-arctic wastelands in the White Sea region of Northern Russia; east of the Ural Mountains into Siberia proper; or to the Central Asiatic Republics, such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Stalin's deportations were a part of a carefully planned aggrandisement policy which had a twofold purpose. First, a political one to destroy the opposition. Second, to boost the economy in neglected regions of Russia. People were deported into those areas of the USSR where, due to geographic and climatic conditions, it was difficult to get a voluntary native labour force to exploit Russia's vast natural resources.
So Russia used slave labour that was made up of its own nationals whom it considered politically to be enemies of the state and common criminals. Then it simply supplemented this already huge existing labour force, which it held in forced-labour camps (gulags), with the deported population from Poland and other occupied territories.
Preparations for deportations from Poland were systematically planned. Typically, the deportation squad would burst into the house in the middle of the night so as to catch the entire family. The shocked and stunned people were ordered to pack as quickly as they could because they were being transferred to another region where everything would be provided for them. The entire household was searched for arms, creating a mess and at the same
It is reliably estimated that along with the captured soldiers and civilians escaping from the German front and the mass deportations of civilians that started on 10 February 1940, plus sporadic deportations up to June 1941, between 1.5 million and million Polish citizens were deported to the USSR. Most of these would have perished, as was intended by Stalin, if it was not for Germany's unexpected attack on its former ally, Russia, on 22 June 1941.
Stalin did not expect an attack, despite being warned by Britain. So when it did come, the Soviet Red Army was unprepared and initially crushed. Soldiers died in their multitudes, 3.5 million Red Army soldiers surrendered by the end of 1941 and the rest retreated eastward in disarray.
In this chaos, the Russian Secret Police was masking all the nefarious deeds that it had committed in Poland. They quickly murdered as many prisoners as possible and the rest were driven east by forced marches. Those prisoners that could not keep up were simply shot.
As a direct consequence of Hitler's attack on Russia, Britain, Poland and Russia suddenly found themselves fighting a common enemy. With Britain's backing, the Polish Government-in-Exile re-established diplomatic relations with Russia on 30 July 1941. This rapprochement led to an amnesty being proclaimed for Polish citizens who were detained in the Russian labour camps and prisons. Among other things, it also provided for the formation of a Polish army inside Russia.
As the war initially unfolded unfavourably for the Allies, some of that Polish army was needed in the Middle East to protect the Western Allies' oil fields. Consequently, 77,000 soldiers and 43,000 civilians, including about 20,000 children, were evacuated under the amnesty from Russia to Iran and the Middle East. From there, the Polish soldiers went on to fight in North Africa and Italy.
The civilians who were previously in the Russian forced-labour camps were treated in Iran as refugees. They could not stay there indefinitely and were relocated to parts of the British Empire, such as East Africa, South Africa and India. They had nowhere else to go because their homeland was still in the war zone between Russia and Germany. Among those evacuees stranded in Iran were many children whose parents did not survive the inhuman conditions in the Russian forced-labour camps or whose fathers had joined the Polish Army formed in Russia after the amnesty.
The Polish Government-in-Exile appealed to the members of the League of
The war was nearing its end. On 4 to 11 February 1945, the victorious Allies held a conference at Yalta. At that conference, Britain and the US agreed to Russia's annexation of eastern Poland and its control of Eastern Europe. Poland received some territorial compensation from Germany, which came to be known as the recovered territories because they originally belonged to Poland.
The political and territorial changes created a great dilemma for all Poles who were abroad as a result of the war, and the various deportations to Germany and Russia. Most of them, as was to be expected, wanted to return to a free Poland and not a communist Russian-controlled and dominated state. However, Poland became a Russian satellite, and Poland's legitimate Government-in-Exile was no longer recognised by the Allies, who found it politically expedient to collaborate with Stalin and agreed to recognise a Russian-installed and sponsored communist government in post-war Poland.
In practice, this meant that those Poles who decided not to return to Poland were regarded as traitors by the new communist government. Some of those who did return were either arrested or treated with suspicion for having been in the capitalist West.
The new government knew about the group of Polish children in New Zealand and made an effort to have them repatriated to Poland. The New Zealand Government offered a solution – it undertook to take care of the children. This enabled them to remain in New Zealand until such time as they reached maturity and were able to decide for themselves whether or not they wished to return to Poland. Most of them had no option but to stay in New Zealand.
The piece of land on State Highway 2, some 3km south of Pahiatua where the rest area with the Polish Children's Memorial is situated, was once part of the Pahiatua Racecourse, established in 1901.
Shortly after Japan entered World War II on 7 December 1941, the New Zealand Government rounded-up all foreign enemy nationals (Germans, Italians, Japanese and Samoans of German extraction) and interned them on Somes (Matiu) Island in Wellington Harbour. However, the fortification of Somes Island meant that the internees had to be shifted. In 1942, a prison camp was built at Pahiatua Racecourse for these "alien" civilian internees.
When on 9 June 1943 the US transport ship Hermitage, carrying a group of 706 Polish refugees from Iran to Mexico, anchored for a short time at Wellington, the wife of the Polish Consul, Countess
On 1 November 1944, Mr Fraser, the Polish Consul Count
The Polish children were farewelled from Wellington Railway Station by hundreds of Wellington school children waving New Zealand and Polish flags. There were also big welcomes at Palmerston North and Pahiatua, and all along the way there were groups of children waving to the arrivals. In a gesture of further goodwill, some of those children were driven to other railway stations to cheer on the refugees again.
Thirty-three army trucks transported the arrivals from Pahiatua station to the old internment camp whose official name was now the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. At last they had a new home. The long journey was over.
Ladies from Pahiatua's Polish Children's Hospitality Committee prepared the beds, put flowers on tables and tidied up the camp for their arrival. The camp was administered by the New Zealand army. All army maintenance staff took orders from Camp Commandant
All teaching at the camp was in Polish and even some of its street names were in Polish. It was intended that after the war all the children and staff would return to Poland. However, after the Russians had pushed the Germans back across Poland in 1945, the Russians installed a pro-Soviet communist government in Poland and retained, with some adjustments, the territories occupied in 1939. It was at this stage that the New Zealand Government assured the children and staff that they were welcome to remain in New Zealand.
The limited financial assistance from the Polish Government-in-Exile in London soon came to an end and the New Zealand Government took over the entire financing of the camp. The Polish authorities were aware of the huge costs of running the camp, and it was decided to try to lower them by cultivating a vegetable garden, and taking over the running of the laundry and kitchens.
The children performed their duties and chores outside of school hours by cleaning the campgrounds, working in the vegetable gardens, cutting the grass, washing dishes, and also tidying their dormitories, classrooms and washrooms. To help them get acquainted with the New Zealand way of life, the army and Catholic hierarchy collected 830 invitations from New Zealand families for the Polish children and adults to spend two weeks' holiday with them in May 1945 and January 1946.
In early 1945, one of the first groups of girls left the camp to attend New Zealand schools, and at the beginning of the 1946 school year a second group left for Catholic secondary schools or to towns to learn various trades. Towards the end of 1946, the new Russian-installed Warsaw Government sent a special envoy to New Zealand, Mrs Zebrowska, to inspect the living conditions of the Polish children in the camp and New Zealand schools. After inspecting the camp, she returned to Poland completely satisfied with the conditions.
As the Polish army was demobilised, there arose the possibility of bringing some of the children's relatives to New Zealand. Soon afterwards, Polish ex-servicemen and other relatives began arriving from Africa, India and Britain. In 1948, they formed the Polish Association in New Zealand, which was based in Wellington. Thus, the children formed the nucleus around which the Polish post-war community in New Zealand developed.
The exodus from the camp continued as each year those children who had finished Polish school up to Standard 6 left for New Zealand schools or apprenticeships. The last group of children left the camp on 15 April 1949. Thus, by the time the camp was closed in 1949, many of the children were
When the last of them left the camp, it was converted to accommodate "displaced persons" who migrated from forced-labour camps in Germany. They were also stateless because of the boundary changes in Europe after the war. By 1952, the last people left the camp and it was finally closed.
The buildings were sold for use as barns, halls and beach cottages. Some of the best-preserved camp buildings are still in use, such as at the Southern Cross Abbey in Takapau, Hawke's Bay. The land then reverted to farmland. Thereafter, nothing remained of the original camp to remind anyone that a huge camp had existed, except for a small grotto shrine on its northern perimeter which the Polish children had helped to build from rocks from the local Mangatainoka River in 1945 for their religious devotions.
In 1971, the Jaycees of Pahiatua notified the Polish Association in Wellington that the grotto structure was rapidly deteriorating. The former children of the camp felt that they could not allow the only tangible reminder of their happy years at the camp to disappear. So the Polish Children's Memorial Committee was convened to build a monument and establish a rest area.
The land and air-landing strip for top-dressing on which the former camp stood was now owned by Balfour Stud Farm Limited, and part of it was donated for the rest area through Mr P Williamson of Wellington. The rest area was established at the northern entrance to the old camp, and the stones and masonry from the grotto shrine were incorporated in the monument now standing there.
The monument, a white marble monolith, was unveiled on 22 February 1975. Based on Greek mythology, its shadow at midday represents a mother holding a child. A historical noticeboard, prepared by
The Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua was the very first humanitarian experiment by the New Zealand Government in assisting a large group of refugees to this country. It was not so much a deliberate immigration policy, but rather a humanitarian vision by Prime Minister Peter Fraser when he learnt of the Polish children's plight when they were in the temporary refugee camps in Iran. These letters reveal that he and his government always regarded the children as their guests.
The first letter is dated almost a year before the children's arrival and the second was written five years later in the year before the camp's closure. The New Zealand Government had no precedent to follow other than its willingness to give it a go.
With reference to our discussion concerning the reception of the Polish refugee children in New Zealand and the meeting held in my office on Tuesday, 14 December, I have to inform you that the New Zealand Government would be very willing to afford hospitality in New Zealand to a total number of persons, including staff, of say 500 or 700, whichever number your government considered more convenient.
Our whole conception of the scheme is that it should cater for the largest number of children and would, therefore, wish that as many children as possible should be included within the total number who might come to New Zealand. We recognise, of course, that it is essential that sufficient staff should accompany the children, and we would be willing, if the Polish Government so desired, to receive, within the total number of 500 to 700, a number of mothers of the children.
The New Zealand Government would make all arrangements in connection with the establishment of the camp and would provide all necessary capital equipment, such as beds, bedding, furniture, kitchenware, etc. Responsibility for maintenance costs, such as food and clothing, would also be accepted by the New Zealand Government subject to discussion on questions of detail with whatever authority may be nominated by your government.
I understand that, in company with the government officers concerned,
I would suggest, on the assumption that the arrangements proposed for the reception of the Polish refugee children in New Zealand are acceptable to your government, that nearer the time when the children will leave, arrangements may be made for the camp commandant designate to travel to New Zealand in advance of the main party. He could, I feel sure, afford us valuable assistance in ensuring that, as far as possible, the layout and facilities of the camp will meet the requirements of the children and staff when they arrive.
I wish to refer to our recent discussions concerning the arrangements which might be made to safeguard further the care and wellbeing of the Polish children in New Zealand. As you are aware, the New Zealand authorities have always regarded the children as their guests and will continue to do so, but it is possible that some of them may now, or at some later time, wish to leave New Zealand and return to Poland. They may, therefore, wish to know the extent to which the Government will assist the repatriation of those who choose to return to Poland.
It has been suggested that those who have attained the age of 18 years and over should be given the opportunity of deciding whether they would like to return or to remain in New Zealand. I would like to inform you and those young Poles that, if they wish to go back to Poland, their repatriation will be facilitated or, if they choose to remain in New Zealand, they will be welcome to do so. It is the Government's wish that those young people should have
It is anticipated that some of those who have attained the age of 18 might not then wish to make an election. In that event, there is no reason why such young people should not have three years in which to determine whether they wish to return to Poland. The Government is prepared to meet the full cost of the repatriation of those between the ages of 18 and 21 who choose to return to Poland.
Adults over 21 wishing to return, however, will have been in employment and should have been able to save from their earnings sufficient to make full financial provision to cover the cost of passage to Poland. If, however, there should be any case in which special assistance towards the cost of passage is desired, the Government will consider, on the merits of each case, their application for repatriation assistance for the purpose of determining whether any assistance is warranted.
I would like to make the contents of this letter known to all the persons having children under their care and these persons should be requested to assist in both the letter and the spirit of the Government's policy. Those employed in looking after the children should be asked to inform them of the Government's decision.
The Polish refugee children's stories 60 years later
These stories are mostly about the lives of the Polish children refugees in New Zealand. Before arriving here, they had spent five years in exile from their homeland on a horrendous journey during the turbulent years of World War II. They were deported from Poland during the early months of the war to forced-labour camps throughout Soviet Russia for two-and-a-half years, then evacuated to Iran for another two-and-a-half years before they finally reached New Zealand.
The experiences of that period were so intense and vivid that they have left a lasting impression in the children's minds, shaped their characters, and affected their reaction to the new and strange culture they found in New Zealand.
Each child had its own unique experiences, and their stories are bold in their own unique and personal way, but as a group they shared the same fate in exile. So to avoid repeating similar events in this book of their experiences before they came to New Zealand, three of their stories of the time just before the war, the forced exile in the USSR, their stay in Iran and journey to New Zealand were chosen as being representative of the group.
In the first story,
The other stories are in alphabetical order of writers' current surnames and maiden names are in brackets.
Dioniza Choroś (Gradzik)
We lived in Volhynia in eastern Poland, now in the Ukraine, where my father had settled as an invalid from World War I. He instilled a sense of patriotism, hard work and self sufficiency in his four girls – Bronia, Halina, Dioniza and Bogda. Later we would joke that our lullabies were war songs and our food the politics heard from adults' conversations.
We listened on the radio about German bombardments and fleeing civilians, and heard war planes overhead. But to us the war was something distant – until columns of the Russian army reached our village. Curious Polish children stood in silence as the columns marched past but the local Ukrainians welcomed them gladly. That night I heard yelling, gunfire, the neighing of horses and dogs barking.
They came for us, five unknown armed men banging on the door with rifle butts, shouting to be let in. They searched for arms, threw the contents of drawers and scattered bedding on the floor, broke jars of preserves and emptied the contents of bags full of provisions. My father, and a neighbour who earlier sought refuge in our house, were ordered to dress and go with them. He told us to be brave before he was taken away. Shortly, we heard gunfire, a dog barked, then one final shot and deafening silence.
Half an hour elapsed but to me it felt like eternity. In the morning, we dressed for church and awaited our father's return. Armed men on horseback arrived instead, ordered us outside and searched the house again. They aimed their guns at us and threatened to shoot us. After a while they left.
We were still paralysed with fear when a neighbour's son ran to us crying, grabbed my elder sister's hand and led us to the garden where we saw blood, our father's and neighbour's bloodied hats, and a bloodied handkerchief. A shot dog lay close by. We followed the trail of blood to the village centre to search for the bodies, but we lost the trail on the crossroads. We then went to a neighbour to share our news and learned that most of the Polish settlers who did not manage to hide were killed, including the school principal and director of the milk factory.
To us, this was a day of horror and no words can describe how we felt. We gladly accepted the neighbours' offer to sleep on their floor, which was the only available space. The neighbour's wife prayed before an icon that we fall asleep and never wake from this nightmare.
I remember well my moment of defiance – I will not pray like that, I will await the war's end, a Polish victory and a return to our normal life. But I knew that for our family and all the Polish people in eastern Poland, the war had only begun. In later years, I saw official documentary photographs of Polish children tied with barbed wire to a row of trees, dying slowly and horribly maimed, plus photos of burned churches full of maimed children and adults burned alive.
The next few months were days and nights of constant fear. I dreaded going to bed, and hid under the bed clothes and cried into the pillow – the nights were full of mental anguish and no rest. Poles continued to be caught and killed. At the end of October, the school was reopened with Ukrainian as the official language, which we already spoke fluently.
Our father, a well-educated man, had always insisted that his daughters follow suit and to be prepared for whatever happens in the uncertain future. We therefore returned to school. The eldest sister Bronia was due to go to high school but stayed behind to help look after the family. But there were few lessons or any curriculum, because most of the time was taken up with idolatrous reciting and singing of communist propaganda.
The local Ukrainians sided with the Russian invaders and turned against us. My best friend now refused to sit next to me because I was Polish. Other Ukrainian classmates humiliated us. The headmaster was murdered and many teachers did not return to school. All of our 40 beehives were taken by antagonistic people. Another time, we found the Ukrainians pillaging our storeroom where my father kept his well-oiled farm equipment, helping themselves to everything and fighting over the spoils.
I record here what I saw, but I know from others that similar scenes took place everywhere. Some people lost everything, including the farm animals. The hardworking Ukrainian family who leased our farm and part of our house guarded their property around the clock.
One day after school I found the body of my godmother, Mrs Kucharska, only partly covered with snow and frozen earth. She had no children of her own. Some years earlier when our house had burned down for unknown reasons, I stayed with her and she pampered me. I loved her with all my heart. She kissed and hugged me more often than anybody else in the world. In those days, people did not generally show their emotions. She was an exception. She now lay dead and battered, and I could not help her. I sat by her body, meditating and crying. I was now 11 years old and aware of everything around me, but I could not grasp this change – why is this happening? After all, the neighbours were good people – how did they deserve this fate?
On the way to collect his invalid pension, my father would buy letter paper
Marko, a Ukrainian who was a leader of a secret communist organisation before the war and now the big boss with unlimited power, forbade the search for bodies or holding of proper funerals. He now freely admitted burning down our home, the murder of the cooperative's manager and many acts of terror on the Polish population.
Soon after, we again heard battering at our door and the order in Russian "
In 1998, 59 years later, I revisited my home region in Volhynia. In a big park in the town of Łuck stands a gigantic monument topped by a huge star in remembrance of the Soviet soldiers. Close by, a plaque announces the death of 65,000 murdered Poles in this undeclared war, in which every Pole was treated as an enemy. According to Polish sources, twice as many were killed there.
I met a neighbour from those old days who cried and was overjoyed to see me. She said that she was convinced not everyone had perished in the deportations, and that she would once again see some of us. She took me to another woman who remembered that my father's body was later found with others in a turf field after the snow had melted in the spring.
This is the first time I have committed this tale to paper in such detail. The horror of these events will never leave me.
The life after the deportations to forced labour in the Soviet Union is covered in detail in the subsequent stories bySister Stella (Józefa Wrotniak ) andHalina Morrow (Fladrzyńska). Dioniza continues with a description of the journey from Iran to New Zealand.
After deliverance from Soviet bondage, our life in hospitable Iran continued to be full of surprise and rapid change. Rumours of an invitation from New Zealand's Prime Minister
Getting volunteer staff to accompany us was not easy, as the war was drawing to its end and everyone wanted to return home to Poland. Few adults relished the idea of a journey into the unknown through the Japanesepatrolled southern oceans. However, 102 adults with a sense of patriotic duty did volunteer.
In July 1944, our secondary school began a series of lectures about New Zealand, of which we knew nothing. They were like Hans Christian Andersen's fairytales of a paradise with democracy, excellent climate and rich soil with two harvests in one year, and plentiful fruit, cattle and sheep. Only the earthquakes were worrisome. After the inhumanity of our Soviet oppressors, we were told of gentle, honest and hardworking New Zealanders who never locked their doors (and most people here did not lock them in those days). It was unbelievable.
Luggage for the trip was not a problem as everything we had fitted into our small suitcases, which, together with such things as toilet requisites, were bought from our pocket money of nine Iranian tumans per month given to us by our Polish Government-in-Exile. Each child was obliged to carry a few books on the journey to form a Polish library on our arrival in New Zealand.
The group departed from Isfahan, Iran, on 27 September 1944. We were gathered in a huge hall where we were given our travel instructions on how to behave as worthy representatives of our country. It was a sad day parting from our friends, who were the substitute for the families we had lost. My mother had died three weeks after our evacuation from Russia to Iran, my two elder sisters joined the Polish army in the Middle East and my younger sister was in a different orphanage. We promised to write to our friends and many lasting friendships have survived to this day, even though continents continue to separate us.
The younger children with their guardians were settled into buses and the older ones into army trucks, bunched together on hard benches. After a cold and dusty trip over the desert, we arrived in Sultanabad (now Arak) the next day in an American army base camp. The hot showers were most welcome. We visited the camp, saw short American films, and the soldiers handed out sweets and nibbles. One soldier knew no language barrier and managed to entertain us until we rolled with laughter. To them, we were their children back home and to us it was a memorable experience.
In the evening, we were farewelled with speeches we did not understand but we applauded vigorously the learned speech by one of our girls. We boarded specially adapted wagons to carry the children, with benches on one side and sleeping platforms on the other. For the little children, the platforms were
The train shook and rattled on bends. We counted more than 150 tunnels on the way, and the acrid smoke from the locomotives permeated everything and made breathing difficult. The children's stomachs began to revolt against the unaccustomed overeating of sweets at the American camp and many of the little ones were ill in the carriages. We arrived in Ahwaz (which in Iranian means hell), where temperatures reach over 50ºC. We were taken to a transit camp which formerly housed the Iranian cavalry's stables. We placed our possessions in the mangers and slept on benches. We spent our time writing letters, which were never posted. Religious services were held outdoors early in the morning to avoid the heat of the day.
After six days, on 4 October 1944, we departed by train for the port of Khorramshahr at the estuary of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers where I saw palm trees. This was the embarkation point for the refugees travelling to India, East Africa and other countries.
Our group boarded the cargo steamship Sontay. In disciplined ranks, we went below to a huge, smelly and dark cargo hold with scurrying rats. The only furniture was piles of smelly mattresses. I was horrified. Having been ill with malaria and the resultant anaemia with fainting spells, how would I survive here? We discovered that the hold would be our bedroom, dining room and living room. Food was brought from the kitchen in buckets. Parts of the floor were flooded with murky bilge water. Sleeping was unbearable in these conditions, so we lugged our mattresses onto the deck and slept under the stars, feeling sorry for the little ones who were not allowed on deck at night. Our male teachers, Mr Kotlicki and Mr Olechnowicz, tried to answer all our numerous questions.
The ship had several British officers and a Portuguese crew. From them, we learned two English words "Washing deck! Washing deck!" when the crew unceremoniously sluiced the decks with seawater early in the morning as we scurried away with our mattresses. After breakfast, an Englishman with a life jacket on his immaculate white uniform demonstrated the emergency drill. We were not to tie the metre-long tape hanging from the life jacket so as to allow a lifesaver to grab the drowning person. But he did not notice as one of the girls tied his own tape behind his back and was most embarrassed when asked to explain why his tape was tied as we roared with laughter.
We sailed down the Persian Gulf. One day, a severe storm broke and everyone was ill. There was nothing with which to clean up the mess. The children, used to a hard life, did not complain but lay pale and ill on the deck. Our guardians were also feeding the fishes. We cleaned up later. The
One day, we became afraid when an escort of two ships suddenly appeared at our sides and a small plane accompanied them. Some of the crew ran to secure the portholes. This lasted a few hours and then the escort left us. After six days, our priest Father
A year earlier, I was on the list of children with my sister Bogda to go to South Africa when I had a similar attack and was taken to hospital. On my return, I found 50 empty beds and all my friends, who had been my family for the past ten months, had already departed and I was alone again. I was shattered and cried for weeks. At my request at the time, I was transferred to another group of older girls, but they were later inducted into the Polish Army Cadet Corps and I lost my friends again. I promised myself never again to be parted from my friends and refused to be left behind in a hospital in India.
The captain (far left) on board
After four days, our ship berthed close to the navy troopship the
There were two meals a day – breakfast and a 4pm meal. We lined up, took trays from a stack and were served by a line of cooks, each one ladling out a tonne of different food which even a wrestler could not handle, let alone children. Leftovers were put into special containers. After our years of malnutrition and our Polish culture of not wasting God's gifts, we could not understand this huge wastage of food. The children, full of activity on deck during the day, were ready for the evening meal and could drink their fill of milk provided by the hospitable ship. The American crewmen gave away their chocolate rations. Some children grew fat on this windfall but others were too shy to accept these gifts.
The girls wallowed in the plenty of the ship's hot water, washing their grimy clothes and enjoying the bliss of unrestricted hot showers. This was the best medicine for our rashes and skin ailments, which were caused by a week of exposure to salt water on the earlier ship.
At 9.30am on 15 October 1944, I awoke to the ship's vibrations. The motors fired and we were on our way on a long and dangerous journey down the Indian Ocean. We said our communal prayers. During the journey, two nuns (Sister
We spent our days playing with large balls provided by the ship – seven went overboard. Some soldiers taught the boys boxing and applauded the budding talent of
The New Zealand soldiers, hearing that we were travelling to their country, also took us under their wing, played games on the deck with the boys and
Wearing life jackets was compulsory. They were uncomfortable and hot, and some girls complained they did not look nice in them. We had regular safety drills and were introduced to the crew responsible for our safety in case of an enemy attack. Each soldier was to look after one child, which made us feel safer. The ship was heavily armed, with anti-aircraft guns and torpedoes on deck. Some were covered and guarded. One day a plane appeared towing what looked like balloons and without warning deafening gunfire erupted from our ship's guns. We were terrified.
This was war time and our ship was zigzagging across the Indian Ocean to avoid torpedoes. Until we reached Melbourne in Australia, our ship sailed in convoy with a sister troopship, identical to ours, carrying Australian soldiers. Each day began with an exchange of signals between the ships. For safety, the ships were made invisible at night by extinguishing all outside lights and covering portholes. One night we awoke terrified to a big jolt, the breaking of crockery in the kitchens, the scurrying of the crew and much speculation. Later, in Wellington, Captain Van Poulsen revealed that a torpedo had grazed the ship's side, though we had already heard the rumour the next day.
The weather cooled as we sailed south. The regular announcements to reset our watches for the time difference were wasted on us because we had none. Pity we had no cameras to record this unusual voyage. Our sister troopship with the Australian soldiers berthed in Melbourne and we sailed to New Zealand alone without convoy.
At last, on 31 October 1944, we sailed into Wellington's harbour around 8pm with sufficient daylight to see the scenic city with small houses perched on its slopes. The next morning was sunny as the ship berthed at the wharf and was welcomed by three bands. The happy New Zealand soldiers, many with bandages and some on stretchers, trooped down the steep gangways to welcoming families.
For us children, this was to be our last refuge before our return to a free Poland. We believed this would be soon. Prime Minister
On the way, groups of school children waved to us and a big welcome greeted us at the Palmerston North station. We disembarked at Pahiatua from where New Zealand soldiers took us in army trucks to the Polish Children's Camp, which was an impressive sight. The presence of barbed-wire watchtowers caused some unease but they were soon taken down. This had been an internment camp for foreign enemy nationals but now it was "our little Poland", with a school, church, small hospital, dentist, Scouts movements, kitchens and dormitories, all staffed by Polish personnel who arrived with us. In addition to our dedicated Polish teachers, we had young New Zealand teachers for English lessons.
I have grateful memories of friendly
I was deliriously happy, because after two years of being ill with malaria and the side effects of mountains of tablets of all types, too weak to climb stairs, constant hospitalisation and having to catch up on missed classes, I was at long last healthy. I could now climb hills, swim in the river and play netball. I became a normal teenager. But dark clouds gathered around us again. Our sustaining dream of a return to a free Poland was shattered. The Yalta Agreement signed by our allies ruled everything out. Eastern Poland was annexed to the Soviet Union and our allies handed the rest of Poland to communist rule.
It got worse. At the victory parade in London, only the Polish airmen who defended London and lost 1,300 of their pilots were invited to take part. The Polish army, which had fought and died beside the Allies to free Europe, was not invited, so the airmen refused to march in the victory parade. A few months later, the Polish Government-in-Exile ceased to be recognised by its allies and its funds to pay our way in New Zealand were frozen. To reduce the cost of our upkeep, the Polish staff took on additional duties, and the older children had to work during the week and study on Saturdays to catch up. We also painted Polish motifs on wood for sale in Wellington shops.
We then knew that there was no return to Poland and for me it marked the end of a dream to study medicine. It was mental anguish not knowing what will happen or what to do. Our Polish guardians were in no better state. Their
A few of the lucky younger children were able to complete their higher education. I lowered my sights from a medical career and completed a three-and-a-half-year course in nursing with very good results. These children are now senior citizens with their own children and grandchildren, to whom we stressed the need for an education and work ethic.
Sister Stella (Józefa Wrotniak )
There were five children in our family – all girls. I was the eldest and the youngest were twins. We lived in Pawlokoma, a village on the San River in the province of Lwów in what was south-east Poland until World War II and is now in the Ukraine. A quarter of the population in the village was Polish and the rest were Ukrainians. With the very fertile soil of the region, my father was a prosperous farmer.
While fighting for Poland's independence during World War I, my father was taken prisoner by the Russians and deported to the Archangelsk region of northern Russia, where the long winter darkness of this part of Siberia is broken only by the polar lights.
After three years of cruel toil in the slave camps, he escaped with a friend. In rags, racked by hunger and exhaustion, he returned home. He said that of the 5,000 prisoners, only 300 remained alive. He was ill for the rest of his life. He could never have imagined that a second world war would erupt and he would find himself once again in the Siberian slave camps, but this time without any escape.
My mother was very religious. She would sing the morning prayers while busy in the kitchen and I followed in her example. She was concerned about our spiritual wellbeing and led us by example. She assisted the poor. But my father was not interested in this. In 1939, the quiet and regular family life came to an end. I was 16 and the twins were only two.
The autumn that year was beautiful, but full of foreboding and worry about the future. We could hear the drone of aeroplanes and the echo of bombardments. In the nearby village, the invading Germans were murdering the Jews, some of whom tried a futile escape by boats across the San which was in full flood, only to die under a hail of gunfire. The Germans herded some 200 Jewish men into a synagogue in the town of Dynów, locked them in and set the building on fire. The stench of burning flesh reached our village 5km away. The remaining Jews tried to escape east and my mother supplied them with food for the journey.
Soldiers, remnants from the defeated Polish army, were in flight from both the German and Russian invaders, and tried to cross to other countries. We gave them all our help, but many fell into the hands of the Ukrainians and met a cruel end.
While we were digging potatoes, a messenger came running up with instructions for my father to report to a given place. Nearly all local Polish men were already gathered there. They were ordered to line up against a wall and the Germans aimed a machine gun at them, intending to execute them all. But after the intervention of a Ukrainian teacher who could speak German, they abandoned this shameful deed. After further interrogation, the men were set free (maybe our prayers saved them). But that freedom did not last long.
We soon found ourselves under Russian occupation. Until the signing of the formal friendship pact between the invading armies on 9 August 1939, our region was interchangeably under the control of the Germans or Russians. The local Ukrainian population, which sided with the invaders, sought the help of the Russians to be rid of us.
The Polish population was then subjected to a census of people and their possessions. We had a bad feeling about this and our fears were justified, because on 10 February 1940, on a bitterly cold night at 1.30am, we heard loud knocking at our door. These uninvited guests were armed Russian Secret Police and a few local Ukrainians. Some of them behaved arrogantly and noisily, and one of them told us to be packed and ready to depart in 30 minutes. My father sighed: "You will probably take us to Siberia?" Another replied that we were being taken to a safer place because we are in a border zone. But we did not believe them and our doubts were soon to prove justified.
My father was not allowed to move. My mother pleaded with their conscience to take pity on the children who were crying in distress. The men's hearts melted and we were allowed as much food and provisions as we could carry – among them freshly baked bread. I was allowed to move freely around the house to pack what I could. Some of our "guardians" helped me in this while my mother dressed my little sisters. The enemy were so touched by the children's distress that they helped us carry our provisions to the waiting sleighs.
It was almost light when they loaded us onto the second sleigh and on this cold morning drove us to the unknown. I can't remember how long it took us to reach the nearest railhead at Lesko. This part of the journey, a time of terror and uncertainty about what will become of us, was erased from my memory. Or perhaps I fell asleep?
Cattle trucks and locomotives were already waiting for us at the railway station, and we were loaded into a carriage with four other families from our village. The doors were bolted and padlocked from the outside. The train was very long. The carriage had small barred windows and a hole in the wooden
For many, many days we survived on the provisions we brought with us, sharing with the less fortunate who were not allowed to take much from their homes. Children were given priority. We tried cooking on a small camping pot with water from snow scraped from the small window. The train shook and rattled so that the cooking pot often tipped over and we had to avoid scalding. Because of our state of depression, uncertainty and worry, we lost our appetite.
Occasionally, the door would slam open and, under escort, one person would be allowed to go to the provisions carriage to select a few items from our own meagre rations stored there, such as a little porridge. The train would often stop for some hours far from any town and would move again before dark. One of the reasons for the long and frequent stoppages was the priority given to the movement of supplies for the Russian army. People in exile had no status – even babies who died of privation on the journey were thrown out of the moving trains into the snow.
After some weeks we reached central Russia. At a railway station, people started banging on the bolted doors with their fists and yelling out that we are not criminals or animals, that we are families with children and so on. This protest forced the Secret Police to open the doors. Hot water was brought to each carriage, and after some days we were given a bucket of watery soup with a few small leaves of cabbage and fish bones. Sometimes we were given a little bread.
Once during the journey when the train stopped in the middle of nowhere, we saw a cabbage field under a cover of snow. Someone tried to force the door and to everyone's surprise it wasn't locked from the outside. A few jumped out to grab some cabbages and jumped back into the carriage before the train moved. We also saw fields of wheat and potatoes under snow. It was a heartbreaking sight when so many people were hungry.
Once we were in the depths of Russia, the authorities felt we had no hope of escaping on foot across thousands of kilometres in the bitter cold through sparsely populated areas, so the carriages were left unbolted and many would take the risk to alight from the train at a station to buy food. The train would always restart without warning and some would be left behind. Once, my sister and I alighted from the train at some large station to look for shops and when we returned we couldn't find our train. It had been moved to another siding and we found it just as it began to move, so we had to be dragged in. My mother cried with relief and we said a thankful prayer.
As the train wound its way north, carriages were detached on the way and its human cargo unloaded to work at mines, collective farms and forests. But we continued to the end of the line. After some weeks of this journey of hunger, cold, foul air and discomfort, we arrived in the Sverdlovsk region. The rail tracks ended here. We were told that the sawmill in which we were to work was the largest in the world, with more than, 2000 workers.
My father had to be carried to the barracks because his legs were paralysed. The bags of flour and porridge we brought with us had been stolen by our fellow travellers, leaving us with the remains of some corn flour a neighbour returned. In these difficult times of exile, dignity and neighbourly love turned into selfishness. I helped my mother with the children. It was easier for the other people to cope because there were few children among them.
Our family of seven was given a small room in large barrack dormitory, with only one iron bed between us. I can't remember how we managed – suffering has deleted that from my memory. The barrack was enclosed by a high barbedwire fence and we were surrounded by the vast taiga forests. The daily food rations were a weak soup and 200 grams of doughy bread which couldn't be eaten without first drying into a hard crust.
My mother and the other Polish exiles were transported under armed escort by truck to work in the sawmill. My father was seriously ill and there was no medicine. In desperation we prayed often and intensely with novenas, and applied holy water from Lourdes which we had brought with us from Poland. The children's almost non-stop prayers were heard and we were overcome with joy when the miraculous cure came, because the paralysis and illness disappeared and my father could walk unaided. The next day, he went to work in the sawmill.
The commandant of this forced-labour camp was surprised and angry that he was given families with children and old people to work in his sawmill. He was promised convicts and criminals. He helped us as much as he could with food and protected those who could not work due to illness, because without a medical certificate the ill people would be dismissed from work or sent to places unknown. The Secret Police got to know of this leniency and after two months the commandant was replaced by a diehard communist from Moscow.
The Russian population understood our fate. Many of them were Ukrainians deported like us to Siberia from the Kiev region and were left to their own fate without a roof over their heads. I saw others living in dugouts, with only a chimney pipe sticking out from the ground as evidence of people living inside.
The conditions were dreadful and gnawing hunger was always present. Bedbugs were a continual harassment – they were everywhere, brought diseases and killing them was useless. There were also plagues of lice. The Polish exiles began to suffer from typhus, bleeding dysentery and other contagious diseases. We heard the cries of dying children who were our neighbours from Lachy in Poland. Soon, their mother also died in much pain, leaving only the father and two other children.
One woman's punishment for not turning up for work without a medical certificate was deportation to an unknown destination. She was not heard of again. This also happened to other families. We were treated as slaves, to be used until we dropped because replacements were cheap. The cries of the suffering and dying were endless, and each day corpses were placed in coffins of raw sawn planks and buried in the taiga forest. Families were being decimated and the living waited for inevitable death. There was no hope of escape from this virtual extermination camp.
Some months later, the camp authorities issued us permits to go to the nearest settlement to buy some food in exchange for our clothes. A few times, my father managed to buy a little porridge in exchange for my clothing.
My job was looking after the younger children and to stand in the bread queue with our ration cards. The stronger ones would push their way in, sometimes breaking the bones of the weaker ones in the crush and pushing them to the back of the queue. There would be no more bread by the time my turn came. I would go back to the barrack empty handed and in tears. My mother would often lament at the injustice of the children suffering. People visiting us would comment about how peaceful, clever, pretty and smiling our little twins were, even in this horrible place. I think God's mercy shone through their innocence and above the prevailing evil in people's hearts. We were helped at the most critical times by people of goodwill. Sometimes we would receive a small food parcel from our relatives in Poland and once we received 200 roubles from our old neighbour there.
Even working three shifts, my parents struggled to feed us. They would also have to pay fines for not sending us to the Russian school. My father would say that he would not allow us to be raised as communists and it was decided that it would be preferable for me to work at the mill instead. I was dismissed a month later for not meeting my quota, because the work of stacking wet planks was beyond my strength. I went back to minding the children and waiting in the bread queue. I knew my parents were hiding something from me – they had stopped going to work on medical grounds and were receiving a small sickness allowance. I soon learned that they were suffering from typhus. I can't remember how they recovered, perhaps with the
And so we lived from day to day awaiting death. One day seemed like a year. After some months, having decided that the Polish prisoners were not criminals but industrious and well behaved, the Russian authorities decided to transfer us from the communal barracks. We were given unfurnished, barrack-like, one-family, single-room accommodation with a stove big enough to bake bread and a wooden shelf for sleeping. The walls were thin and draughty, but at least vermin free. The Russian workers had little plots of land in which they grew a few potatoes and carrots in the short growing season. In the Siberian climate, the severe winters last for nine months and temperatures can fall to -50°C (in this temperature, air expelled from the lungs turns into tiny ice crystals which fall tinkling to the ground).
We were 5km from Tauda, a small town of 5,000 people in the taiga forest by the river of the same name, where the Polish exiles cut and felled trees. The timber was floated down this river to the sawmill. Severe penalties were imposed on anyone taking firewood from the forest – better for it to rot than for us to have it, we were told. We were continually watched by the Secret Police.
For firewood, the workers were given some poor-grade planks not suitable for transport. Melted snow was used for water. The families of the camp garrison lived in a block of flats in the town. For privacy, we hung blankets on the windows and sang religious songs. Day followed day in drudgery and misery. I also remember the river in flood when all the houses were halfway under the water and there were floating corpses.
My mother came to know Anna, a Russian bookkeeper, who took me home to look after her newborn baby. She also hired another woman for laundry and cleaning. She treated me as her own daughter – we went to her private steam bath, wore good clothes and had plenty to eat. Her husband was a Secret Police agent and was the terror of the town. But I was allowed to speak freely on any subject in their home. In private, they did not support Stalin's rule of terror, but in public, fearing for their jobs, they terrorised their neighbours and subordinates.
In their bedroom, hidden behind flowerpots, they placed an icon of the Blessed Mary of Perpetual Help and a beautiful picture of Jesus was hung behind the door of the pantry. The pantry was filled with an ample supply of provisions, because as members of the Communist Party they received not only a high wage, but also three-monthly supplies of flour, porridge and sugar.
The Party members were afraid to speak openly to each other. They all had home stills for making vodka and on free days would get drunk. When my employer's husband was drunk, I would lock myself in my room and did not believe Anna's assurances that he was harmless. Though I now lived comfortably and was treated well, I felt unhappy at not being able to help my family who went hungry while food here was being wasted.
After a few months of my stay there, the baby fell ill. We took her to the doctor whose suggested cure didn't work and this beautiful child died at the age of 10 months. This was the woman's tenth child to have died from the same disease and none of them survived more than two years. She loved children, but was left only with her nine-year-old son. I secretly christened the child before she died. The woman told me that she took each newborn child 500km to Sverdlovsk where she had them secretly baptised by a Russian Orthodox priest to avoid punishment by the Secret Police for doing so. After the child's death, I was asked to stay on and look after the house. One day she asked me if I prayed. When I said I did so in secret, she ordered me to continue like I would have done at home, though I was Catholic and she was Russian Orthodox. We said our prayers together each day and sang religious songs, longing for public worship which was forbidden by the State.
Then one day the news came of an amnesty for the Polish exiles in Russia. Nothing was certain, but it was decided to return to Poland. My parents began packing and my mother came to take me with them. Anna wouldn't let me go and wanted to adopt me, but my mother would not hear of it. It was an emotional parting because I had come to like her.
All was ready for the journey in a third-class rail carriage. But we soon learned that we were misled by the Secret Police, who did not want us to return home, and our train was ordered in a different direction. On 15 September 1941, our exile began anew. The train shook and rattled terribly.
The only food we were given was a ladle of weak soup – sometimes. Occasionally, when the train stopped, we would buy a little bread or a melon. One could buy a piece of bread for any old clothing. At times we were told to leave the train and wait for another. We would sleep for days in the stinking waiting rooms at various stations in overcrowded conditions. We felt that the Secret Police had some secret plans regarding our future. We also thought we would never get out of this nightmare and waited for inevitable death.
One day, we were told to board a train which was obviously going south – though Poland was in the west. We passed the towns of Chimkent, Tashkent, Leninabad and Samarkand in Uzbekistan. The train then took us to Kazakhstan and back to Tashkent. Three times we made this circular journey. Some people were ordered off the train in Kirghizia and others in Uzbekistan. The rest were taken back to Kazakhstan.
When it was our turn to leave the train, we were ordered to walk the rest of the way. I don't remember how long this journey on foot lasted, but we used up our last reserves of strength when we came to a river (which was so wide that we could not see the other side) where huge floating rafts waited for us. Whole families were herded onto them like cattle with no room to move. Some had to sit on the sides with their feet dangling in the water. Our father feared that we would never return alive if we boarded these rafts (we learnt later from witnesses that some of them did sink and that the survivors were taken back to forced-labour camps). Luckily, there wasn't enough room to fit the great mass of people waiting on the shore, and we had to return to the railroad and once again travel by train into the unknown.
I cannot remember how long this journey took. On the way, the train's human cargo was gradually unloaded, a few families (or their remnants) at a time, in Kirghizia and Uzbekistan. The rest were scattered in groups of threes or fours every 15km over the arid vastness of Kazakhstan in the Dzhambulska region.
Six weeks later, at the end of October, we were taken by oxcarts to the Lugovaya region, and given a mud and wattle hut with a straw-covered roof. When it rained, the hut was awash with water, which was not often because of the arid climate. We slept on a bed of dry prickly weeds strewn on the bare earth floor. The hut was so tiny that we had to sleep squeezed together like sardines. We drew water from a small stream in which the local Uzbeks washed their clothes (without soap, which was available only to the Communist Party members).
With the unsanitary water and lack of food, many of the Polish families were decimated by epidemics of typhus and typhoid fever, dysentery and other diseases. Within two months, a number of families had ceased to exist. The young men escaped to the Polish army, which was rumoured as being formed in the south. Their places were taken by a new influx of young men on their way to join the same army. This situation lasted a few months.
At the beginning of May, I went to work 6km away in vegetable gardens assigned for the benefit of Communist Party members. An Uzbek gave me a light weeding job. Ukrainian guards stood watch over us to ensure we met our quota and to prevent theft. For a full day's hard work, we were given a
We were saved by the young Polish men mentioned earlier. One of them gave us liver from an unknown animal and told us to cook it, waft the steam on the open eyes and then eat it. They also gave us some lard from a dog. In a short while, the illness passed and the girls could see. I returned to work. In the evenings we prayed the rosary. I was very upset when I lost my rosary and prayed intensively to the guardian angel. In the morning, I knew exactly where to find it.
The countryside was covered with wheat and cotton fields, though much of it was dry steppe covered in dry grasses with snakes. The Kazakh men wore distinctive clothing, with heavy sheepskin coats and woollen caps, which kept them warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The women wore pyjama-like garments with turban-like headwear. Their language is related to Turkish and we could not understand it.
We lost our appetites due to the chronic shortage of food, and without salt all food was hard to swallow. We were still homesick for our country and churches. Only three of us were to come out of this alive. My mother became ill and I went to work by myself. When I saw a strange man in my path, I would change direction, only to be confronted by snakes – I didn't know which way to run. The time passed in constant stress and fear. Each day seemed like a month and we longed for death, which seemed the only escape from this hell.
It was December 1941. My four-year-old little twin sisters had measles. One night one of them, Teresa, wanted to go outside. I followed her but she changed her mind and came back inside. She lay in my arms, breathed a deep sigh and died. I thought she was asleep and we lay like this all night. In the morning, her body was still warm and supple. She looked alive. We wrapped her in a sheet and buried her out in the steppe. Three days later, her twin sister Weronika died. In death, she too looked alive and pretty. We buried her with the help of the young Polish men.
My father's first exile to Siberia in World War I caught up with him. His legs deteriorated and he couldn't work, became ill and developed a heavy cough. He began to yearn for the unattainable homemade bread and our return to Poland. There was no medical help available and no one bothered about us
My mother warned me not to accept any favours from men, especially the collective farm manager who took a liking to two of the Polish girls. On a few occasions, he gave me some vegetables which I refused. As punishment, he sent us to do heavy work which was beyond the means of even strong men and threatened us with beating. We prayed and awaited the worst. Then we had a bright idea and told the manager that we would write to Stalin himself, who had us under his personal protection and who would punish him for treating us like slaves. The gullible manager believed this, or gave us the benefit of the doubt, and sent us back to the relatively easier work in the cotton field which was under a different manager.
My mother became ill but continued to work in the cotton fields. Because I also had to work, she would take her other two daughters with her, afraid to leave them alone. Somehow, she managed to get into the local hospital a few kilometres away. I visited her with my younger sister Maria. My mother developed a craving for milk and butter. I peddled our clothing from hut to hut and could only buy mare's milk and a little butter, which my sisters would then bring to her. But unable to eat, she would leave them untouched. The food became rancid and reluctantly we had to throw it away. When I was peddling, the local Kazakh people in one hut invited me to share their noodle soup, which I couldn't accept because I was in a hurry. One day, on the way back from the hospital with my sister Maria, we were attacked by two horsemen but were defended by some local Kazakh women working in a cotton field.
Though still ill and unable to walk unaided, my mother was discharged from the hospital and in this state we walked her back the few kilometres to our hut. She was too weak to eat, had a fever and spat blood – she was once again ill with typhus and bleeding dysentery. It was a miracle that none of us three children caught these contagious diseases. She willed herself to keep us alive.
We were so depressed that we did not want to live, let alone eat, even when sometimes people would bring us a little food. Once, my younger sister Maria sat on the grass and began screaming for help. An adder had wound itself around her foot. A workman removed the adder, but my sister, though not bitten, was ill for some days. Everyone was very surprised that the adder didn't release its venom and we all thanked Providence.
Then one day, three Polish men arrived with the unbelievable news that we were to be set free. They first checked our documents to see if we were in fact Polish. They then loaded our weak mother and meagre possessions onto an
Medics in white coats checked our state of health. When they saw my mother lying on the ground, one of them said that she was dying and she was carried on a sheet to the hospital – we were in agonies of grief. She could not eat, drink or speak but understood all that was said to her and she said goodbye with her eyes. From her neck, she removed her meagre savings and gave them to me – I gave the lot to a woman who was our newly appointed guardian of the orphaned children. I thought I would also die. People slept in the open air, but we orphans were taken into a shelter where we spent the night half-sitting. In the morning, I was taken to the hospital, but my mother was no longer there and no one wanted to show us where she was taken – we knew she had died.
We had to hurry because the train was waiting. The carriage had wooden benches on one side. The small children were placed in nets which were slung like hammocks on one side of the rail carriage and others had to sit on the floor. A guardian was in charge of each carriage with children. Some of the latecomers jumped on when the train was already in motion. We then travelled west through Central Asia – Chimkent, Tashkent, Leninabad, Samarkand, Bukhara, Chargan and Ashkhabad – and then left the train at the seaport in Krasnovodsk on the Caspian Sea. I suppose we were fed on the way but I can't remember, though I do remember Polish soldiers sharing their meagre rations with us.
After we disembarked from the train hungry and thirsty, we were taken to the steam baths in groups, where we were disinfected and our hair washed and shaven. All our possessions and documents were taken away, leaving us only in what we wore. We looked like slaves – emaciated, pale, sad and scared.
At last we boarded a cargo ship, where we were squeezed together in a tight space with standing room only. One woman was trampled to death in the crush and her body was thrown overboard into the sea. Two latecomers attempted to board ship when it was leaving the wharf. They jumped into the water and tried to scramble up some dangling ropes, but were too weak and drowned.
Moaning from sick young girls came from below deck, but we weren't allowed to go near because of typhus and other contagious diseases. Our guardian wetted our lips with cotton wool because it was so hot that our tongues stuck to the roof of our mouths.
On arrival at the Iranian port of Pahlevi, we were stood in rows and the English Red Cross checked our condition. The sick went to hospital and the healthier were taken to Tehran. The three of us were taken to a convalescent centre in Pahlevi, and were cared for by young and sympathetic soldiers from the Indian army who also cooked our special diets. We were in quarantine, slept in army tents and sunbathed all day long because everything was done by the soldiers.
When we grew stronger and gained a kilogram in weight, we boarded army trucks for the long journey over the Elburz Mountains to Tehran. The trucks were driven by expert Iranian drivers over the precipitous, tortuous and boulder-strewn bends. We were crushed together in the heat and the dust. Having at last arrived in Tehran, we lived in tents. Many people were located in a huge hall, and slept on the floor with one blanket and a pillow. We had no appetite and couldn't eat because our stomachs were contracted and dried up from hunger, and our livers were diseased. Here, I met many friends from my home village in Poland.
On November 1942, after some months in Tehran, we were transferred to Isfahan, the ancient capital of Iran. Here, the children were located in various old palaces and houses formerly occupied by the rich elite of the city. We stayed in Compound No 6 in the suburb of Dzhulfa with 300 other girls. We were now separated as my younger sisters went to different compounds, according to age. Boys were also in separate compounds around the city.
We looked awful – I weighed only 35kg. But this was the beginning of a stabilised life. Schools were opened, but because of a shortage of teaching materials we wrote our first lessons on sand. Vitamin deficiency caused me embarrassing memory lapses, but I managed at school.
Our compound was surrounded by a high wall whose gate was always locked and guarded by an elderly doorman, though some of the guard duty was done also by the older girls. We were not permitted to go out alone because of the real danger of abduction – one girl was abducted and a year later thrown out into the street with a baby. We received a little pocket money which we would save up to buy sandals.
The compound was next door to a beautiful Armenian church where we attended prayers and services. Representatives of the British armed forces and consulate would visit and pray with us. Back in Poland, our spiritual life was rich and full of prayer. This continued throughout the years of exile in Siberia and now Iran. There were always girls praying in the church, alone or in groups – prayer was our strength and kept us going in the darkest hours of our lives.
I was free from any serious illness during the years in Siberia – there must have been Providence's purpose in that. Now free from any responsibility, my body succumbed to all types of illnesses. I was confined to a hospital bed for two months with inflammation of the joints. Then came malaria with delirium, followed by mumps. I was so thin and pale that girls would run from me thinking I had the dreaded tuberculosis. Together with my sister Maria, I was transferred to a sanatorium run by Ursuline nuns where I stayed for six months.
Our life in Iran was peaceful, ordered and free from stress. In 1943, I joined the Girl Guides and began English lessons. Isfahan was a beautiful city, with irrigated gardens. We discovered the best of what Iran had to offer. Twice a week, we were taken to swimming pools and steam baths. The archbishop hired seven buses and we were shown the old city and its environs in all their splendour. Time passed in lessons, Scouting, choirs, amateur theatre, learning national dancing, Christmas plays and religious festivals. We were also often visited by dignitaries – Polish, British and even once by the Shah of Persia.
Then one day came the shocking news of the death of General Sikorski, the Polish Premier and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish army-in-exile. We cried desperately, because with his death in a suspicious aeroplane "accident" we lost all hope of ever returning to our homeland. We were up to date with all the news from the war fronts – even the clandestine news from the Warsaw uprising. The failure of that uprising was another bitter blow to us, like the last nail in our coffins. The only bright bit of news for a while was the victory of our Polish soldiers at Monte Cassino.
After two-and-half peaceful years of temporary asylum in Isfahan, it was time to move on. In 1944, the children were being evacuated to South and East Africa, Mexico, India and Canada. The last group was evacuated to Lebanon in 1945. I was listed on the third transport to leave Iran for Africa, but because my sisters had trachoma (an infectious eye disease), I had to stay behind and wait anxiously for the next transport. There seemed no place for us to go because all the British colonies were now full with Polish refugees and we weren't sure what would happen to us.
Then came an invitation from New Zealand's Prime Minister
On 27 September 1944, we left in buses for Sultanabad where the American army had a camp and we received a warm welcome. We then travelled by train, and after a short two-day stay in Ahwaz we continued through the beautiful countryside to the Iranian port of Khorramshahr. We boarded a ship which was most uncomfortable. The stench from the lower decks, along with the heat and poor food, caused most of us to be seasick. Because it was too hot below, we slept on the open deck but had to move smartly in the morning when they got sluiced with seawater.
On 5 October 1944, we sailed into the Persian Gulf and then into the Arabian Sea. Another week later, we reached the Indian port of Bombay. Because this was wartime, we weren't allowed to leave the ship. From there, we were transferred to a US troopship the General Randall, which was already carrying New Zealand soldiers home on leave. They made us feel welcome, looked after the children like their own and showered them with sweets. They had fought alongside our own Polish troops in all the theatres of the war in Europe and Africa, and they extended their friendship to us.
The accommodation on the General Randall was luxurious compared to the earlier ship. Everyone had a hammock-type bunk, and there were hot showers,
Our priest, Father Micha³ Wilniewczyc, also a refugee from the Siberian camps, held Mass on deck and we received the sacraments. We sailed into Melbourne Harbour. For two-and-a-half years, we had seen the dry landscape of central Iran and then the limitless emptiness of the ocean. But now our eyes feasted on the green scenery. A few days later, on 31 October, we were in Wellington Harbour and saw before us a fairytale land. Though it was cold, everyone ran up to the decks calling out: "Come see, this is New Zealand." The scenery was truly beautiful and we marvelled at the multicoloured houses perched on green hills. "God smiled on this land," we said.
The next morning, a reception committee was waiting on the wharf, all pleasant welcoming smiles. Polish and New Zealand flags were everywhere. Prime Minister Fraser came on board, together with the Polish Consul Count Wodzicki and his wife. Women from the Red Cross, soldiers and Boy Scouts marshalled us into the waiting train carriages, and gave us food. The local people waved handkerchiefs at us in greeting, and bouquets of flowers were handed to us. We were warmly greeted at every station during the six-hour journey to Pahiatua. The countryside was unbelievable – everything bright and colourful, and the pleasant smell of fresh grass! We arrived in Pahiatua where we were taken by army trucks to the Polish Children's Camp, which had been arranged and provisioned to perfection by the New Zealand army and volunteers.
My first holiday in New Zealand was with the Morgan family in Wanganui, who tried to make every day a pleasant one for me, including a trip on the beautiful Wanganui River and the countryside. I saw beautiful lakes, some of which I was told were so deep that they reached all the way to Japan! I spent my annual holidays with other local families at no cost to me. All these people were most generous and good to me.
I was heartbroken to leave the camp when I had to go and live in Wellington on 20 September 1946. There, I boarded with four Polish girls and 76 of other nationalities in a girls' hostel in Oriental Bay. I started work three days later as a seamstress with three other Polish girls, travelling there by bus. Our
During my holidays, I spent a week with the Davis family in Te Kuiti and visited the enchanting Waitomo caves, a hydroelectric power station and pretty Hamilton East. I also saw the sights of Auckland.
I was always drawn to the religious life and wanted to join an order of nuns among my own people. So I decided to leave New Zealand to study in Rome, closer to my native land. Father Broel-Plater, the Polish priest, made all the arrangements for me. I spent my last Christmas in the Pahiatua camp with my two sisters. I asked them if I could leave them and they replied with sadness that yes, if this was to make me happy.
Some children were returning to Poland to rejoin their parents who were parted from them during the escape from Siberia, so arrangements were made for me to accompany the group. On 7 May 1949, we sailed on the Rangitiki. Our little group was under the care of a Polish woman who was seasick all the way, so I had to take over the role of guardian. I enjoyed the voyage on the ocean. In Panama, I collected letters from my sisters and New Zealand friends. I became homesick for New Zealand and wished that the ship would turn around and take me back there. But I kept my resolve and all the way on the long voyage to Rome I met good and kindly people, and I thank God for all His blessings on me.
Halina Morrow (Fladrzyńska)
My parents were born under tsarist Russian occupation. During the 1918 Communist Revolution, they fled to settle in a small town in eastern Poland. My father was educated, spoke three languages and was a horticulturist who successfully experimented with growing exotic fruit in glasshouses and raised a black rose. I had a very active and happy childhood. On my first day at school, a siren sounded – the Germans had dropped a bomb on a nearby town. After this, I had only two more days at school.
Russian soldiers crossed the Wilia River that ran through our town of Nowa Wilejka, and my father and I went to watch them cross the bridge. The town had some 20,000 people, and was a mixture of Poles, Jews, Ukrainians and Belarusians. Among them were Russian sympathisers. My parents were very surprised to discover that a family who had visited us often turned out to be on the side of the Russians.
When my brother Olek came home from the Polish army, he explained that remnants of the army had crossed over to England. He and my father began hiding valuables, guns and uniforms left by two Polish officers who had stayed with us earlier. Before my father died, he told me where they were hidden. Maybe someone has found our treasure by now.
The Russian Secret Police discovered that Olek was home, and an officer and three or four Jews who were communist sympathisers arrived with guns and took him away. We never saw him again. Life was starting to get very unpleasant. The shops were empty and it was wise to be on guard as even the neighbours could not be trusted. Even some of the children interrogated by the Secret Police unknowingly revealed things they had overheard the adults talking about, causing arrests to members of their own families.
The people lived in fear, and there was nowhere to run or hide. The Secret Police seemed to know everyone's movements and deportations were already taking place. Very early one morning in July 1940, at 4am, there was a knock on our door. My father opened it to face four Russian soldiers. The Secret Police officer in charge of the group was well known to us, as during a threemonth period he had constantly visited our house as a friend.
One of the soldiers, shouting at my mother to hurry up and pack, pushed her.
The overcrowding caused many deaths and the bodies were taken out of the wagons when the soldiers opened the doors at stations. The soldiers struck people with rifle butts and some, especially the older people, did not get up again and were shot where they lay. The toilet was a hole in the floor. Some people would hold a blanket for one another while others just did not care anymore. There was no way we could clean up spilt urine, which stank and made us more depressed. Our enemy was treating us like animals, humiliating us so we would obey them at all times.
The dried bread that my mother brought with us was almost gone. I did not know at the time, but she ate hardly anything to make our food last longer. One woman became hysterical, hitting her head against the wall of the wagon. Men were also cursing and someone was saying prayers aloud. I was scared, shaking and holding onto my mother. The noise, the smell, the hunger, the worry about my mother whom I knew was in pain – I wanted to go to sleep and wake up back in our comfortable house in Poland when everything was calm and normal.
After four weeks, we got transferred from the train into trucks. Some of the soldiers were mere teenagers trying to show their heroism by manhandling women, children and old people. My father was 70 at the time and worried what fate awaited my mother and me if something happened to him. Most of our group were middle-aged women.
Our family was taken to a Russian house in a kolkhoz (collective farm) of Nova Pokrovka on the treeless, open steppe of Kazakhstan. The houses were made of turf, consisting of one room and a kitchen with a large oven, behind which people slept in the winter. Every week the floor in the house was painted with diluted cow's manure. It made the place look clean and free of dust – but the smell! To enter the house, one had to pass through a shed where the animals were kept – usually a cow, chickens, ducks and pigs.
The owners of the house we were to invade were in their late 30s with a young girl of five. They were very polite and offered us their best room, while they stayed in the kitchen. The communist officials forced the local Russians to give up their modest accommodation to the Polish families, and there was no way they could protest or disagree with the decision. In a way, the Russians
Men and women were put to work in the fields behind combine harvesters or driving bullock wagons, and the work was very hard. The people were paid in kind from the produce of the harvests. But because my parents did not work, they had to exchange items of clothing for food. It was fortunate that my father took a glasscutter with him when we left Poland, as he could cut glass for the local Kazakhs who paid him with flour or potatoes.
We then realised that Russia was fighting Germany. Every day for weeks we saw planes flying towards the west. There were thousands of them. One day, I saw a long dark object flying low, almost above me. It reminded me of the submarine pictures I saw in my father's book back in Poland.
The object was approximately 15 metres long and dark in colour, gliding very quietly only 30 metres or so off the ground. At the back, I saw two long tubes similar to exhausts which were discharging bluish flame as the object moved forward, as if it had a combustion engine. I could also see someone inside dressed in dark clothes. We took for granted that it was one of the new Russian inventions. However, years later when I was in the US, my husband asked an air force official what kind of aeroplanes Russia had developed that looked like submarines. He made enquiries and told us that there are no such aircraft in the world, and what I saw in Russia must have been a UFO. Apparently, they were spotted over North and South America during World War II, and were called the "cigar-shaped UFOs".
My mother developed appendicitis, but the nearest doctor or hospital was 100km away. The communist supervisor refused to help because he said the horses were the property of the state and were used for work only. Eventually, a Russian couple travelling through our kolkhoz agreed to take my mother to the hospital, but none of us were allowed to accompany her. A few days later, we were informed that she had passed away. The hospital had no surgeon. I was told she was calling my name before she died. Her body was brought back to our kolkhoz and buried in a small cemetery out on the steppe. She was 45 years old. From that day on, my life changed. I began to cry a lot and then became very quiet. Then the Poles began discussing my father's condition and they didn't think he would survive the winter.
My father worried about me and took over the task of caring for me. I helped neighbours with odd jobs around the house in exchange for eggs or butter. I was eight years old now and my father did not want me to attend a Russian school, but he was threatened with arrest if I didn't show up. My maths was the best in class and my hand was always up during question time, but I would not answer questions on Stalin or the communists. Polish children in Russian schools were being told that God did not exist and to pray to Stalin instead, the source of all good things. To prove this, teachers told them to pray to God for sweets. When nothing happened, they told them to pray to Stalin's portrait. A surreptitious shake of the portrait and the sweets would shower down.
My father was not well and arranged for us to move to another kolkhoz about 80km away to live with Mrs Sokalska, whom we knew from Poland and who also had a daughter my age. It was the beginning of winter and we walked all the way.
The winter was very severe and after snow storms only the chimneys were visible. My father had to dig us out every morning, and after a few days we did not know whether it was day or night. There was no proper toilet, our fuel supplies were exhausted and there was no way we could get into the shed to get more. The supply of bread was running out and grease used to provide light in the house was gone. We sat in the dark, hungry, huddled together to keep warm and prayed it would stop snowing. Two people died in the snowdrifts.
We were all hungry and my father had too much pride to accept food from Mrs Sokalska for nothing, so he went away to seek work. Three weeks later, my father's warm jacket and a few other items arrived with a letter from the hospital confirming his death. He had died of pneumonia.
I had no one to talk to about my sadness. Mrs Sokalska seldom spoke to us and I did not have enough confidence to ask her what would happen to me now. I wished that someone would stretch out their arms and take me away from this deep loneliness to a place where the sun shone and there was plenty to eat.
The temperature sometimes dropped down to -40°C. To keep warm, we burned a lot of dried dung collected out on the steppe during the summer months. But when we began to run out of fuel, we had to pull a sled out into the steppe to pick the frozen weeds in the snow, which numbed and blistered my hands, and the return trip with the laden sled was almost beyond our endurance.
At night, I felt lonely and insecure, and cried myself to sleep. I overheard Mrs Sokalska's friend advising her to get rid of me because I was an extra mouth to feed. Apart from Mrs Sokalska and her daughter, I had no other company and longed to be with the Polish people back in Nova Pokrovka. I worked out in my mind that God was the one with whom I could share my problems.
When I was on my own, I would say a short prayer and then would talk to Him pretending He was in front of me. Sometimes I would ask questions, to which I never heard the answers. But just when I decided to give up my conversations to the friend above as I called Him, I noticed that my mood had changed for the better.
In August 1941, news reached our settlement that the Poles were granted a political amnesty. We were excited but cautious, as this could be just a rumour started by someone to cheer up and bring hope to suffering people. The Polish Government-in-Exile in London signed an agreement with Stalin for the release of Polish prisoners from the labour camps and for enlistment in a Polish army being formed to fight the Germans.
The first sign of hopefully better days was when a supply of medicine arrived from the Americans to prevent epidemics of typhoid, scarlet fever and measles. They also sent provisions but the little clothing we received we sold to the Russians for food. I started to visit Russian homes for company. They had large families, but because I was an orphan they always found a place for me at their table, with six people eating from the same bowl.
Remembering comments to get rid of me because I was an extra mouth to feed, I offered to help a neighbour with milking, knowing we would get eggs, milk and butter as a payment for my work. Normally, this was an easy job, but I was only eight years old and became very tired – the cow had to be milked twice daily, the milk strained, butter churned, chickens and pigs fed, and eggs collected. But I had good meals now.
Marushka, my employer, insisted that I drink lots of milk. Visits to her place were followed by waves of loneliness and longing for my parents. One day, Marushka held my hands and asked me to move in with her and be her daughter.
I remembered my mother's words spoken to me so many times before: "Do not speak Russian to us. Do not sing Russian songs. Communists do not believe in God. Never forget you are Polish. We must try to escape from this country." These words were deeply implanted in my mind. No matter how lonely I was, I belonged with the Poles.
Mrs Sokalska informed me that I was to be taken to an orphanage, which was the last thing I wanted to hear and the thought of it frightened me. The longing to belong to someone or have somebody I could call my own never left me, and I envied the children who had brothers or sisters. Gradually, my predicament made me angry, which later got me into trouble many times during my stays in different institutions. I wished that I was grown up.
Upon arrival at Pavlodar, Mrs Sokalska took me to the Polish orphanage, and without showing any emotion said goodbye and departed. A woman introduced me to a girl and boy aged between 16 and 18 who seemed to be in charge of the 45 children. At teatime we had a thick slice of black bread with lard on it and something to drink. We slept on the floor covered with one blanket and no pillow.
Some of the children were only one or two years old. With no doctor and not being able to be treated, the sick ones were dying. During my stay in this place we buried two little bodies. I attended the funeral of a little girl of about three. She had been found standing outside the gate, hugging her rag doll. The older children examined her and gave her a bath. After she had been cleaned up, I thought she had the most lovely and intelligent face I had ever seen on a young child. She never smiled or cried but just looked at all of us with curiosity.
She had been left outside the gate without any explanation or a name. If it was her mother who was responsible, I can understand why she avoided telling anyone because she knew the girl would not have been accepted if it was known she had a parent. Perhaps she hoped the child would get help. Unfortunately, it was too late and three weeks later the girl died. We did not know what was wrong with her. All of us who could walk attended the funeral. Not far from the orphanage a grave was dug and the little body wrapped up in a blanket was placed in it. We said a short prayer while the two older boys covered the grave with a piece of iron. I am not sure if a cross was ever put on the grave.
Every day was the same and there was not much for us to do. Most of the children were very quiet. The older ones would sometimes tell us stories, but I do not remember anyone laughing or playing like children normally do. The meals we received were very simple – usually black bread with lard three times a day, with a thin soup for lunch. So we were undernourished. I discovered a couple of boils on my body and had difficulty sitting. With the relief warehouse only 30 metres away, we watched all the provisions being unloaded from a stationary wagon but I do not remember the children ever getting anything from it.
After two months, the orphanage was to close due to a lack of money and the children transferred to a Russian institution. We all were frightened to end up among strangers. So one day I asked a girl to escape with me to my old settlement, but she explained that her brother was too small to walk the distance and would not leave him behind. I planned my escape and started to eat only half portions, filling my pockets with bread. Because I arrived at the orphanage barefoot, I helped myself to a pair of shoes from a large box in the hallway. I felt no fear or danger.
After six days of preparation, I got up one morning before everybody else, picked up a pair of shoes out of a trunk, put on my coat and was on my way. I had pushed my bag under the fence the previous day so I could easily grab it on the way out. There was no one at the gate this early in the morning, and I had no trouble opening and shutting it after I left. As it was only a few months since I had travelled down this road, it was easy to remember how to get out of the city. Once past the houses, I was all alone on the road and glad everything had gone as I planned.
Next, a buggy came alongside driven by a man in a Secret Police uniform with his little boy and agreed to give me a lift. He wanted to know where I was going, whom I was going to see and whom I lived with in Pavlodar. I told him the name of the town where I was going, that my mother was in hospital and I wanted to see her, and that in Pavlodar I stayed with my aunt. He wasn't going my way, so I thanked them, got off and walked.
It was a warm day late in the afternoon and I was getting tired. I came to a roadhouse where I hoped to spend the night but the woman in charge only allowed me to drink water from the well. The wooden bucket was too heavy, but fortunately already had a little water in it. With a little of the bread and water, I ate my first meal of the day. The sun was still high and I continued walking for a few miles. There was no traffic, so I decided to spend the night on the steppe. I found a level spot and lay down. The earth was hard and smelled of mildew and rotting grass. The moon was out. Lying still in the dark, I became aware of a hundred night noises. Every little snap made me jump. The sounds were all around me.
Then a beautiful animal startled me a few feet away. It was a thin grey dog, shaggy and twice my size. I took out some bread and put it on the ground by my side hoping it would come nearer, but it didn't move. I encouraged it by speaking to it gently, but it bared its teeth. But I was not afraid of it, and leaving the bread on the ground I went back to sleep. The next morning the bread and the dog were gone.
On my second day I came to a crossroad and knew I was lost. All three roads looked the same. I picked the middle one and kept walking. I was hungry and thirsty. Around noon, I reached a place with several rough huts made of clay and turf. Everything was quiet and no one was visible. In one of the huts, a dirty small window was half opened and I could see some food left on a bench. Putting my hand inside the window of a hut, I snatched a cabbage leaf.
Then I came upon a young, ragged and barefoot Kazakh boy of about 16. He didn't look normal and made lewd suggestions. The prospect of getting food, water and the answer to where the road led to had diminished. I left in a hurry, dropping and losing the rest of my bread and the stolen cabbage leaf.
Darkness fell and the temperature dropped. There was lightning and rolls of distant thunder. I curled up in long grass. On two sides of my bed I had a wall of wild rose bushes. Then the storm struck in earnest. The pelting downpour drenched my clothes and filled my shoes. Brilliant crackles of light split the black sky. I have never seen anything so magnificent before or since. The wind was so strong I had to hunch down on the ground so as not to be blown over. The rain was coming down in sheets now and the wind was howling.
For a long time I sat in the puddle in the pouring rain, my head bowed. I felt defeated. Not knowing what to do next, I said my prayers and tried to sleep. Early in the morning, wet and cold and without any sleep, I decided to get back onto the road. It must lead to people. Hours later, crazed with hunger and angry at everything that was happening to me, I got down on my hands and knees, and scooped dirt and grass into my mouth. In my haste, my eyes got their share of the dirt. Tears ran down my cheeks into my mouth and mixed with the sandy loam, which stuck between my teeth and I vomited.?
For the first time since my departure from the orphanage I lost control. I collapsed on the ground, pounded with my fists and decided it was better to endure the hunger than try that again. I must sleep, then I won't feel hungry. Can one grow accustomed to starvation? I would say so. After a while the hole in the pit of my stomach became second nature to me, a dull pain that accompanied me everywhere.
I slept the rest of the day, survived the night and in the morning I decided to continue walking. Tears were running down my face. My mouth and throat were very dry. Keeping one foot in front of another, I made myself move forward. I accepted a ride in a wagon with a kind young man. He covered me with a long coat, calmed my shivering, and handed me a chunk of bread and a piece of cheese. He told me he was married to a Polish girl and invited me to stay with them, but I wanted to get to my destination.
By nightfall, we reached a kolkhoz where his mother lived. She helped me to clean up and washed out my eyes, gave me warm food and put me to
Mrs Sokalska showed no emotion at seeing me. However, when I explained that I did not want to be a burden and would move in with Marushka, Mrs Sokalska was not prepared to give me away to a Russian. After some months had passed, Mrs Sokalska advised me that I was to go to a Polish orphanage again, but this time to a place further south in Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan, near the Iranian border. The orphanage from which I escaped was closed and the children had been taken to Polish families.
Early the next morning we left the kolkhoz on foot and walked in silence mile after mile. Mrs Sokalska and I never had much to say to one another. It started to snow and I could feel pain in my joints between my hips and legs. Gradually, I began to take smaller and smaller strides. I could hardly walk and Mrs Sokalska almost dragged me for the next 80km to reach the trucks which would take me to the orphanage.
As I was getting ready to board one of the trucks, Mrs Sokalska took me in her arms and for a few minutes held me without saying anything. She had tears in her eyes. After she got her composure back, she said to me: "When you are in another country, try and get me out of here. You know my daughter is ill and will probably not survive the winter. God be with you." Then she was gone. This was the first time I ever witnessed her express any emotion.
With a group of about 40 orphans, I travelled on to Pavlodar where we boarded a train for Ashkhabad, picking up more Polish children on the way. After a long journey, we were delivered to a transit orphanage. Following a quick medical examination, we were issued grey blankets and slept on the floor, jammed 50 to a room.
A girl of 16 was in charge of 10 of us girls. One morning I fell ill and, because no one seemed to know what was wrong with me, they put me in isolation in a local hospital. To this day, I still do not know what was wrong with me.
The diplomatic relations between Russia and Poland had deteriorated and we in the Ashkhabad orphanage experienced unpleasant changes. The Russians arrested the adults, leaving the older children to run the institution. Under the supervision of only one adult, they did the cooking, washing and took care of
Our escape route out of Ashkhabad, south over the mountains into Iran, was over fearsome, steep, dangerously narrow and tortuous mountain roads with no room to pass. The wheels slipped on the gravel. On arrival in Tehran, we were quarantined in a transit camp for Poles. This was the first time we were served good food since our deportation from Poland. After a month, we were sent to Isfahan. Travelling by buses through the desert regions was very tiresome and always in thick clouds of dust.
Many of us children did not know our true age. During our stay in Russia we had changed it so often to suit our circumstances that after a certain time we were not sure how old we actually were. I was confused and it wasn't until I arrived in New Zealand that I found out my right age. In Isfahan the children were taken to various compounds in the city. We started school and life was tolerable with nutritious food. The rules of the institution never appealed to me and I always found an excuse to do something else or make mischief. It seems to me now that the more I attracted attention to myself the better I felt.
On 7 September 1944, we left Isfahan with its warm and sunny climate, which had helped us to regain our strength and health. I will never forget Iran – a country of mosques, palaces, gardens, and shops full of decorative silver and copper.
The journey by sea was very exhausting. On board
A week later we reached Bombay and boarded the troopship
During the voyage, we became concerned with what would really happen if the ship was attacked by the enemy. One of the soldiers explained to us that the ship was partitioned into three sections. If one or two of them got hit, a third section could operate on its own, so we should not worry too much. I am not sure if he had any knowledge of such things. Perhaps he was trying to give us hope of survival in case of the inevitable.
Finally, on 31 October 1944, we sailed into Wellington Harbour. After a month at sea, we were pleased to see land again. We all came up on deck to get a good glimpse of the capital of New Zealand. The colourful roofs of the houses fascinated us and we could see green hills. This was very new to us after all our time in the barren and dry country of Iran.
The next day, we docked at the wharf and were taken by trains to the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, where it was good to be in school again – we had to make up for lost time. I had a happy life at the camp. From time to time, I broke some rules and was punished by not being able to see a film. But gradually, I became older and a little wiser.
I remember our first English lessons. At that time, I am not sure who was more nervous, the teachers or us. Many years later when I met my New Zealand teacher and we discussed life in the camp, I discovered it was just as difficult for them as it was for us children. They had no experience in
The teacher began the first lesson by telling us there were only five vowels with 18 distinct sounds between them, which had to be recognised. Then she wrote on the blackboard the examples and explained the consonants. We had no idea what she was saying and it must have been very uncomfortable for her when she was speaking to us, knowing well that we could not understand her yet still being expected to learn. We did not know how to learn to pronounce and spell correctly, and did not make much progress. For a spelling test, we memorised the words the way we pronounced them in Polish and then wrote them down.
My attention was drawn to the older girls who by that time were working in factories or similar places, and were stopping occasionally at the camp. They seemed happy, had lovely clothes and the stories they told about life in the cities were very appealing. But I was told to stay in school because an education would give me better opportunities later in life. Geography, maths and sport were my favourite subjects, and I was good at writing essays. But English words did not appeal to me. It required too much effort, so I learnt enough to show the teacher that I had studied but not enough to remember. The New Zealand families we stayed with during the school holidays were wonderful to us. Some wanted to keep in touch, but I became very shy and my lack of English prevented me from writing.
On completing Standard 6 of Polish school, I was sent to a college in Gisborne with three other girls from the camp. We realised that we needed more help with the English lessons before handling other subjects. We soon discovered that the three of us had a better knowledge of geography and arithmetic taught in our class than the New Zealand girls. We were taught typing and represented our school in basketball championships.
But we had difficulty conversing with anyone. One woman joked about the way we spoke English instead of correcting us. Not to be ridiculed, we began speaking more Polish and avoided conversations with her. About this time, I realised that because I was not getting help with English in school, it would be impossible to accomplish my dream of becoming a veterinarian.
I started work in a bookshop's printing department in Gisborne, and learnt to print wedding invitations and bind accounts books. Then I worked for State Fire Insurance, attended night school and learned shorthand, which I liked. In normal circumstances, I believe I would have been very good at it,
One day, my friend Aniela and I made plans to travel overseas. We found a cheap bedsit in the centre of the city, took secondary jobs and had our main meals in town. We were young and strong. To save for our boat fare, for three months I worked at three jobs daily and on Sunday mornings at Wellington Hospital. Then I found out that the Transport Department was paying women almost a man's wages, so I left my lesser-paid jobs with the longer hours and became a conductor on the trams, and worked fewer hours. At first I liked my new job, but the six o'clock swill was not fun. The trams were crowded with intoxicated men anxious to get home. I quit the trams after nine months and went back to work for an insurance company.
At last the day arrived and we sailed for England on the Rangitoto. After many weeks of sailing we landed in Southampton. It was autumn there and I was homesick for New Zealand already. I passed a typing test and for three years worked for an insurance company in their typing pool. I was happy in my work and would have been quite content to settle in London with its social life, West End picture theatres, dance halls and various clubs.
In London, I met my future husband Ernie, who was a US citizen, and went to Vermont to join him. Later we moved to Fort Worth in Texas, where he worked in a service station and I as a waitress in a racially segregated cafeteria. Not able to have children, we tried adopting but without success. We eventually decided to move to New Zealand and settled in Gisborne where we built a house. I worked for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. In Texas, I had learned to tool leather and took it up as a hobby in my spare time, but the demand became so great that it became more like hard work.
We joined the Poverty Bay Archery Club and twice represented New Zealand in the World Field Crossbow Championships in England in 1984 and 199, where we won many prizes and medals. We are both qualified coaches and my husband was the New Zealand Archery registrar, judge, selector and coordinator. We also imported archery items and operated the Gisborne Archery Supply business.
I was once asked if we were happily married. After 32 years of marriage, I would pick the same man again. None of us gets the partner with all the qualities we like and it takes a long time to understand another person – perhaps never. Without discussions and compromise, misunderstandings
My spiritual life was affected by my rebellion against the small role women played in the Catholic Church. Sometime after the Second Vatican Council, I returned with a more positive view of the Church. These days I live alone, but my life is always busy with voluntary church work and my hobbies.
In a way, I consider myself lucky. What I experienced during my younger years taught me how to survive, and it made me stronger both mentally and spiritually. Sometimes I think about my years as an orphan and how little life meant to me in those days. I felt strong anger at something, the whole world I guess. This led me on occasions to ignore the rules. My regret is that I am unable to apologise to those who were involved in my welfare at the time. Now I understand, admire and respect people that help those who are less fortunate.
Marian Adamski
I came to Taranaki in 1954 to work as a carpenter, but in this rich farming country it was difficult to resist that inner call to work on the land. I began working in dairying, first for wages and then share milking. My ambition was to have my own land to diversify. In 1979, I leased a property bordering the Mount Taranaki National Park and continued with dairy farming, but also experimented with growing hazelnuts and chestnuts. Then I found out about blueberries.
My enthusiasm knew no bounds. If my wife Priscilla hadn't stopped me, I would have put the whole farm in blueberries. The area's climate, with its cold frosty winters, is ideal, promoting a good berry set and bumper crops. I soaked up all the information I could find about the fruit, including its medicinal properties. Unbeknown to me, I was getting a reputation for being an expert blueberry grower. In the mid-1990s, we employed eight girls in the berry-picking season, and our six children helped out during their school and university holidays.
In my retirement, I live on my memories of hard work and achievement, and of the many people I met who came to pick their own year after year. I was a Polish orphan child refugee without even a distant relation that I could say I belonged to, but now I feel I have earned the right to belong here in New Zealand.
Piotr Aulich
I returned to Poland on 22 November 1948 with my brothers to be reunited with my mother. On the one hand, there was the joy that we were back in our homeland. On the other hand, disillusionment at the poverty and lack of freedom – at whose restriction we were soon made aware, because Poland was now under Soviet communist occupation.
We were forbidden to photograph anything or have contact with our kin, who were kept far away from our ship. In other ports at which we had called, it was quite normal for passengers to call out and throw down small presents, such as cigarettes and chocolates, to those they recognised below. But this was forbidden in the Polish northern port town of Gdynia, which we reached around 9am. Though it was autumn, it was a sunny day and for that time of the year very warm. Though we wore short trousers and shirts from New Zealand, we didn't feel cold.
After leaving the liner MS Batory, we were led to the Repatriation Office in a large building. There we stood in an endless queue to be repatriated. It was already dark when our turn came, with little time left until our train's departure. My brother Antoni was registered as No 60254, Józef as No 60255 and I as No 60294. We each received a document allowing us free passage on the public transport system on our way home. Each one of us also received 500 zloty.
We thought at first that we were rich, but quickly changed our minds when the time came to buy something. I remember going up to a kiosk to buy sweets and learned that the cheapest and smallest box of chocolates cost 730 zloty. We were not given very much on which to travel the length of Poland – from Gdynia in the north to Lubawka in the south.
After two hours in the train we felt really hungry, so at Warsaw we used up all our money to buy sweet buns and orange drinks. While waiting in a queue at the station in Gdynia before the train departed, we were invited to a meal. I will not forget this meal to my dying days. They gave us rusted mess tins into which they poured, or rather ladled, thick macaroni tubes. When I tasted it, I immediately realised the meaning of the warning not to return to Poland given to us by our guardian, a religious monk and our teacher in Xavier College, Christchurch. But it was too late for sorrow and grief. The return road was closed to us and that reality had to be accepted.
I quickly came to terms with my lot and looking back I don't regret my return to Poland – one has to live somewhere and survive the time given us by God. It was not as easy for my brothers, and for many years they held a grudge against me for having talked them into returning.
The train ride from Gdynia to Lubawka was long. We travelled to Warsaw in a packed train. Everything was strange and foreign to me – people's behaviour, their clothing and especially their speech. The travellers must have represented every ethnic Polish group – mountain folk, Kurps, Jews, and people from Poznań, Warsaw and many more.
I was fascinated by the strange way they spoke Polish. Sometimes I could not understand a word they said, especially the speech of the country folk. It wasn't just the words, but also the current affairs under discussion (too many things had changed since our deportation to Russia during the war). We had been away too long. I felt like a foreigner in my own land.
Our clothing was a sensation to my fellow travellers. I wore the uniform and cap of Xavier College, which made me stand out among the crowd and we were often asked who we were. When I replied that we were returning home from New Zealand, I got laughter and pity – those people in the train knew to what we were returning. I did not understand at the time that things were not what I imagined them to be, though I felt it.
In Warsaw, we changed to a day train and continued our journey to Wroclaw. I gazed out the window at the ruined landscape of my beloved homeland. It was a pitiful sight – the towns we passed were yet to rise from their ruin, and the skeletons of houses and churches.
The farm houses we passed looked very small compared to those we had seen in New Zealand or other countries we passed on the way. The roofs were made mainly of straw. It was all odd and very miserable looking.
Wroclaw, like Warsaw at the time, was a sea of ruins and ashes, though both cities showed signs of renewed activity – rebuilding and licking the wounds of war. We arrived in Wroclaw before dusk, but this was not yet the end of my journey because home was still 110km away. We travelled all night, changing trains a few times, always waiting in overcrowded waiting rooms full of cigarette smoke and odd smells.
We arrived in Lubawka about 6am. It was covered in a sprinkle of snow and it was cold. Asking the way to our mother's house, after a few minutes we were at her door. My heart beat furiously when we knocked on the door. Our mother opened the door and behind her stood our 11 year-old youngest brother Heniek. We rushed into each other's arms and the hugging was without end, especially when we were joined by our sister Elżbieta and her husband Wladek.
Since we had found each other in 1946 through the Red Cross and made contact, I often sent my mother parcels from the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. These were made up of things brought to the camp, such as coats, jackets, dresses and skirts. At the camp, a lady teacher was always present to give us advice on the choice of fashion and sizes to send in the parcels to our families in Poland. When asked how tall my mother was, I showed that she was a head taller than I. It was in reality the other way around, because mother was shorter and this was the greatest shock to me. I just never gave it a thought that I had grown but she remained the same.
My sister Henryka chose to stay in New Zealand. Antoni died in Lubawka on 27 February 1982. Our sister Irena never reached New Zealand – she remained in Iran, where she married and in 1952 emigrated to the US. She died in Cincinnati, Ohio, on 13 June 1999.
Standard 6B, 1947.
Back: (l-r)
Middle: (l-r)
Front: (l-r)
Sitting: (l-r)
Józefa Berry (Węgrzyn)
Our family of six orphan children was lucky to be selected to travel to New Zealand, as we were initially on the list for Mexico. Our mother and father had died of typhoid fever in Uzbekistan in 1942 within a few days of each other. I was the second-eldest child and placed in the senior class for one year at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. My class was a lively and closeknit group. Teaching was conducted in Polish and Miss Neligan taught us English for two or three lessons a week.
I have happy memories from the camp life, performing in little plays and nativity scenes, and leading a Girl Guides group. Once we had a Girl Guides meeting on a beautiful fine day by the river, but when cows came to visit we all ran away scared and never went back. Though I was reluctant to go to Sacred Heart College in Christchurch, I spent a year there with three other Polish girls, including
I made the right decision in selecting nursing as my career. It gave me many opportunities to make a lot of friends, and to work in various hospitals around the country. I did my general training at Masterton Public Hospital so I could be near the Pahiatua camp where my younger brother and sister were cared for until 1949. There were many long, sometimes lonely months of study in English, which was time consuming and difficult.
The social dances and nurses' balls were the highlights of my training. They gave me some light-hearted fun and excitement. It was at one of these balls that I met and danced with Peter, my future husband. His letters to me were long and always something to look forward to during my study. I did maternity training at Hastings Memorial Hospital and graduated with an award. Living in the Nurses' Home was enjoyable with the friendliness of the other girls and the community spirit. Some of the hospitable families I befriended invited me to stay during my days off. But I still missed my Polish community.
I married Peter in 1952 and during our marriage we moved several times. I worked at Wellington and Christchurch Public Hospitals, Princess Margaret, St George's Surgical Hospital, St Nicholas' Geriatric Hospital, and nursed many private cases for the Nursing Bureau in Christchurch and Lower Hutt. I also worked in Pahiatua Hospital for three months in 1950. We moved to Lower Hutt in 1975 where I was glad to be closer to my family and the Polish
I tried four months of psychiatric training at Sunnyside Hospital, Christchurch, but this was not my cup of tea. I remember many long night shifts, and coming home to be mum to my family of five children during the day meant plenty of tiring times. I had to reluctantly retire at 60, which was the compulsory retirement age in those days. I nursed in a private geriatric hospital in Taita for a few months, then hung up my nursing uniform for gardening and my grandmother role. I have 12 lovely grandchildren from five to 28 years of age. Peter died in January 2004 and I live in Waikanae.
Henryka Blackler (Aulich)
My dearest memories of the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua were, and still are, the songs – the beautiful morning and evening hymns at the grotto, and Sunday Mass in the camp's hall. I especially loved the musical films, which I later tried to enact and sing for the girls in the dormitory. It was so much fun that it was worth the punishment we received for breaking the curfew rules. It all brought us closer together as a family.
I took part in all the concerts held in the hall and I still remember the poem I recited. We performed the Irish jig and Scottish whirl in front of Prime Minister
When we were unable to travel home to the camp for our school holidays, my New Zealand friend Joan invited me to stay at her home. From that time, I boarded with them and attended the Convent School in Lyttelton. At 18 I started work, first as a junior office girl and later as an operator of a Burroughs bookkeeping machine. One day my machine broke down and this handsome mechanic came to repair it – my future husband George. A week later I met him at a dance and some time later we were married at the lovely Catholic Cathedral in Christchurch.
I had married a fine, hardworking and fun-loving man, only he was the poorest Kiwi I could have found, so we worked very hard to pay for our wedding, the deposit on our house and raising our children. Three years later, he was transferred to Timaru where we stayed for 16 years, but returned to Christchurch after he was made redundant from that job.
Despite all the ups and downs, I have not forgotten my faith. I thank God for His goodness. With my late husband, I belonged to an operatic group and a church choir. I now belong to a small group of singers who entertain rest-home patients and elderly citizens. I also attend our small Polish gatherings in Christchurch where I can refresh my Polish language and identity, and eat all that lovely Polish food that I never learned to cook.
My only regret is that I no longer have my Polish family to share my ups and downs with, as my sister Irena was left behind in Iran and my brothers had returned to help rebuild Poland after the war.
Maria Campbell (Pytlos)
I was five years old when I arrived at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. In the camp's centre there was a play area with swings, seesaws, a shallow swimming pool and a fire-hose pump. The pump was not part of the playground equipment, but it looked like a horse and we loved playing on it. The children of kindergarten age were often taken to this play area, which was always a treat, and it didn't worry us if we were told off for climbing "the horse".
One day, the youngest kindergarten children, and I among them, were taken to the play area for a swim. I was not allowed to go into the water because I was ill, so I stood on the edge of the pool watching others. I was a sickly, scrawny child. Some older boys ran past and accidentally pushed me into the water. The boys jumped in to save me and the other children began to scream. Some time elapsed before my mother could get me (I was one of the very few children who had a parent at the camp). It is possible that as a result of this experience I caught a chill, which resulted in pneumonia. I was then admitted to the camp hospital.
While there, I woke up one morning feeling very stiff from my neck down. Nurse
A doctor from Palmerston North was called for and he diagnosed poliomyelitis. An ambulance took me to Palmerston North Hospital and I stayed there for six or seven months. I lay flat on my back. During the day I was strapped to my bed, which was raised to nearly vertical position. At first, no one was allowed to visit me, not even my mother. There must have been a crisis because I was given the last rites by the camp's Polish priest
When it was decided that I had sufficiently recovered, I was put in a ward with other children. I could not walk then, but moved around on my bottom. Every effort was made to get me to walk again. My legs were strapped with irons, and I was coaxed and encouraged to walk. I fell over a lot because I kept looking at my feet – it was nearly impossible for me to look ahead.
I was then transferred to the Otaki Children's Health Camp. By then, the Polish Children's Camp was closed. My mother was living in Wellington and could not visit me very often as she was working as a housekeeper. I must have spent at least two years at the health camp. There was nothing likeable about me, either in appearance or character. I was uncoordinated and my hair had to be shaved because on arrival at the health camp I got infected with lice. I had a terrible temper and I was always in trouble.
While there, I was supposed to recover my health and build my strength. Unfortunately, I did not cooperate. For example, when I was given a dose of cod-liver oil, I would hold it in my mouth, then slip outside and spit it out. I liked porridge though, but my portion wasn't enough for me. Occasionally, I would slurp up what I was given, take a clean plate and walk up to the serving bench and say that I did not get any. They knew they had already served me and told me so, adding that there was none left. This triggered the worst in me and I would throw myself on the floor yelling and screaming. To appease me they would end up giving me more.
During the holidays, the parents of the children at the Otaki Children's Health Camp would come and take their children home. My mother was working very hard and living in cramped conditions, and sometimes could not take me home. On such occasions, I was transferred to the staff quarters. Most of the staff had families living with them and I would be taken to visit their relatives for Christmas dinner. Still, I felt very lonely.
I was not an easy child to look after. I would run away, climb a tree and refuse to get down. Sometimes I would incite other children to come with me outside the allowed boundaries. On one occasion, I was responsible for leaving a gate open and the cows got out. I was even chased by a bull and only just managed to get away by climbing a pine tree. I always felt angry, but never scared. They must have wondered how so much anger came out of this "splitpin" as I was called.
In the end, my mother was informed that nothing more could be done for 82
When the boarding school closed, my mother placed me in the Polish Girls' Hostel in Lyall Bay, Wellington. I shared a room with a group of girls whom I already knew from the Polish Children's Camp. We were all enrolled at St Patrick's Primary School in Kilbirnie, Wellington. I was accepted by the group and enjoyed their friendship and companionship. Here I met
We used to sneak butter from the kitchen, rub ourselves over and then sunbathe to get a nice tan. When I was on kitchen duty cutting blocks of butter into little squares and then rolling them into balls in preparation for the breakfast table, I sneaked some butter out. Maria and I rubbed ourselves over and went to the back of the hostel by the clothesline to sunbathe. We both got badly burnt and didn't dare to have a bath that night. Sister was very suspicious when she smelt the butter on us, but we got away with it.
It was at the hostel that I became truly scared for the first time. I now realise that the older girls were playing pranks on us, but at the time it was very real. We were told that the hostel was haunted and that during the night a "Lady in White" visited the rooms – one night we did see a white figure move in the distance. There was also a piano in our room and during some nights its
We had so much fun together. When the lights should have been out we would pull the mattresses onto the floor, sit in a circle, and talk, laugh and dream of what we were going to be when we grew up. We made promises that we would always keep in touch. At any sound, someone would call "Sister is coming", which was a signal to heave the mattresses back on our beds and try to make them in a hurry.
In 1958, the Polish Girls' Hostel was closed and I went to live with my mother. She was working as a housekeeper for an employer who owned many different houses and so she had to move often. There was no peace between us. She could not understand my rebelliousness and for that matter neither could I. So I decided to leave home and live in Christchurch. Then I moved to Dunedin, then Ocean Beach in Invercargill and then Dunedin again. After that, I decided to return home to Wellington. I was going to catch the
Eventually, I returned home and got married, but the marriage did not last. Much later I met my present partner. I worked for 34 years until retirement with Amcor Cartons in Moera, Lower Hutt. My life is now happy and stable.
Irena Coates (Ogonowska)
When we arrived at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, lines of grey army barracks seemed to be everywhere. We were used to camps, but this one was different. There was a beautiful freshness about it – green patches of grass, some trees and a special quality of happiness. Or, more correctly, an absence of threat and terror. There were New Zealand soldiers everywhere smiling at us and looking friendly. They were so different from the hostile, dangerous-looking adults who had been a large part of my experience in my young life.
Very soon after arriving, we were offered our first New Zealand meal. Miraculously, it seemed, all the 733 children were accommodated in several dining halls. Each child was handed a plate and as we filed past an open servery, colourful and delicious food was placed on it. I felt absolutely stunned to see so much food. This was because I remembered always being hungry, always looking for food. My reaction was to hide this food because I thought there might not be any more after this wonderful offering. But our Polish teachers circulated among us, encouraging us to eat and promising that tomorrow there would be more.
As we settled into the camp's life and routine, we found it comforting to have three meals a day. Each time I ate, it seemed as if a wonderful gift was bestowed upon me by a benevolent and loving God. Pahiatua became for me a haven of kindliness, peace and benevolence. For the first time in my life, I was receiving daily food, had a beautiful clean bed to sleep in and could have a shower.
Life became so different in other respects too. The effect of eating regular meals began to change my body. I began to want to run and jump with my friends. We started to play games and we started to laugh. I don't think I had ever laughed before. The joy of simply being alive filled my whole body. It was lovely to be, to live and to experience. Life was worth living!
Many spaces around the camp were used for games of hide and seek, daring jumps over huge puddles of water after the rain or negotiating the nearby river. As I look back on the planning and thought that the New Zealand authorities put into our reception, housing and programme of recovery for us at the camp, I am profoundly thankful for the wonderful welcome and recovery programme that enabled us to begin a new life in this country. In
Then one day, one of my teachers called me and told me that I had to go to a New Zealand school because I had learned some English and could study like New Zealand school children. I was excited by the prospect of studying in a New Zealand school as I loved learning English. So a small group of four girls was dispatched to a girls' boarding school in Timaru. A new and totally incomprehensible environment enveloped us as I became one of 100 boarders. There were strict rules with punishments attached, and bells summoned us to classes, the chapel and dining room for meals.
Silence was obligatory at most times – which for me was not a problem as I could not speak English anyway. What I couldn't understand was why speaking was such a transgression. Boarding school was interesting for the learning opportunities that were offered. I loved learning English and French, and found French much easier as I already had a foundation of the language while in Iran. But English, what a headache it was – the ever-changing grammar where each rule once learned was often displaced by an exception. What a difficult but beautiful language.
We gradually made friends with many girls who often invited us to stay with their families. This was a wonderful introduction to the warm-hearted and compassionate New Zealanders who took us in and treated us as their own children. They frequently treated us to new clothes, shoes and outings, as if we were their own. Meeting New Zealand families formed a valuable link to human goodness in people everywhere, and we formed lasting and enduring friendships.
After four years at boarding school, I passed School Certificate and it was time for another transition. I was accepted for Christchurch Teachers' College to train as a primary teacher. Being a student was an interesting experience. I became one of 300 students and met many friendly young people. Life was full of adventure. We had classes in many subjects and observed children learning. This was an exciting experience and the beginning of a lifelong interest in how people learn.
After graduating, I taught in many schools. My first permanent posting was to a Maori school in Gisborne where my work was fascinating. In that school, mothers came to school with their children every day and stayed in my classroom, taking part in all learning activities. It was only later that I discovered this was the road to literacy for many adults.
Early in my teaching career, I met and married a New Zealand journalist. We had four children. It is my great regret that I did not manage to teach my
My children have all become professional people – in law, management and the arts. There have been many times when they have expressed regret at not knowing their mother's language.
In 1979, my husband was posted to London to represent the four main newspapers in New Zealand. I accompanied him there and taught in special education in central London. Living there enabled me to visit my homeland for the first time since arriving in New Zealand. It was a thrill because I found great happiness in hearing my native language spoken all around me. It was a deeply emotional experience. It also made me realise the isolation of living in New Zealand. I realised sharply and painfully that my cultural inheritance comes from Europe where my roots are.
While working in England, I had the opportunity to study at London University. I followed my interest in how people learn and gained a Diploma in Teaching based on my work in teaching children with learning disabilities, particularly in language acquisition. Later, I became interested in teaching
Because of my background, I am able to understand the needs of foreign students, and can facilitate their English language learning with perception and understanding based on my experience as a learner and teacher.
I frequently reflect on my life – the loss of my family, home and country in World War II, and our arrival in New Zealand as a bewildered group of war orphans. I also reflect on how fortunate I have been to have landed in this hospitable land. I salute the humanitarian concern of the New Zealand Government for having accepted us. I thank New Zealand for having given us shelter, food, education and the opportunity to build a new life.
It has not always been easy living here, especially in the years when we were raising our young family without parental support. I often longed for my mother to comfort, explain and encourage or share in the joys of my bicultural family. But through the hardship we endured and learned to be strong. Socially, New Zealand is evolving as a compassionate and tolerant multicultural society. Our roots are now deeply in New Zealand, as well as in Poland.
We received much from this country but we also gave much in return, especially our four children who are bicultural, creative and intelligent. They are contributing their energies to New Zealand's development. They have also learned from us about the destructive futility of war, the value of life and family, an appreciation of their homeland and equality of all people. We were once refugees but our children are proud citizens of this hospitable country.
Janina Duynhoven (Kornobis)
I arrived in New Zealand with my sisters
I was one of the first girls sent out from the camp to work in the New Zealand community in 1945. We were not quite sure where we were going and most apprehensive as to what it was going to be like to work there. When the train started, even though many times before we had started a journey into the unknown, this was different – there were only four of us and the rest, including my sisters, stayed behind. I started to cry. Lewisham Hospital in Newtown, Wellington, was our destination. This hospital was later called Calvary Hospital and is now known as Wakefield Hospital.
I had great problems in understanding instructions. One day, I was told to take a glass of milk to a person in bed No 9 in room No 10, or maybe it was the other way round? Anyway, I gave it to a person who was going for an operation that afternoon and it had to be postponed. The Sister said that it could have been she who had given me wrong instructions.
At first we lived in a small room by the kitchen but then we were shifted to a small house just by the hospital. There we felt free to speak in Polish and sing our favourite Polish songs. We were allowed to go to the pictures in the evening but had to be back by a certain hour. That was enough to give us a feeling of freedom. My first pay was £1 4s. We used our money wisely. If, for example, one of us needed a pair of shoes, we put our spare shillings together and she bought her shoes. Then every one of us bought a pair of shoes paid for in the same way from our future pay packets.
Slowly my English improved and I enjoyed my work as a nurse aide. At one time, I had the privilege to serve meals to Prime Minister
It was while working in the hospital that I met my future husband, Mr Biesiek, who came from a family of early Polish settlers who had already integrated completely into the New Zealand society. We married in 1946 and lived in Inglewood. But I was not yet quite ready to live among New Zealanders all by myself. Worse still, in 1949, my four sisters left New Zealand to join our father in France.
In the early days, not all New Zealanders were tolerant. I remember one time when I was employed in a clothing factory. Myself and another Polish woman spoke in Polish to each other during morning-tea time. The manager called me into his office and told me not to speak Polish because he'd had complaints from the staff that we were talking about them. In helpless anger, we gave each one of the workers a name such as "cow" and "bell". Even my husband told me off when I spoke in Polish to one of my friends when she visited me: "This is an English country and you speak English."
We had four children and things got better. I also visited my family in France and the US. Sixty years later at the age of 80, I am leading a quiet life. I am grateful for my life – the good and the bad of it, the happy moments and the sad.
With fellow staff from the camp's hospital and a young patient. (l-r)
Henryk Dziura
On 10 February 1940, I was deported with my aunt Zofia and many other Polish citizens to far away Siberia, about 150km north-east of Bernaul. We were housed a number of families to each hut among the never-ending taiga forests, with severe cold and deep snow. To survive, my aunt had to work very hard in the forest and sawmill.
Our next journey of exile took us south to Kirghizia. Weakened by hunger, malaria and dysentery, we waited for the worst. But thanks to God's Providence and the help of the newly formed Polish army-in-exile who took us under its wing, we recuperated. We were then evacuated to Krasnovodsk, a port on the Caspian Sea. In the second half of 1942, we were transported with the Polish army by sea to Pahlevi in Iran. The army went west to the war fronts of Africa and Europe, my aunt went to Africa and I, with other children, was taken to Isfahan.
In the autumn of 1944, we were taken to New Zealand, and I came to share in the story of the Isfahan and Pahiatua children. In the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, we were assured of very good care and livelihood, thanks to the magnificent New Zealand Government, and also our Polish teachers and guardians.
My character was formed under these auspicious conditions and I gained an education up to the fifth year of primary school. My religious upbringing is due to the good priest Father
My mother Michalina died in 1939 in Krzywice near Borszczów, which is now in the Ukraine. My father Stefan was called up by the Polish army in 1938 and later taken to the front. He survived the war and imprisonment. After the war, he returned to his native village near Miechów in the Kraków province. He traced me to Pahiatua and decided to bring me home. I was carefully prepared for the journey by my relatives at the camp, especially
In London, we boarded the Polish liner MS Batory and reached Gdynia
It was the wet season, so the wheels got stuck and slithered on the muddy road, and the cart teetered from side to side. I thought we would sink in the mire. After an hour of this, we at long last arrived home where we were met by my stepmother (my father remarried in my absence) and a small half-sister Basia. For many days and weeks afterwards, the local people would come visiting, curious about me and how I looked and behaved. I was asked to speak and sing in English. Some were impressed, others simply joked about it. I was a foreigner among my own. I ignored this and after a while was absorbed into my new surroundings, though my behaviour was very distinct from those around me.
In September 1948, I was enrolled in Standard 4, even though I had a certificate of having attained Standard 5 in New Zealand. Having checked my knowledge, after two weeks my teacher sent me to Standard 5.
In the aftermath of the German and Russian invasions, the country was in ruins. The classes were held in an old and cold building. The village was overcrowded and rather poor – there was no electricity, and the houses and roads were in poor condition. In summer, the roads were dusty, in spring the mud made them impassable and in winter the rutted surface was frozen solid. Snow storms would cut off the village from the town and the only doctor in the district. There was also no farm machinery – all work had to be done manually with back-breaking toil, assisted only by horse power. Water was drawn from wells. The people led a quiet life, maintaining their age-old traditions.
There was also the mass exodus to the cities (which were rising faster from the ruins than the countryside), mainly of the young people to the coalmines of Silesia where work was more plentiful. So the villages depopulated.
I made slow but steady progress at school and was slowly absorbed into the community, though I still had few friends. I learned to work very hard. We had no money and my father didn't own land, but he was willingly hired by farmers who gave him work in exchange for other services. After a time, my father found a piece of no-man's land from a former aristocrat's landholding. We demolished the old stables and pigsties by hand, filled in the old fishponds and cut down an abandoned orchard. We did all this hard work in our spare time. We then planted potatoes from which to live and for spare cash. My workload and responsibilities increased.
Four more sisters were born from my father's second marriage. I was their elder brother, mentor and guardian. It became more difficult to study and I
In 1951 I turned 14 and wanted to be a sailor, so I applied to the maritime school in Gdynia. But because I had spent time in a foreign country and a capitalist one at that, I was rejected (the totalitarian communist regimes thought staying in a capitalist country tainted that person with capitalism). I then applied to a technical school of building in Kraków, but this time I pointed out in my application that I did not know how I got to New Zealand and omitted my deportation to Siberia (we had to keep quiet about that for fear that we would be accused of anti-state propaganda). I was accepted and stayed there for a year until forced to leave from lack of funds. I returned home to help my father on the farm and around the surrounding farms. Because of my age, I couldn't find a permanent job.
I then witnessed many changes in the rural economy. The first was the building of power lines, and the connection of electricity to houses and farm buildings. One day a switch was turned on and all was light and bright. Life was different. A fixed one-station radio was also installed in each house, which broadcast the state-controlled station from morning to evening. Work soon began on an asphalt road. All the farmers joined in the heavy labour, shovelling and carting dirt, and levelling the road. The surface was then firmed-up by hand pounders and the asphalting was paid for by the local council. Thus ended the nightmare of boggy roads and our village was drawn closer to the town.
The farmers began renovating the buildings and erected some new ones. The next stage was establishing a bus route through the village. At first, the local people were sceptical of who would use the buses, but soon it became obvious how necessary they were for the village and their frequency increased to 14 buses per day. Mechanisation of farm equipment was the next stage in making village life easier. Horses ceased to be the sole mode of power and their numbers declined. The village people began buying home appliances, such as refrigerators, washing machines, radios and later TVs. The difference between village and town life became less pronounced. The transformation was completed by the installation of water pipes from an underground well to the houses and farm buildings.
In the spring of 1953, I was called-up to the State Youth Movement for compulsory and unpaid work in rebuilding Poland. While working there, I passed my driver's licence. We were disbanded after a year. I then migrated from the village, and worked in paid employment as a driver's assistant in Będzin and later as a driver. The pay was poor, so I moved to Sosnowiec and worked in the railways stores loading and unloading wagons.
I was 20 when, in 1956, I married and lived in my wife's small apartment. To avoid military service, I took a job in a coalmine and worked below ground at the coal face, loading coal onto a conveyer. The work was hard and dangerous, but I enjoyed it. After three years, I returned to the railroad stores. In the meantime, our two sons Mieczysław and Andrzej were born.
Working and gaining experience, I was promoted to storeman and later to store manager. My wages were less and it was difficult to keep a family of four. So to improve my financial situation, I went to Myslowice and worked as store manager in the coal industry. I attended evening classes and obtained the essential qualifications which I had lacked up until now. I worked there until my retirement in 1992.
This is a short description of my life and achievements, mainly based on hard work which often went to the limits of my endurance, with never any time for "blowing-off steam" or youthful entertainment. I was entirely self sufficient and started everything from zero. I am sure that all the Pahiatua children also worked hard to achieve anything and have great satisfaction from their efforts.
Wanda Ellis (Pelc)
After the deaths of my younger sister Izabela and my father Stanislaw in Turkmenistan in the USSR, my mother Stanislawa was left alone with three children without any means of support. She had to make a choice for us – stay together and die, or send us to an orphanage in the hope of our survival In November 1942, she sent her two younger children to an orphanage in Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan. My elder sister remained to look after her.
I will never be grateful enough to my mother that she made the choice to send me and my brother to the orphanage. I will also always thank God for the wonderful caregivers in Ashkhabad, Iran and the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua for the care and love they showed to us. They helped me and my brother Czeslaw to find a new life in beautiful New Zealand, my new "motherland".
The camp became my first real home since my family's deportation to Siberia. How did I repay my new country and its people? I studied very hard, first in high school at Baradene Girls' College in Auckland and later in the Auckland Business College from which I graduated with good grades and became a business secretary, working in two well-known firms in Auckland.
Sometime later I married Frank Power, a New Zealander of Polish descent. We went to the US in 1954 where Frank taught school. While there, I gave many lectures and talks about life in New Zealand. I also spoke to numerous groups about Poland and the experience of the Polish people during World War II. Upon our return in 1955, my husband and I decided to adopt a child. We adopted four children in all. Unfortunately, one died in infancy. We gave them a good home, love and education.
When my husband died, leaving me with three very small children, I had to carry on alone bringing up three little New Zealanders. When they were older, I went back to work. I served the country and the community at large by working with younger people. For 20 years I worked as a secretary at St Peter's College for boys in Auckland. My duties were many and varied. I was a secretary, nurse, mother to the boys and helper to the teaching staff. Besides work, I joined local groups, such as the Catholic Home Makers and church committees.
For more than 50 years, I served the Polish community in Auckland. More recently, I taught English to the new immigrants from Poland, helping them
Ryszard Gołębiewski
My first recollection of life was in a high-walled complex in Iran in one of the nobility's summer palaces. Life was good there and we had plenty to eat, including grapes and pomegranates. My brush with reality was the hungry people begging for food at the gates of the complex. I would go to the kitchen, get slices of bread and give it to the beggars. In return, some of them gave me round balls or pellets that when thrown at a wall would explode on impact – I thought it was fun. But all of this changed one day when I found our friendly dog, I think it was an Alsatian, with a slashed throat. This had a huge impact on me and I stopped going near the gate. It was my first experience of seeing the dark side of humanity.
Upon arrival in New Zealand, we were greeted by a huge crowd of people who were giving out small gifts. As we were shepherded to the train for the journey to Pahiatua, someone in the crowd handed me some candy. As I recall, it was shaped in the form of small biscuits in different colours and tasted heavenly. This was my first taste of candy.
After Iran, I could hardly believe that strangers could be so kind. I think this restored my belief in humanity. Then we were established in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, which to a young kid was a paradise. We made our own toys and our surroundings were a magic land – a river, native bush and the surrounding farms which we raided for turnips and were often chased away by the farmer.
On our holidays, we were billeted out to New Zealand families and I was sent to a farm. The experience was unforgettable – animals, orchards and the general smell of the farm. The farmer was very kind, and he took me and
After World War II, my father (a Polish army ex-serviceman) located me through the Red Cross. He arrived in Pahiatua in 1947 with a large group of Polish ex-servicemen who came to claim their children. He was told that he had three days to make arrangements to take me out of the camp. When he broke the news to me I burst into tears and said I didn't want to leave. I was not ready to leave all my friends who were like an extended family. I didn't
In the beginning it was very difficult as my English was very poor. But within a couple of months I was able to communicate with the kids at the school. It's amazing when placed in that situation how rapidly one learns.
I liked St Thomas' except for the food. For breakfast and lunch, it was bread and butter, plus tea. For dinner, it was mashed potatoes and tripe. I couldn't stand the smell and taste of tripe. The nuns tried their best to persuade me to eat it, but as soon as their backs were turned I tossed it out the dining room window.
To make up for my poor diet, I volunteered to help in the chook house, which involved taking food scraps from the kitchen to the chook house and mixing it with mash, collecting eggs and raking up chicken poo. For this, I was rewarded with a boiled egg at the end of the week. Soon I realised that mash was quite tasty, so that became part of my diet, combined with plants that were edible, such as nasturtium leaves and flowers. Scottish thistle when stripped of its exterior has a small white fleshy piece the size of a one-cent piece – it wasn't a big meal but it was tasty. I also found a crab-apple tree and though the fruit was bitter, for me it was superior to tripe.
In winter, I volunteered to feed the cows and lay out the hay. The farmer would get molasses, mix it with hot water and then drench the hay with it. Apparently, it increased the milk output. Molasses was a treat for me. By the way, the nuns were not trying to starve us – this was a couple of years after the end of the war and most food was available only on ration cards.
My dad got a job in Hannah's Shoe Factory and visited me regularly on the weekends. Then one day in my second year at St Thomas', he didn't arrive to visit me. He came a week later and explained that he had an accident at work and lost half of his index finger on his right hand.
He received compensation of £108, so with this money he had enough for a deposit on a house. He bought a property in Seatoun Heights. It was an acre block of land with a derelict house in the middle. This land encompassed the border of Seatoun Heights Road and Sinclair Street to the cliff face. It had an uninterrupted view of the Seatoun wharf and Wellington Harbour heads – a million-dollar view. He paid £850.
The whole section was overgrown with deadly nightshade creeper. To gain access to the house, he had to use a sickle to hack his way in. The locals called this property a ghost house and it lived up to its reputation. The tin roof was
Dad enrolled me at Marist Miramar, so it was a daily walk over the hill come rain or shine. It kept me very fit. During school holidays, my dad gave me numerous chores to do while he was at work. Apart from all the chores at home, I also got a job at the local grocer delivering groceries on a pushbike and saved enough money to buy a new pushbike. That was handy as I was able to bike to the city when I started high school at St Patrick's College.
The joy of the land far outweighed the back-breaking work. In springtime, the land became alive with wild freesias and was intoxicating with the pure sea air. Coming home, my head would be woozy. When I reflect on those times, life was hard but at the same time gratifying. I have children and often they complained about being bored. However, in my recollection I cannot recall one single day when I can honestly say I was bored. In those bad old days, I had only a few personal possessions and life was hard. But I was happy so maybe those bad old days were really good old days.
I have travelled the world in the merchant navy, on working holidays in various countries and to Poland three times, but New Zealand remains in my heart as home. I moved to Australia only for health reasons. The cold, damp Wellington climate has affected my joints so I needed to move to a warmer climate in Perth, but New Zealand has been good to me and still remains as number one in my mind.
In 1947,
Emilia Henderson (Sondej)
While looking through a box of memorabilia, I came across my very first autograph book. It was given to me during the May holidays in 1945. I still remember the train ride from Pahiatua to Inglewood and a nice lady with two girls waiting to meet us.
Thinking back, my admiration for that brave woman grows with time. Not too many people would be willing to invite into their home a complete stranger from an orphanage who does not speak their language, but this lady took two of us. Actually, many New Zealanders volunteered and the train was crowded with the inhabitants from the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. We all had tags attached to us with our names, destination and names of the families where we would be staying.
My total vocabulary of the English language consisted of only a few words. "Thank you", "please", "yes", "no", "good morning" and "goodnight" were some of them, as well as my version of the words of the song You Are My Sunshine, but I didn't know most of their meanings. My friend
After the formalities of matching tags to the recipients, our hosts welcomed us, or so it seemed, while we smiled back and nodded our heads. We were trained to be ultra polite and super obedient, but we had no social skills at all. I know that I didn't. Next, we all dispersed in different directions.
On arrival we were given a cup of tea and biscuits. That was my first tea with milk and I still like it that way. The girls' names were Anne and Sylvia, and they would have been more or less our age. They were friendly, telling us things, showing photos and asking questions, but we had great difficulty understanding and an absolute inability in answering.
Władyslawa and I had a big bed to sleep in and a whole room just for the two of us. On our first morning, we awoke when we heard someone moving in the house. Nobody told us to get up, but it seemed wrong to be lying in bed and we wanted to do the right thing. So after a short discussion, we got up, tiptoed to the bathroom, got dressed and made the bed. We did not know what to do next. We weren't given any chores to do and being away from the camp routine we were lost. After some deliberation, we decided not to leave the room until we were instructed to do so. We said our morning
Maybe they'd forgotten about us because the house seemed quiet again. But before I could reveal my thoughts to Wladyslawa, the door opened after a gentle knock and our hostess came in with a big smile on her face, greeting us with a cheerful "good morning". Of course, we knew the reply to that but we did not know what to do with the tray laden with a mountain of toast, jam and tea that she placed on the bed. Could it be just for us or do we share it with the rest of the family? We need not have worried, and despite the language barrier she got the message across to us and from then on we were hooked on the breakfast-in-bed idea.
Later that day, Anne took us to see an old Polish lady from an earlier immigration. She was frail but interested in the fact that we were from Poland. I think she said a few words to us in Polish but I mainly remember the sad, bewildered, faraway look on her face, and while the family was telling her about us two tears rolled down her cheeks. I assumed that she was remembering things from long ago since she arrived in New Zealand as a very small child. I also often cried when I thought of Poland and my home, but only at night when it was dark. Somehow I felt good about being Polish.
Our first Sunday in Inglewood started with the Mass where we saw other Polish children from the camp. We automatically gravitated towards each other, eager to exchange a few words without having to struggle with this peculiar English language that made no sense, and for the first time in our lives we were surrounded by it. The Pahiatua camp was home to us until we would return to Poland, but at the time we didn't know that it wasn't to be.
In the afternoon our hosts had visitors and we caught a glimpse of the beautifully set table with all sorts of sweet delicacies. Right in the middle was a big sponge cake filled with raspberry jam and a thick layer of whipped cream. A light sprinkling of icing sugar on top made it a sight to behold but our shyness held us back from joining the others. We wanted to do the right thing and all those goodies on the table were tempting, but nobody told us exactly what was expected of us.
I was good at following orders but none were forthcoming. The afternoon dragged on. Eventually the visitors left and the table was cleared. I felt that in some way we had let these kind people down and expected some sort of reprisal, but none came. Soon our hostess called us into the kitchen and out of the safe produced two wedges of the most delicious, spongiest delicacy that we ever tasted. She had kept some for us and with a smile told us to eat. At the end of our holiday the girls gave us an autograph book each with entries made by each member of the family.
There were other holidays and generous people to whom I will always be grateful and I deeply regret that I didn't maintain contact with them, but I honestly didn't know how. Maybe one day our paths will cross again.
My first year of secondary school education was not a great success.
Irena lived at the boarding school and I was boarding in a private home. We were both lonely and missing our familiar environment. The camp gave us a sense of belonging and security, but that was taken away from us. All in all, it was a bad year for me. The next year followed in the same fashion but Irena was no longer in my class.
Though people were kind to me, I did not feel like I belonged in this new environment. The family that I was living with the previous year moved away from Wellington so another home was found for me. Again, I was learning how to fit into a new situation. I was still missing my Polish friends and the fragile security of the Pahiatua camp. After all, it was the only home I had since we were deported to Siberia and later separated from our parents.
Despite the well-meaning people around me, I felt very unhappy and there was no one that I could turn to. I wasn't making much progress at school and so any self esteem that I may have acquired during my last couple of years at the camp completely evaporated.
One day I was sent out of the classroom because there was someone to see me. It was a priest I had never seen before. After a polite "good morning, Father", I timidly stood to attention and waited. Then this kind and cheerful-looking man introduced himself as
He gave me my usual 10s pocket money for the month, looked me up and down, and said: "You are a tragic sight. A holiday on the farm will fix that." I said "yes, Father" and "thank you, Father", and forgot all about it. A few days later,
Soon enough I was on the train, clutching my crocheted string bag that I had made myself. My bedraggled suitcase was in the luggage compartment and I was concerned that it might not be intact by the end of the trip as the lock on one side didn't work. It was a five-hour journey, and at various stops people got off to get a drink and something to eat.
Tea was served in the white, solid china railway cups, conspicuously branded with "New Zealand Railways" in large black letters. Saucers matched the cups and the lot would be left on the train to be collected by the railway employees at some later stage.
I didn't get off because I was worried that the train might leave without me. I still remembered the Russian railway system where trains stopped for no apparent reason and left with no warning, leaving people stranded and never to be seen by their families again. The countryside was more familiar to me now since my first visit to Inglewood and I knew the names of the stations, but I remained alert so I wouldn't go past my stop.
This time I recognised the station before I saw the sign and, as
Soon after we left Eltham, I could see in the distance ahead to my right the beautiful Mount Egmont (Taranaki), with its peak shrouded by a cloud. It was a fine day. On either side of the road, the green undulating countryside spread as far as I could see and the sun was sliding towards the west. I knew that it would take about an hour to get to the Leahys' farm, but I didn't own a watch so I had no idea of how long we had been travelling. Most of the people got off the bus along the way so I assumed that soon it would be me.
I loved the rolling, green hilly paddocks with some farm houses near the road and others well in the distance. The milking was finished and the cows seemed to know where they were going with little human intervention. The sun was lower now and the memory of another sunset from a long time ago, still in Poland, came back to me.
Sunsets had spelled security, warmth and a sense of belonging. But then came the day in Kazakhstan in 1942 when my mother put us on the train with the other children bound for orphanages and survival. It was afternoon. As the train moved away from the station and mother's tear-stained face vanished into the distance, my sister Stefania and I kept on sobbing. Leon, our elder brother, tried to be brave but with little success.
As the afternoon dragged on, exhaustion set in and we must have dropped off to sleep, because the next thing I remember was seeing the sun low on the horizon and Stefania's crumpled tear-stained face between me and the window. That is still the worst moment of my life because I really knew then that mother would no longer be around for us.
The older boys in the carriage behind us were singing
A damp sensation on my cheeks jolted me back to reality, and I became aware that I was still travelling along Eltham road to Opunake towards my holiday on the farm. I was the only passenger on the bus and the driver was slowing down, so I filed my memories back into the past and with more than just a little apprehension I looked around me.
When the bus stopped outside a gate, four little faces turned towards the road and all activity ceased. Out of the house a slim, smiling, dark-haired woman rushed out towards the gate saying to the children: "Emilia has arrived." Little did I know then that the Leahy family would become part of my life from that day on. Soon the so-called tribe of kids that Father Joe told me about became David, Terence, Maurice, Margaret and Brian, the baby in the pram. From our first meeting, Terence, who must have been about six or seven years old, accepted me as a likely pupil and took it upon himself to show and tell me everything.
It was getting dark, so we couldn't venture far, but we managed to see the chooks and I was told that in the morning they would take me to look at the cowshed. After dinner there was another treat for me. We all filed out of the house, except for Pat who was reading the paper and Brian who was asleep. We climbed a little hill and one of the boys shouted "Look, Emilia, the Opunake lights!" And so they were. Not many, not bright and far in the distance, but the only few lights that I could see. Pat was amused by our expedition and laughing, said to me: "Now that you've seen the lights of Opunake, you've seen it all."
Within a few days of my arrival, I slipped into the Leahy routine. Simplicity and absolute informality at all times and in all things suited me just fine. The
During that first week, I discovered that it wasn't important to be good at cooking, sewing or at anything else for that matter. Mary seemed to have enough confidence for the two of us and took everything in her stride. She didn't praise and she didn't criticise. In fact, it never occurred to her that I may not know how to do something, and before long I was producing stacks of biscuits and cakes, which were quickly consumed by the family.
One day, the scones turned out a good bit on the solid side. I felt concerned as my inferiority complex was a mile long and I craved approval, so I tried to do everything well. Mary looked at the latest culinary offering and told me that they were just like hers and suggested that I should put a little extra blackberry jam on them because that's what she did. A day later, Mary and I packed the children into the car and set out for the Opunake beach. First we went to the shops where I met most of the locals and discovered that a lot of them were related to Mary, or so it seemed at the time.
I was introduced as the Polish girl that Father Joe sent, and that, going by the reaction of the locals, was in my favour. It was obvious that they already knew all about me and, since some of them were related to the descendants of the Polish families who arrived in Taranaki during an earlier immigration in the 19th Century, it was enough to almost qualify me as a soulmate.
Eventually we got to the beach to eat the sandwiches that Mary prepared before we left home. It was pleasant in the warm sunshine, sitting on the sand, and listening to the waves breaking on the shore and receding with a swish, while Mary was talking to yet another friend. The conversation must have been suddenly directed to me, as Mary was saying: "Do you really need to go back to Wellington so soon, Emilia. Would you like to stay another week?" In those days, I didn't know that I was allowed to have a choice, so I explained that I already had the ticket and the family I was boarding with would be expecting me back. That didn't present a problem to Mary and soon we were on the way home to make new arrangements.
Pat rang Father Joe and in the blink of an eye my plans were changed so I stayed on the farm for another week. My visits to the farm continued and Father Joe's work with the Polish children finished, though the friendship remained. After college, I went nursing and each time the exam results appeared in the paper a congratulations note from Father Joe would arrive. From time to time, he would ring with a message from Mary and to see how I was coping.
After I was married, he was a frequent visitor in my home, as were all
Father Joe, Pat and Mary are dead now, but not in my memory. I fondly remember the times we spent together and the various occasions that we shared. Above all, I value their simplicity, generosity and sense of humour.
I remember one evening the four of us standing by the window in the house in Korokoro, Petone, looking at the lights in Wellington Harbour spanning from Oriental Bay all the way to Day's Bay and the Hutt Valley. It was a spectacular sight. In silence, we watched as the Picton ferry, all lit up, slid away from the quay on its way to the South Island. Father Joe said: "It's magnificent!" Pat was quick to reply: "Just like the Opunake lights."
Sister Jadwiga (Maria Rombel )
Our journey by sea to New Zealand in 1944 was a happy one. But some parts of it, especially when we were crossing the equator, were extremely hot and exhausting. I lost my appetite and felt very tired. By the time we arrived in Wellington it was much cooler and I felt so much better.
Our first two weeks in Pahiatua were wet and miserable. We couldn't get our luggage and it was raining most of the time, and we began to feel sorry for ourselves being so far away from Poland. We hoped that at the end of the war we would return to our homeland, but were very disappointed when, in 1945, our country was taken over by communism against our will. We all knew from experience what Stalin's regime was like and that we would not be safe there, so we had no choice but to stay in New Zealand.
We had our own school in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua and when we arrived I was enrolled in the camp's Polish High School. Ours was a mixed class of boys and girls. We learned Latin and English as a second language, and it began with me trying to translate English into Polish word for word but it didn't work. We ended up with some very funny expressions and we laughed so much that the teacher decided we should start thinking in English.
One day, our teacher Miss Neligan asked us what colours of bread we knew? All the answers were black and white, but I was daydreaming and said brown. In Polish, we usually called brown bread "black" and for me it seemed that my answer was stupid. To my surprise the teacher said that I was right!
When I completed my studies in the camp's Polish High School and decided to stay in New Zealand, I was sent to St Dominic's College in Dunedin where my younger sister was already boarding. When I asked her what the Sisters were like, she replied that they were very nice, "but they are not for you". It was an excellent school and the Sisters did all they could to help us with our study and religious education. They made a very good impression on me, as they had a deep spirituality like the contemplatives.
From my youngest years, it was my dream to become a religious Sister, even before I knew there were religious orders. When my teacher in Poland read to us about Mary when she was presented in the temple to serve God, I made up my mind to do the same when I grew up. As I didn't know any other congregations, I applied to the Dominican Sisters I had associated with
When I ask myself what gives me life after 50 years of my religious life and how do I stand before God, I find the answer in the catechism. God made us for Himself to share with us His divine life and love. Therefore, I try to aspire to achieve a personal, intimate and conscious union with God who is the source of all life and love. St Augustine tells us that we will never find peace until our broken hearts find rest in Him. Then we can be happy and share the joy with others.
I do not look back and nor have I any regrets for choosing to be a Dominican. My gratitude goes back to my parents, who died in Siberia, and to so many good people who helped me. My prayer is that God may reward and bless them abundantly.
(l-r) Piotrowska, Jarka (seated), Dac, Nowotarska, Rombel, Malczewska, Nawrocka, Głogowska, Manterys (seated), Gawlik, Iwan
Józef Jagiełło
At the beginning of 1945, mail began arriving for the children whose fathers were in the Polish army-in-exile. This created great excitement as we'd had no word from them for many months. It had already been explained to us that mail from the war zones was censored before being sent on and therefore took a long time to reach us.
Some of the children in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua received mail and they were very happy, knowing that their fathers were alive and well. But for those of us who didn't get a letter, we had no idea what could have happened to our fathers, and so we were worried and upset. We were told that the mail could have been lost, as many ships carrying mail were torpedoed and sunk by enemy submarines. We were told not to be too upset, but to be patient because the officials who had our particulars were looking for members of our families.
In the mail that came there was money for the children, which caused great excitement and a trip into town was organised for them to go shopping. The children from my dormitory who'd received mail and had gone shopping came back with all sorts of wonderful things, including pencil sharpeners, new pocket knives, little clocks and of course lollies. They also brought back stories of the wonderful shop that they had spent their money in. They said it was a very big shop, with long, long counters filled with all sorts of goods. Later we knew the shop to be Woolworths.
The rest of us could only look forward to the time that we would have money to spend there, and as it turned out we didn't have long to wait. We were told that those of us who hadn't received any money would be given some so that we could go shopping. I remember going into this brightly lit shop with all the different items on display and not knowing what to buy. I noticed all of the pretty girls behind the counters smiling at us, but I don't know what they thought of us – about 30 young boys, all wide eyed, and walking up and down the aisles looking at everything in amazement.
I decided on a pocket knife, but as I couldn't understand the money or its value all I could do was show it to the shop girl and point to the knife. She shook her head and so I knew that I didn't have enough to buy it. Then she pointed to a cheaper one, but then I shook my head and pulled my old knife from my pocket to show her and she just laughed. I was determined to buy
Films were shown regularly in the camp's hall, and we were fed a diet of cowboys and Indians, and pirates, as well as lots of cartoons. I remember Popeye the Sailor Man with his spinach. Sometimes we were also shown war documentaries. After seeing the films, we boys began making our own weapons – guns made from bits of wood, and swords out of tree branches, and we'd take turns at being "goodies" and "baddies".
This caused lots of arguments about who was supposed to be alive or dead, and whose turn it was to be the baddies, because the baddies always lost and nobody wanted to be on the losing side. The games even involved some of the older boys who made rafts from driftwood by the river and re-enacted pirate fights. From what I remember, they all ended up falling in the water because their "ships" were very unstable.
My time in the camp was mostly happy and developed in me a lifetime love of the countryside, hunting and fishing, and outdoor life. After the hardships we went through before arriving in New Zealand, it was paradise.
Bogusław Januszkiewicz
Before World War II, we lived in the Ostrów Mazowiecki region of Poland near a village called Jasienica before being deported to the Soviet Union. We survived Stalin's hellhole because of the sacrifices made by our parents.
After a lengthy and arduous exodus, we eventually arrived in Pahlevi, Iran. My brother Stanislaw was six years old and I was eight. Within three months of our arrival, our mother, aged 3, died of malnutrition and other associated complications brought on by the hardships suffered in Siberia. She is buried in Pahlevi. After our mother's death, we were virtual orphans left to fend for ourselves, wandering from one refugee camp to the next looking for food and shelter. The army cadet camp was our most frequent destination, because in return for cleaning shoes and performing other minor chores we were given food.
I specifically remember one night in the pouring rain with thunder and lightning surrounding us, my brother and I sheltering in a doorway of a house somewhere in Pahlevi. To this day, I vividly recall the loneliness I felt, despite only partially understanding the helplessness of our situation and not really realising how alone we were. On learning of the death of our mother, our father was granted leave of absence from the army to locate us and determine our situation. In the few days he had with us, he arranged for us to be placed in an orphanage camp, and organised with the authorities that he be informed of our movements and wellbeing.
After two years in Iran, we were invited by the New Zealand Government to stay in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. My observations about life in the camp pertain mainly to that of the boys and do not encompass the secret life of the female residents. Of the 733 children brought to Pahiatua, 308 were boys with a range of ages, abilities and backgrounds. Some were very serious and studious, others devilish and wild, with a few potential bullies in the making. Some excelled in gymnastics and athletics, and others on the football field.
The usual routine at camp life comprised church, meals, school classes, sports activities, general cleaning, hygiene and sleep. But during our free time on weekends a whole new range of opportunities became available. Exploring the camp's surroundings and the adjacent farms, forests and river was one of the most thrilling facets of camp life.
Roaming and hiding in the forests, jumping off vines into the river like Tarzans, and swimming and playing with the primitive rafts and boats that we built were among the favourite activities. Fishing for eels and trout with hooks and lines was always exciting. But someone once attempted it with dynamite, which proved to be dangerous and stupid – especially considering the subsequent investigation by the police and camp authorities.
Building tree houses, catching sheep and attempting to ride them, and climbing for birds' eggs were all part of our rural lifestyle experience. Many boys developed an awesome degree of artfulness in avoiding detection or being caught during raids on orchards or a field of turnips. Sometimes the farmer would attempt to catch the perpetrators but he was usually too slow. Occasionally, he would send his farm dogs in pursuit but the poor animals would turn back yelping from slingshot volleys. The more audacious acquired onions and carrots from the teachers' private gardens, though not always successfully. Such indiscretions would certainly end in pain and silent tears.
Culinary experimentation was not just the domain of the girls at Pahiatua. It was a major coup among the boys to acquire enough sugar off the dining table to make toffee over a fire while out on weekend adventures. In summer, there was an abundance of blackberries to eat and what wasn't eaten was inevitably turned into "wine" – an enterprise that often ended up with amusing and disastrous results.
Most of us were curious and inventive, freely participating in activities that were fun and harmless. For self entertainment, a wide range of ball and stick games were improvised. What began with palant (baseball-type game), dwa ognie (netball-type game), wheel hoops, cowboys and Indians, making stick swords, bows and arrows, and slingshots, soon progressed into making samopaly (homemade guns), assembling bikes and dismantling tractors. As you can imagine, we were very popular with the local farmers!
Periodically, we were allowed to go to the Saturday matinees in the town theatre and, though it was a three-mile hike, it never seemed a hardship. It was there that more enterprise was often displayed. It was common practice to sneak out at the beginning of the screening to borrow the New Zealand boys' bikes parked outside and try to learn how to ride them. It was then imperative to be back in our seats before the end of the film but more so to be seen leaving the theatre by the camp chaperone.
After the camp closed in 1949, we were dispersed throughout New Zealand. One group was placed in Hawera, another in Auckland, but the majority went to Wellington. Most continued with high school studies and some went on to university. Others obtained apprenticeships or jobs, and most developed into assertive and independent individuals. While assimilating well into New
An unrestrained sense of humour and ribbing was always evident at every meeting of the boys. There was an intensive yet friendly rivalry in every facet of our lives. This would include sports activities, billiard-hall snooker games, and the ownership and display of motorbike expertise. This was even more evident while courting at the Polish Girls' Hostel in Lyall Bay, and at other dances and gatherings.
While initially displaying (not surprisingly) awkwardness or naivety in our social behaviour, we hopefully acquired some degree of refinement and manners to help us in our later life. Six decades ago, we guys from "Mars" had a simple "sophisticated" method of dealing with the opposite sex. We threw stones at them, pulled their hair or sprayed them with water on
There are many factors that combine to make our Pahiatua camp a unique experience. Being there contributed immensely to our survival. My younger brother and I were fortunate to have ended up in New Zealand. For more than five years, we were without parents and the camp life created a feeling of belonging and comradeship. This created the atmosphere of an extended family, which has been retained to varying degrees by most of us for the rest of our lives.
While it was unique and special, it was not a true integrated family and has made us slightly different. As my wife Erna commented only shortly after we first met, it was obvious from my outlook and attitude to life that I lacked a mother's influence while I was growing up – most of us did. The camp, combined with our earlier life experiences, made us more determined, confident, assertive, selfish and in many matters more knowledgeable, though not always to our advantage or betterment.
Our father, having joined the Polish army being formed in Russia under General Anders, went on to serve in the Middle East and Monte Cassino, Italy. He fortunately survived the war and, after the demobilisation of the Polish Corps in Scotland, was eventually able to join us in New Zealand and reinstate us as a family.
Dwelling into nostalgia, I wish to make an observation of my own and my brother's life. In our youth, we were exposed to hardship, pain, starvation, tragedy and sorrow. Despite this, I believe in God's presence and care over us throughout our ordeal. I am therefore convinced that our survival and future blessings are God's way of compensating for having taken our mother so early in our lives. We are thankful for the return of our wonderful father, whose
We are both blessed with happy marriages – Stanislaw to
Most of us will be buried in this country. On reflecting on our past and what has ensued, let us appreciate with gratitude our present situations, and say
Jan Jarka
I arrived with my sister
My family was reared in the principles of honesty, justice, fair play and discipline, as well as charity and humanity – virtues which I still value. My mother died in 1936 before the war and my father (who was a highly ranked police officer in Białystok, northern Poland) was executed in Katyn Forest in 1940, together with thousands of other Polish officers. I still have the last postcard I received from him before he was killed.
From the Pahiatua camp I went to St Kevin's College in Oamaru for two years and then to Auckland, where Catholic Social Services took our future wellbeing into their hearts by ensuring that no child entered the workforce without adequate and proper qualifications. I became an accountant, and finished my working life with the then Commercial Union Fire and General Insurance Company. Another Polish orphan from the Pahiatua camp,
In 1958, I married Stella Rose Wilkinson, who to this day is often taken for a Polish girl. It was a good choice, as both my sister Jadwiga and I have been accepted by the large tribe of Wilkinsons, with happy associations to this day. Our daughter Rozalia was born with a serious heart defect and after two heart operations passed away, aged 39. Our son Michael gained a Bachelor of Arts and is a teacher, and our youngest daughter Elizabeth was a Hansard reporter for the New Zealand and UK Parliaments, and later for the New South Wales Parliament.
During my accounting career, I met a lot of nice people whose friendships I treasure to this day – one of them was the solicitor David Lange. When he was the Prime Minister of New Zealand, we had a private discussion on the need for a closer approach to the needs of Polish immigrants by appointing Polish-speaking people as Justices of the Peace. On his suggestion, I was sworn as a Justice of the Peace in 1990.
I enjoy the busy work in the community at large. I am now retired and can devote more time to this. I am available at any time of the day and sometimes evenings too. In my church work, I served on the Parish Pastoral Council,
I have been involved in the affairs of the Polish community since 1949. We held meetings to enable us to practise our traditional national songs and dancing, maintain our native language, and to meet and make new friends among the New Zealanders. Auckland's Polish Association was registered in 1960 and it purchased an old house to serve as clubrooms. Later, the new Dom Polski (Polish House) was erected to cater for an increase in Polish migrants. This project was financed by using voluntary labour and each member contributing $500 ($100 each year for five years) as a repayable loan.
I served as president a number of times and on the committee for almost 30 years. I was president during the Pope's visit to Auckland in 1986, whom we welcomed in the traditional Polish way. I also advised the Auckland archdiocese on Polish traditions to make him welcome, such as greeting the guest with bread and salt. During the Papal Mass, we presented the gifts of a Krakowski hat with peacock feathers and an old 1880 Polish prayer book of the early Polish settlers in Taranaki. Meeting His Holiness was a thrill for me because I had always hoped to meet the Pope.
My interpreting/translating career began as a result of an emergency court session when two Polish citizens were caught travelling in New Zealand on illegal passports in the late 1970s. I am now an accredited interpreter for many institutions and government departments, and became a founding member of the Auckland Ethnic Council in 1985, which looks after about 40 different ethnic groups in Auckland.
In 1993, I was privileged to receive the Queen's Service Medal (QSM) for voluntary and unpaid community work for the previous 30 years. I feel that this award was given to all the Pahiatua children who have given much to this country and who grew up to be good citizens.
With my wife Stella, I have twice visited the country of my birth where I met my relatives in very emotional reunions. I visited my mother's grave and was given her portrait, which now hangs in our sitting room. I don't regret the choices I made over which I had control because, despite the difficult beginnings, I have had a marvellous life thanks to my family and the friends I have made over the years. I thank you all.
Krzysztof Jasiński (Staszczuk)
I was 11 years old when we arrived at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, where we were separated by age and gender into dormitories. The following day we were able to explore our surroundings.
The buildings were practical and comfortable, and the dormitories were segregated for boys and girls by age groups. The buildings included a large assembly hall, a common room where dances and other functions were held, and separate dining halls and classrooms. There was a boiler house, army and personnel huts, a shoe-repair workshop, a garage for the army trucks, an administration block and a hospital. The camp was surrounded by farms, and had a river and native bush nearby. The paddocks also provided us with playing fields.
Then we were allocated our classes for schooling. The camp's adults were responsible for organising all our activities and needs. I took part in many of the activities, including Polish national dancing, Scouts, altar service and participating in nativity plays. Part of the routine at the camp consisted of dormitory inspections, but these were never a problem for me.
The New Zealand army had made bicycles available, which we eagerly learned to ride. One day, I set out to collect palms for decorating the hall. On the way back, a palm branch became trapped in the spokes of the front wheel and I ended up toppling over the front of the bike. I was hurt. Sheer embarrassment and hurt pride prevented me from telling anyone.
I clearly recall one of the girls trying to ride one of the bikes. So indignant was she from the experience that she said she would prefer to ride a wild bull than a bike again. The boys picked up on this and teased her whenever they could. We roared and had many a laugh at her expense. Thankfully, she was good natured and let us get away with it. We were also taught to repair shoes and naturally, as boys, would take full advantage of putting nails into all the girls' shoes for a laugh.
We would often swim in the local river and one of the boys convinced us on one occasion to try diving. We got covered in mud from head to toe and never trusted his advice again. In later years, when we began to learn English, we would take great delight in mispronouncing English words for a laugh, which our teacher
One of the New Zealand soldiers made his army hut available to use whenever I liked. He had a gramophone and I used to play his records. One was by Judy Garland. If she ever knew how much I murdered it in my head she probably would never have recorded it.
As Scouts, we were invited to take part in a Scout jamboree. I was assigned with a group of boys to build a rope bridge. We were to be marked for neatness and tautness. For the effort I put in, my prizes were blisters on both hands as well as being rewarded by the jamboree committee. I was put in charge of a younger group of boys, "brown knees" as we used to call them, to teach them to march. This was displayed in front of a group of visiting dignitaries. They did this very well. I was very proud and the results spoke for themselves.
When singer John Charles Thomas was touring New Zealand, his version of Home on the Range was popular, as were the Western movies that we used to see. The Poneke Maori Club travelled to the camp to perform their traditional songs and dances, to which we have now become accustomed. I was fascinated by their makeup and dress. They treated us with their poi dancing and singing. To this day, I have not forgotten that evening.
The camp had a large family atmosphere. At Christmas, we would give concerts for the camp's personnel and invited guests. The girls' choir would sing traditional Christmas carols and we would perform national dances. There was always an atmosphere of joy and happiness at this time.
In 1947, my final year in the camp, we were taught by the older girls to dance. Mrs Watson never tired of playing the piano, and we would dance on Saturdays and Sundays. Mrs Watson would often come to the camp early and say to me: "We will have a singsong before the rest of the family get here. You are all like my second family." I would like to express my gratitude to Mrs Watson for everything that she did for us at the camp. It has meant a great deal to me personally.
On Sundays, many people from the surrounding areas would come to see the camp. It was like a parade. We marvelled at how so many people would come, but we could not understand them when they spoke to us in English. We often went on Scout camps in the surrounding countryside. It was always an enjoyable time. We would erect tents in the bush and stay for hours at a time, cooking on an open fire, singing around the campfire and playing games long into the night. At Christmas we would gather around the tree, lighting candles as we sang carols.
Two New Zealand teachers,
When I was appointed captain, everyone was given shorts, jerseys and boots to play in. All except me! Muller and Nola called me over saying: "Chris, we have something special for you", and showed me the boots – they were beautifully made leather shoes, which I had never seen the like of before.
One rugby trip to Palmerston North saw us having to play in very strong winds. It was a team decision to play against the wind. I won the toss and so we proceeded. We never managed to get the ball past the 25-yard line and each time we kicked it, it went further backwards. It never left our territory in the first half. In the second half the wind had died down considerably. From then on, I followed my own instincts regarding the toss. We played for Wairarapa-Bush in a seven-a-side tournament, which we won. The prize was very gratifying.
I was billeted to a New Zealand family in Masterton for the holidays. They were a lovely family, treating me like one of their own. One day they took me to the pictures to see A Californian Gold Rush and I can distinctly recall the main scene for the song Clementine. Every time I hear that song I can still vividly see the movie scene as I first saw it. We would gather around the piano and sing the songs. It was a marvellous time and like all good things it eventually came to an end.
The man took us on grocery deliveries to farmers. On weekends, we went rabbit and possum shooting. Two days after setting the possum traps we would retrieve the trapped possums and skin them. We used the hind legs of the rabbits as eel bait and usually went eeling at dusk when they were at their most active. Once the eel grabbed the bait, we then jerked it onto the bank. On one occasion, his daughter got too close to the edge and was pulled in by a big eel, and instead of the eel landing up out of the water, she ended up in the creek. At least she could see the funny side of it.
On one occasion, we came across so many rabbits that we wouldn't have any trouble shooting them blindfolded. However, even aiming my 22 rifle and with the barrel virtually touching my nose, I still missed. On weekends, the neighbours would visit and we usually had a singsong around the piano or entertained ourselves playing games.
I was told that I was to be sent to St Patrick's College, Silverstream, as a boarder. I left the camp with regret and apprehension, as my happiest years were spent there. When I first arrived at the college, I was homesick for the camp, but had to overcome that and learn to accept everyday life at the school.
At the end of my first college year we were allowed to invite a partner to the annual school ball, at which we had to wear uniforms and white gloves. My partner and I made such an impression on the boys at the college that they were still talking about it six months later. She was also from the camp. She wore a white gown and danced beautifully. The experience gained by our group of Polish boys in that first year of college made it easier for other boys who followed from the camp in later years.
We had study times between 5pm and 6pm. Then the whole school would gather in the school courtyard in their respective years. Father Doohan would stand at the front calling the names of those who had received mail. As each student was called, we waited expectantly. On one such occasion, he came to a Polish boy's name which was as unpronounceable as you could have. The entire school erupted into laughter and even Father Doohan, who was known for his serious no-nonsense approach, joined in. In later years, I was to change my name by deed poll.
In my second year at the college, I was chosen to play in the First XV and was pleased to have been chosen to represent the school. That year, I was also given the responsibility of looking after the science laboratory, which I grasped enthusiastically. I had all the chemicals at my disposal and could practice experiments at will. Some of my colleagues nagged me to let them do some. Eventually, I gave way to peer pressure. At the time, the Americans and Russians were exploding the atom bomb.
One Sunday afternoon we decided to build a bomb. Once we had mixed all the chemicals, we wrapped it in aluminium foil and dipped the string wick into turpentine, lit it and hid. When it exploded it made a lot of black smoke. We quickly opened all the windows to release the smoke, which saved us from being detected. I got such a fright and I would not let them talk me into doing anything like that again. Some of my colleagues at the college took to smoking and, giving in to peer pressure, I allowed them to smoke in the laboratory. We were caught and I was lucky to not lose my laboratory privileges.
One night, I began to experience stomach pains. Throughout the night these became intensively worse and in the morning I could not get up. Father Doohan came and then fetched the matron, who deemed that there was nothing wrong with me. Father Doohan didn't agree and sent for the doctor who immediately had me admitted to Hutt Hospital.
There I was under close observation. The pain began to subside though I wasn't able to eat anything. They kept me there until the Thursday when I informed them that unless they returned me back to school I would run away
After a week of barracks, we would march to Trentham Army Camp accompanied by a drummer and bugler. The army always put on a special afternoon tea. It made it all the more special. I was one of the boys at the school given the responsibility for recording weather patterns. As a student, I came well above average in most subjects but my only downfall was my command of English.
I left school with the same regret that I had left the camp and boarded at the Polish Boys' Hostel in Island Bay, Wellington. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I took a job as a clerk in the Ministry of Works. After four months, I was sent to vocational guidance and made to sit an exam to become an electrician. Upon passing, this became my chosen career.
In 1954, I bought an old house which was virtually falling down. I knew very little about carpentry and started to teach myself from books. I applied to be a carpentry improver and worked for a building firm specialising in houses. I gained valuable experience there, so I began renovating my own house. Next door lived a carpenter who had emigrated from England. He encouraged me as well. He felt that I was as good as anyone he had ever dealt with. It gave me more confidence to carry on.
During the day I worked as an electrician and did renovations in the evenings, bit by bit. At times, I worked until midnight. I couldn't afford to
In their Sunday best. (l-r)
At the end of my apprenticeship, I worked for a plastics factory in Te Aro. Working 16 hours, seven days a week, I stayed there until it relocated to Miramar. I bought a taxi and drove it for nine months. I then hired a driver for the taxi and began to work as a self-employed electrician and builder.
Our daughter was born in 1962. I named her after my eldest sister who had been left behind in Uzbekistan. I never drank or went to the pub because my motto was that I would have been denying my wife and children a better standard of living. I worked seven days a week for as many years as I dare to remember.
In 1972, I took the whole family to Poland to see it for the first time since World War II, where I met my elder brother for the first time in 30 years.
Felicja Juchnowicz (Nadolska)
Ever since I was eight years old I wanted to be a school teacher. Security and friendship were the motivation, and I enjoyed school, the friends I made there and the learning. At the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua I finished my primary schooling in Polish, with only one hour of English a day. My English was not fluent and my vocabulary was poor – pronouncing words, such as the "th" sounds, and spelling caused me a lot of trouble.
In 1949, I was sent to Sacred Heart College in Wanganui as a boarder. Life there was difficult, and I was lonely and uncomfortable. Being separated from my friends at the camp and seldom hearing my own language was also a problem. From a confident and a bright student I became withdrawn, shy and reluctant to talk in case I said the wrong words. And of course my accent showed me up immediately.
Life was difficult. I was virtually learning three languages – Latin, French and English. My input in the class was meagre as I did not want to appear stupid. So I was given some speech lessons to help me with my difficulties. Looking back, I realise that my life and study there were beneficial and I was being prepared for the future. The school years rolled by and time gathered momentum. Armed with School Certificate, I left the boarding school and went to live at the Polish Girls' Hostel in Lyall Bay, and attended Wellington Teachers' College from 1954 to 1955, where I studied hard.
It was hard work but I was determined to succeed. My financial situation was difficult as well. Some students were reminded to cash their cheques promptly, but that was never my problem. Mine was how to stretch my budget. I earned £22 a month. From that, I paid £12 for my board and the rest had to cover books, tram and bus fares, and clothing. What to do?
So I went to work at the Steamship Company laundry in Evans Bay. The work was difficult, steamy and exhausting. I worked fulltime during school holidays and part-time during terms. The work gave me some extra money and even more determination to succeed with my studies, but there was no way I was going to work there for life.
Thank goodness that in those days one could buy fish and chips for only a sixpence. There were no government student loans in those days, so you had to survive somehow or go under. Of course, if I was desperate, I could always have asked Mrs Zaleska for some help. She worked at the Social Security
The two years at the teachers' college on the whole passed quickly. By the end of 1955, I had completed my two-year course successfully and was on top of the world. Jubilation, ambition accomplished – I was a primary school teacher. My first position was in Masterton West School and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I remember one of the children in my class asking me: "Are you going to be with us for the whole year?" "Yes, I will," I said. And I was. The children were great, and the teaching staff were helpful and loyal.
I taught at different schools throughout my life. When my children left school, ambition returned. I went to Victoria University and graduated with the Diploma of Teaching English as a Second Language. I also obtained an Advanced Diploma in Teaching through Wellington Teachers' College.
Throughout my life, I encouraged my children to study and work hard. I believe that knowledge of the world and its people makes us more tolerant towards each other, and thus we become better citizens of this world. I have had a good life and I am proud of what I have achieved.
Inside a prefabricated classroom that was especially built for the Polish Children's Camp.
(l-r)
Irena Kane (Woźniak)
The first three months in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua for six secondary-school girls was a time of intensive study which had begun in Iran and was rewarded by receiving a Polish School Certificate from the camp's school. After the initial joy of arriving in the camp came a time of sadness, because after only three months there the first six girls, including myself, had to leave its safe and secure life for the unknown once more. What will it be like? I felt like a young bird that had to leave its nest for new horizons.
Three Catholic boarding schools made places available for two girls each. Jadwiga Brejnakowska and I were chosen for Sacred Heart College in Lower Hutt. It was a completely new environment. The language barrier was very evident, but I was determined to cope and learn, and be grateful for the opportunity. Jadwiga and I were appointed to different groups. There were fears at night and lonely moments of prayer in the school chapel, but there were also happy moments and new friendships were formed.
By a strange and significant coincidence, while there I met Claire who came from Norsewood and I was surprised to be invited by her parents for the Christmas holidays. Initially, I didn't want to go (I just wanted to stay with my friends in the camp) but I had no choice. It was to be a completely new experience.
Claire's family opened their home and hearts for my little sister Ewa and me, and offered kindness and friendship. However, Claire's brother Charlie didn't know how to cope with the foreign girls in his home and wouldn't come out from his bedroom when I was in the room, not even for his meals. He just watched us through the small gap in his door.
Not being able to communicate well was frustrating for me. Sometimes in translating from Polish to English the meaning would change, for example "I don't mind" into "I have no mind", which created confusion. Other times it created laughter and I wondered why. On one occasion, Michael, a guest visiting from Auckland, tried to impress me with a Polish word he had learned from the boys holidaying on a farm –
Then I met Bill Kane, a friend of the family who was understanding and helpful, and we got on well together. It was Bill who took me to my first
All was well and I danced with Bill until it all started to change on the dance floor. When Bill's friend tapped him on the shoulder, he let me dance with him, then with another friend and another and another. I was so embarrassed. I thought I danced badly, but I still continued and pretended to enjoy myself, all the while searching with my eyes for Bill. When he finally came to my rescue, I asked: "What is wrong with me?" "Why?" he asked. "Nobody wanted to stay and dance with me," I replied. Bill laughed and explained that it was an "excuse me" dance, and that all the boys wanted a chance to dance with a foreign girl. What a relief.
The band played on for yet another dance and a guy with a red tie kept asking me for something while dancing with me. I did not understand what he was saying, so when in doubt I always said no. And so it went on – he kept asking and I kept saying no. Bill explained that I was being asked for a supper waltz and was pleased that I said no. Bill and I had supper together.
"Yes" and "no" were two very important words to me in my journey into the unknown.
The holidays ended all too soon. After I left my friends in Norsewood, Bill came to the Pahiatua camp looking for me but I had already gone to Auckland with Helena Wiśeniewska to train as nurses in Mater Misericordiae Hospital. Caring for people appealed to me, and I was eager to learn and acquire practical skills for a life of independence, and to contribute here and later in our free Poland. To return to Poland was always my expectation but it didn't happen. God had other plans for me.
It has been said that when one door closes, another door opens, and it did open for me for another new chapter. Bill and I were married in 1949 and our first home together was in Norsewood.
Leokadia Kazimierzak (Kolodzińska)
My brothers Stanislaw, Roman, Jan and I could be considered lucky because we had a mother with us when our boatload of Polish refugees crossed the Caspian Sea and landed in Iran in 1942. But then came long periods of separation from each other while Stanislaw joined the Polish army cadets and my mother was appointed a caregiver of a group of Polish orphans.
My mother was asked if she was willing to become a member of the staff responsible for the group of 733 Polish orphans going to New Zealand. We came with her. At the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, she was assigned a job in the kitchen and worked there from 1944 to 1949. Within a year or two of our arrival, Roman was placed in St Patrick's College in Wellington and in 1948 Jan joined him. I spent a lot of time as a patient in Silverstream Hospital, Upper Hutt.
When the camp was closed, my mother came to Wellington, found employment in the Wellington Public Hospital laundry and boarded with the Gazdowicz family. I was at a boarding school and spent my holidays with our New Zealand friends. My mother had to contribute towards our education. She had no hope of saving enough money for a deposit on a home and keeping her family together, yet she still managed to keep in touch with us. The disadvantages she had seemed insurmountable.
The only time we lived as a family was after my brother Stanisław joined us in the late 1940s. He married and bought a house, and invited us to live with him. By then we were all working. Soon I got married, as did Roman, and Jan went overseas. My mother moved from place to place and at one time she lived with me.
But she never complained about her tough life, nor her gnarled hands from years of hard labour. She cried when things looked hopeless but never gave up hope. Neither did she demand help. It was Gerald O'Brien (the Prime Minister's electorate secretary and chairperson, treasurer of the Polish Hostel Board and who was involved with the welfare of the Polish children refugees) who decided to help her. Thanks to him, she was able to move into a council flat – her first permanent home after being forcibly deported with her family at the beginning of World War II.
Janina Keenan (Chrzczanowicz)
After miraculously surviving the Siberian forced-labour camps, and spending two years in Iran, I didn't know what to expect at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. But what we found was a heart-warming welcome. The beds were beautifully made and there were flowers in the rooms. I almost felt the love of the people who had prepared it all. I finally felt safe again.
After leaving the camp I went to Auckland to Sacre Coeur College to study. I was anxious because my vocabulary consisted of only a few words – "OK", "thank you" and "please". How envious I was watching little New Zealand children speaking English with such ease. I wondered if I would ever master this new and difficult language. To help us along, the nuns at the convent were kind and understanding, and gave us extra tuition.
We learned a lot that first term, but I waited with longing for the school holidays so we could go home to the camp. The years haven't dulled the memory of the excitement of packing a full suitcase of books to study in the holidays. But the suitcase was never opened as there was so much to do – seeing my sister, nephew and friends, playing games, biking, swimming in the river, dancing to the music of the piano in the evenings and the joy of talking Polish throughout the holidays.
The memory of my first job is very vivid but wasn't happy to begin with. After finishing Auckland Business College and getting a job as a shorthand typist, I was full of apprehension but also excitement when I arrived at the office. The people who worked there were kind. Unfortunately, I was told that my boss was on holiday for two weeks and was asked whether I would take over the telephone exchange. I had no choice but to agree, not knowing a thing about it. There were eight lines and sometimes they would all ring at once. It didn't look too difficult – until I started answering.
Did I think I had mastered the English language? I thought so. Evidently not enough because I had never learnt business English, but with help I learned quickly. Not only did I answer the telephones all day but also all night in my sleep! Those two weeks were endless. Later, when I was happy again doing my secretarial work, I realised how beneficial my crash course on the telephones had been.
I have written of some happy and some sad times, but my most recent and precious memory is with me every day. It is sad, because my husband died,
What my husband and I started 53 years ago, the family still continues – celebrating Christmas Eve, and singing Christmas carols in Polish and English. We raised three children and three grandchildren who are all together with me on Christmas Eve. My home is and always will be in New Zealand. I love the country and the people I have met, but my thoughts very often return to those precious days as a child with the family I lost during World War II.
Wanda Kowalewska (Szczawińska)
The Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua was my home for five years. I loved my surroundings, had a lot of friends who always followed me around, and we had our own concerts and Polish dancing.
I loved going mushroom picking in the hills with the other children and Road to Singapore, in which I loved Dorothy Lamour's dancing. I remember imagining that I was Dorothy and started copying her dancing, and my friends joined in with me and we relived the film. My teachers Mrs Michalik and Mrs Powierza also left me lots of good memories. Most of all I loved Mrs Sawicka who was a nurse in the camp hospital. Sometimes she would ask me to her hut where she gave me sweets that she had made herself.
One day, a Maori concert party came to the camp to perform for us. Everything was wonderful until they started the haka war dance. I ran screaming for the door and all my friends followed me. When we got to our dormitory, we jumped into bed, hid under the blankets and stayed there until morning. Today, I enjoy the haka and laugh at myself for being so scared.
I also remember Mrs Pietrasińska preparing us for our first Holy Communion and later for confirmation. Soon after, we had English lessons once a week. Then came a day when we were told we were leaving for Wellington. With a sad farewell to everyone, we left the camp. Goodbye Pahiatua. I will always remember you and the wonderful friends I made there with the fondest of memories.
I was sent to a convent school in Wellington and lived in the Polish Girls' Hostel in Lyall Bay, which was run by four Polish nuns and an Irish nun who had taught French in Poland before World War II. She had also got caught up in the war and shared our lot in New Zealand.
Life was now good and I was becoming more independent. I began to learn the piano and was getting high praises from my teacher Miss Peters. After leaving school, I went to the Hollywood School of Dressmaking and obtained a diploma. The nuns were returning to Poland and the convent was wound up. Though we were old enough now to look after ourselves, there were many tearful goodbyes. I then occupied a three-room flat with my friends Jadwiga and Leokadia where we had a lot of fun.
Most of my friends married Polish boys whom they had known in the
Working with New Zealand people, I made many friends. Soon my friend left to marry her immigrant Austrian fiancé and I moved into a flat for £2 per week, with only one suitcase and a travelling bag – that is all I had. Five months later, I met a young man called Ludwik Kowalewski, a Polish refugee from the German forced-labour camps. We started courting and fell madly in love. Eighteen months later, in 1955, we were married in the Hill Street Basilica in Wellington. We raised four sons and a daughter.
In 1966, my brother, separated from me during World War II, came to visit from South Africa. He finally found me after all those years. We hadn't seen each other for 26 years, so imagine the reunion – there were lots of tears. We talked until the early hours, capturing every precious moment together. It was hard to say goodbye again, but we now had our separate lives. I had my family in New Zealand, while he had his in South Africa. From then on, we have corresponded with each other and kept in touch.
Our children grew up with a good education and settled into well-paid jobs. I have eight grandchildren and am very proud of my family – they are not only good citizens but also loving and caring people. At my 60th birthday surprise dinner put on by them, I felt like a princess going to the ball. I have been blessed with a husband and children who have brought so much joy to my life.
My love for Poland has never left me. It is part of my upbringing and was reinforced by the loss of my childhood home.
Aleksandra Kraczko
While on the train during our flight from the Soviet forced-labour camps with my mother, and sisters Maria and Helena, Maria got off the train to buy some food and the train subsequently left without her. We later learnt that she went south along the main escape route which we were following and tried to catch up with us. But she didn't find us because we had already been evacuated out of the Soviet Union and our mother had died. So she became stranded in Russia.
When Helena and I arrived in New Zealand as child refugees in 1944, we thought we would never see her again. Then in 1968, we received a communication from the Geneva Red Cross advising us that Maria, who had remained in Russia after our evacuation, was looking for us and wanted to give us her address. Helena was sceptical, because she just couldn't believe that Maria was still alive. She kept saying that it must be someone else. So to make sure, we asked our "newfound" sister which arm I had broken at the beginning of the war. The correct answer came back and we were overjoyed.
The story was that a man from Poland was visiting his family in Russia and Maria told him about us. He made inquiries and eventually found us. In 1973, I went to Poland to meet her and was offered lodgings with the man's family. I arrived and waited for Maria.
When we met, I could only recognise her from the photographs she had sent me. She could not speak English and I could not speak Russian, and we did not always understand one another when we spoke Polish. Russian had become Maria's first language. Fortunately, we had this kind man, who had found Maria for us, to do the interpreting when needed.
She told me later that even though she had never given a reason to the Soviet officials (which was mandatory at the time) for wishing to travel to Poland, a policeman came to her office one day and told her that her papers were ready, and that she could travel to Poland to see her sister from New Zealand. Under the censorship of the time, all my letters must have been opened by the Communist authorities.
Kazimierz Krawczyk
Without doubt, the worst loss that children can suffer is the loss of their families. It is a tragedy that would be difficult to comprehend for those that were fortunate not to have suffered such tragedy. It proved difficult for me because I came from such a wholesome and caring family in a secure village environment where all lived in harmony, shared their work and seemed to know each other.
With such treasured memories constantly in my mind, it was challenging to accept and adjust to the strange environments forced upon me by our deportation to Russia and which reshaped my life. First, I lost my father, whom I idolised as my first mentor and indestructible provider. Then I watched my two slightly older brothers die one after the other, within days of one another, in the same bed beside me. I was fully aware that the same fate awaited our only sister.
Watching the pain in my exhausted and broken-spirited mother's face was heart-rending in itself, without the added misery of being separated from her and my two remaining elder brothers Henryk and Mietek. Little did I realise then just how this loss would affect the rest of my life. Not only was my childhood disrupted, but also in my youthful years I lacked the vital role models, which left a void in my life. What I missed most from my senior brothers was guidance, a sympathetic ear when I needed someone and to remind me of the values our parents would have wanted us to live by.
From the time we arrived in New Zealand, I took every opportunity to try to find the surviving members of my family through the Red Cross. But each time I was unsuccessful, probably resulting from the unsettled conditions in war-ravaged Poland. This left me with the thought that all my family had perished in Russia or simply weren't aware of my search.
Finally, with desperation in later years, I took the matter into my own hands and wrote to the manager of Radio Ukraine. I corresponded with him in the hope that he might at least point me in the right direction, since that area of Poland which was my home is now in the Ukraine. After contacting the area where I was born, he informed me that there were no more Polish people living there.
More recently, as a last resort, encouraged by a longstanding friend who was successful in tracing his own relatives, I applied to the Ministry of Defence in
The information I received from the Ministry of Defence confirmed that the family names I had imprinted in my mind were correct. From their records I also learnt my mother's maiden name. From that time on, my hopes were raised higher. Suddenly I felt inspired and pressed officialdom to move faster on my behalf.
I stressed the urgency because of my elder brothers' ages and urged the helpful ministry officer to short-circuit the bureaucracy and provide me with my brothers' whereabouts. By return mail, I was overwhelmed to discover that one of my elder brothers, who had served in the Polish forces under British command in Italy, lived in Canada. I became fed up with all these earlier hindering policies, secrecy and non-disclosure nonsense – to hell with the bureaucracy, I thought, I wasn't going to be deterred by them any longer.
On 4 July 1999, I phoned Ontario, Canada, gave my brother's name to a telephone operator and asked to be connected to him. Unfortunately, there were a number of similar namesakes, so the kind operator offered to send me all these addresses. In due course, I wrote to all 13 households. With bated breath I waited for a response. I was overjoyed with the results of my letter. I not only found my family's favourite brother Mietek, but also a family friend and well-respected neighbour from our village, and our first cousin who happens to live near my brother in Ontario.
On receiving my brother's "letter of a lifetime", where he briefly outlined his life after the break-up of our family, I was overcome with heartening emotion. I read it over and over, and treasured each word as if it were holy. No longer was I an orphan, a lost soul in this wide world. Now I had the proof that I came from a caring and wholesome family!
I immediately phoned him and we talked for six hours non-stop. Next, together with my wife, we wasted no time in arranging a visit to meet him and his family. Meanwhile, we exchanged photos and became reacquainted through correspondence. My flight to Ontario was spent in anticipation and excitement. At the airport, we had no difficulty in recognising each other and, almost forgetting our wives' presence there, we hugged each other in the traditional Polish style to the strange glances from the onlookers.
The two-hour journey from Toronto Airport to his farmlet was spent in recollections, such as: "Do you remember this and do you remember that?" Amid Mietek's and his wife Mary's generous hospitality, there were signs of the difficult life he had endured, with evidence of the hardship he suffered in
I then wasted no time in planning the search for my elder brother Henryk. Now that I had learnt he was in the sunset years of his life, it demanded additional urgency. I was determined to see him alive. The helpful records officer in London's Ministry of Defence gave me all the information that he held and really there was nothing more he could do for me, other than to speed up the process by forwarding my tracing information directly to the Polish Red Cross in Warsaw. I must admit that it proved most instrumental in the eventual happy reunion with Henryk and his adorable wife, whom all referred to as
When my wife and I were making arrangements to attend a reunion of the former Polish children of Isfahan in London during May 2002, where we planned to visit my daughter and take in some London sights, we were woken up at 2am by a phone call asking for me. "What inconsiderate soand-so could be ringing at this hour?" I thought. To my astonishment it was my eldest brother Henryk from Szczecin in Poland. He could not wait when he heard that I was still alive and searching for him, so he phoned me there and then.
We couldn't talk for as long as I had with my Canadian resident Mietek, but long enough to get reacquainted and exchange all necessary information, addresses and telephone numbers. During that conversation, I was visibly trembling with excitement. What a blessing that was. I felt that God was finally rewarding me for all that I had missed out on in my life. How lucky can one get?
I couldn't go off to sleep that night, with my mind racing from one thought to another. Now I had yet more family. How will we be able to juggle the two reunions at such a short notice? Suddenly a trip to Poland to visit my brother in Szczecin became all important for me and all plans revolved around that. In the meantime, much informative correspondence was exchanged between us, as Henryk and Mietek were also reunited.
On arriving at Szczecin railway station, we were met by all my brother's immediate family. Then followed the most memorable and overwhelming welcome for myself and my wife. In Polish tradition, she was presented a bouquet of fresh flowers by my brother's granddaughter Ewelinka. Henryk's daughter Dorosia and her husband Mirek then drove us to reunite with my 135
Needless to say, the meeting between us was most emotional and we could hardly contain our tears of contentment and intense joy. We found ourselves so engrossed in past memories that we almost forgot to introduce our wives. Now we were all one wholesome family again, with brothers, wives, uncles, in-laws, aunties, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, cousins and so many nice relatives that made this life worthwhile again. I never imagined that I would ever be called
Surprisingly, both the family and London reunions merged successfully, with the last fortnight spent with my brother's family. It was heartening to see that everybody in each family that we visited not only approved of my wife but also welcomed her warmly with genuine acceptance. Ewelinka and my nephew Radek spoke excellent English and played a busy entertaining and interpreting role for their new ciocia, while Henryk and I caught up with some of our life stories during barbeques and over drinks.
I was overcome by the size of the family and the amicable interaction between them all. There was an apparent respect between them, especially for babcia and my brother. Despite the real hardship Henryk had suffered during the war and the many years that followed, he preserved our family's values and traditions. This, together with his gentlemanly disposition, patient listening ear, non-judgemental attitude and acceptance, made me feel humbled that I had not lived up to our family ways. I envied his popularity and the traditional respect with which people of all walks of life greeted him.
The strength of the family was reinforced by the industrious son-in-law Mirek. He was a busy man, running three separate businesses with the help of managers and responsible helpers who all happened to be members of the family. This alone was an admirable commitment on his part to promote our family's welfare and closeness.
At times, I felt infuriated that I was cheated out of a lifetime of contact with my brothers and their families. The breakdown in communication between the various organisations to which I had directed my enquiries in the earlier days left me with a bitter taste in my mouth.
It later came to my notice that these inquiries may have been filed directly into the rubbish bin. Who the hell had the right to keep us apart for so long? What a cruel and mean-spirited policy that was. Did they really think that time would heal these wounds? Or were they so afraid of the claims that we
Ever since the reunions, we have continued corresponding in whichever way is suitable for each age group – email with the young members and good old-fashioned letters with the seniors. Never forgetting birthdays, special occasions and holy days, I have kept my commitment to phone my brother on the third of each month to commemorate our reunification, but not at 2am in the dead of night.
A group of friends from the Polish Boys' Hostel in Hawera. (l-r)
Edward Kukiełko
My classmates and I had to leave the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua in 1947. Those who were considered too old to continue with their schooling were found employment. Myself and six other boys from my class at the camp were enrolled at the Marist Brothers' High School in Greymouth.
We were given board with New Zealand Catholic families and placed in the same Form 3 class. We were and looked older than the New Zealand boys. I was 17 years old. Some of my friends settled reasonably well – one of them was brilliant at maths, which gave him confidence in himself, and
We didn't get any extra tuition to help us to master the English language and the oral instructions made no sense to me most of the time. As a result, we weren't learning anything. We felt frustrated and unsettled. The camp was still in existence then, so I wrote on behalf of all of us to the camp's Polish Delegate Mr Zaleski advising him of our plight. At the end of the school year, I was sent a ticket for the interisland ferry to Wellington. I was going to become a joiner.
In Wellington, I was assigned accommodation at the Polish Boys' Hostel in Island Bay. Olga Łaszkiewicz, the Polish welfare officer for the Wellington region, introduced me to all the local joinery manufacturing firms. But none of them would take me on because I was already over 16, which meant they would have to pay me 3p an hour more than the other apprentices. I wasn't worried because plenty of other work was available.
One of the boys at the hostel told me about International Paints in Miramar, so I applied and was accepted. It was my very first job. Very soon I realised that the smell of paint was making me very sleepy. A bloke who was working on another tank fell asleep one day and awoke surrounded by a sea of red paint. He panicked, tried to jump over the puddle and fell into it. The boys at the hostel and I decided that there must be better jobs.
I thought nothing of changing jobs often. Sometimes the reason was that a
But the only problem with changing jobs so often was that each time I had to report to the police to have a new entry made in my Certificate of Registration (which was required under the Aliens Act 1948).
However, there was one job I left not because there was something better to go to. That was working on a patent slip (an inclined plane on which ships are built, repaired or cleaned) in Evans Bay, Wellington.
A group of us Polish boys applied for jobs with the New Zealand Forest Service in Golden Downs, Nelson. We coped, and I quite enjoyed working in the tree nursery, pruning and collecting seeds. Then the pull of the Polish community in Wellington must have been too great, so I returned to Wellington and got myself a job driving trucks with New Zealand Railways.
I often talked to Mrs Rudnicka, my former teacher at the camp. Her two sons had settled in Taupo and she was always full of praise for the place – its beauty and the easy availability of land. So I bought a bit of land there and planned to build my own home. At Taupo Concrete Products, I learnt to make foundation piles, chimneys, power and fence posts, and was involved in every part of manufacturing. With all of this experience I accumulated over the years, I was able to build my first home before I got married.
Seven Polish boys in Marist Brothers' High School (with teachers in the back row), Greymouth, 1947.
Middle: (l-r)
Danuta Kupidura (Łakoma)
On 24 May 2002, the four Łakomy children (my brothers
My daughter Anna and son Tadeusz, unbeknown to us, had compiled the story of our lives in exile in Russia. The four of us were then presented with gifts, which spoke of some experiences in our lives and which have become a part of our family history.
I was given a doll in Polish national costume. I had told my children that one day, in the forced-labour camp in Siberia, my mother had scolded me because I made a doll using a small potato for the body, and sticks for arms and legs. Food was so scarce and precious that even small potatoes could make a difference. The beautiful doll I was given was the doll I never had.
Józef was given a book of all the different breads of the world and how to make them. We fled Siberia in 1942 to find our father who had joined the newly forming Polish army near the Caspian Sea. The train had stopped and the locals were selling bread. Józef raced off to get some bread for us but did not return before the train moved off. My mother was distraught thinking we would never see him again, but he had boarded another carriage and eventually rejoined us – with the loaves of bread.
Anicet was given a preserving jar with blueberries. He had been seriously ill on the way from Siberia to Iran and there was no medicine available. Mum had preserved some blueberries while in Siberia and these had helped him to recover.
Zenona was given a small porcelain milk jug. She was only 11 months old when we were deported from Poland and less than three years old when we were evacuated to Iran. The train had stopped and my mother told me to buy some milk from a Russian woman. Unexpectedly, the train began to move and I scrambled quickly from under the train carriage still clutching the pitcher of milk. I was quickly lifted into the carriage by two soldiers. The milk was for Zenona.
Life hung in the balance many times for us. We were blessed by God to have found a safe haven away from the troubles of the world. Our mother was with us and our father was wounded in the battle at Bologna, but he recovered and at the conclusion of the war rejoined us in New Zealand.
Jadwiga Lynch (Lutomska)
I was happy to be in New Zealand from the moment we arrived here. I admired the beautiful surroundings of the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. There were comfortable beds to sleep in and, above all, there was enough to eat. And if I wanted more, I could line up for a second helping.
I was given an opportunity to study in a New Zealand secondary school and then obtained a good job as a typist. Then I met and married a fine New Zealand chap, and we had a happy marriage and three wonderful children. Fortunately, my husband Gerard felt very comfortable among my very large group of Polish friends. He understood what we had experienced during World War II and that it created a strong bond between us. My husband therefore understood how important it was for me to keep in touch with my Polish heritage.
The years when we were bringing up our children were very busy. We had all the responsibilities of having three children at school and we also took an active part in the Polish community. We attended the usual functions and receptions for special visitors to our community, such as bishops and priests. For a short time, we had a Polish Saturday school in Hamilton where we enrolled our children. Sadly, that time was not enough for them to learn the Polish language. My husband and I even travelled to Auckland from Hamilton to attend Polish balls. My husband made many Polish friends and so did my children, who are still in touch with some of them. My husband never complained about his Polish wife and my children never complained about their Polish mother.
Zenona Łakoma
There isn't very much I can remember from my years at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. However, there are some events that I can remember vividly, but can't remember names as I was too young.
Prime Minister Fraser's visit to the camp was a memorable occasion – I was in the group which welcomed and later danced for him. Our class also attended our English teacher's wedding in Wellington, where we gave a Polish concert at the reception. I still have photos from this event. I will never forget having to line up for our dose of cod-liver oil, where a lady would give us a spoonful of this horrible mixture to drink and another would hand us a piece of bread to take away the taste. To this day, I cannot stand the taste or smell of it. Thank you ladies for this thankless task that you performed.
I remember the building that was our dining hall. After our meal, we would return our plates to the kitchen. One day, I was returning my plate to the kitchen with my cauliflower still on it as I disliked its taste. Mrs Lewandowska met me halfway and asked where I was going. "To the kitchen," was my reply. "Why did you not eat your cauliflower?" she asked. "Because I do not like it," I said. "Go back to the table and wait for me," was her stern reply.
On her return, she had a plate full of cauliflower, sat opposite me and began eating it. "Now you eat your cauliflower like I am doing and thank God for the food you have to eat. You will not leave this table until you have eaten it all." To this day, I love cauliflower and most other foods, and I do not complain.
We used to go to the river to swim and have picnics. I remember that I was too small to swim, but one of the older boys would carry the small children on his back across the river to the other side and then bring us back. When it was my turn, I was too impatient to wait for "St Christopher" to pick me up but began wading into the water to meet him. I must have stepped into a hole and began to drown.
Thank God for the boy's strength and quick thinking, as he pulled me out of the water and handed me to my mother who was frantically waiting on the riverbank for me and wrapped me in a towel. I soon recovered from my ordeal. I wish to thank the young man who saved my life.
Anicet Łakomy
I was only two years old when World War II broke out, so I was too young to remember the horrors of my family's deportation to the forced-labour camps in the USSR. However, what was related to me by my parents, and from documentaries and books about that era, has taught me how fortunate we were to arrive in New Zealand.
My stay in New Zealand was a very happy one. We had food, we played, we laughed and above all, we were free, though the concept of freedom meant very little to me at that time. I would like to share with you the following memories, which are still vivid in my mind. I remember going for a picnic in the forest near a river. The whole Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua seemed to be there. We had fun, and when it was time to go back some of us decided to stay behind and camp out. I must have been about eight, but I was only too glad to tag along with my older "protectors" who seemed to know what they were doing. I am sure we didn't tell our teachers or supervisors.
We stayed behind, caught some eels and cooked them, and slept under the stars. The next morning we made our way back to camp as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I can't remember that we got into much trouble but some questions must have been asked. Imagine that happening these days. Imagine the commotion.
I recall once when we were paired off and sent to different destinations for a holiday to experience life with New Zealand families. I forget who my friend was, but I suspect he was as scared and mystified about the whole thing as I. A group of us arrived by train in Wanganui and we waited at the station for our New Zealand hosts to pick us up. My friend and I were the last ones to be collected. We snuggled into a corner and waited. It was dark and we weren't too sure how long we had to wait.
Eventually, our hosts identified us by our tags and we were taken to their homes. They were lovely, hospitable people who fed us well and looked after us beautifully. They showed us off to their friends and we generally had a great time. Our command of the English language was very limited at that time but we must have managed to communicate. These holidays were repeated a few times and I am very grateful to our New Zealand hosts for their generosity.
After leaving Pahiatua, my parents Katarzyna and Jan, and my siblings Danuta, Józef, Zenona and I settled in Ruakura, a government research farm
My life's dream became a reality when I visited Poland with Teresa and my youngest daughter Maria. Imagine visiting my place of birth after an absence of almost 60 years. A lot of emotion and adrenalin flowed through my body. I was delighted when people complimented me on how well I spoke my mother tongue. Teresa and I always made sure that our children knew their roots, and we tried to pass on to them our love and pride for our native land. We stayed with our relatives and visited many historical places. The Panorama Racławicka in Wrocaw made a great impression on us. We, of course, made a pilgrimage to Jasna Góra in Częstochowa. This place still holds many special memories for us.
One evening, I decided to go for a walk through the streets of Sosnowiec where we have relatives. It was raining and the footpaths were empty. I splashed
Every non-citizen in New Zealand was obliged to have a Certificate of Registration under the Aliens Act 1948. This had to be presented within 14 days after change of abode, place of employment or occupation. The visits to the police weren't pleasant experiences as the refugees felt that they were truly treated as "aliens"
Suddenly, some dogs began to howl and bark. Porch lights went on and a few doors opened. However, I had waited 60 years to do my "thing" and I continued to gustily sing those songs I learnt at the Pahiatua camp, and those I learnt at home while my parents were alive. I would love to have heard the comments made by those who poked their heads out to see what caused the commotion.
After spending 45 years in education, I have at last put away my "chalk and duster" and am enjoying my retirement near Brisbane, surrounded by my extended family and four grandchildren. The concept of freedom that meant so little to me then means much more to me now. I hope that my children never experience the horrors of war and that they always value freedom.
A big mystery for me is why we were spared when millions of others in similar circumstances perished. I suppose it will always remain a mystery but my prayerful thanks each day is: "Dear Jesus, thank you for bringing my mum and dad and our family out of Russia into this part of the world."
I am indeed a very lucky man.
Stanisław Manterys
I was 12 when I first arrived in Wellington from the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua in early 1948. The choice of Wellington was influenced by my two elder sisters,
I was taken by tram from the railway station to my destination in Courtenay Place. The station at that time was the largest and most imposing building in Wellington, though small in comparison to today's skyscrapers. My wonder at this first tram ride was indescribable and each subsequent ride was an adventure in itself – the clang and rattle, the open doorways to jump out of when still in motion, the "all fares please" call of the conductor, the breakdowns, the three-penny fish and chips treat wrapped in newspaper and tucked inside the raincoat while waiting for a tram in a howling southerly, and the city life passing by.
Few buildings were higher than four storeys but to me they were like huge skyscrapers. Until now, I had only seen one large city – Isfahan in Iran, which was built in the Eastern style with low buildings. So Wellington was the first high-rise city in my life, even though by then I had travelled halfway across the globe to the end of the world.
From the rolling farmlands of my home in eastern Poland, through the limitless emptiness of Siberia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, through dry Iran, and the empty waters of the Indian Ocean and Tasman Sea – I remember mostly flat. Wellington was a complete contrast – all hills and greenness, bright little houses perched miraculously on steep slopes without falling down, like a colourful painting freshly sprayed with clean rain. I couldn't imagine how one could push a bike up those steep streets.
I was met off the train by Mrs
We got off the tram in Courtenay Place, walked up to Roxburgh Street and up a steep fenced path to my new lodgings – a two-storey house beneath
Too soon, Mrs Zaleska left me to be alone for the first time in my life among strangers who did not understand a word of my own language or my culture – I had only a few of their words and none of their culture. The first of many misunderstandings with the English language began. New words were learned quickly, but an understanding of the proper cultural meaning hidden behind them came after slow and painful experiences.
Though it was three years since the end of the war, butter rationing was still in force. But coming from a camp environment, I knew nothing of this. First thing, Mrs Parker asked me for my "ration book". I was surprised and a bit annoyed that she expected a "Russian book" from me. After all, we had just a few years earlier escaped from the horrid Russian forced-labour camps and did not want anything more to do with them.
Annoying me even more, she then rummaged in my carton suitcase and extracted the book of ration stamps she wanted, but which meant nothing to me. I had morbid thoughts that Mrs Parker was using Russian Secret Police tactics in searching my few possessions and tried to say as much with my few words of broken English. She must have thought me rather odd. But I at least had learned a new word and concept.
They were a kind and peaceful Catholic family, tolerant of my English and, to them, my strange ways. The house was sunny and pleasant, with a small lawn (thankfully). I was shown into the back bedroom which was to be shared temporarily with their adult son Kevin. I missed him when he soon married and left, because he coped with the handmower on wet grass which was now my lot and showed me how to do things, most of which I didn't understand.
The language problem was an ego deflator. At the camp in Pahiatua, we had only one or two hours of English language each day, for which I came first-equal in our class with The Adventures of Robin Hood. I was very proud to have more or less understood the first few pages until I came across "Marian" and couldn't understand why the word "she" was used for a man – Marian in Polish is a male name. This confused me, so I never finished reading the book. Thinking the book must be wrong, I still thought myself well placed in the new language. But, after being left alone without assistance in this strange
I became used to people being surprised, annoyed or thinking me silly because I would not understand them better if spoken to loudly and slowly. But I never got used to people being angry and telling us off for speaking our own language in public. The phrases "speak English" or "go back to where you came from" were heard so frequently that we called the New Zealanders "
It was a two-stop tram ride up Cambridge Terrace to St Patrick's College, which in those days stood opposite the Basin Reserve before it was moved to Kilbirnie to make room for a motorway (which was still not built 50 years later). The college was a Wellington landmark in those days – a real grey stone castle with towers and a prominent statue of St Patrick near the top.
That first day there was another blow to my self esteem. Some local boys stood around the entrance dressed in proper school uniforms. I felt like a country yokel, still wearing the army surplus kit we wore daily at the camp – a battle-dress re-dyed navy blue from its original khaki, too big for me, grey shirt, grey army socks and heavy boots. Some odd looks came my way. I expected jeers and laughter, but the boys must have been too well brought up and only gave odd glances.
I asked directions in a few words of broken English but got only stares of incomprehension. Then a group of Polish boys appeared, all dressed in the same army surplus manner – all was now OK, and there was laughter and relief. I was not alone. St Patrick's had an invasion that day of some 30 Polish boys and for most it was also their first day. We happily milled around the school yard together for protection, not sure what to do and trying to ignore the locals.
After the assembly, at which we formed a distinct group, the Polish boys were sorted into classes, with one of the older hands acting as an interpreter. Someone had to fill a vacancy in the French class, so my camp classmates volunteered me because of my English language prize in the Polish school in the camp. The rest of them were to take up bookkeeping. I tried to resist because surely, I thought, bookkeeping is looking after and binding books in
After two weeks in the French class, the teacher gave up trying to teach French to a boy with little English and who could only say "Toto looks at the door" in French. I happily moved into the bookkeeping class with the other Polish boys. To my disappointment, we never got to bind books and instead the teacher spoke a lot about a "Mr Purchases" and many "Debits", "Credits" and "Accounting" – whoever they were? To make it more interesting to the class, the teacher spoke about things as if they were people, which confused us completely.
At the end of the year, I had no idea what bookkeeping was about and dreaded it. When in my final year a career in accounting was suggested, I chose law instead. This choice was a mistake because I soon found the legal language and its concepts were very different from the English of literature which I was currently learning. Ironically, I later made a belated switch to an accounting career. Perhaps if Mr Purchases had been just plain purchases, my future life might have been so much easier?
Of the 30 pupils in the class, 0 were Polish. We were happy with this arrangement, but it must have been very difficult for the New Zealand boys and the teachers. We could not have been an easy group to teach. We were the first non-English-speaking refugee group to reach New Zealand and there was no precedent to guide the education system as we all bumbled along. But we inadvertently set a precedent for future generations of refugees. The college was run by the Order of Marist Catholic Priests. In those days, private schools operated without any government funding. All the teachers tried very hard in this new situation and as a measure of their success they were able to get us Polish boys through School Certificate, the then major national qualifying exam.
We wore our distinctive army-issue clothes for many months and were an attraction around town until the college rector put pressure on our guardians, the education authorities, to outfit us with proper school uniforms. We were now a little less conspicuous around town.
Towards the end of the school year, a place was found for me in the Polish Boys' Hostel in Island Bay where the Church of St Francis de Sales now stands. It was two sections by tram to school. The only other transport was by bicycle or motorbike, which were owned by only a few of the older boys. The staff was all Polish – some from the Pahiatua camp, and some who were recent arrivals from the German forced-labour camps and were also finding their way in this new country.
The older boys were already working, had gramophones and music Records,
There was a friendly stationery shop in Majoribanks Street, which I visited regularly to read a Classic Comic The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, though I understood little of it at the time, which only added more to the mystery. The shopkeeper was a kind man and didn't chase me away – there were very many kind people like him about in those days. This intensive spurt of adventure reading gave me an incentive to read other books and unintentionally advanced my confidence in written English. I wish the same were true of my pronunciation.
My ever-vigilant elder sister Krystyna, who had been instructed by our dying mother in Uzbekistan during our evacuation from Russia to look after myself and our sisters, thought that life in the hostel was too distracting and that my schooling was suffering. So she prevailed upon our guardian Mrs Zaleska to transfer me far away to a boarding school the following year to St Kevin's College in Oamaru. I did not regret it because the four years at that college were my best, and the teachers of the Christian Brothers Order gave me a good education and insight into the New Zealand character.
There were only five of us Polish boys in that school. To catch up with the New Zealand boys, two of us Polish boys (myself and
Two boys sitting on the ship's torpedo.
The Adventures of Robin Hood, Zane Grey's Western tales and Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island with greater understanding.
When it was my turn to make a formal speech in front of my class as part of the English curriculum, I learned by rote the subject matter given to me without understanding many of the words or knowing how to pronounce them properly. The speech was a complete failure because no one understood what I was talking about. Not normally shy on stage, this experience made me forever uncomfortable in front of an English-speaking audience.
In 1990, I travelled in the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Railway in the opposite direction to our deportation route in 1940 and in comfort as a tourist. I visited the graves of my parents in Uzbekistan and finally laid some ghosts of the past to rest. I never take wellbeing and security for granted.
During all my years in New Zealand, I was considered to be and felt like a foreigner. It was not until after I returned from spending seven years in a now free Poland with my wife Halina before my retirement in 2000 that I truly felt like I belonged here. Though my roots are in Poland, I consider New Zealand to be my home.
- • "She'll be right" – Who is this "Sheila" and why will she be right?
- • "Hot pies" – When I had three pennies to spare (which was seldom) and hungry (which was always), I would still avoid the hot pies shop – the word "
pies " in Polish is "dog". We had enough of dog meat in the Siberian forced-labour camps (if we were lucky to get it). - • "Lively" – Some time later, with a better vocabulary, I complimented a mother on how "lively" her child was. I was surprised at her annoyance until I was told she had heard me say how "livery" her child was.
- • Lawn mowing – The kind Mrs Parker says to me: "Time to mow the lawn Stan, before it gets wet." But I understand her to mean it is time to mow the lawn "
becauseitiswet." What's the point of mowing wet grass when it's not even wet? - • Spelling – I thought my native tongue superior. In Poland, every child after the first year at school knew how to read every word without having to spell it first.
Maria Matkowska (Zielińska)
As the New Zealand soldiers whose job it was to cut the children's hair were due to leave the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, and as there were more than 700 heads of hair to be kept tidy, the Polish Delegate Jan Śledzińki began searching for someone willing to be trained for the job.
Boleslawa Poleć was very keen and enjoyed hairdressing – her coiffure was always perfect. I never cared about my thick curly hair, but she asked me to join her and I agreed. We were enrolled at Joy's New Zealand College of Hairdressing and Beauty Culture in Palmerston North.
On Sunday evenings we travelled by bus to Palmerston North where we boarded with a lovely New Zealand family during the working week. Then on Friday nights we returned to the camp. All Saturday we helped the New Zealand soldiers cut the children's hair to acquire practice.
We graduated and then became fully employed at the camp. The pay was excellent – £5 a week. The boys were quite a handful but the girls gave us no trouble. For hygiene purposes, their hair was cut very short. But once the lice infestations became a thing of the past, many of them were allowed to let their hair grow long. When I moved to Auckland, my qualification in hairdressing helped me to find a good job in a hairdressing salon.
Julian Mazur
Soon after arriving at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, I became ill with tuberculosis. I was moved to Masterton Hospital where one of my lungs was operated on, and my health improved.
During this time a young Maori couple, Mr and Mrs Horn, offered to adopt me. It was a pleasant surprise, but at that time us Polish refugee children thought we would still return to Poland so I had to refuse the invitation. After I was discharged from the sanatorium, I returned to the camp but much had changed. There were now only about 40 boys left, with whom I restarted my schooling at Mangatainoka School.
When the camp closed down, the remaining boys were moved to Linton Military Camp in Palmerston North where we attended St Peter's Marist School. After a short stay in the military camp, we were moved to the Polish Boys' Hostel in Hawera. I attended Hawera Technical High School where we first began to mix with Kiwi kids. This was an enjoyable time, playing rugby and rugby league. While I made some new friends there, I still tended to hang around with the other Polish boys from the hostel. At the end of Form 5, I began a mechanics apprenticeship in Hawera, which lasted for five years. During this time, I boarded with Max and Margaret Peters who have remained lifelong friends.
After the apprenticeship, I immediately moved to Wellington. Most of the guys I knew from the hostel had moved there and so for me the move was natural. By the end of my time in Hawera I was ready for the big city, where I went to work on the trams and buses because I'd had enough of being a motor mechanic.
I initially shared a flat in Princess Street with some of the guys from Hawera (including
In 1966, I married Patricia Denton and we bought a house in Miramar, Wellington. Early in my marriage, I bought a taxi cab and was happy to
Patricia and I are the proud parents of six children and, because of my lack of formal education and my wife's profession as a teacher, we both agreed that education was to be of primary importance in raising them. They are all well qualified and successful in their careers. New Zealand has provided me with the chance to bring up a family in a safe environment with many opportunities for them to become educated and realise their potential.
Alfons Moroz
My mind reels back to the time in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua when Stanisław Dygas, Michal Smal and I decided to build a canoe. We started looking to the nearest native bush stand, known to all the boys as the "
After school the next day, armed with borrowed axes, we made a beeline to that first bush stand. We worked with zest so it didn't take long to bring the half-rotten tree down. Once on the ground we cut it to the length we wanted. Every day after school we worked hard, shaping it and digging out the inside. Some weeks passed by and we were making good progress – it was two-thirds finished and we were counting the days to its completion. But it was not to be and our dreams would be shattered.
One day, we were concentrating and working so hard on the project that we didn't notice a police officer with a farmer sneak around and pounce on us, like vultures on a dead carcass. We had no chance to run. The policeman took our names and confiscated our axes. The next day we had to face our camp commandant about all the problems we'd caused and the bad name we had brought to the camp. We were grilled for a long time by the red-faced commandant and told we were to appear in Pahiatua children's court.
The time had come for us to present ourselves before the judge. A stern-looking judge was seated behind the bench as he read our charges – first being unlawfully on the property and secondly the cutting down of a tree. When he finished reading, he asked us if we had anything to say. I piped up, saying the tree was rotten.
The judge looked at me with cold eyes, raised his hand and banged it on the bench – £10 fine each, which was a lot of money in those days. The fine was paid from our pocket money, so we were without it for a long time. When we got back to camp, we had to again face our camp commandant who imposed a further punishment – cleaning the toilets for a month.
So ended our great canoe dream.
Jan Niedźwiecki
I remember the big welcome awaiting us as we sailed into Wellington Harbour and the tiny coloured houses that dotted the surrounding hills. It seemed like one big Disneyland. From there, I remember the train journey to Pahiatua and having a feeling of such anticipation and excitement that I almost wet myself, but didn't tell anyone.
For most of us, the years spent in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua would be the happiest of our lives. Compared to the multitudes who died in Russia, we were the lucky ones who survived and thanked the Lord for our chance. The camp was well organised and run by supervisors who tried their best to look after us. The atmosphere was great and we all felt like one big family, experiencing much laughter and tears together. Sometimes we would be too wild for our supervisors and two Polish returned servicemen were brought in to supervise us. Though their style was quite tough, they soon put us right. Looking back, that discipline helped develop our characters in many positive ways.
I hold a great deal of respect for all the supervisors who looked after us and will never forget the time when one supervisor, Mrs Powierza, playfully grabbed me and gave me a motherly cuddle. It was as though an electric shock passed through my body. This is how it must have felt to be cuddled by our own mothers, whom we all missed so much.
Suddenly we were no longer children but growing teenagers. As with all teenage boys, we started to become curious about girls. Occasionally, we would try to spy on them through the drainage hole in the showers, but unfortunately all we caught were glimpses of their legs.
Life in the camp was full of adventure and fun, which helped us to deal with some of the unhappier memories of our childhood. We would perform our duties after school, such as cleaning the camp, tidying up the dormitories and tending the gardens. These chores taught us about responsibility and physical work while keeping the camp clean and tidy. Camp life boomed in all aspects of education, music and theatre, with sporting activities proving very popular. Our New Zealand teachers introduced rugby, a game that was new to us but it caught on like a house on fire – we loved it.
After the camp closed in 1949, a group of about 45 boys was transferred to Hawera where we lived in a pleasant and well-maintained hostel, and
After two years, I moved to Wellington to continue my engineering studies at Wellington Technical College, while at the same time completing an apprenticeship with an engineering company. I lived with my sister Janina and her husband Stanislaw Kowalczyk. I am grateful to them for taking care of me and making sure my life went in the right direction.
By then, the Polish community in Wellington was thriving. There was a Polish girls' hostel in Lyall Bay and a hostel for boys in Island Bay. We spent our weekends visiting the girls' hostel for social activities. The girls looked so beautiful that I had trouble choosing a girlfriend, as I liked them all.
The Polish House in Newtown, which was established in 1949 by the Polish Association in New Zealand, was a great place for us to meet and chat. It had the feeling of one big family, all very much alive. I remember one evening at a dance function when a friend smuggled a bottle of liquor into the hall and a few of us tried it – this was in the days when alcohol was forbidden in gatherings which were open to the public. I had one little sip and was sick as a dog. I was then 19 and would be 23 before I accepted another drink.
In 1961, after finishing my apprenticeship and studies, and having worked for a while, I saved some money and went to Poland to visit my mother and the rest of my family. During the confusion of our escape from Russia in World War II, many parents became separated from their children and I hadn't seen my mother or the rest of my family for 18 years. It was a very emotional meeting and I felt strange because I was now a grown man and hadn't seen them for most of my life. There was a fantastic party in my hometown Grajewo and I had my first taste of vodka in true Polish tradition.
I then made my base in London and at first was homesick for New Zealand. I went to Poland a few times and the communist regime became suspicious of my frequent visits. My intention was to return to New Zealand, but a US petrochemical company, specialising in oil refineries in the Middle East, hired me. With my engineering qualifications, I was offered a job in the projects and design office.
Soon after, my manager called me into his office and asked: "John, how would you like to go to Iran?" I nearly fell off my chair and exclaimed: "Iran? I was there as a kid!" He said: "That's even better, you probably speak the local lingo". Within two weeks, in October 1969, I was off to Iran. Since then, I have visited there many times – the last time in 1995.
When there, I had the opportunity to visit Isfahan and my taxi driver took
Tehran was a fascinating city. While there, I had the opportunity to meet a few of the Polish women at a concert party given by the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. As young girls after their escape from Russia, they had remained and married Iranians. They were very pleased to meet me and the following day I was invited to a function following a Polish Mass. That evening in 1978 was a historic moment – Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope and became Pope John Paul II. We all went crazy with joy.
It was also a time of political unrest in Iran and a 6pm to 6am curfew was imposed – we had to stay awake until the morning because there was no sleeping accommodation in the function room. Not long after that, the Shah was deposed and the rest is history. By now, I was well established in London, but spent many working assignments in other Middle Eastern countries, with a period in Iraq with my wife and two-year-old daughter – our son was born in Bahrain.
In the mid-1960s, we had a Pahiatua boys' mini get-together of those who worked in London and those visiting. There was
Another particular friend from the Pahiatua camp whom I came across was Henryka Holender in the early 1970s. She was a talented girl, especially in music and theatre – I saw her performing on stage with the New Zealand Players Company.
We all went in different directions in life, but I will never forget my life and upbringing in New Zealand. My sincere gratitude goes to the Polish and New Zealand people who looked after us, and to all those who gave us a wonderful start in life. God bless you all.
Czesława Panek (Wierzbińska)
After World War II, Poland was incorporated into the Soviet communist bloc. Though not officially part of the Soviet Union, it was its puppet state.
The Soviets oversaw Poland's internal affairs and the Soviet military forces exercised direct military control. Based on a political dictatorship supported by a large Russian Secret Police, it was supposed to be a classless society but in effect it was dominated by the Communists. Soviet socialism existed on suppression of all individual freedom, persecution of religion, strict censorship, collectivisation of property, strict summary punishment of those who dared to oppose it and an inhuman bureaucracy. Even judges were under Party control. The state of the bankrupt economy was hidden by false reports. Citizens were fed on false propaganda and individual citizens had no say.
My brother Mietek was away at college when our family was put on the trains to forced-labour camps in Siberia in 1940. When he returned, my aunt met him at the station and gave him strict instructions from my mother not to go anywhere near the trains. He remained in Poland, while I survived deportation to Siberia and found refuge in New Zealand.
I was determined to see Mietek again and spend a Christmas with him. In the meantime, I led a quiet life and by December 1961 had saved enough for a trip to Poland. I was afraid to visit Poland, as I was unsure whether the communists would allow me to return to New Zealand. I would have been one of the first of Pahiatua's Polish children to travel to Poland.
In December 1961, I sailed to Europe and from Holland by train to East Berlin where the temperature was -32°C and the carriages were unheated. All I had with me was a rug, as my luggage was still with customs in Holland. The train was six hours late, arriving late at night at Łańcut railway station in
In desperation, I ventured into the police station. By that time it was past midnight. When I told them who I was and who I was looking for they just burst out laughing and rang my brother to come and get me. My brother explained that he'd been rushing between Łańcut and Rzeszów, the nearest railway stations, trying to find me but had to give up.
I looked at Mietek and he was a stranger to me. The last time I had seen him he was just 15 years old and a college student. Now, 21 years later, I saw a man in his mid-30s with a wife and two sons. I stood there holding a rug without luggage or money. The money transferred through the bank arrived a week late. That was their introduction to what they called "millionaires" from the West.
Also, I felt like a stranger and rebelled against what I considered the new Poland's unfair compulsory government regulations. I got round having to purchase the compulsory hotel bonds by applying for a visa for one month only, and then trying to extend my visa in Poland while there. The exchange rate for the hotel bonds was only a third of what I could get elsewhere. When I applied to have my visa extended, I said that I wished to attend the skiing championships in Zakopane. There was no accommodation available, and I got the flu and missed the championships. My luggage arrived in February – just in time to take it back with me to London.
On my next visit to Poland in the summer, I thought I was much better organised. After quite a lot of hassle with the Polish Embassy in London, I received a dispensation from paying a bond for one month's visit. After a month elapsed, I went to the police station in Rzeszów hoping to extend the visa for another couple of months. I was interrogated: "Why did you not attend the skiing championships when your visa was extended last time?" and so on. I kept explaining, but in the end got into a bad temper and left banging the door behind me. They were probably hoping for a nice big bribe, which wasn't forthcoming from me.
My brother Mietek managed to get my visa extended somehow – probably with a bribe, he never told me. From what I heard, the militia had about a twoinch thick file on me. I don't know what they found to write in it. My every move and perhaps every word I said must have been recorded.
Franciszka Quirk (Węgrzyn)
I was privileged to be sent to St Mary's College in Wellington, which had very good teachers. I passed University Entrance and in 1954 commenced my studies at Victoria University of Wellington for a Bachelor of Arts. Though I passed other subjects, I failed the compulsory 50% pass rate in English. Worried and discouraged, I assumed this was because English was not my first language, and that the unfamiliar grammar and idiom were at fault. But now I feel that I did not fully apply myself to all the reading required.
Also, getting by on a meagre 10s pocket money a week made me decide to discontinue university. It would have been helpful if someone had explained to me my failures and advised me. But at the time I was not aware that such help existed and hope it now exists for foreign students.
I applied for work in an office. Then I met and married Michael Quirk, who was very conscious that working in an office would not give us the best start in our life. We started saving hard and each took additional part-time jobs. We then bought a dairy in Khandallah, Wellington. Work in business was hard and it became even harder as our children were born, but this had set us up financially. We moved to Tauranga, worked on a poultry farm and then on a dairy farm.
Eventually, we returned to Wellington where in the 1980s I decided to complete my degree. Why bother at this stage of my life? We were already successful but for me it was like some unfinished business. I still needed a sense of achievement. Anyway, I had always enjoyed learning. It was not easy getting back into studying, but being a mature student I was able to commit myself fully to my studies. First I studied extramurally and then fulltime. Finally, 31 years later, in 1985, I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts.
Looking back, I know it is not the result that gives most satisfaction but the process of getting there. We encouraged our children Anthony, Diane and Darren to study. They all gained university degrees, and have happy and stable careers and partnerships. There is only one thing I regret and that is that my children never learnt to speak Polish. But this did not stop them from visiting my homeland or enjoying the company of their many Polish cousins there.
Kazimierz Rajwer
At the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, there was a group of mainly older boys whom we used to call the "shoemakers". They were put into the group for various reasons, including some misunderstandings. They used to do various jobs, but mainly they were taught shoemaking by a New Zealand soldier who was also a bandsman. It was like an apprenticeship for these boys and they received a bit of pay with which most of them eventually bought bicycles.
They had their own separate table in the dining room, which held between 200 and 300 people, and each table seated 12. Each table was expected to clear after itself and at our table we took turns. For some reason, the shoemakers' table was not cleared regularly after each meal and the chief cook, a Kiwi soldier, got fed up and banned them from the dining room, which of course meant no meals.
I had a friend in this group and I couldn't let him go hungry, so after each meal I would make a big sandwich and take it to him. After one particular meal, just as I was about to hand the sandwich over, I felt a powerful hand gripping the shirt at my back. It was the chief cook. He took me and the sandwich straight to Mrs
I was quite good with my hands and made all sorts of things in the camp – mainly swords, bows and arrows, crossbows and various guns (including ones that fired 22 bullets). I also carved chess sets with my pocket knife for which I once received first prize at the chess-making competition organised by the camp authorities.
Not long after the sandwich episode, the chief cook decided to move on. Because he was quite popular with everyone, the Polish camp authorities decided to make him a presentation and chose to give him my chess set. Imagine my great embarrassment when I was told to make the presentation after dinner in front of all the people. We both pretended that nothing had happened earlier and parted best of friends.
On a fairly regular basis, we were treated to what we called "cinema" in
Well, after one such cinema, Mr Białostocki, who was in charge of our barrack, came to me and said: "Rajwer, come to my office, I have something for you." I followed him wondering what it could be. He reached to the top shelf of his cupboard and produced a handmade gun. Immediately, I smelled a rat. He said to me: "Is that yours?" I said: "No, it's not mine", which was the truth. He said: "Are you sure? The boys told me it was yours." I said that I was sure it was not mine. "Well," he said, "if you don't want it then I will give it to someone else." I shrugged my shoulders and said: "Do that."
As I later found out, one of the boys went rabbit shooting with a homemade gun and came across a farmer with his little daughter. The farmer, being a friendly chap, asked the boy to show him his gun, which he thought was a toy and even pointed it towards the little girl. The boy got concerned, took the gun back and showed him it was loaded with a 22 bullet. Well, the farmer nearly fainted from shock, and grabbed the gun from the boy who now saw no future in staying around and fled. The farmer had no chance of catching him. And besides, he could not leave his daughter.
Of course, there was a lot of trouble over this and the authorities wanted to find out who the rabbit hunter was, hence my involvement as being one of the camp's gun makers. After this incident, the camp authorities promised us range shooting with real guns. They promised us other things too, just as long as we stopped making our own guns, but none of these promises ever eventuated. Instead, more rugby and cricket were introduced in which a lot of the boys took part and did well in competition games with local schools and clubs in the Wairarapa.
Jan Roy-Wojciechowski
In February 1994, after spending several weeks in our place in the Bay of Islands, my wife Valerie and I took our daily walk to the beach at Te Uenga Bay. It was a beautiful morning, the tide was in, the sea was blue and the beach deserted.
The next day I had to go back to the office. Then I suddenly thought: "Why do I have to go back – why is it that I have chosen to continue working when there is no need for me to do that?" So we made a decision that I would go back to Auckland and hand in my resignation from the position of chief executive of Mainzeal Group and executive chairman of Mair Astley. I finished my working career that year.
So here I was, heading towards the age of 60, after a successful career in commerce, not wanting for anything, a lovely home in Auckland, another in the Bay of Islands, a large luxury launch, a luxury mobile home, six grownup children, and a successful and happy marriage. I now had time to enjoy those gifts – to enjoy the company of my wife, to retire together and enjoy a new life because the decision to retire was made by us jointly. During my working career, I guess I spent half of my time being away on business – certainly not many early evenings at home and certainly not contributing much to the cooking, cleaning and raising of our large family. So how did this fortunate situation happen to me?
I was born in the village of Ostrówki, near the town of Drohiczyn in the Polesie region of eastern Poland. Soon after the German invasion of western Poland in 1939, our part of Poland was absorbed by the USSR. The land, about quarter of all Poland at that time, is now part of Belarus, the Ukraine and Lithuania. Russians, Ukrainians and other USSR subjects have since resettled the land, now mostly emptied of Poles. Everything to do with Poland – Polish books, churches and institutions – was destroyed and forbidden to be mentioned. To this day, I'm not able to get a copy of my birth certificate, nor is it possible to get any certificates for births, deaths and marriages from eastern Poland – they simply do not exist.
My father was caught and shot by the Russian Secret Police before our deportation to Siberian forced-labour camps. There, the Russian political prisoners told us that we were here for life and that there was no way of ever escaping. But we did escape. In 1944, I came to New Zealand as an orphan
I arrived there when I was 12 years old, the only Polish boy in the school and with just a smattering of English. I was put into the third form. To me, it was just another institution. I had lived in institutions for most of my life. However, the difference here was that I couldn't speak the language.
The boys were cruel, because foreigners were not accepted in those days as they are today. The staff did not appear to be as loving and caring as our substitute "mothers" who had looked after us in Iran and the Pahiatua camp. However, I was determined to overcome these obstacles and by the fourth year I was top of the class in a number of subjects. In the fifth year, I was accredited University Entrance and by then had a reasonable command of the English language. I made many lasting friendships in Silverstream.
After completing my five-year stint there, I stayed with my sister in Wellington to attend Victoria University, where I chose an accounting and commerce degree. I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to work for Bowden, Bass & Cox, and a small accounting firm where I was exposed to a variety of business and had my own clients. I made some great friendships among the young men and women who worked there, and it is where I met my wife Valerie.
After qualifying as a chartered accountant, I was offered a position with W&R Fletcher and then with GH Mooney & Co, where after four years I became the company secretary. Wishing to progress, I joined the General Electric Company as its financial manager and one year later joined the board as financial director. I later became the managing director for Charles Begg & Co – importers of musical instruments.
Early in 1980, I went out on my own as a consultant, company doctor and chartered accountant what-have-you. I was hoping to have a bit of a break but was asked to manage another company. So I began to manage companies in crisis, the development of successful businesses and investments.
Having completed a successful career as an executive, industrialist, investor, property developer and being appointed Honorary Consul of the Republic of Poland, I can ask myself: Was it all worth it? What would have happened if the Russians had not attacked Poland, and taken me and my family to Siberia? Is the wealth that I was able to create in New Zealand ever able to compensate for the tragedy that happened to me and my family? I have never
There are blurred memories of my home in Poland. I remember the smell of the lilac tree by our front door. I remember that we had two dogs. But I couldn't find the place if I wanted to today because the whole village was destroyed and replaced by a collective farm. Would I swap the life I have here in New Zealand for these things that I've never known? Who chooses what form of life one should lead?
A Strange Outcome – The Remarkable Survival Story of a Polish Child, published in 2004
Antoni Rybiński
My earliest memories go back to 1939, the year World War II broke out. As a four year old, I vaguely remember that my father was arrested and we were eventually deported to the Semipalatinsk region of Kazakhstan in the Soviet Union. From there, we were eventually evacuated to Iran.
Unfortunately, our salvation came too late and my mother died in Pahlevi, Iran, just a week after we were evacuated there. The terrible time and other hardships of our enslavement took their toll. I have always remembered my mum repeating to me over and over to never forget my name, date of birth, and that I was Polish and Catholic. Shortly after her death, I was taken to a Polish orphanage at Polish Civilians' Camp No 5 in Tehran to join hundreds of other orphans. Suddenly being alone among all these orphans was a very difficult time for me. Mum gave me a small photo of herself and I often looked at it so I would not forget what she looked like. I have kept that photo to this day.
Providence was good to me and, as it happened I, together with a group of 733 children, was selected to go to New Zealand in 1944 for the remainder of the war. After that journey to New Zealand, we settled down to a stable and what seemed like a carefree life at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. Shortly after, my sister Helena found me through the Red Cross.
Everyone fell in love with Wellington and the beautiful countryside in Wairarapa. The camp became a home away from home – "our little Poland". Even the camp's streets had Polish names. Most of us look back on those years at the camp as some of the happiest in our lives. Unfortunately, most good things come to an end. In 1949, we were told that the camp was closing down and that it would be used as a transit camp for displaced persons arriving from post-war Europe.
The last of the children to leave the camp were the 42 youngest boys. I was among them and it was a disrupted school year for us. For the first school term of that year we travelled by army trucks to Mangatainoka School. For the second term, we were sent to live at Linton Military Camp in Palmerston North and then to Marist Primary School. At the end of the second term, we left Palmerston North and were sent to our new home in the Hawera Polish Boys' Hostel, from where we attended St Joseph's Primary School until the end of the year. Then we attended Hawera Technical High School.
Hostel life was different from the camps. We felt closer to each other, we marched to school and church, and in the church we always sat in the front so everyone knew we were the Polish boys. As time passed, we managed to save some money and purchase bikes – can you imagine all those boys on bikes coming out of the hostel gate at once? What a sight.
Talking about bikes, I would like to share with you how I purchased my very first bike. During the 1949-50 summer while on school holidays at Mr and Mrs Kirby's in Fitzroy, New Plymouth, one of their sons was getting married and they took me along to the wedding. At the reception during the speeches, the priest mentioned how nice it was to have so many different nationalities and that among us we have a Polish boy who lost his parents during the war. This seemed to touch me and I just had to leave the hall. I ran into the toilet and cried my heart out. Next, I heard a knock on the door and a Jewish man said: "Tony, come out. I will give you £20. I know how you feel. I have been through the same thing." Well, of course I came out and received the money. But that was not the end.
Next Sunday after Mass, the priest stopped me and apologised for what he had said and gave me another £8. My new bike cost £27. When I arrived at the hostel with my brand new bike, the housemaster wanted to know where I had got the money from to purchase such a bike. I have not revealed my secret until now. I must also mention that the businesspeople in Hawera were very generous towards us by bringing us such things as leftover cakes and "ice creams.
We had a horse, cow, sheep and three dogs on the hostel's premises, as there were acres of land at the back for us to use and we sure did make good use of it. We were allowed to keep chickens, so a local lady of Polish descent brought us 40 chickens and we had to build a chicken house in a hurry to accommodate them. It was real fun. There were two lakes close by which we visited often and I have some fond memories there. I even saved a young girl from drowning.
We had a large garden which we dug up and later planted. I was amazed at how everything grew. We were also rostered to attend to the boiler (which supplied us with hot water). On one particular day, the boy who was in charge wanted to join us all in a game so he decided to load up the boiler and came out to play. Next thing we knew the boiler house was on fire. We were not very popular.
In 1950, we started Hawera Technical High School. The teachers and pupils treated us kindly. We enjoyed sport and some of the boys did very well in their schoolwork. I only spent two years in the school and went on to do an apprenticeship as an electrician, serving my time with JJ Peacock Electrical,
Just one last thing I would like to mention, as I'm getting older and think back – my grandparents are buried in Poland, my father in Katyn, Russia, where he was shot, my mother in Iran, my sister in the US and I will be buried in New Zealand.
A reason to smile – a proud
Maria Sinkinson (Skiba)
The Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua was the happiest time of my life. For that, I am forever grateful to the New Zealand people, the Government and to God. I remember on arrival at the camp being given beautiful secondhand clothes – a black pleated skirt and purple jumper, a navy blue dress with a new Peter Pan collar, new edging round the sleeves, and a new pocket in navy and white polka-dot design. I felt beautiful when I wore them.
I was a child with peace and goodwill in my heart. I was friends with everybody and everybody was friends with me. And here I must mention
One of my best friends during those happy days was
Then there was
I remember when our beloved priest Father
This is my last opportunity to acknowledge all those New Zealanders who opened their hearts and invited us to their homes for the school holidays and
Here I must mention the people I stayed with during some of the school holidays – Mr and Mrs Summers in Masterton, Mr and Mrs Hodgins in Hastings, and Mr and Mrs Linton of Richmond Road in Carterton. What wonderful people. I stayed friends with them for the rest of their lives.
In June 1946, I was reunited with my father who arrived in New Zealand after the Polish army-in-exile was demobilised in Britain. It was a wet dark winter's morning when my brother
He worked in Woodville and every Sunday would pedal his bike to visit us at the camp. I would wait with my girlfriends by the gate, and he would bring us chocolates and lovely kids' books (not comics). The one I still remember and loved was Ben and Bella – it was about two yellow ducks. Tata was then 40 years old. Why did I think he was so old?
In August 1948, he took over the responsibility for my care and I had to leave the camp. I thought I would die. My English teacher wrote this in my autograph book: "Wishing you a very happy and prosperous stay in NZ and best wishes for the future" – Patricia Sloan, Polish Camp, 8 July 1948.
And so life in New Zealand treated me well. Thank you Miss Sloan. If it was possible to go back in time to the days of no responsibility, security, happy days, togetherness, lasting friendships and camp meals, I would say: "Take me back to the place once called the Pahiatua camp."
Stanisław Skiba
I recall vividly how soon after we arrived in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, Mr Holona, who was our senior disciplinarian and a firm believer in physical punishment, issued instructions that no one was to leave the camp without permission. At that time, we had all spent about four years or so without parental guidance, so he was obviously worried that we would get into mischief if we were allowed to go into town.
One day a small group of us decided to sneak out of the camp and find out a little bit about New Zealand life. I later guessed it must have been a day before Anzac Day because on the footpath was a stand with artificial red flowers and a bucket. Passers-by would take a flower and throw a coin into it.
We had just come from the hardships in Russia and our stay in Iran, and we could not understand why there wasn't a guard standing by the bucket. We thought he was somewhere out of sight. We didn't get into any mischief and managed to sneak back into camp without being found out.
After a decent length of time elapsed, we described to one of our house mothers what we had seen in town. We were told that we were very lucky that we did not get any ideas about the money in the bucket because in New Zealand you had your hand cut off if you were caught stealing. That revelation rehabilitated us and I personally believed it for a long time, because in those days crime was almost unknown.
Now, since the Government has taken over the responsibility for raising children and abolishing any deterrent for misbehaviour, things have changed beyond recognition. Out of the 733 children who came to the Pahiatua camp in 1944, only two have seen the inside of a prison, according to former Prime Minister Jim Bolger. Mr Holona's view that to spare the rod was to spoil the child might have something to do with our respect for the law.
Eugenia Smolnicka (Piotuch)
We all must have memories of days or even weeks of complete happiness and contentment. For me, one such time was a Christmas holiday in 1946 which Krystyna Nowakowska and I spent in Hastings with Mr and Mrs Cantwell and their three children Norma, Margaret and Laurie. They weren't a rich family and their house was very ordinary, as were their car and truck. However, they were extraordinarily good and kind people.
Mrs Cantwell told us, and I think I understood her correctly, that she wanted us to forget the terrible times we had been through and tried to make us forget by being extra kind to us. She served us our breakfast in bed and we were told to rest until morning-tea time. She was an excellent cook and baked delicious cakes. After the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua's fare, we delighted in the meals she produced. In the evenings, Mr Cantwell would pile us all on the back of his truck and take us to watch sports. Mrs Cantwell used to take us in her car for picnics and to the orchards for apple picking. In those days, you only paid for the apples which you picked off the tree. The apples lying on the ground were free.
Norma and her friends always included Krystyna and myself in their trips to the pictures. When we walked back, we would stop at a fish and chip shop. It was the first time that Krystyna and I tasted fish and chips, and we thought it was a rare delicacy. The man serving in the shop was a Russian and when he found out that we were Polish began speaking Russian to us. We answered him back in a mixture of Polish and Russian, and understood one another pretty well. It was good to be able to communicate.
I was a teenager then and very shy, but at the same time taking everything in that was going on around me. How I enjoyed watching Mr and Mrs Cantwell going for walks holding hands. It was the first time I had seen a married couple holding hands.
During one of our trips to town, we met Adela Szłapak, a girl from the camp staying with another family. Adela's mother was one of the camp staff and Adela used to borrow romantic novels from the camp library, saying that they were for her mother. She told us about the wonderful book she had just read – Magnes Serc (Magnet of Hearts) – and lent it to us. It was all about sunny Naples with its beautiful scenery, palm fronds waving in gentle breezes, and romantic words and embraces. I was in a dream world.
Soon we had to return to the camp and the reality of life. I told one of my friends, Magnes Serc. Mr Holona stared at her and said: "How do you know about this book?" "My friend told me," she replied. "Which friend?" asked Mr Holona. By that time I was shaking. Fortunately, my friend remained calm and she answered: "She has already left the camp to attend an English school in the South Island. "Get out of here," roared Mr Holona.
In a matter of weeks, I was sent to a New Zealand school. Then my father was demobilised from the Polish army, which had fought alongside the Allies against the Germans, and joined me in New Zealand. He did not know any English. I was his only child and therefore had to take on many responsibilities of rebuilding our life. My mother had died during the war.
At first, my widowed father lived in Waitara, and I attended St Joseph's College in New Plymouth and boarded privately. Then my father shifted to New Plymouth and we eventually bought a house together.
I often thought of the wonderful holiday that I spent with the Cantwell family and regretted that I did not thank them properly. I had their address but lost it almost immediately. There was only one thing I could do – I prayed for them.
Years went by. One day in 2004 there was a knock on my door. Outside was our good friend Edward Kowalczyk and he had someone else with him. "Don't you recognise me?" asked the other man. "No…" I said slowly. "I am Laurie Cantwell," he said. I just started sobbing. Over a cup of tea, we tried to cover the 56 years since we had last seen each other. Laurie knew Edward when he was still working on a farm in the Hawke's Bay. He found Edward's telephone number and visited him in Lower Hutt, where he showed him a photograph taken during our holidays and asked him if he knew these two Polish girls.
Edward could not recognise us, so he took Laurie to our mutual friends
Now I am back in touch with the whole Cantwell family.
Stefania Sondej (Manterys)
While I was staying in Dunedin in 1947, Prime Minister
The Dominican Sister who was teaching us English discovered an English translation of the Polish national hymn
The Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, 1946. Two of us Standard 6 girls were tidying up the New Zealand teachers' dining room. While cleaning out the cupboard, we found a piece of revolting mouldy cheese so we threw it out. Then we were surprised that instead of thanking us, the teachers told us off.
St Dominic's College, Dunedin, 1947. One of the teachers, a Dominican Sister by the nickname of Winnie the Pooh, asked me in class what sort of food we ate in Poland. With the aid of a Polish-English dictionary, I told her "
2004. I am a glutton for blue-vein cheese, and all the contemporaries of my former classmates consume yoghurt by the litre – some of it most definitely rotten tasting!
My friend
One day, she said brightly in Polish: "We'll go to Inglewood and I'll buy
One consequence of living almost your entire childhood and adolescence, sometimes longer, in single-sex orphanages is that you grow up with a wrong idea of the opposite sex. We were living daily lives among only girls or boys of mostly the same age – and not even with sisters or brothers because they were all segregated according to sex and age. Girls had female carers, boys male carers, and very rarely the twain met.
So, as we grew up and began day-dreaming about marriage and family life, she imagined a loving husband who looked after her and forever was nice to her, like the fellow in the books and films, while he imagined a dainty adoring wife, who would look after his every need, bring his slippers, cook for him and never complain, like the sirens in the films. Well, we know real life is not like that.
For years we used to refer to New Zealanders as "
For years, our New Zealand teachers frowned when they heard us speak Polish to one another and admonished us. To us, it seemed ridiculous to speak broken English to friends of longstanding who could much better understand Polish. But our teachers must have thought that we would never learn English unless we forgot Polish. Back then, New Zealand was a very isolated country and few people travelled to Europe. There were also some people who were so conceited that they could not imagine anyone who did not speak English to be able to think intelligently.
One, and I must stress one, senior Plunket nurse whom I was obliged to see when our five-year-old son was starting school was shocked when she caught me speaking Polish to him: "Don't you see what harm you are doing to him? How is he going to cope at school?" Fortunately, I was by then a much more self-assured person and was able to reply that if I, who had very little primary schooling and no knowledge of the English language when I went to secondary
Miss Eising, my English teacher at the Polish Children's Camp pushed a book into my hands without even asking if I could read it. My first English book! I was surprised that I actually got the gist of it. Next she gave me A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Such confidence.
At St Dominic's College, the Sisters, instead of pitying us ("Poor little Polish girls, they don't know any English") and giving us easy work as some other schools did, constantly encouraged us to do the work that the rest of the class was doing. We cried, struggled and thought the nuns cruel, but our work improved steadily. I never dreamed of attempting any of the public examinations such as School Certificate, but again the Sisters signed me up saying: "You can do it, Stefania."
Boarders at St Dominic's College in Dunedin, 1947. The Polish girls are:
Back: (l-r)
Front: (l-r)
I was fortunate to receive the same kind of encouragement and confidence in my ability at Auckland Teachers' College, and from headmasters when I began teaching. After all, they could have had their doubts about my ability to teach English when they heard my "lovely Polish accent", as my students used to put it.
During the five years from the time we were deported from Poland to our arrival in New Zealand, we had no books to read, not even text-books. So we learnt poems and hundreds (true!) of Polish songs by heart, and could sing for hours on end. Now, with all those aids – song books, sheet music and photocopies of words – we tend to rely on them, watching even the la la la las, and not on our memories. Pity.
But back to dinner. Two Polish girls on a holiday with a New Zealand family (our first Christmas holiday, 1944) were sitting outside lustily singing a lively Polish Christmas carol where the chorus goes – "
Their hostess came out with a worried look on her face and tried very hard to make them understand that dinner was not ready yet. However, they thought that she did not want them to sing "
Sigh! Today we leave our beloved Polish Children's Camp, friends and "Polishness", and return to Catholic boarding schools in the South Island. A sad time, but exciting too. First, army lorries take us to Pahiatua Railway Station. Then by train to Wellington, very slowly, pulled by two engines over the Rimutaka hills. Slowly enough for us to be able to walk beside the train when the guard is not looking. A few hours' wait in Wellington for the ferry to Lyttelton – will it be the Rangatira or Hinemoa this time?
Some Polish people already working in Wellington and some curious New Zealanders gather on the quay in Queens Wharf to wave us farewell. We all talk Polish and New Zealanders stare, wondering what it is all about. We hurriedly and unselfconsciously hug and kiss those staying behind, girls and boys, before going on board. As the ferry starts to move away from the dock, we begin to sing a Polish farewell song, then much more softly our evening hymn
A night on the ferry, sleeping on bunks. We are woken up at 5am with a cup of tea which is so strong and black that it was enough to withstand the rolling of the ship! Next day we disembark at Lyttelton, the port of Christchurch,
At the station in Timaru we say goodbye to the girls going to Sacred Heart College. Then on to Oamaru for another group of girls to attend Teschemakers College and the boys to St Kevin's College – my brother Stanislaw with my suitcase (we both have the same first initial). The small remaining band of girls travels on to Dunedin to St Dominic's and St Philomena's, and we finally arrive at our destination at 4pm, two days after leaving the camp. I put my brother's suitcase back on the train and hope that mine arrives the following day.
We are back at school where I like learning, discovering new ideas and understanding new concepts. This gives me great pleasure, but I miss the camp where I feel at home.
Poland or New Zealand? I will let the reader decide.
I am not a sportsperson, but I like watching rugby when the All Blacks are winning. I watch the Hurricanes play other teams, but only if they are
Farewelling the Polish Girls' Hostel's Ursuline Sisters at St Anne's Hall in Newtown, Wellington, 9 March 1958.
(l-r)
When our Polish dance group Lublin in Wellington was due to have their first public performance, they were sad because they did not have any costumes. So I took two months off from my part-time job, raided every fabric and haberdashery shop in the Wellington area, organised mothers, friends and relations, and at the end of two months Lublin had 32 lovely Polish costumes.
When I visit Australia and the Australians boast how they beat New Zealand in this and that, I point out that the entire New Zealand population could fit into Sydney with room to spare, so they have nothing to be proud of. I am a sworn Justice of the Peace. On Sundays, I attend mostly the Polish Mass. What New Zealand priest would let us sing our beautiful Polish hymns Sunday after Sunday and allow us to pray for the freedom of Poland for 50 years?
Now you try and decide where my loyalty lies.
Janina Szczepańska (Malczewska)
I wish to pay tribute to the special teachers at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua who helped to mould me as a person. The most influential was Sister Alexandrowicz, who taught us religion. She showed us how to pray the Rosary, as well as explaining the Old Testament and how it helped us to learn about ourselves as people. To us, she was a wonderful person and full of understanding – an understanding which helped us as children in our times of loneliness.
Mrs Holownia was a brilliant historian. She never came to class with a book, teaching us everything from memory. Her descriptions were so vivid and moving that the girls were often moved to tears. Naturally, this was always the best-behaved class. Mrs Krzyżanowska was the kindest teacher and that quality made her very special. Not only were the teachers special, but there were also other treasured people and moments that I would like to highlight and pay tribute to.
Our brightest classmate Stefania Manterys ("
Sundays were special days at the camp as we had visitors from as far as Palmerston North. Those visitors included entertainers, Maori groups and Scottish bands. In particular, I wish to express my appreciation to the Palmerston North family that befriended me. Unfortunately, due to my poor understanding of English in those early days, I wasn't able to communicate my fondness to them and over time we lost touch. The family will never read this, but nevertheless I wish to acknowledge their kindness.
My stay in the camp was only for two years, as I left to attend college in Christchurch, but it was long enough for me to make lifelong family-type bonds among these special people in my life, to care for each other and to call ourselves "one of us".
Krystyna Tomaszyk (Skwarko)
"Do you see yourself as a Pole or a New Zealander?" a friend asks me.
"How do you see me?"
"Polish," my friend laughs.
"Well…" I laugh back.
So, let's think…
I speak and write in both languages with similar ease, celebrating the challenges of finding the most appropriate words to express my ideas. I experience delight and satisfaction in manipulating the Polish Latin-rooted complexities of grammatical conjugations and declensions, and relish having the privilege of being able to delve into the inexhaustible riches of the English language.
And thinking? I think in both Polish and English according to whether the subject of my thoughts stem from or relates to a Polish or an English-speaking context. Understandably, most of my adult insights and ideas were acquired in the English language but, on the other hand, I can do quick multiplication tables only in Polish.
And praying? My private prayers are in both languages. But my inner, reflective dialogue with God is conducted exclusively in the English language.
But what about the language of love? That would be telling…
And what happens when I am in Poland? When in Poland, I feel Polish and, though I know I am different from the Poles in Poland, I feel a part of the Polish world around me and everything that makes up Poland – its culture, history, people, countryside, cities and buildings – I identify as "my own". Yet, when I speak with Poles about New Zealand, I say "home" and when I discuss New Zealanders, it's "we".
So, how do I feel about New Zealand? I am proud of New Zealand's and New Zealanders' achievements both in New Zealand and abroad. I think with nostalgia of the times when the door to one's house could be always left open and when I knew I was safe on the streets in Wellington even when coming back from Victoria University lectures and dances very late at night.
But it's especially after a trip overseas that I am conscious of how much I belong to New Zealand. It is also then that I realise the extent to which New Zealanders are "my people". They are the people I know, understand and feel close to. They are my friends, they are members of my family, they are
Throughout the years of our professional life, my husband – also a Pole, a former World War II participant in the Polish underground army, a prisoner of three German concentration camps and educated at the University of Paris – and I have always had the opportunity of working in professions of our choice: Czeslaw as a technical researcher and later a technical executive in a major corporation, and I in the fields of marriage guidance, child and Maori welfare, social work, post-primary teaching, and community advice and development.
But what of our children? Czeslaw and I have a son and daughter, and from the very beginning we knew that our children would be considered by other New Zealand-born Kiwis to be different also. We understood that we had to use every means we had therefore to equip our children with a strong feeling of their own identity as well as with a pride in their parents' heritage. Thus, Polish became the first language our children learned at home. And when they were eight and six years old respectively, we took them on a three-month trip to Poland. It was this trip that helped our children realise that there was a
The polonaise dance group at a concert in Wellington, 1953. (l-r)
But growing up in an environment where one's parents have a strange name and speak with an unusual accent, lead "discussions" instead of "conversations" at the dinner table, use garlic in cooking and have Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve and not on Christmas day, was not easy for our children. Both have coped well, as even taking to school salami sandwiches that no one wanted to exchange for vegemite-and-lettuce sandwiches did not seem to have damaged them permanently. Both have become well-adjusted individuals and are high achievers in their chosen fields – Krzysztof in law and Nina in human resources and demography.
So what about our grandchildren? Yes, as could be expected, they are also "different". On her last day at her local kindergarten, Ariana was asked to do a presentation on the subject of "where does the name Tomaszyk come from". The then five-year-old Ariana had no problem with the assignment. She told her friends that her "
Yes, New Zealand is one of the few countries, if not the only country, in the world where being different is an advantage instead of a disadvantage for us, our children and grandchildren. And finally, my baptismal name is the same as my mother's, Krystyna. In English, I prefer to use the name Krystine.
I celebrate diversity.
Regina Villmo (Zielińska)
When I was six, my mother died after the birth of our baby sister Lusia. It was a very cold winter in 1940 and the country was at war. I remember how we cried all the time and missed our mother. Then on 10 February 1940, only eight days after her funeral, the Soviet militia burst into our farmhouse at 2am, searched my father for any weapons, and ordered him to pack his children and take whatever clothes and food we could take with us.
We were taken in that severe winter night to the nearest railway station, which was close to the Russian border. There we were loaded – shoved and pushed – into cattle cars and taken north to Siberia. There were thousands of people on this train, one of the many from eastern Poland, in this first ruthless deportation of the Polish citizens from their country.
Women tried desperately to help crying children and our baby sister was fed by other breastfeeding mothers or given boiled water, which was shared when guards allowed us to collect it at various stops on the journey. But the baby died soon after we arrived in the remote mountain place past the Ural Mountains. Many died on this journey… the constant travel for three weeks!
I remember that our father worked, like all other men and young people, in the mine. My sister Stanislawa, then 14, worked unloading the trolleys of copper ore on the surface. If people didn't work they were not given bread rations either for themselves or their families. My eldest sister Misia was a housekeeper. Maria, 12, was a nanny in a Russian family and the two youngest, myself and my brother Kazimierz, had to go to a Russian school.
We often went to the markets to sell whatever we could spare to buy food. We walked miles to potato fields at harvest time to glean some after the big combines had left. Then we would enjoy feasting on potato and onion soup, potato pancakes and hot potatoes with salt. There was no guarantee of salt, sugar or food necessities in local stores and supplies would be disrupted, especially when Russia was invaded by its former ally the Germans.
We were then freed and made our way south, eventually arriving in Iran. Half starved, ragged and ill, the women and children saw that sticking to General Anders' newly formed Polish army in Russia was their only chance of survival.
General Anders bravely decided, against Stalin's preferences, to take as many civilians as possible with the Polish army being evacuated through the Caspian
For us that survived and arrived safely in Iran in March 1942, the hunger was over and the sick children got hospital treatment. We were clean, warm and fed at last, and joined various transit camps in Tehran. From there, the five children in my family were separated. My two elder sisters joined the Polish army to go to Palestine where they hoped to find our father. We three younger ones, Maria, Kazimierz and I, were taken to the Polish schools in Isfahan. Hundreds of girls were looked after by the French Sisters of Charity, where they learned French and promptly forgot Russian, which had been imposed upon them in the Soviet forced-labour camps. A hundred boys were also placed with the Salesian Brothers. Both groups were sponsored by Pope Pius XII.
We were very happy there but soon another shift awaited us. This time through the big and mighty ocean to New Zealand. From Bombay, India, we travelled on the
I remember our train journey from Wellington to the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. At all the stops we were greeted by people and school children waving New Zealand and Polish flags and banners. They gave us ice cream and small change. We saw beautiful colourful houses on hills, so different to those in Iran. And in Pahiatua we had a great reception, with the army band playing and photos taken with smiling, friendly people. Happiness was everywhere and we felt very welcome.
At the camp, we were divided into classes and housed in army barracks, with a bed and a chest of drawers, each nicely made up. Young New Zealand girls and boys tried to teach us tap dancing and took us to visit their homes or to the pictures in Pahiatua. I was lucky to be befriended by a young mother of three who later corresponded with Misia, my eldest sister, and who helped her and her husband to come to New Zealand from London.
Later, I attended college in New Plymouth and again was very lucky to be "adopted" by a kind and happy family with five children. I became their sixth, and to this day I treasure their friendship and keep in contact. In November 2002, I came with my Norwegian husband Loyd all the way from Norway to
Time marches on and it's 60 years later, but the carefree childhood in Pahiatua that the New Zealand people gave us is still much appreciated and celebrated by the Polish Children's Reunion in 2004.
Our father died in a Tehran hospital six months after our evacuation from Soviet Russia. He was very sick from typhoid and malnutrition, but we learned from the Red Cross nurses that he died happy because he knew that his children were safe and in the care of the Polish army.
Romualda Waluszewska (Sokalska)
In May 1945, six months after our arrival in New Zealand, we spent our school holiday with New Zealand families to experience everyday life and improve our English.
My journey began at Pahiatua Railway Station and ended in Masterton, while others continued their journey to New Zealand families in different parts of the country. I well remember how shy and awkward I felt standing on the platform, awaiting some kind family to take me to their home. It was quite unnerving.
But soon some of my apprehension was dispelled. I noticed a lovely lady with a big smile holding a card with my name on it and walking towards me. She took me by the arm and said "Welcome to Masterton", and led me to her car. We travelled for about half an hour before reaching the family home. The house was large with a very pretty garden and a neat green lawn. There was also a sizeable vegetable garden. They were sheep farmers.
The family consisted of a mother, father, two daughters and one son. They greeted me warmly on arrival and were very kind throughout my two-week stay. We had a lot of laughs trying to understand one another. I have very fond memories of my first holiday in New Zealand.
The evening meal was a special time, as they changed to more formal dress. Dinners were very tasty and for the first time in my life I had roast lamb, roast pumpkin and mint sauce. The desserts were delicious.
One evening, something embarrassing happened at the dinner table. One of the girls at the table asked: "Romualda, pass the salt please." My answer was: "No thank you." I thought she had offered me salt, which I did not need. What a blunder I had committed.
I sometimes think of that particular evening and hope that they took my comment with "a grain of salt".
The Wanganui Chronicle
Fifty years ago, Wanganui provided the first large-scale direct contact with the New Zealand way of life for 225 children from the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. They stayed from 17 to 31 August 1945. With the help of the army, along with charitable and church groups, Wanganui became a huge holiday camp.
When the Polish children came here by special train, each had a tag with their name and host. With junior Chamber of Commerce members on the platform calling out instructions, it was a bewildering introduction to the river city for the war victims who were aged from five to about 15.
Piotr kept in touch with that family but when he was sent to high school in Auckland he lost contact. Some 30 years went by, and he, his wife and their four children went for a ride to Wanganui. "We stopped at Kowhai Park and had a lovely time. Then, while I was buying ice cream and drinks for the kids at a nearby dairy, I remembered that it was the dairy where we used to get ice cream and milkshakes when on holidays in Wanganui.
"So I asked the shopkeeper if she knew where 'so and so' lived. She did and told me. When I knocked on the door an old lady came out and asked who I was. I said: 'Don't you remember me?' She looked and looked, and asked me all sorts of questions. 'Well, I said, if you don't remember me then I will tell you who I am.' I said: 'Remember the Polish boys who holidayed at your place
Her husband had died some years ago, the boys had gone their ways and she was living alone. "Then she asked me what I was doing all those years. Have I got family? Yes, I said, and she invited my wife and children, and we had a wonderful time recalling wartime years and our holidays in Wanganui. My children took to her like to a grandmother."
Twenty years after this reunion, Piotr still has the fondest memories of that family and Wanganui.
Among the Wanganui people who remember the Polish children was Jean Healy. She hosted two Polish boys, who she said were lovely children. "We enjoyed having them." Mrs Healy recalls them playing with a walkie-talkie set and was amused to see one chewing on gum and then handing it to the other for a turn.
One night, the elder sister of one of the boys came to tea but she wouldn't speak. Mrs Healy said that Catholic priest Father Stapleton told her the girl was still affected by seeing her mother and father shot. The boys returned for a holiday with the Healys on a later occasion. Years later, one of them approached Eric Healy who had bred and raced horses for the Pahiatua or Woodville races, and reminded him of their Wanganui holidays.
Fay Shaw remembers having two Polish boys with the family. She was nine at the time and they were about the same age. "It was one of the few times we went to the pictures at the Duchess," she said. The family had offered to have the boys after a request for homes, especially on farms. At the time, they had a few acres at the top of Roberts Avenue. She recalls the boys teaching the family a few Polish slang words, and though she learnt them and the meanings she can no longer remember them. "I often wonder what happened to them, though my father said that Nowak went back to Poland. I don't know if I ever knew their surnames."
Stella Scoullar remembers a small Polish boy staying opposite her in College Street. She said the only word which seemed to be in common between them was mouse, because it sounded similar in both languages. He was delighted with this small communication.
The Wanganui Chronicle reported that the children thought New Zealand was a fine place and their only complaint was it rained too much. All were looking forward to returning home to Poland. But with the advent of Soviet occupation, New Zealand became their permanent home.
Tadeusz Woś
My earliest memories were of a full and comfortable life in Poland with my mother, father, brother and sister. We lived in a good house on a farm with plenty of open space around us. Who would have known that in only a few short years I would be standing on the decks of the
This strange country had offered us a place to live but would it turn out to be a home? We were the lucky ones. After four years at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, we became reunited with our father, now a widower, who had come looking for us at the end of World War II. He was very grateful to the New Zealand Government for the opportunity to work here and raise his family. He was given a job as a blacksmith at the Ruakura Research Farm in Hamilton.
Once settled at work and with good accommodation secured, my father was able to take us out of the camp. But it wasn't just the three of us. He married
I attended Marist School in Hamilton, which I found difficult. We only spoke Polish at home and I soon found the biggest barrier to learning was my poor grasp of English. But I enjoyed maths, possibly because numbers are fairly universal and were something that I recognised.
After a couple of years, with the help of our father's friend, I was offered a job in a bakery and left school. The early hours were okay and the tasks manageable, but I learnt quickly that I didn't like working indoors and my health was deteriorating in the bakery environment. So, after two years, I got a job roofing and then worked on building sites with a gang of Polish carpenters. I had found my passion.
I loved building houses and was comfortable in the company of so many other Polish speakers. I continued with my carpentry job during the week and
In 1959 I went to the Hawke's Bay and ended up working with
Robin and I had always intended to visit Poland. However, with family commitments and financial restraints we didn't make that trip until I was 59. I had no idea how I would feel and was quite anxious. I had a great life in New Zealand, taken so many of the opportunities we had been given and all of my family were now New Zealanders.
But when I arrived in Poland, I knew for the first time that I belonged to two countries. The sounds, visions, food and culture overwhelmed me. I was home. We have been back there twice since my retirement, but I strongly believe that New Zealand is where I will happily live for the rest of my life. I am so grateful that a decision was made to let so many young refugees and their families come into this wonderful country. I have had a very good life.
A family reunion.
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These were the type of cattle wagons in which the Poles were deported to forced-labour camps throughout the USSR
A group of Polish women in exile in the USSR perform the serious task of measuring the below-subsistence level of bread rations handed out by the authorities. Note the small portions already set aside on the bench, which were often dried and kept as a reserve
The Zhdanov, overloaded with Polish refugees, took them from Krasnovodsk in the Soviet Union across the Caspian Sea to Pahlevi, Iran, in 1942. Many didn't survive the journey and died on board due to exhaustion, deprivation and disease from the years in Soviet forcedlabour camps
After fleeing from more than two years of freezing cold, hunger and disease in Russia's forced-labour camps, the emaciated Polish children lie exhausted in the Pahlevi (now Bandar-E-Anzali) transit camp in Iran, 1942
Waiting to board
The
Once more into the unknown. Boys boarding the train on the wharf in Wellington for the final part of the journey to Pahiatua, 1 November 1944
Another welcoming party of New Zealand children wave to the Polish children as they pass by on the train to Pahiatua
The New Zealand soldiers returning home from the war on the
With their wordly possessions on their backs, the children disembark at Pahiatua Railway Station on 1 November 1944. One of the oldest Polish staff members
Station to station. The Polish children on the train to Pahiatua look out the windows as the New Zealand children wave to them
The children get helped off the army trucks as they finally arrive at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, 1 November 1944
The youngest children on their way to the dining room with
The new arrivals line up for their first meal at the camp.
2nd from left:
The new arrivals enter the dormitories on their first day in the camp
The youngest new arrivals in the dining room on their first day in the camp.
A soldier (front) helps
The end of a very long journey. Bedtime for new arrival
An aerial view of the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, New Zealand, 1945. The camp was located on the site of the old Pahiatua Racecourse
A composite view from the watchtower. Ulica Sikorskiego (Sikorski Street) on the left and ulica Bora-Komorowskiego (Bór-Komorowski Street) on the right, 1945
A view of the camp with the girls' dormitories in front
An aerial view of the camp with the Mangatainoka River, which is a tributary to the Manawatu River
More than 100 women from various organisations, including
A scale model of the camp in the Pahiatua Museum which was prepared for the 50th anniversary of the Polish children's arrival
June 1999.
The field in 2004 where the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua once stood
May 1997. Inside the kitchen at Kopua Monastery, Hawke's Bay, which was once one of the buildings at the camp.
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The portable altar on the recreation hall's stage was a large wardrobe-like cabinet on wheels with folding doors. After Mass it would be shunted aside. It was built in Palmerston North for £27, and eventually ruined by borer and thrown away. Note the Polish traditional Christmas crib on the left
The altar in the camp's chapel. The picture of Our Lady was moved to St Joachim's church in Berhampore, Wellington, where it continued to be venerated
The camp's vehicle fleet outside the garage. The fleet was maintained by the New Zealand army personnel
The grotto was built in 1945 on the camp's northern side by the Polish refugee children who each brought a stone from the nearby Mangatainoka River. It was a focal point for the children. By 1975 it was a ruin, so some of its remaining stones were reused in the plinth of the new memorial statue
The camp's main assembly hall where concerts and dances were held, important visitors entertained, films screened and Masses celebrated
Cztery Janiny obchodzą imieniny (four Janinas celebrate their name day), 24 June 1946. (l-r)
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A group of staff and older girls, some of whom were already employed in the camp (kitchen, laundry, sewing, nursing).
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The sewing room made the camp more self sufficient and gave practical experience to the older girls, some of whom would rather have been given the opportunity to study. It operated from November 1944 to January 1946. (l-r)
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A group of girls perform their chores at the camp
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Standard 4A, 1947.
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Standard 4, 1948.
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Standard 6B, 1947.
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First Holy Communion, 1947.
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Standard 6A, 1947.
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Lunch on a Sunday in the Polish Children's Camp's dining room No 2, 1948
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Taking a summer's dip in the Mangatainoka River.
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Healthy and happy, the Polish children play in the warm Pahiatua sun
The Polish Girls' Hostel "Ngaroma" in Lyall Bay, Wellington, 1950. It became a focal meeting place for the Polish boys and girls as they grew up. Many marriages resulted from this
Polish girls in Sacred Heart Girls' College, New Plymouth, 1946.
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Pupils and teachers in the camp's high school.
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A basketball team with coach
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Junior basketball team, 1946.
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A basketball team, 1948.
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The standard of the Polish Scouts of New Zealand, donated by Scout leader
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Polish girls at Teschemakers College, Oamaru, 1947.
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A group of senior students depart the camp for New Zealand schools in 1946. (l-r)
Trepidation and expectation. One of the first groups of girls to leave the camp, 6 February 1946.
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The National Film Unit films the krakowiak – a regional dance from southern Poland.
Polish girls in national costume at a garden party in Palmerston North
The play
Krakowskie Wesele (Kraków Wedding) staged in the camp to a large audience of the Pahiatua public. The dresses were made in the camp's sewing room. Camp Commandant
At one of the first weddings in the camp – the groom (a returned serviceman) with attendants. (l-r)
Dressed up for a concert.
(l-r)
A group of the younger boys stare as a gardener cuts the grass with a lawnmower — a new and exciting contraption they'd never seen before
Having fun with a scooter at the camp.
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The first funeral at the Polish Children's Camp for
Kindergarten children in the camp's pool
The youngest children test drive the new seesaw built by the New Zealand soldiers (back left)
Back: (l-r) Front: (l-r)
Standard 6A, 1947.
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The proud eel fishers, 1947.
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Polish boys at St Patrick's College, Wellington, 1948.
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At the entrance to Block C, bedrooms C1 and C2, during the Christmas holidays at the camp, 1948-49.
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The dentist
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The lawn brigade outside the school staff building. (l-r)
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Photo taken by Camp Commandant
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A sea of smiling faces with some clutching prized toys.
The youngest children growing up.
Standing: (l-r)
Kneeling: (l-r)
Camp Commandant
Caregiver: Back: (l-r)
Middle: (l-r)
Front: (l-r)
"Bush Midget Champs" 1947.
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Front: (l-r)
Bush Primary Champs" 1947.
Back: (l-r) Middle: (l-r) Front:
One of several camp rugby teams, 1947.
Back: (l-r)
Middle: (l-r)
Front: (l-r)
A rugby team, 1948.
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Poles under the posts, 1948. The boys took on rugby with a passion and became "the fear of the northern Wairarapa". The opposition team's management had to lend them rugby boots for the representative team's first game.
Standing: (l-r) Kneeling: (l-r) Sitting: (l-r)
The seven-a-side Bush Primary Cup, 1948.
Back: (l-r)
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The Polish Scout troop leader in New Zealand and Polish Cub leaders. The Poles include:
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Middle: (l-r)
Front:
Polish Scouts at the camp.
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Sitting: (l-r)
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A dishwashing brigade at the camp's kitchen No 1
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Kneeling: (l-r)
The youngest Polish children from the camp temporarily attended Marist Primary School, Palmerston North, and lived in the Linton Military Camp before relocating to the Hawera Polish Boys' Hostel for the final term of the school year, 1949.
Back: (l-r)
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On holiday in Gisborne with members of the Gisborne
On holiday in Gisborne, January 1946.
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Front:
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Boys in the camp's vegetable garden when an effort was being made to make it as self sufficient as possible, 1945. (l-r)
One of the last groups of boys (back row) to leave the Polish Children's Camp briefly attended Mangatainoka School before being transferred to Linton Military Camp.
Back: (l-r)
Outside the camp's chapel, 1948.
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The first wedding at the Polish Children's Camp, 21 May 1945.
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Front:
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In the garden of the Polish Boys' Hostel, Island Bay, 1947.
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Children in national costume get ready for the arrival of Prime Minister
The Prime Minister and his entourage with the children outside one of the camp's buildings
Polish children in costume lead the Prime Minister (back middle, with hat) into the camp
The whole camp welcomes Prime Minister
The Prime Minister (centre) meets some of the the 733 Polish children he invited to New Zealand. With him is
The youngest children form a guard of honour as Prime Minister
Countess
VIPs visiting the camp, February 1947. (l-r)
Taking a salute on Poland's national day, 3 May, on the podium beneath the guard tower.
Poland's national day parade (3 May) at the camp led by
rd from left). Note the camp's siren on the building on the right
Halcyon days in the prime of their youth. Many of the former Polish children refugees with the ex-Polish army emigres celebrate New Year's Eve 1954 at the Winter Show Buildings in John Street, Wellington
The now adult Polish boys during their motorbike phase on Wellington's picturesque Oriental Parade in the 1950s. Note St Gerard's monastery on the hill. (l-r)
At a dance in St Francis Hall, Hill Street, Wellington, early 1950s.
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A group of the camp's teachers, caregivers and domestic staff.
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The Polish Children's Camp hospital was a very important place as the children's health needed attention from their years in exile. Thanks to the staff's devoted care, the children soon recovered.
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Polish staff relax in the camp's dining room. (l-r)
Polish domestic staff members. (l-r)
Some of the New Zealand personnel, 1947.
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Inside the camp's shoe-repair shop. (l-r)
Camp Commandant
The camp's ever-smiling hygienist
1947. The New Zealand teaching staff at the Polish Children's Camp who gave the children their first formal introduction to the English language, not to mention the fair game of rugby. (l-r)
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The Polish girls farewelling the popular Polish priest Father
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Farewelling
The New Zealand Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) staff at the Polish Children's Camp, 1945. The sign reads "wstęp wzbroniony" (no admittance). Canteen lady Belle Alexander is second from left
The Polish Children's Camp's Ambulance with some of the New Zealand soldiers who looked after the vehicle fleet
The New Zealand soldiers next to the camp's vehicle fleet. One of the Polish children,
Noel Jackson, a much-loved soldier, used his camera to record the life of the camp. It is thanks to him that many of the former children have a record of their years there
The New Zealand army staff who initially ran the Polish Children's Camp until most of the day-to-day functions were taken over by the Polish staff
The Rombel family, 3 May 1946. (l-r) Piotr,
The Nawalaniec family. (l-r)
Back: (l-r)
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The Szczapa sisters during fruitpicking season in Motueka, 1949. (l-r)
The Kotlicki family in one of the camp's staff huts.
(l-r)
Listener
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The Manterys family, 1945. (l-r)
The Dajnowski family. (l-r)
The Skiba family. (l-r)
The Skwarko family. (l-r)
The Kornobis sisters, 1946. (l-r)
A group of first-generation Polish New Zealanders with some of the former children refugees dressed in Polish national costumes at Pahiatua's centenary parade in 1981.
Standing: (l-r)
Sitting: (l-r)
The first-generation Polish Youth Club in its heyday at a camp in Akatarawa, Upper Hutt, September 1980
The Polish dancing group Lublin. The group consists of first-generation Polish New Zealanders who performed at various Polish cultural events and to the general public.
They are pictured here after a performance in Pahiatua at the 50th anniversary reunion of the Polish children's arrival in New Zealand
Two weeks' holiday (from 17 to 31 August 1945) was arranged for all the children from the Polish Children's Camp to various parts of the country for a taste of life in New Zealand. This group of 225 children visited Wanganui, where they received a very warm welcome from the local community. Each child was given a commemorative certificate of their visit
The Waione boat excursion on the Wanganui River during the children's holiday in August 1945. This was one of the many activities organised for them by the city
A remembrance certificate in three languages (from top: Maori, English, Polish) was presented to each Polish child who holidayed in Wanganui in August 1945
"Successful and happy celebrations of the 50th anniversary of arriving in New Zealand in 1944, from the former 'Isfahanians' around the world, signed Jadwiga Lewicka-Howells, President, the Association of the Former Polish Students in Polish Schools in Isfahan and Lebanon, London, October 1994"
This memorial statue was unveiled on 22 February 1975 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Polish Children's arrival in New Zealand. It stands in the rest area next to the camp's old entrance on SH2, some 2km south of Pahiatua
The plaque on the plinth of the memorial statue (see left photo)
This memorial shield was affixed to Pahiatua Town Hall in 1969 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the arrival of the Polish children in New Zealand
A statue of New Zealand's wartime Prime Minister
This plaque was unveiled on 25 October 2004 in Frank Kitts Park, Wellington, as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations
The original St Patrick's College, Buckle Street, Wellington. It was subsequently demolished to make room for the motorway, which was still unbuilt half a century later. Some 30 Polish boys attended this college at one time. Note the Carillon tower in the left background
The Polish House (Dom Polski) in Newtown, Wellington. Converted from a bakery in 1956 by voluntary labour, it is a cultural centre and focal point for the Wellington region's Polish community
A march to Wellington's Cenotaph to support Poland's Solidarity (Solidarność) movement and protest against the Soviet occupation of Poland, 9 February 1981. Note the railway station in the background and the former Government Buildings on the right. Leading the march are (l-r)
The Polish House in McDonald Street, Sandringham, Auckland
On 22 February 1975, a commemorative monolith erected at the entrance to the former Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua was unveiled. Because Iran gave shelter to Polish refugees from 1942 to 1945, a visiting Iranian TV crew filmed the unveiling for its viewers. Note the film crew on top of the bus
Cutting the cake at the 40th anniversary of the Polish children's arrival in New Zealand. (l-r)
MP
Reunion Committee of the 60th Anniversity of the Arrival of Polish Children in New Zealand.
Standing (l-r)
Sitting (l-r)
The 60th anniversary group photo in St Patrick's College, Silverstream, 24 October 2004
Helena Wypych (Chwieduk)
We used to call the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua "the little country of our own". I was very happy there. The well-organised daily routine made me feel safe and secure, and I made friendships which last to this day. In 1946, the Polish high school at the camp was closed and our group had to leave the camp. Some of us were selected to continue our studies in New Zealand Catholic secondary schools, while others were sent to work. I was assigned to go to Sacred Heart Convent in Hamilton.
On 16 September 1946, at 2am, five of us Polish girls arrived at Frankton Railway Station. There was some misunderstanding and no one came to meet us, so we sat on the bench and waited. When the caretaker arrived, we tried to tell him in our broken English that someone was supposed to meet us. He must have understood us because he telephoned the convent and the nuns came without delay.
The next day we were separated. Three girls stayed in the convent as boarders, and another girl and I were boarded out to New Zealand families. A young man, Frank Mayer, came to collect me. He picked up my suitcase and escorted me to his car. On the way he talked to me but I did not understand him. I was scared and so very lonely. The place we were going to was about 15km out of Hamilton. On the way, we passed a dairy milk factory at Matangi, then turned towards Mr and Mrs Mayer's farm (they were Swiss people).
The house was old and there were lots of cows around it. Nobody came out to greet us and there was no one home. Some time later, a young girl, Elein, came home from school and started to prepare a meal. The rest of the family arrived later from their work on the farm. We sat round the table to eat. I remember fat grilled chops, but I was so tense that I could not swallow the food and a stream of tears came down my cheeks. I left the table and went to my room.
In the evening, I was told that we were going somewhere, but I did not understand. We went to a hospital to visit their sick mother. She was a kind, lovely lady. She stretched her arms towards me and hugged me. After a few days, Mrs Mayer came home. She took me to town and bought me my school uniform.
Mrs Mayer was good to me and treated me as her own daughter. Unfortunately, this made her daughter jealous and she did some very unkind things to me.
Weeks went by. Slowly, I got used to life on the farm. I loved the early spring mornings. The beautiful scenery and fresh air made me feel so good. I often did some weeding in the flower beds before going to school and I can still see these rows of different coloured poppies, which at the time were my best friends. I longed for the Christmas holidays so that I could go back to the camp. The long summer holidays spent there were times to remember. I was with my friends again, who like myself came back from schools across the country. Everybody was wearing different uniforms, looking happy and we had so much to talk about.
After the Christmas holidays, I was sent to St Dominic's College in Dunedin as a boarder where I immediately felt at home. The building was old, but kept in good condition and very clean. The staircase, which led up to the second floor, was always well polished.
Every day at the sound of a bell we walked down in pairs for meals, singing hymns. One that I really liked was Hail Queen of Heaven, which still echoes in my ears. The discipline was very strict – silence was kept at all times. We were told never to use the words "no, Sister" even if you were not guilty – you always said "yes, Sister". When a nun walked behind you, you had to stop, bow and wait until she passed. At the time it was tough, but the convent education gave me moral values and we were taught good manners. I believe that I am a better person for it.
I remember the Saturday afternoon walks through the city wearing our complete uniforms – hats, gloves, well-polished shoes, socks up and on our best behaviour. On our return, we were given a one-hour lecture on general behaviour and table manners. Special periods were assigned for homework, cleaning, handwork, reading, music, sports and recreation. Life was full of activities. There were eight Polish girls with me at St Dominic's and that made all the difference.
In 1948, I was told that my father, stepmother and baby half-brother had arrived in New Zealand. From that time on, my father was responsible for me and had to pay for my education. But he had no money and I had to leave school. For me, that was a disaster for the rest of my life. I had not seen my father for about six years. He and my elder sisters Irena and Janina had joined the Polish army when it was being formed in Guzar, Uzbekistan. He served under the command of General Anders in Iraq and in the Italian campaign. My mother had died in Uzbekistan. After the war, my father married again.
My father had no home where I could live, so I boarded at the Polish Girls' Hostel in Lyall Bay, Wellington. Suddenly, I found myself on my own,
The first job I had was at the Karitane Factory in Melrose. I used to walk to work and back, up the steep hill. The job was very hard. I had to keep up with the machine, which was pushing the tins out with great speed and I had to stack them at the same time. By the end of the day I could hardly walk back to the hostel. I survived there for two months. My second job was at the Government Printing Office opposite Wellington Railway Station. I liked it there and my work was interesting. After a short while, I was promoted and put in charge of posting the Police Gazette. I was proud of myself and happy.
I was not prepared for the next upheaval. The Pahiatua camp was being closed and a group of girls, all orphans, were coming to live in the hostel. There were not enough beds. I had a father, so I was asked to move in with him in Wallaceville, Upper Hutt.
Army service in World War I, then deportation to the USSR, then army service again in World War II and finally shattered hopes of returning home to Poland took its toll on my father. He seemed to be angry all the time. Also, I could not communicate with my stepmother because she only spoke Italian. I did my best to learn Italian and we coped, but she did not like me talking to my father in Polish.
Soon after, my brother Józef (Ziutek) came to live with us and we became very close. He was still attending college and bringing home very good results. How he managed that I do not know, because he never had time for homework. My father made him work hard around the place, sometimes until very late
The house my father lived in was badly in need of repair. Each night after work he worked on it until late at night. The banging was terrible and the baby could not sleep. One night, I asked my father to stop the banging and let the poor baby sleep. He just glared at me and promised me a thrashing the next day. I was terrified and that night decided to run away. I asked Ziutek to help me. We packed my belongings and the next day I took my suitcase to work with me. After work I went back to the Polish Girls' Hostel to seek shelter. I was accepted but for a very short time. My father was very angry with me and could not forgive me for a long time.
After a short time my brother also left home. He boarded with a New Zealand family, Pat and Nancy Stanaway in Kilbirnie, and attended St Patrick's College in Wellington. However, when he became 16 he had to leave school and found a job as a labourer on the Wellington waterfront.
The time came for me to leave the hostel again. A lady from work offered me a room in her home. Then I shifted into a boarding house in Kensington Street off Abel Smith Street and shared a room with my friend. For the first time, we had to learn to cook for ourselves, which most of the time was a disaster. Many times we ended up buying fish and chips, but we did not care what we ate – we were young, free and happy.
My future husband, Konstanty Wypych, told me that he spotted me for the first time when I was singing with the Polish choir at the Polish national day celebrations. After several weeks, we met at a 21st birthday party. He sat next to me throughout the evening, and took me and my friend home. He scribbled down my telephone number and rang me the very next day asking for a date.
Our first date was on Sunday evening at St Mary of the Angels church in Boulcott Street. I used to go there every Sunday evening to attend the Benediction. On the way there I thought to myself "he won't come", but he did. He was there waiting for me at the foot of the steps, which later led us to the altar on 10 April 1950. From the first moment there was a feeling of belonging to one another. On the day we got engaged, we celebrated with a fish and chips meal. We were married in the same church where we had our first date.
Konstanty had a similar background to mine. His family experienced deportation to the Soviet Union. He, his father and his three brothers joined the Polish army, which was being formed in Russia from the former Polish prisoners and deportees. He fought at the battle of Monte Cassino, where he
God gave us five wonderful children (Stanislaw, Jan, Zofia (RIP), Stefania, Barbara) and nine lovely grandchildren (Haydn, Oliver, Adela, Jessica, Thomas, Spencer, Paige, Stefan, Billie). My dearly loved husband, loving father and grandfather passed away on 12 June 1993
Maria Wypych (Węgrzyn)
While in Isfahan, Iran, every effort was made to help the children catch up with their education which was interrupted by World War II. However, I was in my late teens and considered too old to continue going to school. So along with 16 other girls, I was given an opportunity to learn traditional Persian carpet weaving. An Iranian was employed to teach us. He was very demanding but an excellent teacher. If a mistake was made, he was the only one capable of correcting it. No wonder he hated mistakes.
Sometimes the situation was nerve wracking, like the time we had to make a rug to present to a visiting Polish official. We worked by lamplight well into the night. Black and navy colours were hardly distinguishable in the poor light. Mistakes were made and when our Iranian teacher arrived in the morning he was most displeased. Some of the rugs we made can be seen in the Sikorski Institute in London. One of them is on the front cover of the book Isfahan – City of Polish Children.
In August 1944, I was transferred to Home No 10 to work as a caregiver to the kindergarten-age boys. I may have been chosen because my youngest brother Bronislaw was there, but also at that time final preparations were being made for our journey to New Zealand. Stanislawa Lewandowska was appointed in charge and I as her helper for the journey.
We travelled by train to the Persian Gulf and boarded the British cargo ship Sontay. I was responsible for keeping the children fed and clean. I don't remember what sanitary facilities we had on the ship, but I do remember that I had to bring a bucket of water down to the ship's hold to give the children a wash at night. I was so busy that I did not have time to find out if my three younger sisters Józefa, Wladyslawa and Franciszka were on the boat with me.
We disembarked at Bombay, India, and boarded the troopship
It was a long journey and the children got used to their surroundings. The
At night, I was asked to sleep next to Zofia Matula who suffered from pain in her chest and back. She cried and groaned during the night. To this day, I can't understand why nothing was done to help her. When the ship tilted to one side (I believe it was a tactic to avoid the mines), the children would panic and start crying. It was not easy to calm them down.
We received a wonderful welcome in New Zealand. I remember the boys covered in ice cream and the screams on the train as it passed through Manawatu Gorge on the way to Pahiatua. Upon arrival at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, I carried three huge bundles wrapped in sheets of dirty washing to the laundry, and with the help of soap and a washing board I slogged away for two days. No matter how hard I tried, I found it impossible to wash out the rust from the metal buttons on the children's Sunday uniforms. During the journey, the children's clothing had been stored in damp conditions.
From the moment that we arrived at the camp, a new routine set in. I was reappointed to my job as a caregiver, Mrs Lewandowska was the house mother, Mrs Tietze was responsible for administration and Mrs Rubisz was appointed as the kindergarten teacher.
The preschoolers were assigned to one block, which typically had 56 beds. The block was partitioned in the middle by separate rooms for the caregivers. The girls slept on one side of the partition and the boys on the other. I had a room of my own but out of necessity slept in the boys' dormitory. On the whole, they were a healthy group of boys but many had chilled bladders and had to be taken to the toilet when they woke up at night. To this day, I am still haunted by the memory of children crying in their sleep.
It was very helpful to have a routine to stick to even though the job engulfed me. I would wake the children in the morning and lead them to the washroom, and some still needed help with dressing. During the winter months, the boys wore stockings with socks on top. The stockings were kept in place by rubber garters and it was quite a job in itself to keep track of all the garters. The boys then lined up in two rows for their morning prayers where we sang
Every three days, I had an extra duty supervising the older boys washing the dishes after 180 children had left the dinning room. Sometimes they would give me the slip and I finished the job myself. When it was done, the cook would inspect the dishes. If he found a greasy plate, the whole lot had to be
After lunch, the children had to rest for an hour. That was the time Mrs Lewandowska had a break and I supervised the boys. Some wanted to sleep but others would stay awake and continue to make noise, so it was an exhausting time for me to try and keep them quiet. In the evening there were always a few children who needed a bath or just a wash, and some had to be helped with getting into their pyjamas. In the corridor, all their shoes were waiting to be cleaned and polished.
It would appear that I wasn't entitled to a free day. But when the children were taken to the hall to watch a film, I stayed in my room and enjoyed a period of complete quiet doing some embroidering. I needed permission to go shopping in Pahiatua.
As the older boys reached primary-school age (which was seven, because the camp followed the Polish system), they became reassigned to a different caregiver. After one and a half years, all my children commenced proper schooling and there was no longer work for me at the camp. On 6 February 1946, two boys and six girls in their late teens (for me it was the year of my 1st birthday) were sent to Wellington to work. The boys
Some foods were still being rationed in New Zealand. At the hostel, we also were kept on rations. For breakfast, we were given two slices of bread and a very small portion of butter. For lunch, we could take two slices of bread with a filling, and for an evening meal we were served with a piece of meat and vegetables. We were always hungry. One of the girls could not adjust to her new life, cried all the time, got sick and was sent back to the camp. Eventually her father, who managed to settle in France after being demobbed from the Polish army, asked for her to be sent to him.
Some nights we worked until 8pm because we were also attending a course in pattern drafting. I was very interested and always enjoyed sewing, but I did not know enough English to grasp what I was being taught. However, dressmaking came to me naturally. All my life, I was considered a skilled dressmaker. I worked in the trade and also made clothes for myself and other people, including my children and grandchildren.
The Catholic Church took an active interest. Father Tottman organised
Monika Wodzicka, the daughter of the Polish Consul to New Zealand during World War II, organised us into a Polish club where we met on Sunday afternoons. Those that attended included
The board at the hostel was guaranteed for only six months. As other girls from the camp arrived, some of us had to look for other accommodation. For a short time I boarded with an older lady in Miramar, but both of us had to move when the airport was being built. I was learning fast to cope in my new environment.
At the hostel,
We had to work very hard to get ourselves established in a home and to educate our five children. Our children wanted a better life for themselves and they achieved it. Now I am watching my 20 grandchildren grow up.
Józef Zawada
In the early 1950s, the word was that you could earn big money scrubcutting on contract. So my friend and I went to Wellington Public Library and searched through the "scrubcutters wanted" columns in the newspapers.
We decided to answer one particular advertisement and went to the post office to make a toll call to Pio Pio. Two days later, we arrived by train at Te Kuiti, then by bus to Pio Pio – the last part of our journey in the amiable atmosphere of Fred Breadenbeck's mail bus. He dropped us off at Cliff Pethybridge's farm. Wow! This was really wild country. We had made it to the heartland of New Zealand.
"My name is Joe Zawada and this is Stan Manterys."
The names obviously baffled him.
"Where do you boys come from?"
"Oh, we are Pahiatua Poles, you know, from the Polish Children's Camp that was in Pahiatua in the late 1940s."
"Have you had any scrubcutting experience?"
"Yes, of course we have!"
"Have you got your slashers?"
"No."
We then got organised. The hills to be cleared of scrub were a fair way from the homestead, so we decided not to stay in the whare (house) but to live in on the job.
Cliff gave us a haystack cover, a horse cover, an old iron bed and two bales of straw. We made a tent using the haystack cover. I slept on the bed, my friend on the straw, wrapped in the horse cover. At night, the cattle gathered around our camp. Our kitchen consisted of a tripod made from sticks and billies suspended by wire. We used manuka for fuel. It was a lovely spot with a stream and small lake nearby.
We hired slashers, axes and sharpening stones from Cliff. He showed us around the block and said there were about 35 acres of scrub to be cut. We were absolutely "green", full of energy and enthusiasm, with hopes of big savings. We were going to be rich for Christmas and the New Year 1954.
Our working day began at 6am. At 8am, we had an hour off for breakfast, which usually consisted of a huge plate of porridge and condensed milk. We then worked until noon when we had the main meal of the day – meat and
We soon discovered that most of the manuka scrub was too thick for the slashers, so we had to use medium-weight axes. In the humid climate we were constantly sweating. Our soft hands were shortly covered with so many blisters that we ran out of Elastoplast. In some spots on our hands it was literally one blister over another.
The terrain, gently rolling country, presented unsuspecting problems. It was boggy, even on hillsides, with dense moss holding a lot of moisture. The fairly thin but tall manuka at the bottom of the gully became shorter but thicker as we cut up the hill. We worked with determination for several weeks but as Christmas approached we realised we would not finish, no matter how hard we worked. We told Cliff that we would not be returning after Christmas. He estimated, and was very surprised, that we had managed to cut 13 acres. At a contract price of £6 10s per acre, we received a cheque for £84 10s.
The hardest-earned money of my life was at Pio Pio.
Jadwiga Cooper (Jarka)
After the dryness of Central Asia and Iran, the rolling pastures around Pahiatua seemed to call us to enjoy their freshness and beauty. One day we went to a farmhouse and asked the owner for permission to play on his property. As my command of English consisted of only a few words, I had to gesture with my hands to make him understand that we would like to go over there and play. He nodding and said yes. Usually I was timid, but I found a new freedom when we ran, sang and rolled down the gentle slope.
Regina Czyżowicz (Kupis)
When we were settling into the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, many people came to visit. Some of them were Polish immigrants or descendants of immigrants from the late 19th Century. I met an elderly man whose Polish was as poor as my command of English, but we had a pleasant conversation. I admired the man, who tried to extract from his memory long-forgotten words of his forefathers.
Katarzyna Fahey (Piesocka)
I left the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua in 1947. Apart from some English, I had learned sewing there which benefited me later when making clothing for myself and my daughter. I moved to Masterton as a waitress in the Midland Hotel. In Dannevirke, I became a women's clothing machinist and met my future husband Eric Fahey, who was a plasterer/bricklayer. We had a happy marriage lasting 45 years before he passed away.
We settled in Palmerston North, raised a daughter and have four grandchildren. Because I married a Kiwi and there were few Poles about, I seldom spoke Polish but never lost the accent. I enjoyed the weekends when I could converse in Polish with my sister and two brothers. I taught my daughter Susan a few words and sentences, which she put to good use on her visit to my brother in Poland. Though I never returned to Poland and accepted New Zealand as my country, I will never forget my homeland. I felt very proud when my granddaughter wrote my biography as part of an assignment at high school. This is now a valued heritage document in the family.
Marceli Jamrozy
My father, who was an officer in the Polish army, was murdered in the Katyn massacre in 1940. Five of my family died of starvation and disease in Siberian forced-labour camps, and my sister didn't survive our evacuation to Iran. My elder brother joined the Polish army and I was left alone to reach New Zealand. I am bitter that our country was sold to Soviet Russia by our allies into half a century of bondage under communism.
After leaving school, I was pressured to work on a farm, which I did not want to do, and then I chose a trade certificate in carpentry and joinery. I have earthquake construction experience, and worked as an electrician at the control panels for a power station and as a site supervisor for Fletcher Housing. After moving to Australia, I obtained a builder's licence and became self employed.
Teresa Jenner (Dmochowska)
I don't remember Poland because I was born in 1941 during my mother's deportation to the forced-labour camps in Siberia. I was only four years old upon my arrival in New Zealand. My mother found a long-term job as a housekeeper with Ben Vogel, in what is now Vogel House in Upper Hutt.
It was a lonely time for us and I missed all my Polish friends from the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. We declined a transfer to Picton because my mother didn't want to be isolated from the Polish community. I was fortunate to have led an ordinary life – I got married, saved, bought a house and we raised two children who can speak both English and Polish.
Danuta and Wiesław Kaliński
Our mother's (
Crocheting, painting on wood and glass, and making paper cut-outs helped to develop in the children a manual dexterity and creativity which, if they had lived under normal conditions, they would have learned at home. Our mother also contributed to the cultural life of the camp by producing decorations and stage props for productions. We returned with her to Poland in 1948.
Marian (Marek) Kazimierzak
I was in the first wave of older boys to be sent from the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua to work in Wellington, and was given board by a nice New Zealand family and a poorly paid job. On Sundays, I went to Mass at 7am with the family, and then joined my friends for the Polish Mass and drifted on to the Polish Boys' Hostel in Island Bay for a midday meal. During that time, most of my friends had well-paying jobs on the wharf or at the freezing works, and some even bought motorbikes.
I desperately wanted a motorbike of my own, so I limited my spending to paying board and saved the rest. To avoid spending my money, I stayed at home and amused myself with knitting scarves and making cords with a cotton spool. Then came the day when I had £300 in my post office savings account. Armed with this grand sum, I went to Tommy Oats, a motorbike shop in one of the small alleys off Manners Street, and came out with a brand new AJS motorbike.
The problem was getting it home. Now that I'm over 70 years old, I can admit that I walked it home most of the way. And I can also admit that I bluffed my way through getting my learner's licence. When asked a question I knew nothing about, I would answer with something I was very familiar with.
On Sunday afternoons, we would ride out in a band. It was as though we were going into battle when we got on our bikes and rode down the old Western Hutt Road at full speed, avoiding potholes. Our destination was a milkbar in Lower Hutt. We would roar up to the front, get off and walk in fully aware that all eyes were on us.
Czesława Krystman (Szach)
I was simply terrified when I was sent for my first two weeks' holiday to some strange place called Pungarehu in Taranaki. I didn't want to go but I had no option. And my English was nil. I waited at the station for a long time with my nametag pinned to my dress, and strange women passing by looking at my card and moving on. "Dear God," I prayed, "let someone come soon" because I was close to tears. At last, a woman stopped, studied my card and said "come".
The next morning I was asked what I wanted for breakfast – porridge or an egg? As the word "egg" was much easier to pronounce, I said "egg". Well, I learnt my first word of English. The following day the neighbours came over
On the day of my departure, I said to my host Mrs D: "Thank you for a lovely holiday." I had learned this by heart because we were told to say this by our teacher at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. My host visibly paled and I could see that she was shocked. I presume she thought I could speak English and had made a fool of her by pretending all along not to understand. I didn't even get a hug and she never invited me over again. Sometimes I wonder what was said about me over those endless cups of tea with her friends and neighbours.
Lech Lubas
At the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua we made friends, shared stories, laughed, sang, danced, got into mischief and maintained our traditions. Later, I lived with the Conroy family in Karori, Wellington, for one year while attending St Patrick's College in Wellington. They treated me like one of their own and taught me what I needed to know in this country.
I thought my sister Helena and I were the only ones from our family that had survived World War II, but we later received the incredible news from the Red Cross that our mother and brother were both alive, and that we had a new little sister who had been born when we were taken to the forced-labour camps in Siberia. Though we kept in touch, our plans to return to Poland got bogged down in the daily cares. Helena and I both married and raised our respective families, my mother died, and it was 1996 before I travelled to Poland and was reunited with my brother and a sister whom I had never met before.
Izabela Melvin (Jankiewicz)
While living at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, my father
Janina Ościłowska (Łabędź)
We arrived in New Zealand without parents. Our father and our brother Zdzisław Tkacz, who were in the army, joined us here after World War II. Our friends in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua were envious of those who had parents.
But life wasn't easy when we were setting up house together. Daunted by the responsibility of looking after three daughters, my father remarried to try and give us some family life. To help with finances, we took on boarders. When our stepmother had a stroke after just a few years, the responsibility for looking after the house and boarders fell on myself and my sisters Helena and Regina. My brother Zdzisław, who helped look after us when we were in Russia after our dad left to join the army, now helped with the various expenses and helped us to survive here.
We bought a house in Hanson Street, Newtown, Wellington, which became a focal point of our extended family life where friends from the camp would regularly meet for shared meals and social evenings. The neighbourhood children joined our children to play in the backyard and have remained friends ever since.
We all married Poles from the camp. My sister
Zofia Przerwa-Tetmajer (Łuszczewska)
At the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, all the children except me seemed to be excited and happy. But I was convinced that I was ugly, shy, clumsy and a terrible coward. So I was a victim of bullies in the camp's school. One day I ran crying to the grotto, and prayed to the Virgin Mary about my fate and asked for help. This stopped me crying, and gave me some peace and strength.
On my way back I popped into the army canteen where, behind a high counter, stood a tall stocky man with a round face. On my next visit, he smiled and said: "Hello, big blue eyes." Then he pointed to himself and said: "Bill." When he pointed to me, I said: "Zosia." Later, our English teacher Miss Eising showed us a picture of London's Big Ben. After school I ran to the canteen
Elżbieta Sawicka (Bednarska)
The three years spent at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua will stay with me until the end of my days. I remember it as though it were yesterday – the excitement of taking part in the camp's activities, such as Scouting, sport, being part of a Polish dancing group, Irish and Scottish dancing, and even learning to play the violin. Another happy memory is drinking from a bottle of creamy milk with a straw during playtime. I still remember the names of the New Zealand people with whom I spent my holidays. My mother, two sisters, brother and I returned to Poland in 1947.
Leon Sondej
One day in 1946 I was told that I was to leave the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua and go to work in Wellington. Tailoring was chosen for me and I was good at it. But as a child in Poland I was used to open spaces, rivers and forests, and the sight of my forester father's gun. I thank the person who introduced me to a tramping club and the New Zealand bush.
I joined the Wellington Defence Rifle Club where I learnt the basics of accurate shooting. Soon I was spending all my weekends tramping and hunting, never missing a Christmas holiday tramp in the Southern Alps. In those days it was easy to get a job, but when I applied to the Department of Internal Affairs for a deer-culler's job there were 300 names on the waiting list. The idea that you could go hunting and be paid was very attractive, so I decided to take on deer culling for a few months' holiday.
I was interviewed by Ron Fraser, the conservator of forests, Wild Life Branch for the Department of the Internal Affairs, in his offices in Wellington. He asked for my qualifications, looked me over and said: "This is man's country. If you can handle it and survive in it, OK. If not, out you go down the bloody road."
A deer culler puts his life in danger every day. We worked in very rough terrain and there was always a possibility of injury from slipping or falling rocks, drowning or becoming isolated for a very long time. I hunted deer for four years. I always felt perfectly at home in the bush and never felt lost. In the Southern Alps, I understood what was around me, knew every sound and felt very safe. They were the happiest years of my life.
Wanda Watoła (Martul)
My most memorable years were spent in Porewa between 1958 and 1959 in a small railway settlement near Marton in the Rangitikei district, where my husband had a two-year contract with New Zealand Railways.
The wages were low. We had no electricity in the house and I cooked on an enamel Shacklock coal range, which I still consider better for cooking and baking, and it heated the house well. All the other amenities, including a concrete washtub with a manual wringer and toilet (which was hygienic and odour free), were in separate buildings outside. The washing line was a wire between two trees and our water came from a 300-gallon corrugated-iron tank on the roof.
The nearest shop was some 12km away in Marton. I phoned my grocery order weekly for bread, butter, sugar salt and soap – and very little else. Think of what we can buy in supermarkets these days! My meat order was delivered by train and dropped off at the station. Every couple of weeks, I travelled by train with my two little children to Marton to pay the bills. With the few shillings left over, I would buy them toys.
We had no fridge, takeaways, vacuum cleaner, washing machine, TV, phone or car. We learned to grow a vegetable garden, had egg-laying hens and bought milk directly from a neighbourhood dairy farmer's milking shed. The weekends were dedicated to the family, with picnics by the Rangitikei River. We were poor but happy in that place, and had no time nor the need to feel sorry for ourselves. They were good times. But what I found most hurtful was that we had absolutely no relatives, father, mother, granddad, grandmother, brothers or sisters, or fellow Poles to speak to.
Ola Wołk (Sajewicz)
Stanley Jemioło, a descendant of Polish immigrants to the US, was a Polishspeaking sailor on the
Stanley's tour of duty kept him at sea for another two years, by which time his elderly mother back home in Massachusetts had simply forgotten about the letter. In the process of destroying old books after her death, a neatly wrapped envelope fell out of an old Bible with an unopened letter written by Stanisław Wołk 35 years earlier. In the intervening years, Stanley had searched
So 35 years later, in possession of an address from the old letter, Stanley wrote to the mayor of Pahiatua seeking any trace of the two boys. The mayor knew another of the former refugees, Bronisław Wêgrzyn, and so contact was made and the original letter was answered at last.
There was joy and surprise on both sides. Stanley came with his wife to New Zealand on his birthday where he was welcomed by the boys' families in Auckland and Wellington, and other former Polish children refugees. A birthday cake turned up, gifts were presented and a resounding
Stefania Zawada (Sondej)
Maria Dolhun sat next to me in class at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. One day a question was fired at her. She stood up slowly and I watched her face stiffen, and not a word came out of her. With my whole being I felt what she felt, because I was no stranger to that experience. She listened in silence to a harsh comment made by the teacher and sat down. From that day, Maria became a friend.
She asked to be put into employment and a few weeks later left our Standard 3 class to work in the camp's kitchen, mainly peeling potatoes and sneaking out extra bread to the boys when asked. When the camp was closed, Maria went to work at the presbytery of St Anne's Church in Newtown, Wellington, and also worked at a tobacco factory and Wellington Zoo. She has dedicated her spare moments to caring for the Polish chaplains, visiting the sick and helping people in the community. She married, and has children and grandchildren. Her Pahiatua friends also became her family. That's what camp friendship is all about.
For her dedicated hard work in the Polish community, Maria was decorated with the
The next generations
Paul Coates son of Irena Coates (Ogonowska)
I am the son of a Polish refugee mother and an Anglo-Saxon New Zealand father. So it is indeed fitting that, being the son of a refugee, I find myself working as an immigration and refugee lawyer to help other refugees and immigrants settle into New Zealand.
My earliest childhood memories are of my mother preparing delicious hot Polish meals and Kiwi roasts on Sundays, and caring for us while my father was away at work. She was the mainstay of the family. She nurtured us, taught us decency and compassion for others, and told us stories about Poland, her motherland. Hearing about peacetime Poland filled me with excitement but her stories of World War II shocked me. I wondered how she had managed to cope after losing her family in such tragic circumstances.
Our mother is a special person in many ways. She was different from the mothers of the other boys at school and I liked her ways much more than those of my friends. Whenever we were ill or hurt, she spoiled us and sometimes let us miss school longer than we really needed to. You could feel her warmth in the home and I liked to listen to her speaking Polish on the telephone.
I found that I understood other races more easily. I could easily relate to boys of Dutch descent and couldn't comprehend the parochial attitude of some of my contemporaries. Even in the face of adversity, our mother always insisted on tolerance, a virtue that I will always cherish.
I sometimes get asked whether I am Russian. My appearance suggests I have Eastern European blood and I am proud to tell people that I am half Polish. I have met a few other half-Polish New Zealanders over the years and found plenty to talk about. But not knowing Polish, I always felt like I didn't really belong to the Polish community. Neither do I feel I am a true Kiwi, whatever that is.
It must have been difficult for my mother to raise us with a knowledge and understanding of the Polish culture and language. My father did not speak Polish for a start. Our mother showed us pictures of Poland but I could not relate to Poland and so my "Polishness" became something inherent but non-interactive.
When I began socialising with members of the opposite sex, I found Kiwi girls the most difficult to get along with. There was nothing wrong with them but they spoke, acted and behaved differently to the way my mother would.
Many New Zealanders are not at all familiar with Poland and being half Polish sometimes had an isolating effect on me. I can recall blank looks from many people when the subject of Poland came up. Often they did not want to know about Poland and when it came to bonding with other Kiwis, I found I had less in common with them because of who I am.
Piotr Gawor grandson of Krystyna Łącka (Manterys)
Though I speak with as much of a Kiwi accent as any other New Zealander, I have always been identified as "the Polish guy". I mean, with a name like Piotr Gawor, what else could one expect? That I was born in Wellington Women's Hospital made not a jot of difference. So how has being a second-generation Pole in New Zealand affected my life?
I have found that my Polish heritage is a strength rather than a weakness. It could be termed a point of differentiation (though that wasn't my strong point in calculus). The fact that I spoke two languages by the time I went to school was something that a lot of my classmates had yet to master.
However, being Polish wasn't always plain sailing. Not only can your teachers not pronounce your name correctly (I have had variations on Piot, Pitter and Poitre), neither can your friends (Piot is the accepted variation in this case). I must say that it is definitely a relief to come home and finally have your name pronounced properly.
History lessons were also a major subject of contention. In particular was the matter of Poland being invaded or the fact that it was still in the horse age when Germany came along with tanks. Now this is not to say that I did not come back with clever retorts, such as Poland was one of the largest countries in Europe before your little empire was even in its infancy or that Poland had the first constitution in Europe. But this mattered little to my fellows who just laughed-up Poland's sad story of the past 100 or so years. It is a pity that the New Zealand curriculum does not concentrate more on world history and chooses to focus solely on the history of England (but that is another topic for another day).
Though I seem to fit suitably into the second-generation category, I must confess that I find myself between two categories and could be described as one-and-a-half generation Polish. My maternal grandmother came to New Zealand as a refugee with the Polish children in 1944 and my maternal grandfather Piotr Łącki came to New Zealand from a German prisoner-of-war camp. Like many others, he didn't wish to return to a Poland controlled by a totalitarian regime. As a displaced person, he was accepted by the New Zealand Government and made a new life for himself here. My father made the same decision 30 years later when he chose to leave Poland.
At home, Polish and English can be exchanged without a problem. But this
I would like to take this opportunity to talk about Polish food (and I hope people can forgo the silly comments about the Polish sausage). Polish food to me is simply a joy with its variety of flavours and textures, such as
Having said all this in favour of Poland and being Polish, I can't escape the fact that I strongly identify myself as a Kiwi. This provides positive opportunities (when Poland and New Zealand play at any sport I can't lose) as well as negative (I have two teams that people can laugh at when they lose horribly). I believe that through my life I have been able to manage the two cultures in such a way that each makes up an equally important part of my life.
It must be said that to be Polish in New Zealand is not easy, just as it could also be said that any foreigner has a hard time in this country. So it is not exclusively a Polish problem. But being Polish has exposed me to riches that have and will continue to affect my life in a positive way. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Barbara Hanson daughter of Dioniza Choroś (Gradzik)
An African proverb popularised by Hilary Clinton states: "It takes a village to raise a child", meaning that it is the input of the whole community rather than just the family that shapes a child. In my case, I believe that I was raised by two villages – the Anglo-Saxon and Polish communities.
My mother was one of the Polish children who was fortunate enough to survive the horrors of Siberia and come to New Zealand with the 733 orphans at the invitation of the New Zealand Government. The tragic loss of both parents, starvation and deprivations endured in the years in Siberia, and the interrupted education played a major role in shaping her approach to life, and in the way she and my father raised their children.
If people make a conscious decision to emigrate, they may feel less inclined to retain their culture and may even make a conscious decision to abandon it during the process of becoming citizens of their new homes. In the case of the Polish orphans, they had no choice in leaving Poland and I believe that this accounts, at least in part, for their determination to retain their Polish culture in New Zealand.
My brother Chris and I were born in Australia, where my mother met my father after moving there not too long after completing her nursing training in Wellington. In Brisbane, where we lived until I was 10 years old, and in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, where we moved to in 1966 to be closer to my mum's family, the Polish village had a profound input and influence on me. I grew up speaking Polish as my first language, and apparently my mum would sit us down in front of the TV before we went to school to improve our English.
As my parents' friends were almost exclusively Polish, weekends were spent socialising with other Poles. We'd also go to Polish Mass, Polish Guides and Scouts on Friday nights in Brisbane, and later Polish School on Saturdays in Petone, New Zealand. There were also the formal and informal functions at the Dom Polski (Polish House in Newtown, Wellington). This was one side of my life and the other was attending the local Catholic school. The two sides were completely separate – until my mum spoke to me in Polish in front of my schoolmates.
Children don't like to be different and in the 1960s it was not considered "cool" to be from a different cultural background. There was no mention of "a
I remember mum waiting with us at the bus stop in the mornings and my intense embarrassment when she spoke to me in Polish. I would either try to stand out of earshot of my friends and grunt a response or answer in English, to which mum's reaction was: "
When we moved to New Zealand in 1966, I was surprised to learn that there were other Polish children in my school. In fact, there were three in my class! "You're Polish? Me too." There was a certain safety in numbers and for the first time the likes of
I enjoyed the Polish School classes in Petone, partly because I was with other kids so there was an element of fun. But there was also a downside. It meant I couldn't play any Saturday afternoon sport and that was a reason for feeling some resentment towards my Polish culture. My sister Danusia was born in the late 1960s and here was another example of having to explain: "No, her name isn't Dana, Diane or Denise. It is a Polish name with no English equivalent." But this was a minor detail as I was ecstatic to have a sister and no longer be the baby of the clan.
During my teen years, I learnt Polish dancing under the tutelage of Mr Babczyszyn. He was a hard taskmaster and I was certainly not a "natural", but I loved it. An early memory is watching the
So when the opportunity arose to join the dance group I jumped at the chance. We regularly danced at functions in the Dom Polski and, in a sign of the changing times and growing awareness of other cultures in New Zealand, at a few events around the Wellington region. A few years later when no one else would take on the task of teaching the dances, I agreed to teach until someone else could be found. I took it on for about 18 months, though with serious reservations. Even though I could always feel the rhythm inside me and loved the music of the polonez, mazur and krakowiak, my feet were always happier on a sports field. It's only now that I look back at that time
My mum and dad always hoped that I would marry a Polish boy, but that didn't happen. The ones I met in Wellington I got to know so well that it would have been like marrying a brother! My husband John has been not only accepting of the Polish side of me, but wonderfully supportive of it. Customs such as sharing
But the acceptance of different customs has not all been one way. Kiwi dishes now also feature at any family gathering and when carols are sung at home, English ones are included. These are just a couple of examples, but are indicative of the accommodation and acceptance of the two cultures that has occurred not only in our family but also in the two communities.
I am proud of my Polish heritage. But do our four children feel they have any connection to it? To different degrees, I would say undoubtedly. Our youngest, Jennifer, still attends Polish School, went to PolArt (a festival of Polish performing and visual arts) in Sydney in 2003 with the Orlęta (Little Eagles) dance group, and hopes to attend a summer school at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków when she finishes college.
While Anna, Stephanie and Krystina don't have the same agenda, all have
A group of second-generation children during the Polish national day celebrations, 3 May 2003, in the Polish House, Wellington.
Back: (l-r) Front: (l-r)
They make time for
Over the years they have questioned their
The Polish village has had a profound influence on me, just as the New Zealand village has. Both have shaped me into the person I am today. The importance of a good education was stressed in my home and at school, and being able to speak another language never hindered my progress. Now, a daughter of a refugee, I teach English to refugees from various war-torn parts of the world. A circle completed.
However, neither village is the same today as it was during my formative years. New Zealand has changed a lot since the arrival of its first refugees in 1944. There is not only a greater acceptance of different cultural backgrounds, but also a celebration of those differences.
The Polish community here has changed a great deal also. There has been a large degree of assimilation. So, while my children's generation may find it easier to wear their Polish hat in New Zealand, that hat is generally no longer as big. It will be interesting to see what influence the Polish village has on my future grandchildren.
Elizabeth Jarka daughter of Jan Jarka
Growing up, I was always aware that my father was Polish. He always spoke Polish to his friends on the telephone and my friends always told me that he had a strong accent.
I remember spending quite a lot of time at the Polish House in Auckland, especially during the construction of its new premises in the early 1970s and when my dad still did Polish dancing. Once I had entered my teens and became heavily involved in the youth group in our parish, I didn't have much to do with the Polish community in Auckland anymore.
Dad never spoke in detail about his ordeal during Word War II and his journey to New Zealand. When I read The Invited, by Krystyna Skwarko, I understood him a lot better, though I found, and still find, it hard to believe that these people went through such hell to reach their new home. I regret that dad never spoke Polish to me, my brother or sister when we were kids. I began learning the language a few years ago and must admit that I didn't get very far. Also, regrettably, not speaking the language prevented me from visiting my dad's relatives in Poland when I travelled there in 1993. But I sent them a postcard in English to let them know that I was in the country, hoping that one of the younger generation was learning English and could translate it for the family.
I had been led to believe that most young people were learning English but I did not come across many Poles who understood me. I met up with an English couple who were on holiday and they were kind enough to let me accompany them on sightseeing trips, including the salt mines at Wieliczka and white-water rafting on the Dunajec River.
One such trip was to the German concentration camp Auschwitz. I had heard stories, read books and seen TV programmes about the atrocities there, but nothing prepared me for the visit. Walking through the buildings was harrowing.
I still remember seeing the piles of thousands of artificial limbs, spectacles, suitcases, and brushes and combs, and thinking that they had belonged to fellow human beings who had been killed for no good reason. I had tears in my eyes when I walked through the crematorium and saw fresh flowers left in places, presumably by relatives of people who had been killed there. Before my visit, I had been told that the birds don't sing at Auschwitz. And it's true. An
I was driven through the countryside from the east of Germany down to Kraków and on to Zakopane. The towns and villages I went through were depressing. It looked as though the war had ended the previous week, instead of 49 years earlier. The buildings were very drab, in grey and khaki colours, and the streets were very rough with no footpaths.
But the countryside was lush and green, and the farmhouses were very well maintained. Many of them had holy shrines built into walls and their gardens were full of beautiful flowers. I was struck by the abundance of extremely tall sunflowers – that's probably when they came to represent something more to me than just pretty flowers.
When I was in Poland, I understood the cultural differences. I felt wealthy compared to most people I met and could afford to buy anything I wanted. I took advantage of the cheap amber that was available at the markets, but I knew that the people on the stalls were trying to make a living to feed and clothe their families. Things American were starting to appear and the young people were getting into its pop music. Everyone I met was very nice and helpful, even though there was a language barrier. The people in the tourist bureau in Zakopane went out of their way to ensure that I made the most of my time there and I was well looked after.
I hope to go back to Poland one day, preferably with my father, to meet my relatives and see how my distant family lives. My father knows that he is privileged to live in New Zealand, but he never forgot his homeland and, I am sure, would dearly love to share that with his "Kiwi" family.
Bela Jones daughter of Piotr and Alina Przychodźko (Piątkowska)
My earliest childhood memory of realising that our family's background was different to your average Kiwi household was overhearing a conversation my father had on the telephone. I heard him say: "I know what it's like to starve and I never want my children to go through that. And as long as I live, I will never let it happen." He never did, and that could explain the weight problem I have had all my life!
In my later years, he used to say: "Be careful, because of your background and foreign last name people might act differently towards you and you may not get the things in life that you want." I must admit, that did happen to my brother while he was in the New Zealand army and to my younger brother when he was at school. But to my sister and I it never happened, possibly because we were females.
In fact, it was an advantage as my name stood out in a crowd. It was a great talking point – "how do you pronounce your surname" or "I can't believe that you only have two vowels in your surname and they are both the same". People would ask me what nationality I was and I was proud to answer "Polish". In my older years, when they found out that my parents had been at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, they would say: "I remember those children coming to New Zealand. It must have been hard for them coming out to a strange land but they have turned out to be good people".
The only problem I had was in my college years. All my teachers, when calling out the class roll, would always call me "Smith" or "Jones". They never bothered to learn how to pronounce my surname properly, which being teachers, you would think that they would have taken the time to do. They always told me that I would marry a Smith or Jones one day anyway. That was one comment they got right.
Our family, like many other Polish children, was brought up with all the wonderful traditions and Polish cooking that our parents had been taught when they came out from Poland. Christmas Eve was wonderful – getting to open your Christmas presents before anyone else and Easter with all the coloured eggs was also a very special time, not to mention the mandatory trip to Polish Catholic church more than once during those times. Not that we complained in our older years, as it was a good time to catch up with the other youths to find out what was happening. The Polish race is a proud one, full
It wasn't until I was about 18 (1980) when I accompanied my father on a trip to Auckland, where he was taking part in a Christmas play they were putting on for the Auckland Polish Association, that I discovered there were a lot of young people around my age with the same background as me. On the way back, I discovered there was a Polish Youth Club open to all youth with a Polish background. I decided to join as it looked like fun. To this day when I look back, it was the best decision I ever made.
Because us first-generation Poles were coming into our late teens/early 20s and by then had many years of learning about our Polish heritage, I think we were at a stage in our lives where we wanted to be with people who shared the same kind of childhood. What we found was a common bond that links us together even to this day. I entered the Polish Youth Club just as it was beginning to grow and mature.
We had a proper structure of president, vice-president, treasurer, secretary and committee members. The committee began organising get-togethers for its members, such as video screenings, dances, soccer, volleyball and sports games, and parties. (For you worried parents at the time, we did not use drugs and only a minimum of alcohol was consumed. We did not need a lot of alcohol to have a good time, we just enjoyed each other's company.)
The highlight of each year was the Wellington and Auckland Anniversary weekends in January. As the Wellington Polish Youth Club was going from strength to strength, the same was also happening at the Auckland Polish Youth Club. So a challenge was set. On alternate years, we would travel to Auckland, and the following year the Auckland Youth Club would travel to Wellington. Everyone was billeted out with different Polish families. The entire weekend was spent playing sports, such as soccer, volleyball, netball and basketball. Yes, it was Auckland versus Wellington.
On the Sunday night, there was always a social in the Polish House, with the presentation of a cup to the youth club which had won the most sports games as one of the highlights. As us Wellingtonians seemed to have more multitalented sports people (and no we didn't cheat), you will find if you have a good look at the cup that it was won by Wellington more times than Auckland. In fact, I think it's still held by Wellington today (have a look in the Polish House).
These events were so looked forward to that the inevitable had to happen. Yes, some long-distance romances started between the clubs and even my younger sister had a romance with an Aucklander. Some of these even resulted in marriages.
At the same time, a Polish dance teacher, Jacek Śliwiński, happened to emigrate to New Zealand with his wife Ania. He set about forming the Lublin Polish dance group, which most of us became members of. And so came along another very valuable learning experience of our Polish heritage – Polish ethnic dance.
It was very social for us. We practised twice a week and performed on many occasions at Polish functions in Wellington, around the country and even in Australia at one of the Polish arts festivals called PolArt. Funds were raised for materials and our wonderful mothers spent many hours sewing costumes for the group. When these were worn, the effect was amazing to see a large group of young people performing traditional Polish dances in authentic Polish costumes. After a number of years, the dance group slowly diminished as people went their different ways.
Years later, we re-established the dance group to perform at the 50th anniversary reunion of the Polish Children's arrival in New Zealand, which was held in Pahiatua. This time we were older and certainly appreciated Mr Śliwiński more – he didn't get such a hard time from us!
I was lucky enough to be elected onto the Wellington Polish Youth Club committee, and spent two years as secretary and the third year as president. My aim as president was to have at least one different activity a month that
The Polish Youth Club membership card
It also happened to be a year where we decided to do a lot of extra things. We planned a ski trip, which meant a lot of extra fundraising activities. The fundraising started off with catering for the New Year's Eve ball in the Polish House. Some of the boys had formed a band and played for us that night. It's a pity they didn't carry on with the band as they were pretty good.
Each member that attended the ball that night was required to spend half an hour doing some kind of kitchen duty, with the roster being set by me. As a result, the band dedicated the song Whip It to me that night – I don't think I was that bad! The night was a success thanks to everyone's hard work, so our finances were off to a good start. We did other fundraising activities, such as bottle drives, fancy dress dances, normal dances, video nights and a casino night. As a result, the Youth Club members went on the skiing trip to the National Park and had a wonderful time with no one breaking any legs.
The hardworking committee of that year also decided to take on an extra organisational nightmare. We put a proposal to the Auckland Youth Club that the annual sporting event between Auckland and Wellington could be a two-weekend event, the first weekend being on Wellington Anniversary in Auckland and the second on Auckland Anniversary in Wellington. We did it and it was fantastic. It was a lot of hard work for both committees, but it was all well worth it – I think it turned out to be a draw.
On top of all this hard work, it was the year the Food for Poland Appeal was organised by the Polish Association to help raise funds for aid and relief to Poland. The Youth Club recognised that we also needed to contribute towards this appeal. So a 24-hour sportathon was organised and held in the grounds of Hutt Valley High School. We were sponsored by work and school associates, friends and family, and worked hard playing all different types of sports over that 24-hour period.
I remember the dinner provided by some of our mothers that night and I can still picture a Youth Club member (whom I had better not name) eating virtually a whole tray of my mother's baked potatoes. Our contribution was then proudly presented to the committee of the Food for Poland Appeal with their gratitude.
To top the year off, it was a milestone year for both the Wellington and Auckland Youth Clubs as it happened to be a year where a lot of us were turning 21. Therefore, 1st birthdays were being celebrated almost monthly, and this meant a lot of travelling between Auckland and Wellington for
Sadly, the youth clubs slowly diminished as we all grew older and moved overseas doing our big overseas-experience trips, and others got married and started families. Now many of those Youth Club members are in the Polish Associations and have become actively involved in their activities. Slowly, their children, the second-generation Poles, will learn from their parents all the Polish traditions and then also become proud of their heritage. Then hopefully they will revive the Polish Youth Club when they enter their teenage years and the cycle will begin again.
I, hopefully, am speaking on behalf of all the past Youth Club members of both Auckland and Wellington when I say that this stage in our lives was one of the most memorable and enjoyable times for us all, and one that we will never forget. We had everything anyone at that age could ask for.
Two Polish girls with their twin Kiwi husbands who were also part of the Lublin Polish dance group at the 50th anniversary celebrations in Pahiatua. (l-r)
Socialising, a place where we could all meet and base ourselves, people to talk to who understood each other because we all had the same background, and experiences and trips away in New Zealand and overseas.
Some were lucky enough to have romance and, of course, we all shared the bond of friendship. Friends of Youth Club members would sometimes come along and join in our activities. I am sure they wished that they could have belonged to a cultural group as strong and social as we were.
I can honestly say that the friendships and experiences we all shared have never been repeated in my life since. It was an incredible and special time, and one that I will always hold dear to my heart.
So what, for us, is there now you ask? Well, our parents began having their Pahiatua reunions at 5 years. I can still remember going to it as a little girl. If my calculations are correct, the fun we had with the Polish Youth Club was about 33 to 24 years ago. So in 2005 or 2006, a reunion for all the members of both Polish Youth Clubs at 25 years may happen…
I would like to dedicate this article to my father
Ed Juchnowicz son of Wacław and Felicja Juchnowicz (Nadolska)
Church life was an important part of our family life when I was a child. Though we were members of our own local parish, we attended Polish Mass at St Mary of the Angels in Wellington or the Berhampore church St Joachim's (across the road from where the Polish priest resided) on major feast days, such as Easter and Christmas. This gave us an opportunity to catch-up with our extended family, which was often followed by a meal at a relative's or family friends' house for a leisurely afternoon.
As a child, I recall frequent visits to family and friends or their visits to our house. These visits may have been in connection with a birthday party, baby's christening or First Holy Communion. In my younger days, this included contact with older members of the Polish community who gladly took on the role as grandparents. Though not related, it would be difficult to know who was or wasn't in this close-knit environment. And the older members would sometimes be our caregivers, involving us in activities, such as fishing.
Holidays provided a great opportunity for extended family trips. Places such as motor camps in Taupo and Waitarere provided summer holidays by the water. On one occasion, we toured the South Island in tandem with my aunt and uncle, and their children. The rain and snow (over what was summer) provided its challenges, but we enjoyed the adventure together.
The Polish House in Newtown, Wellington, provided a focal point for Polish culture in my youth. Visits included meals on Mother's Day, and the occasional film and bookstall. The Polish Youth Club committee organised dances and events. Contact with other members of the Polish community of my own age was limited in my late teens and opportunities weren't pursued. Study and work took increasing amounts of time.
Family influences stressed the importance of education, religion, and the necessity for work and employment in general. There was also a factor of self reliance and the commitment to take up the challenge. The challenge may have been as simple as a bike ride, a walk through the surrounding hills or the building of a fort in the backyard. More technical challenges came and included electronics or photography, for which a darkroom was established in the basement.
I have continued to influence my own children in similar ways to my own upbringing. We attend Mass on Sundays, followed by a visit to my parents for
Education has become an important part of their lives, and extra tuition in speech, drama, keyboards, drums or sometimes school subjects (such as maths and English) is valued. They also enjoy a range of activities, such as sport, horse riding, skiing and Scouting. We also purchased a boat so we could fish and water ski together in the holidays, and join with our friends in such activities.
Life with my Polish background was similar to that of my friends who also had good family lives, but it added an interesting dimension. I was able to extend on this by two trips to Poland and meet with relatives in Sopot in the mid-1980s. I took great joy in seeing the Patea Maori Group in action on Polish TV, particularly as Patea had also been a town where I'd spent time visiting older friends of my parents – our de facto grandparents.
My trips to Poland were in part to satisfy my curiosity about the country my parents left all those years ago. In some rural areas, time had fairly much stood still (in the mid-1980s) and I could compare the life of a Polish citizen to that which I knew. I also witnessed the remains of the destruction and the efforts that the Polish people were making to rebuild their country. It will be interesting to compare this on my next trip in years to come.
Tereska Kozera and Veronika Mak daughters of Zdzisław Kozera
As children of Polish and English parents, we have always felt a strong connection to our father's Polish heritage. With our
Polish Saturday school (though we resented attending it at the time) was a useful way of drawing us into the Polish culture. In 1976, we were fortunate to visit relatives in Poland (Będzin and Prudnik), and get a sense of our history and the strength of the Polish people.
The annual Polish picnic in the spacious grounds of St Patrick's College in Silverstream was one of those events not to be missed – the memories of all the families, walking from group to group, swimming in the pool, watching the children's novelty races and enjoying the Polish food. We have been able to introduce our own children into this community.
The Polish Youth Club was a great way to stay in touch with a lot of our friends when we moved into college years and we always felt a sense of belonging with the group. Knowing that more than 90% of Poles are Catholic, we look back and realise that the link with church was stronger than going to Kiwi Mass. We think it is more than possible that we could have strayed from the church if we didn't have this strong link.
Polish dancing became important to us for many years in our early adult life. We had a sense of pride in ourselves and the culture we were sharing. Performing at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Polish children's arrival in New Zealand was a very special time for the group in celebrating our history.
Even though we are not full-blooded Poles, nobody has ever treated us differently. We feel that the Polish community admired our English-born mother Hazel for fostering our Polish side, and it is a great feeling to be able to walk into the Polish House and be greeted by people that we don't know very well, but who obviously know us through our parents and grandparents. What a sense of belonging.
Terenia Krystman-Turski daughter of Czesława Krystman (Szach)
My parents' Polish background and war experiences have greatly influenced my life. My mother was one of the refugee children at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. My father, Tadeusz Krystman, was also deported to Russia where, after the amnesty was declared, he joined the II Polish Corps, fought in Monte Cassino and eventually arrived in New Zealand from the UK as an ex-serviceman.
As their first born (they married in 1950 and settled in Hamilton), I am a first-generation New Zealander who grew up feeling that I was neither a New Zealander nor Polish. Every day I straddled the two cultures. My first language was Polish and at school I was immediately different with my thick stockings instead of long socks. My lunches consisted of foods foreign to the other children. They did not like the smell of salami. Friends, there were none, because I did not go, nor was I invited, to play at their homes after school. Neither did my mother go over to their mothers' places for a cup of tea.
My father's arrival at the school gate and his speaking with a strong accent only emphasised my difference. I remember quite clearly that while I never felt embarrassed by this difference, I definitely felt alone in an environment which did not include something Polish.
In the 1950s, Polish families tended to socialise together over the weekends. Following Sunday Mass, they tended to stay back for hours, talking and catching up within their own ethnic group because New Zealanders left for home immediately after the service. Occasions such as christenings tended to be big affairs because invitations to all in the Polish community were the done thing. How could you leave anyone out? The community was small.
Since such gatherings were very Polish regarding food, music and language, it was not comfortable or even considered logical that New Zealanders would be invited. In those "safe" environs, Poles were free to remember their homeland (with or without tears) and know that the Polish person listening to their story would empathise with them because they had also experienced something similar.
It was not unusual for people to sing popular folk songs, which inevitably would lead to emotionally charged patriotic tunes. Emotions were raw. Grown men who normally acted tough would cry unashamedly as they remembered comrades lost on battlefields and/or recalled their mothers last seen at some
Whenever Poles gathered, political discussions were never far away. Discussions tended to be emotional rather than rational, covering topics such as Winston Churchill, the Yalta Agreement, Siberia, General Sikorski, Monte Cassino, Stalin, and parents and families lost. Heaven help anyone who would express an opinion which suggested anything positive about the communists! Memories were still too fresh in the 1950s. And yet it was not unusual for these same people to sing Russian songs with much enthusiasm. The explanation for this was: "The ordinary Russian people are OK – it's just the political system."
I remember the Berlin Wall topic discussed as if it were a wall about to be built through Hamilton's main street. The Cuban Missile Crisis resurrected deep fears of everything associated with the Soviets and some in the Polish community actually began stocking their homes with tinned food.
While New Zealanders were generally sympathetic, polite and hospitable to the refugees who settled in small groups throughout their country, it would have been difficult for them to fully appreciate their fears, unyielding political views and insecurities when the war was legally well and truly over. How could New Zealanders understand what it is like to wait for a parent who never came? But this is not to say that these new Polish refugee settlers did not appreciate their new country and feel a gratitude for the physical security in which they could begin their lives afresh.
I said that my parents' Polish background and war experiences affected me deeply and personally. The effect has been emotional as well as academic. I undertook sociopolitical studies at university, directing particular attention to that period of modern history which had so affected my parents – World War II. I found much of my reading material on the war familiar territory, thanks to the numerous political discussions I had listened to over the years. I felt that my father must have known Stalin personally because he would even change his voice to a lower timbre whenever he "quoted" something the dictator had said.
The Polish language was not only a skill I would ultimately need for my research work, but speaking it also gave me interactive entry into a culture rich in ethnic humour, political satire and historical awareness with a heavy peppering of religious symbolism. Many an essay benefited from the general knowledge I had gained from home.
While a New Zealand student had to read books to learn about such things as sweet tea drinking in Russia, gold coins worn like ornaments by girls in Iran, meat hidden along river banks, personalities/actions of Russian guards,
I just know from my experience as a first-generation New Zealander of a Polish post-war displaced person and refugee, that a refugee's past never goes away and becomes irrelevant. It may fade a little with the years but that past continually appears in their conversations, manners and a momentary look which is far away, thoughtful and often sad.
The refugee children have learnt to survive the reality and memory of those violent and unpredictable times, and even laugh about some of them. But it is those very experiences which, 60 years later, still mark them as a unique group of people in New Zealand.
Isabella Kuczma daughter of Karol and Stanisława Pietkiewicz (Domańska)
My brother
I enjoyed Polish Saturday school where mum, other "Pahiatua girls" and ex-army officers were our teachers. Polish language and traditions were very important to their feelings of self-being and they wanted to impart this to their children. We all longed for a free Poland.
The Pahiatua children and their spouses, usually from the Polish forces, were the basis of the Wellington Polish community. They worked hard to establish the first Polish House in Kenwyn Terrace, Newtown, and later the massive renovations of an old bakery in Newtown, creating a new large, homely and very functional community centre – the Dom Polski (Polish House). We can only hope that the pioneering and enterprising spirit, and strong patriotism that inspired this sense of self reliance will continue in the next generations of New Zealanders of Polish background.
My mum was very active in Polish community affairs, being a founding member of the Polish Women's League. Her proudest moment as president was meeting Cardinal Wojtyla before he became Pope John Paul II. I know mum was very happy with her choice to remain in New Zealand, and the Pahiatua children were all her family and subsequently ours.
My brother and I settled in Australia. Andrzej works as a policy analyst for the Federal Government and married a Polish girl, Ursula, who teaches at Belconnen Polish School. My life is blessed. I enjoy work as a pharmacist part-time and assisting my Polish-Australian husband Kazik, who is very busy with his architectural practice. My teenage children love and remember all the times they spent with
Through my children, I'm involved with Polish school, the Syrenka Folkloric Ensemble and Polish Foundation. It's enjoyable to be able to make a meaningful contribution to Polish groups and I hope that our descendants will maintain their cultural heritage while remaining good citizens of the country they live in.
Marek Manterys son of Stanisław Manterys
My earliest memories show no real issues, as with all little kids I made friends with the neighbours and we played well together. The innocence of youth has a lot to say for itself. I think it was only when I was progressing through primary school that I first noticed that some things were different.
The first, and most constant, was that nobody wanted to pronounce my name correctly and I had to endure many years of this. It is only in recent times that people in this country have made an effort to pronounce names correctly. It wasn't that easy starting at a new school at the age of nine with a strange name, and from that time it was mispronounced more often than not. At work, most people call me by my anglicised name, but many make an effort to call me by my proper Polish name and that is well appreciated.
Christmas was always good, because our family celebrated it in the Polish tradition on Christmas Eve. This meant heaps of presents well before all of your mates. Then, if we were lucky, there might be some more on the day itself. After we moved to Wellington from Auckland, Christmas day started with a Mass at St Mary of the Angels cathedral. The place would fill up with people and the sound of the Polish choir singing made it special – and knowing that we were off to a traditional Christmas lunch afterwards helped as well. I really enjoyed the traditional Polish cooking and have always looked forward to the times when there will be such dishes as
Another lasting memory was the polite bigotry of parents of my school friends – you could just sense that they considered us outsiders and would have preferred that their child had chosen a more suitable friend. There were times when I heard myself being referred to as "that child" down the road. Some New Zealand parents were very cool in their manner towards me and that is one memory that makes me a little sad. I think that this may be one reason why all my childhood friends that I still keep in touch with are of Polish origin. When I was a teenager, we had a very active Polish Youth Club and I was on the committee. We planned many fun events, including sporting trips to Auckland and social events.
I recall with pleasure one year at school when my teacher Mr Henderson, who had taught my father in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, could speak some Polish and understood the culture. That was a very pleasant year.
Considering the fact that my parents had to start from scratch and had no real network to fall back on, they tried hard to instil their culture, values and beliefs. Considering what they were up against, I think they did very well. So I have no time for people who do nothing and complain about how hard they have it. It really makes you think about how many opportunities there have been for people who were born into established families and how many of them still complain that life has dealt them a bad hand.
I can only imagine the difficulties of setting up a life in what sometimes appeared to be an intolerant society, and people would have to have been very strong willed to survive. It is a good thing that the situation has changed over the years and we now live in a racial melting pot.
Gordon Noble-Campbell son of Teresa Noble-Campbell (Ogonowska)
All New Zealanders can justifiably claim to have come from somewhere else, and in doing so have created a society of different peoples and colours. From the mid-19th Century until today, while exporting our primary produce to every other part of the world, as migrant New Zealanders we have imported our culture – our favourite foods, stories, songs and customs from all over the world.
Everyday we witness and experience elements of different cultures in every part of our lives. Whether we are of Asian, European, African or Polynesian descent, we have had an innate Kiwi ability to accept all people as they are. Therefore, it has always intrigued me that as a geographically isolated group of islands, we have a noticeably weak sense of a common nationhood and that as a country comprising diverse cultures, New Zealanders can generally be somewhat hesitant to celebrate their past.
We often hear that minimal wealth and low income are the underlying reasons for social discord, and that they are attributable to the government. Considering New Zealand colonists' shoestring existence, it seems we have forgotten that "nothing great was ever forged without sacrifice and struggle".
If ever there was a pointed example of those who came to this land of plenty with nothing but turmoil and tragedy as their passports, and yet who have dramatically succeeded beyond all but their own expectations, I need look no further than my own mother – one of the former Polish children refugees. As one who can be proud to claim my Polish heritage from those turbulent beginnings, I can never attempt to understand the sense of loss created through the state-sponsored terrorism of Stalin who ingenuously stated: "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." However, I can only but try to emulate the personal qualities that emerged from that formative fire, which are demonstrated by my mother in her daily life.
I sometimes surmise that national identity can become too closely entwined in cultural cliches. For example, the haka as representative of New Zealand or McDonald's as the ubiquitous flag-bearer for the US. These types of outward demonstrations of cultural identity make recognisable statements for many, but do not necessarily reveal the true attributes of a homogenous group of people.
Therefore, if I were to attempt to describe my own sense of "Polishness",
More recently, I have spent time tracing the origins of my mother's family back to her homeland. In doing so, despite the difficulties establishing a link between the past and present, I have discovered that there is something peculiar in the arrogance of the oppressor to the oppressed.
Between 9 February 1940 and 20 June 1941, large tracts of eastern Poland were effectively depopulated by the Russian Secret Police. While obviously disregarding the humanity of those it was removing from their homes and livelihoods, the Secret Police was strangely meticulous at keeping detailed information on each individual member of the families deported. It is almost as if statistical satisfaction was derived from consigning the deportees to an existence of poverty and hopelessness.
To date, around 180,000 of those records have been released from the Russian archives. It was from this source that I came across the history of my mother's family from their deportation on 10 February 1940, incarceration in an Archangelsk province forced-labour camp on 29 February 1940 and their subsequent release on 5 September 1941. The Russian name of the camp in which the family was detained was "Jeglec", the Russian name for the primrose – a flower which grows profusely in Siberia in the short spring. This flower is a fitting emblem of hope, reflecting the lives of those who have cultivated beauty and success from the seeds of tumult and oppression.
Three generations of
Back: (l-r) Alexander,
Front: (l-r) Lachlan, Teresa, Thomas
Michael Pleciak son of Witold Pleciak
My father and I arrived in Poland on 1 September 2002 to "find his roots" using old family letters and recollections of family members. We spent a week living in Warsaw's Stare Miasto (old town) and were overwhelmed by the restoration since its destruction in World War II, the immense feeling of patriotism, and the struggle and bravery of the people. Standing on the banks of the Vistula River, we could really appreciate the history of this city.
We drove to Kalisz and Łódź to find some family history, but without success. We then stayed in Kraków, which is a beautiful city and unlike Warsaw was almost untouched by the German army in the war. A visit to the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz made us feel sick. Our next part of the journey was to travel into the Ukraine and visit Rivne (previously Równe) where my father was born. The drive from Kiev to Rivne (west towards Poland) was like a journey back in time – horse and cart, primitive farm machinery and communal farms.
Formerly in Poland and now in the Ukraine, Rivne was occupied by German forces in 1939. We managed to find German military and Russian maps of when this region was still part of Poland. These maps were to prove very useful because place names had changed over time. In Rivne, with the assistance of a driver and an interpreter, we talked to some elderly locals about the area before the war. We even managed to find the ex-Polish Red Cross hospital where my father was born – which is now used by the Ukrainian military.
We also visited Rivne railway station where his family, after being made to leave their farm with minimum belongings, were herded onto cattle trucks by the Russians and sent east to the forced-labour camps in 1940. The Pleciak family had a 14-hectare farm in the Hallerowo settlement near the town of Tuczyn. This land had been given to my grandfather as a veteran of World War I. When Józef Piłsudski had reclaimed Poland's borders (which hadn't existed for 123 years) after that war, he gifted his soldiers land in eastern Poland. They were known as the combat colonists.
We then visited Tuczyn and found the marketplace where my grandfather would have sold produce and also a church site in Horyngrod where the Polish families attended (the church was demolished during the war).
After talking to some locals in and around Tuczyn, we were directed to
It is a moment I will never forget – and to have a person still alive that linked my father with his past made our journey so worthwhile. While we were in Poland, our relatives made contact via the internet. We are now in regular contact with my father's cousin. Neither side of the family knew the others existed. This has given us even more reason to travel back to Poland.
On the first day at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, a New Zealand soldier carries
Maria Schlaadt daughter of Irena Mroczek (Niedźwiecka)
When I look back on my childhood growing up in Wellington in the midst of the Polish community, one word springs to mind – idyllic. Yet it is only now as an adult and parent that I realise just how privileged I was to be part of the deep affection and cultural richness that is the legacy of the 733 Polish refugee children who came to New Zealand in 1944.
My mother was one of these children. She was 16 years old when she arrived in Wellington with her two sisters and two brothers, after surviving three harrowing years in a kolkhoz (collective farm) in Kazakhstan. She had witnessed death, and experienced starvation, separation and loss. It was a childhood so different to mine that I still find it difficult to believe this is part of my family history.
After arriving here, my mother's fortune changed dramatically. The refugee children were settled in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua where they could recover from their horrific war experiences in a caring and peaceful environment. The children forged strong and lasting bonds, and a deep sense of community. Sixty years later, these bonds are still as strong as ever.
It was in this caring and intimate community that I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. By then, the refugee children had moved all over New Zealand and set up a Dom Polski (Polish House) in Auckland and Wellington, where they and their descendants could meet to keep in touch and maintain their cultural heritage, while embracing life in New Zealand. My mother settled in Wellington and married my father
From the beginning, the Polish House in Newtown was the focal point of my childhood. It was here I learnt to read, write, sing and dance in Polish. It was here I attended movies, plays, lectures and cultural festivals. It was here I experienced my first ball. Like most of the former refugee children, my parents were deeply committed to passing their Polish heritage on to their children, which happened in the culturally rich and festive atmosphere of the Polish House. For me, it was a home away from home and an extension of my immediate family.
Naturally, I took it all for granted and sometimes even resented the fact that Saturdays were taken up with Polish lessons. But on a recent trip to
At the time I was growing up, my mother's sisters and brothers were all living in Wellington so we had many lively family gatherings where we would celebrate Polish customs and traditions, such as
Often we would meet at midday and continue well into the evening with our parents playing circle games with us, which they remembered from their own childhoods. Inevitably, there would be a lot of noisy singing. In my mid-20s, when I first went to Poland, my cousins there were impressed by my knowledge of Polish songs and the fact that I could sing more than just one verse.
My parents' religious faith played an enormous part in my growing sense of identity as a Polish New Zealander. The former refugee children were, and still are, devoted Catholics and we attended Polish Mass each Sunday. This was a huge unifying force within the community, and another opportunity to meet together and celebrate the old customs.
The traditions I particularly enjoyed were during Easter and Christmas. On Good Friday, my cousins and I spent many hours decorating hardboiled eggs with wax and colourful dyes for the Easter baskets. We would also sculpt a small lamb out of butter, symbolising the Lamb of God. On Easter Saturday, we would take our baskets to church to be blessed by the Polish priest. Then the contents of the basket would be eaten on Easter Sunday as part of the Polish celebration of the Resurrection.
But the most special festival for me was Wigilia (Christmas Eve), which we celebrated in our own home with just our immediate family. It was my job to set the table and I did this very reverently, appreciating the symbolism of the different aspects of the ritual table settings. First, I went to collect "hay" to put under the white tablecloth, which was a reminder of the stable in Bethlehem where the baby Jesus was placed. On this, I would place the
The meal was considered a fast because it was without any meat or dairy products. But it was, as with all Polish food, delicious. My mother made
Now it's my turn to pass these traditions on to my children. I find my parenting has been hugely influenced by my "Polishness", and my two sons have a keen appreciation of all things Polish and multicultural.
In 2004, my Kiwi husband and I took the boys to Poland to experience their heritage first hand. They visited the homes where their grandparents were born and explored the historical treasures of Kraków and Warsaw. I was very proud to see my children so comfortable and interested in their ancestral homeland. I believe they will grow into tolerant and broadminded Kiwi citizens, and through them the legacy of my parents and the former refugee children will continue to flourish.
Standing (l-r):
Sitting (l-r): Grandsons
Danusia Trask daughter of Dioniza Choroś (Gradzik)
In 2004, my six-year-old daughter Zosia went to school dressed in her Polish costume for a multicultural day. She was so happy, and felt beautiful and different. She was different because she knew she had something in her that wasn't the same as the other children in her class.
Zosia has a Polish background, and knows that her
My two beautiful children Zosia (6) and Tomek (4) attend Polish school once a week after normal school and are part of the Orlęta dance group in Lower Hutt. They love these two activities and look forward to them each week. Painting
The children who attend Polish school and perform in the Orlęta dance group all have the same background – a Polish ancestry. I am sure that the children feel privileged, and attend with passion and enthusiasm. Zosia and Tomek are lucky to have a loving babcia. They have a great time making
My parents raised me as a Polish-Kiwi girl. I attended Polish Saturday school in my younger years, then the Polish Youth Club and Polish dance group Lublin. Polish was always spoken at my parents' home. This helped me when I left school. My profession was a travel agent and customers from the Polish community often came to me to book their travel arrangements because they could speak Polish, be understood and life would be a little easier for them not having to battle their way around English.
Night after night, day after day, I see my mother writing the history of
Christina Quirke niece of Bogusława Burgess-Tarmas & Dioniza Choroś (Gradzik)
After World War II, my parents chose New Zealand (over Argentina) for emigration because two of my aunts had been included in the group of 733 Polish children refugees sent to New Zealand in 1944. Thus I, Krystyna Anna, was born on 18 May 1950 in Lower Hutt to Bernard and Bronisława Rosner, a Polish couple struggling desperately to re-establish their shattered lives in this peaceful country, but one alien to them in both language and culture.
Some years later, I was to discover that officially I was never a Krystyna but in fact always a Christina. Same difference I suppose, but as I reflect on my childhood (from an era where one sometimes craved to be "un-Polish" like one's peers) to now (where even my own children have found that it's considered "trendy to be ethnic"), I would have appreciated the correct spelling of my name on my birth certificate, just as my parents would have no doubt appreciated being understood all those years ago.
But back then things were very different. There were no social services of any kind to assist immigrant families from war-torn Europe resettling in New Zealand. And, until New Zealand's own servicemen began returning home with their foreign wives, accents other than the Kiwi twang were not readily tolerated.
Thus, especially during my formative years in primary school at Sacred Heart in Petone, I tried desperately to be socially accepted by my peers. For the most part there weren't many problems, though Polish school on Saturdays was always a bugbear. Having to attend those classes ruled us Polish kids out of a lot of extracurricular school activities, especially sport and the fellowship associated with it. However, as our family lives were so involved in maintaining our Polish language, culture and traditions, in our household there was never any question of priorities because all spare time outside normal work and school commitments was automatically dedicated to this cause.
Church also played an important part in our lives, with weekly trips on Sundays to St Anne's Church in Newtown for Polish services. But these never seemed as tedious as Polish school, because after Mass my dad often shouted his "girls" (mum, my elder sister and myself) to a treat somewhere in Wellington. Inevitably, this was either hot apple donuts at the local Newtown coffee bar or cappuccinos in the city's Casa Fontana coffee house – both delicious extravagances for that time.
Obviously, the sole purpose of my parents' "rebirth" here in New Zealand was to escape the oppression befallen their beloved homeland after the war. Consequently, my sister and I, as their only offspring, became the focal point of their existence and the main purpose for their ambition to do well here in their adopted country. This was eventually reflected in the fact that the Rosner girls were always well dressed, well fed, well housed and, to other children, appeared to have everything to excess (such as piano and accordion lessons, and cars eventually).
And yes we did. However, every privilege within our household was always considered just that and had to be earned. Because our parents worked tirelessly, both alongside their fellow Kiwis and among the Polish community, as we got older my sister and I had our own set of chores to complete regularly to ensure these privileges continued.
But it was only as I grew older that I began to understand why I was the recipient of such privileges and why my parents wanted nothing but the best for me. With them having been robbed of everything – their homeland, roots, families and even youth – they were determined that neither my sister nor I, if they could help it, should ever suffer the same fate.
Hence, I'm sure, the reason for their strong drive for success (which they
Of course, there will always be times when I recall with some resentment the seemingly never-ending stream of Polish concerts that always required a compulsory recital from me, be it in the form of oratory, national dance, accordion or piano. And the occasions in the school playground when I would've "killed" for a regular lettuce and marmite or jam sandwich, instead of the usual salami and mustard, or liverwurst and pickled cucumber ones I was always sent off with. And why didn't the ground open up when Polish was spoken to me in front of my friends. How my parents' honourable philosophies were wasted on me during those times.
As adulthood neared, my late-teenage years saw my own social and work activities broaden my horizons beyond the realms of my parents, as is in accordance with nature. And when my future husband became an important part in my life, I sensed that my parents – as they had earlier done with my sister – readied themselves for the inevitable acquisition of a second Kiwi son-in-law. This ultimate sacrifice on their part was perhaps foreseen by my parents, because within our Polish community any eligible boys (through years of close association) had grown to be more like brothers and cousins to us girls, rather than prospective husbands.
Either way, their sincere and unconditional acceptance of my marrying a Kiwi will always be, to me, one of the greatest testaments to my parents' total permeation into New Zealand's way of life. Fortunately, my husband Gary immediately proved to be a great Pole, and has always been supportive of my family's Polishness and the many traditions we maintain to this day. Our children Simon and Helen have also walked a similar path to my own within the Polish community. They have attended Polish school, sung in the children's choir, danced for the Lublin dance group and were actively involved in the Polish youth group.
Perhaps it is these second-generation half-Polish, half-Kiwi kids who now best reflect my own upbringing and pay tribute to my parents' efforts at their second chance of life here in New Zealand.
Joe Zazulak
My five aunts – Anna, Maria, Stanisława, Stefania and Wiktoria Zazulak – were at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. I arrived in New Zealand with my parents in 1952. Though my early experiences before arriving here were different to those of my aunts, there were similarities in growing up as an alien child in this country.
While my grandparents and my aunts were deported to Russia during World War II, my father was taken prisoner by the Germans and spent the war there. After the war, a letter from the Relief Society for Poles, dated 30 December 1946, was received by my father at the Polish Displaced Persons Camp at Westfalen, Germany. It was to advise that both of my grandparents had perished in the USSR in 1942 and that my aunts were now located in New Zealand. The letter went on to say that there was no knowledge at that time of my uncles Józef and Antoni.
However, this was the start of my parents' dream. And so, six years later, of which I remember very little, the family, consisting of my mum, dad, brother Jan, sister Janina and myself left the small coalmining town of Vucht in the Flemish province of Limburg and via Switzerland arrived in the Italian port of Genoa. The journey by sea began in April 1952 and, after transit stops in Fremantle and Sydney, we disembarked in Wellington on June 1952. We were now in New Zealand and officially registered as "aliens" under the Aliens Act 1948.
Our first home in New Zealand was to be with my aunt Wiktoria and Kiwi uncle George. From there, it followed a very short stint on a farm in Hunterville, and then on to Titirangi to stay with my aunt Maria and uncle Bolek. Finally, we moved to a rental home in Penrose, Auckland, courtesy of Cashmore Bros who had offered dad employment in the timber yard. It was here that my sister Elizabeth was born and a few years later in 1956 we built our own home in Mount Wellington.
As a young boy growing up in New Zealand, there were no problems to speak of. The English language was unusual, but for a young child it was not a problem to learn, and very soon I was able to speak and understand it. Not so my parents and therefore my interpretation skills were often called upon. I recall the many times I would accompany my mum or dad, or both, on another journey into the unknown to translate. It must have been quite
All that aside, we really were in a land of milk and honey, and though making ends meet financially was always hard, we never went without. Our large property provided fruit and vegetables, and the chickens provided eggs and plenty of roasts. We quickly made friends with the neighbours and it would be fair to say that at that time the average Kiwi was always happy to give a person a fair go. We did not sense any hostility as long as we made the effort to assimilate into the New Zealand way of life.
It was not so long ago that the war had finished and, while it was never openly discussed, one did not broadcast the fact that mother was German. The anti-German sentiment was understandable, but certainly misdirected, and we did not allow it to become an issue.
We were fortunate as children to have had parents with strong religious beliefs. Belonging to the parish community, together with the Catholic schooling, certainly made our assimilation into New Zealand much easier. We were never made to feel we were foreigners throughout our entire time at school and apart from the unusual unpronounceable surname, we were no different to the kids next door. However, this did change once I started work. There was always that feeling that one had to work just that little bit harder to gain acceptance. The adult world was a different world to that of the child.
When I left school in 1965 just before my 17th birthday, I applied for a job my mother had cut out of a newspaper advertising a career in insurance at South British Insurance Co (now New Zealand Insurance). Neither my mother nor I knew what insurance was. Unlike my Kiwi counterparts, we did not have any mentors because my parents had no commercial experience whatsoever, so it was very much trial and error in a lot of things.
Having said all that, the job was just what I needed to groom me for the future and without reservation I can say that those seven years were very happy times. The only blight was when I was looking to apply for another position in another company. Upon arriving for the interview, I was told by the manager that he did not employ foreigners. Fortunately, he was very much the exception, but it did bring back the insecurity which was always in the subconscious.
I do not wish to take anything away from the people of this beautiful country, but I guess it is only natural that those who consider themselves to be the indigenous people of a country will always show preference to their own. When I look back over the years, I saw this to be the case with my father throughout his working life, though he would never say so. But in my own
No longer do I sense any discrimination, but perhaps we have all moved along and got on with the more important things in life. We have all married and have wonderful children who are in turn contributing to New Zealand society, and in some cases to the countries overseas where they in turn are on their own voyage of discovery as we were more than 50 years ago.
This country offers plenty of opportunities to anyone who is prepared to put their hand up and do the hard yards. Sure, the early days were tough for "aliens", but for us as first-generation New Zealanders and for our children, this is certainly the land of freedom and opportunity.
An untold number of similar replies to searches for lost relatives from the war kept the world's postal services very busy. This letter from 1946 tells
New Zealanders remember the Polish refugee children
Earl Bailey
I was assigned to film the arrival of the Polish children refugees who had come from the other side of the world. Most of them were orphans or had lost their parents, so they were assigned foster mothers for the journey. These women were 30 to 50 years of age. Many New Zealand locals wanted the children, either because they were unable to have children themselves or because they felt sorry for the plight of the waifs.
Nothing could have prepared me for the sight of these little children, each carrying a pathetic little bundle – all they owned in the world. It brought tears to my eyes then as it does now. I shot hundreds of feet of film from which a clip of a few minutes was selected for Movie News and it is possible that the original footage may still exist in the National Film Archives. I hope our country continues to welcome desperate people who have lost everything.
It was a fine day on the Wellington waterfront. Thousands of people were there to welcome the Polish children into their new land of promise. The ship had two gangways. I was positioned at one and a fellow by the name of Stan Weyms covered the other gangway. They were streaming off the ship, wondering no doubt what sort of world it would be. There was no cheering that I can think of, but a solemn silence as the emotions of the Kiwis went out to the children. As a cameraman, I was visibly disturbed and I still feel it. After the film was edited, the footage was rolled up and stored in the archives.
A moment of anticipation and apprehension for the Polish children as the
Bill Ballantyne
I would like to welcome Mrs Evans from Pahiatua, and Kathy, Bronwyn and Howard Evans. All the time I have known Stan, he always talked about the Evanses and called them his New Zealand parents. Also a good friend of Stan's was Jimmy Bryant from Pahiatua whom Stan had shorn sheep and spent a lot of time hunting with during his days in Pahiatua.
Friendship is a priceless gift that cannot be bought or sold. But its value is far greater than a mountain of gold. I knew Stan for nearly 40 years and spent seven-and-a-half of them at Mangaone Station near Taihape with him. I always thought of him as a good friend. Stan was born in Poland in Skoraty, which was on the border with Russia. His father was a farmer. Stan had three sisters and two brothers. When the Germans invaded Poland, his father, a soldier in the Polish army, was shot. Stan and his family were deported by the Russians to Siberia where they spent two years in a forced-labour camp. His mother died of starvation in this camp.
Stan and his brothers and sisters were evacuated to Iran where they stayed for two years. He was nine years old when he was brought to New Zealand with his younger sister Krystyna and many other Polish children. They were placed in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. I'm not sure exactly what happened to Stan's brothers and other sisters after Iran, but one brother went back to Poland some years later and the rest live in England. Krystyna went to England where she has lived for some years.
I'm also not sure what Stan did after the Pahiatua camp, but between the ages of 18 and 19 he worked for Charlie Seblyn and Johnny Evans, who was Kathy, Bronwyn and Howard's grandfather. He also worked casually in the area. Stan loved rugby and used to play in Pahiatua every Saturday. Before the game, he worked dagging a shed full of ewes. One day, the workers decided they would be too tired to play rugby after dagging the whole shed, so they got two buckets and poured water all over the sheep. When the boss arrived, they told him the sheep were too wet to dag. But the boss had been looking through the window, so Stan and his mate had to dag all the sheep wet. They missed the rugby.
From Pahiatua, Stan arrived at Mangaone Station where he worked for about 18 years. Hugh Chisholm was the manager at the time and then Peter Green. I first met Stan 40 years ago at Makokomiko Station. I was put in the
Stan got to know Lester Chisholm very well. During university holidays, Lester, who is a High Court judge in Christchurch, worked with Stan. They both kept in touch all these years. There is a paddock at Kelly's called Stan's Mistake. One winter's day with about three feet of snow outside, we were playing cards and getting tired of stoking up the fire. So we helped Stan up to the roof and threw him up the wood. He stacked the fire from the top. It burned all day and night, and we didn't have to get up and stoke the fire.
Rosemary and Stan were married while on Mangaone. When Wayne was four, they left and bought a house in Taihape. In all the years I was in Kaiangaroa, Stan did the docking, TB testing, crutching and dagging. I could ring Stan asking for 15 men and they would be there next day. If I was away, he would always ring Jenny to see she had enough firewood or if there was anything he could do. We always had a standing joke that he wouldn't come docking or take on deer work unless there was a ham provided in the tucker box.
Stan's greatest joy was his family. Between him and Rosemary, they were very involved with rugby and netball. His involvement with midget rugby was outstanding and employment of young players within the town was admired. I used to call him Mr Wins. He had a great vegetable garden of which he was very proud and his family was never out of firewood. I will miss the cheek he used to give me and the telephone call on Christmas Day. Stan always rang on Christmas Day.
Stan, may the wind be always at your back, the sun shine warm upon your face, the rain fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.
Elizabeth Banks
My father John Thomson, a private in the New Zealand army, was stationed at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua when the Polish children arrived. He was there to meet their train at Pahiatua Railway Station and the shock he got when he saw the children was, to say the least, unbearable.
He loved the youngsters and hence his Scouting career. He lived for it. In fact, I think he was in his Scout outfit more often than his army uniform. He would take them to Greytown for competitions with other troops and they would have a ball. Dad just could not do enough for them. His reward was seeing the change in them and enjoying their sense of humour.
Our family lived in the camp. My brother Ian and I were children at the time, so we made friends with some of the Polish children. We would go out the back of the camp where a farmer had a barn full of hay and a haystack, and climb up it and slide down. It was great fun. The laughter just rang out. What lovely people.
When my father left the camp in 1948, he received a card from the Polish troop. There were not many dry eyes among the boys and dad also cried. The card read, with its wonderful little spelling mistakes:
We the Scouting group of the Polish camp, Pahiatua, wish to express our sincere gratitude for the wonderful work you have done for our troop. We know you have not spered no effort to make everything worthwhile, four [crossed out] for that we thank you.
We shall miss you much more than you may possibly realise and can assure you we shall always remember you as our friend and fellow Scouter. Parting is not easy at any time but it must be. We wish you and your family every best in your new life and shall hope that we may see you often in the future.
Mollie Baoumgren
At the beginning of World War II a unit of the Red Cross was formed in Kaiwharawhara, Wellington, where I lived. We had a variety of things to do, such as working in casualty at Aotea Quay and Wellington Hospitals. One of the things that I will always remember was the arrival of the Polish refugee children in Wellington on 1 November 1944.
It was a lovely sunny morning and the train pulled in alongside the ship that these people had travelled on. There were sweets handed around and lots of smiles from us all. I guess they were a bit apprehensive and wondered what life in New Zealand would be like.
Then when the two or three of us were allotted to look over each carriage and everyone else was on board, the train, pulled by a steam engine, set off for Pahiatua.
Along the way, we stopped at some stations and there seemed to be many people on the platforms to greet the newcomers. Posies of flowers were passed through the windows, and many of the people on the train put their faces in
Red Cross nurse
Everybody seemed to look happy as they saw the mountains, rivers and lovely green hills. There were lunches for all and everyone appeared ready for it. We arrived in Pahiatua late in the afternoon and were offloaded into a convoy of army trucks which took us to the Polish Children's Camp. The newcomers were keen to see where they were going to live and I think they were quite excited.
We all had a meal together, after which all who had helped get all of these people to their destination set off to Wellington by bus.
That was 60 years ago, and I have often thought of that day and hope that they have called New Zealand home.
Geoff Bennett
Even though my recollections may not mean much in the overall scale of the Polish children's experiences, they nevertheless made a great impression on my life.
During the 1940s, I lived in New Plymouth with my mother and elder brother. Like most young lads of the time, I was involved in the Scouting movement and it was through this association that I met the Polish children refugees, well 40 of them. Somebody from the Government and Scouts came up with the idea of bringing a group of Polish Scouts from Pahiatua to New Plymouth for a holiday. These boys were billeted among the local families for, what I always hoped would be, a relaxed and happy time.
My mother, an intelligent and compassionate person, ensured that my brother and I understood what the boys had been through and where they had come from. The lad who stayed with us was
Some years ago, I read a newspaper article written by Stefan of his life and experiences. I was delighted to know that he had settled here and made a life for himself after such a tragic beginning. The Polish lads had Mrs Kozera with them as their mentor. She was a charming and charismatic person who had the misfortune to be knocked down by a car, breaking her leg. On a visit to the hospital, the boys sang the Polish national anthem to her. It was the first time I had heard it. That tune still brings tears to my eyes.
Bill Cronin
The year is 1950 in my first week at St Kevin's College in Oamaru. For this quiet little boy from the quiet little South Island town of Gore, this was the wide world, exciting stuff. With 180 other boys to meet, it most certainly was exciting – people from all around New Zealand and Samoa. All mysterious places to this stranger from Gore.
But who were these five "Poles"? Rumour had it that they were refugees, whatever that meant. I recall making enquiries about refugees and where they came from – it was from the other side of the moon as far as I was concerned. This group of five seemed to keep to themselves and that was fine by me.
A slow learner, I struggled with my studies, unlike the Poles. I was not a bookworm, but I did notice that they often seemed to be carrying school books. For whatever reason, I just could not make out why at the time. Outside school hours, where there was one Pole, there were several, and all much more focused on learning than the writer was.
After leaving school, I began reading and researching war history. What struck me then was my ignorance of what my Polish friends had been through. We all had families at home, but where were theirs, if they had any? Where did they go during the school holidays? Did I care?
In more recent years, I went to Bosnia with an aid agency and got too close to Serb guns. For the first time in my life I experienced fear. This brief encounter gave me just a small taste of what my Polish friends must have endured for years and what pain was still in their hearts. The question remains – what could or would I have done for them had I some idea of their background?
Among my many other social commitments, I am involved with people in prisons. What a waste of humanity, where one often finds a background filled with negatives, resulting in wasted lives. In contrast, this group of Polish children have brought positives out of the carnage of World War II.
We have benefited greatly from the calibre of these people who became New Zealand citizens and contributed to the welfare of our country, which is a better place because they live here.
Alexander Henderson
How did I become involved? My hometown was Napier, where we had lived since my parents arrived in New Zealand from the UK in 19 4. Across the road lived a Catholic family and in 1945 they were hosting a couple of Polish boys from the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua for the holidays. At the time, I was training to be a teacher.
The mother asked me if I would be prepared to help with the holiday plans by taking the boys along with her kids swimming, to the pictures and so forth. I agreed without hesitation as I was very interested. Well, I was absolutely fascinated beyond belief. It was my first experience of trying to make myself understood and trying to understand what was being said to me in another language.
The holidays ended and I went back to work. Then in early 1947, when reading through the Education Gazette while teaching in Wairoa, I noticed a teaching position advertised at the camp's school. I applied and was appointed, and started in April of that year.
I remember my arrival vividly. I had left Wairoa on the evening railcar, stayed overnight in Napier and travelled on the next day to Pahiatua. Though I was excited about the whole expedition, I was also somewhat apprehensive, being quite unsure about what I had let myself in for.
I had never been to the Wairarapa before and was a bit concerned about the change of trains at Woodville. As it turned out, there wasn't much of a wait for the Wairarapa train. But what a clapped-out old junk of a train it was. The couple of carriages which made up the train were vintage 1900, I think – bolt upright hard bench-type seats with a feeble gas light casting an eerie shadow light throughout the carriage. And what a strange cargo of people there seemed to be. Even down to the one or two crates of hens and chickens squawking away at the tops of their voices.
However, my real concern was that I would get off at Pahiatua, so I kept a pretty tight eye on where we were heading. At last we stopped at Pahiatua. It was very dark and the station seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. As I got off, two young men (one tall, one short) approached me and asked me two questions – was I the new teacher and did I play football? To the first question I answered "yes" and to the second "no".
They seemed disappointed and without more ado led me to an army station
He drove me to the back of the camp where, among larger buildings, were some two-men army huts. He showed me into one and said "this is your digs", and turned to go. I was hungry, as I hadn't had much all day, and asked him if I could get a meal or something to eat. "Sorry mate, canteen and cookhouse has shut down for the night", and with that he left me alone. I felt completely at sea and not a little crestfallen. To make matters worse, I had no idea of how the camp worked or what was expected in the morning. And before I'd managed to organise myself, the lights went out (the next day, I discovered that the camp lighting went out every night at 10pm). So there I was trying to make my bed, unpack in the dark and wondering what in the hell I'd gotten into.
Next morning, I managed to get some breakfast and learned I was attached to the sergeants' mess. As time went by, I found to my way of thinking that the army, which officially ran the camp, had some funny rules which applied to us no less than anyone else. For example, the lady teachers and school principal were attached to the officers' mess which we male ordinary teachers weren't allowed into.
The women teachers lived in a compact house called the WAAC's quarters (Women's Auxiliary Army Corps). It was a nice fully self-contained unit with kitchen, bathroom and three beautiful bedrooms. The male teachers were officially not allowed entry there either, but we would go there for supper anyway. Actually, I found the army rules slightly irksome and in many ways stupid. But in the end you got used to them and found your own ways around them.
After breakfast on that first day, the principal
There was a tremendous lot I didn't know about teaching children and adults from another culture which I couldn't possibly get clued up on in five minutes. I asked
I found the settling-in quite difficult and appreciated to some extent what being adrift and lonely must have meant to these children whom I had come to help teach English. I didn't know anyone, not even the New Zealand teachers. And to make matters worse, from my point of view, I was pretty green to the ways of the world and in hindsight it was my growing up time. The first two weeks or so I was at a rather loose end outside school time. The others had their own pursuits, so camp life was in many ways solitary. To complicate matters further, when payday came there was none for me. I was quite alarmed as I had very little money reserves. When I made enquiries, the other teachers told me I would be lucky to receive any pay within the next month or so. I thought they were having me on and I was not very happy about it at all.
In the end, at the beginning of September, when I was desperate for money and owed various people in camp about £15 (a small fortunate to me at that time), I complained to
The response was rapid and from Prime Minister
A little sideline to Uncle Harry – a play that was then showing in London's West End. Fraser, his wife and granddaughter Alice (later to become well known on the New Zealand stage and TV screens) came to see our production. After the show I met them in the college supper area where they talked to me before I went to the dressing rooms to remove my makeup.
I never gave the meeting another thought. However, unexpected things happen occasionally, and while I was in camp he paid a visit. When he was escorted into my classroom, you can imagine my surprise when he walked up to me saying: "Good afternoon, Mr Henderson. You certainly look a great deal different now from the last time I spoke to you in the supper room after your performance in Uncle Harry at the Teachers' College." I was quite floored that a man who meets hundreds of people a week could remember the likes of me. What a marvellous facility for a politician to possess.
When the pay business got critical for me, it was suggested that I approach
Until I was a bit more settled, I filled my free time talking to anyone who would pass the time of day and visited the children in the camp's hospital. Some of them had been patients there since arriving in New Zealand.
Then, bit by bit, I began to find my feet and formed friendships with some of the teachers, especially
But to get back to the beginnings. I found some of my classes difficult to handle at times and I was sure some of the things they were saying to me were not complimentary. I wasn't used to this sort of thing and I didn't know how to handle it.
He gave me some strategies to try on them and agreed to tutor me in the essential Polish swearing vocabulary. With his help, I soon had a command of Polish curses and swearing. When the troublesome boys realised that I was aware of what they were saying to me, things improved markedly and we settled down to a much more harmonious time together.
When a new male teacher came to camp, the boys took great delight in greeting the said arrival with a grinning "good morning, sir". It sounded a little strange though and you sensed there was a joke somewhere, but what? That was a mystery. Then from one of the teachers you would find out that the
Talking of unfortunate words, not more than a few weeks after arriving in the camp I was invited to an afternoon tea party that was hosted by
Well, the hush that descended (once the cups stopped rattling on their saucers) was almost deafening. "Oh! Mr Henderson, you cannot say that!" "What?" I asked and reddening. "What have I said?" "No! No! You not say that!" And the way it was said warned me the conversation on that topic was closed. I didn't really enjoy the rest of the afternoon. Later in the day, I went to Mrs Tietze's house – the head teacher of the Polish primary school. As she had also been at the party, I asked her what on earth I had said to have caused such a stir. She was very reluctant to tell me but I pleaded with her to tell me as I didn't want a repeat performance.
She got out her dictionary and with a very red face said: "It is a very bad name for here," pointing to her seat. Then I really went red. As I thought about it, I suddenly roared with laughter, for in effect I had said: "This cake is super arseholes." I never used the expression again. It now seems trivial, but in 1947 it certainly wasn't afternoon tea talk.
Soon after my arrival in camp, we celebrated the Polish Constitution day of 3 May 1791 – Poland's national day. This was to be my first real introduction to the Polish way of life. In the early evening in the camp hall there was an official commemoration concert where we were treated to an evening of Polish orations, songs and dances. I hadn't a clue as to what was happening but something clicked within me. I was on the road to wanting to know much more about Poland, its history and its culture – in fact, to learn as much as I possibly could.
Come Monday, I headed for the Polish/English library where there was a selection of books, mainly sourced from the printing presses in and around Chicago, which had a Polish population of several million people. Luckily for me, there were quite a number of excellent translations.
After about four months, I was completely at home in the camp, enjoying teaching and just being part of camp life in general. The anxieties of the first weeks were well and truly behind me – even the fear of earthquakes. This fact would probably seem funny to most people, but I had been through the 1931
On some Saturdays we headed off to wherever there was a dance, such as Pahiatua, Mangatainoka and Hamua. Sunday mornings were dedicated to Mass, usually at 9am in the camp's theatre. At first, I didn't get up very early on Sundays, but one Sunday not too long after I arrived, I decided I would like to go to the Polish Mass as I was curious to see what it was all about. I asked the other teachers if I could go with them. They said that would be fine – no questions, not even a funny look.
Most of it was in Latin and the rest was in Polish. I didn't understand a thing that was going on but in some indefinable way I was much moved. Their singing had a wonderfully refreshing quality about it. It haunted you. It made you want to hear more and I did over the ensuing years.
Gradually with time and a Mass book with the English translations, I began to get the gist of things and willingly became part of the scheme of things. I felt happier and more secure in this part of my life than I had ever felt before. Then came a devotion called Benediction. My first experience of it completely
Taking the "salute" on the rostrum. (l-r)
Matka Boska Częstochowska (Our Lady of Częstochowa), a very revered icon in the monastery of Jasna Góra in Częstochowa, Poland, was given especial devotion in the camp. As I learnt more of the icon's story, I found myself drawn to this favourite, also known as the Queen of Poland. I acquired a small card bearing the image, and it went with me everywhere. Now it is rather battered in looks but loved all the same for it embodies a history.
I was intrigued as to why the image had a slash across the face, which led to my learning of the Tartar invasions of Poland during which an arrow from a Tartar struck it and left a scar on the cheek. This is an icon of great power and I have found much support through devotion to Our Lady of Częstochowa. The end result was that after a great struggle of 26 years, I at last accepted the challenge and became a full member of the Catholic Church — a decision I never regretted.
Late in 1947, it became clear that Poland's political climate had changed. The New Zealand Government decided that, as many of the children would now probably remain in New Zealand, the main teaching in the camp school should be conducted in English. In some ways, this made things easier for us from an administrative point of view, but to this day I have no idea what input the Polish staff had in the decision. It was the one thing that rather saddened me in the teaching area.
Our contact with the Polish teaching staff was minimal and we had little knowledge of their work programmes, and I am sure they had little of ours. As teachers, we were given no courses or real guidelines on how to teach English as a second language, hence our approach was mostly trial and error. This meant much heartache in the beginning, and you didn't get anywhere until you gave up your preconceived ideas and adjusted to new ways of control, teaching and general approach.
All that being so, you could still fall foul of the system without even trying. For example, the day when
"Ah, so. Well, the boys have mixed it up as Adam and Eve, and anyway they probably think Adam and Eve were Polish."
"Father," I replied, "I am here to teach English, not to take religion classes. I am sorry about any mix-up there may have been". In my head I thought: "God help me. There are traps everywhere you step in this camp."
Pahiatua is situated on a flattish area in the northern Wairarapa with the Tararua Ranges a few miles to the west and the coastal hills to the east, which made for a fairly hot summer and rather cold wet blustery winter. The whole area was a great place for kids to explore and have a close look at the world of nature around them, and a great teaching medium too. It's the only place I know where in one night it can freeze, rain and freeze again by the morning. It was often very cold, foggy and icy around school-starting time.
The school was at the outer fringes of the steam-heating system and the heat took ages to get through to the classrooms. It was not an unusual sight to see hundreds of Polish kids in their khaki outfits, boys with shorn heads and girls with their hair plaited jogging along the main road with large puffs of exhaled air from each of them forming a veritable cloud of steam. And we teachers were puffing our way around the block also. It was a great way to get warm, believe me.
Another event worthy of recording was the mushroom trail, which took place whenever the weather was right for mushroom growth. I would set off with the class with a sack or two, and head into the hills to gather these wonderful delicacies. The boys particularly enjoyed romping over the hills and enjoyed the mushroom gathering as much as I did. It was also a great time for conversation about the world around us, and somehow the open air seemed to loosen up tongues and shyness about using English. So there were two-fold benefits – food and English language practice.
Every camp kitchen during the mushroom season served mushrooms cooked in a variety of ways. In fact, before being in the camp I had always thought there was only one way to cook them. But the haul of mushrooms wasn't cooked at once. As you went from house to house, kitchen to kitchen, you would find lines of them strung up across the ceiling drying out to be stored for use in later cooking as flavourings.
One was also immediately aware of the many notices stretching for some distance in the environs of the camp, warning that some areas were no-go zones, such as "
But there was another side to this. One had to realise that these children had learned to be survivors – they'd led a tough unrelenting life since their
Their vigour and lust for life showed up in the area of sports. They took to rugby, football, basketball, cricket and softball like ducks to water. Very soon, under the excellent guidance of two other teachers
Talking about sports teams also reminds me of another debacle I got myself unwittingly into at the start of my term of duty in the camp. The occasion was during the King's Birthday weekend of 1947. The older boys were travelling to Masterton accompanied by Frank and Andy to an inter-school senior primary school rugby tournament. They asked me to accompany the junior boys to a similar one in Pahiatua. The arrangement was that we would have army transport to the grounds but would have to walk back to the camp at the end of the day. That seemed quite reasonable.
However, no one had planned on a violent change in the weather. At about 2pm, the sky just opened up and within minutes everything was awash. The thought of getting all those kids back to camp safely in such weather was, to say the least, very off-putting – perhaps if I rang the camp they might just take pity on us and arrange for some transport.
So I duly rang the camp, got Mrs Zaleska and told her my predicament. She asked me to hold the line while she made some inquiries. After a bit, she came back with the news that a transport would pick us up at 3pm. I was delighted that the problem had so easily been resolved. We arrived back in camp in one piece and considerably drier than we would have been.
I never thought another thing about the incident until a few days later I was walking down a camp street towards the school when the adjutant,
"Yes, Captain. What do you want?" I asked as pleasantly as I could.
"Who said you could order army transport as and when you want it?"
"I rang the camp to ask if it would be possible to have transport because of the downturn in the weath…"
He cut in very sharply and told me in no uncertain terms where I stood in this hierarchy, finishing his tirade by saying rather loudly: "And in future, keep your bloody nose out of transport, because if you don't…" He didn't
With that, I left him standing there and headed to the school feeling annoyed. I never really discovered how the balls-up occurred but I suppose it was crass ignorance on my part – just another part of the learning we all had to do while in camp. Relations between the captain and I were never particularly cordial from that time onwards. We tolerated each other because we had to, I suppose.
The summer days saw all of us down at the waterholes in the river about half a mile across the paddocks from the camp. Of a weekend, the area was a hubbub of noise and shrieks of laughter as kids dived, jumped from the banks, heaved rocks and generally let-off steam.
A proud
Looking back, I'm amazed that I don't remember anyone being hurt in any way despite the mayhem. In today's world, we wouldn't have been allowed such freedom. Life is now too controlled and I sometimes feel we have become too safety minded, and have in some ways stolen adventure from our children.
I am forever grateful that my curiosity led me to make inroads into the Polish community and to gradually learn a great deal about a culture that was light years away from my own. People's stories of their lives before the war and in captivity, and their family ties, schooling, religion, countryside and history, I lapped up. I found myself absorbing into their life patterns, so that when I left the camp when it closed it caused me quite a few problems and I couldn't always speak English exactly correctly.
There has remained in me a great love of these people. I had learned to laugh, cry and in many intangible ways to share their lives. It has never left me and forever a part of me will always relate to Poland. My memories of the hard times and the celebrating times will move me to tears along with them.
If at Polish Mass, which from time to time I have over the years attended, they begin to sing
Allan Hughes
This experience was a focal point in my life, which is why I can vividly recall it years later.
It was 1944, World War II was still raging in Europe and I was a 12 year-old schoolboy living in Palmerston North. Our citizens were very patriotic and it was normal practice for everyone to be involved in raising money for the "boys overseas". It was important to me as I had two older brothers who had served in the army abroad in Europe. One had died in December 1943 and another was a prisoner of war. Our pennies provided comforts, such as free envelopes, writing paper and other necessities which the Patriotic Society used the money for.
Our school raised money for food parcels for the needy children in England. Classes competed with each other to have their class read out at daily assembly to see who had raised the most cash. Then one day, there appeared a very strange request from the Government and Palmerston North city mayor. They requested that all city schools give their pupils time off to go to Palmerston North Railway Station at an appointed date to welcome a group of Polish children who had come all the way from Iran.
Well, there was soon a mad scramble to find out how on earth children from Poland could have come from Iran. It seemed so far away from New Zealand and totally disconnected from us or the war. Out came the maps, and there was endless speculation and excitement. We wondered what Polish people looked like. Would we actually be able to speak to them? Any holiday from school was also a welcome relief as our lives were fairly dull and boring, so why not take the offer and go down and meet these people as they passed through our city on the way to the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua.
At that time, the railway line ran right through the middle of Palmerston North (it has long since been shifted) and so those citizens who could not make it to the station were asked to go to the railway line at the time that the train would pass to wave a welcome to these people.
Because the Russians were our allies at the time, little had filtered out here about their atrocities, such as the Katyn Forest massacres and mass forced deportations of whole groups of people.
All we knew was that the Poles were also our allies, and that our forces serving in the Middle East had found them very reliable and friendly. Many
Excitement grew as the day arrived and we all set off for the station. Some people rode bicycles, some walked and there were even a few horse-drawn vehicles! Petrol was still rationed, as was food, and a lot of private cars had simply been sequestered by the army. So apart from the local dignitaries, there wasn't too much vehicle traffic.
When I arrived at the railway station, it seemed as though half the city population was there. I had to push and shove to get anywhere near the front. It seemed as though even the children from the farming towns were there – what a throng. One could hardly talk due to the babble of voices and the excitement.
At long last the word came: "The train is coming!" It reached Longburn and then came up Main Street (later renamed Pioneer Highway, where I was to live some years later with my wife and family). The excitement was at fever pitch and then it arrived. One of the biggest and longest trains we had ever seen, jam-packed with its cargo of children and guardians.
The excitement abated as we saw them. Their faces bore a look that we had never seen before and never experienced. A look of sadness, bewilderment and shock. Their faces showed that behind them lay endless suffering, pain and deprivation which we could never know. It was written there for all to see. The shaved heads, the khaki clothes, but most of all it showed in their eyes. The looks seemed to say: "What is it going to be like here? Will we be safe? Will we be accepted?"
For a short while we just looked at each other. We couldn't speak Polish and they couldn't speak English, but as we handed them gifts of toys, food and sweets, the ice began to melt. The smiles began to appear and then the sheer surprise of it all began to show. It was as though Easter, Christmas and their birthdays had all come at once. The reserve disappeared as the New Zealand children grabbed the Polish children and said any word to let the other ones know that they were welcome in New Zealand.
The train was only supposed to make a brief stop in Palmerston North, but so huge was the welcome that it remained for some considerable time. In fact, the townspeople were so moved by the pitiable condition of this trainload of children that many of those who lived closest to the station actually raced
Truly it had been a great day, the day that we learned about the suffering of the Polish people, first at the hands of the Germans and then the Russians. Little did I ever think that one of the boys on that train,
Later, one of the girls from the train, Franciszka Skierewska, boarded with my sister for a while. And one of the boys, Michał Gliński, taught me art at Palmerston North Technical College night school. In life, it seems nothing is strange and nothing is impossible.
Palmerston North flocks to the railway station to see the Polish children refugees pass through their town on the way to Pahiatua, 1 November 1944. Showing the true extent of the townspeople's welcome, this photo was taken almost a mile away from the railway station
Mary McAllister
I was appointed to the English staff at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua in May 1946 and left when it closed in Christmas 1949.
Because we lived in the camp, we were available and actively involved in most aspects of its life. To begin with, we taught English classes only and to all ages – children through to adults. Our resources were minimal – our tools of trade were imagination, improvisation, a sense of humour, endless patience and the ability to cope with the unexpected.
One day, there was a knock on the classroom door and in came Prime Minister
Soon, physical education and sports became part of our brief, which were the highlights for many. From the very basic
Camp social life was ongoing and there was any excuse for a party – You Are My Sunshine and Pokarekare Ana), the Masses and church singing, and the national dances that were danced with such patriotic fervour.
As staff members, we would hitch a ride on an army truck into Pahiatua to go to the pictures, a rugby match or party. On one such occasion, we were at Ned Barry's after-match party. Ned was the local police sergeant and an ex-All
The closer we got to camp, the more we could see how close the fire was to our quarters. In fact, it was the old grandstand behind the camp, which was used by the boys for such things as keeping chickens, stashing away their treasures and having a secret cigarette. I remember the poor chickens squawking madly, scattering to escape total incineration and some locals, who had come to watch, chasing and catching them to take home.
- • The wonderful parades –
Boy Scouts andGirl Guides ,Lady Baden-Powell 's visit, the wreaths, flags, music, pomp and ceremony. I remember parade leaders such asIrena Wierzbicka andJanina Ratuszna (short legs, long strides). One day,Lady Baden-Powell came and after the parade was entertained to tea – we weren't invited, so we had our own parade whileFrank Muller andAlexander Henderson stood on the be-flagged dais and solemnly took the salute in true Scout style. - • Your love of being photographed – you'd pose for a picture anywhere, anytime.
- • After lunch on a hot, sultry, summer afternoon – children turning up to class with the "great treasure" of a half-finished lump of garlic (stuffed under the desk lid to save for later), the ensuing stink so unbearable that it called for instant evacuation. It was probably a good excuse for one of those long walks or a swim in the river.
- • The polio epidemic in the summer of 1948, when we were all confined to the camp.
- • The nightmare of taking groups on trains to deliver to holiday homes or new schools.
- • The sadness throughout the camp when a group left for Poland – but later the great happiness and pride with which family members welcomed returning soldiers and others from overseas.
- • The two doctors
Dawidowska andCzochańska – their kindness to us, hospitality and wit, and the many laughs we had. - •
Sister Johnson in the hospital – so starched and white, and so kind. - • My friend Mrs Tietze – we exchanged Polish/English lessons late at night and always over a drink or two (one for each leg and one for the head) as it improved the fluency. My Polish involved learning all the words and phrases necessary to understand what was being said behind my back, such as swear words.
• My bicycle – the line up to ride it straight after school and the persuasive methods used by Czesława Jackowska ,Maria Najbert ,Irena Wierzbicka and company to regulate rides. - • I particularly remember the ingenuity of the children to make something out of nothing, especially boys like the Niedńwiecki brothers, Jan and Kazimierz, who cadged, picked up, "found" or borrowed bits and pieces to make their own bike – their pride and joy.
- • Finally, my most enduring memory – the success you and your families have been as a group in New Zealand and the great contribution you have made in so many fields of endeavour. Not least the way you have kept alive the practice of your Catholic faith and Polish culture.
My hope is that this will endure for generations to come while being ever mindful of the courage of those who started it all – the Polish children of the Pahiatua camp.
The Polish Children's Camp's female New Zealand teaching staff, 1947. They were pioneers in teaching foreign children. (l-r)
Claire Ny
In the late 1980s, I attended a course run by the Department of Internal Affairs on citizenship work and one of the instructors was
Stefania came back the next day with a small piece of paper, which said: "Claire, my husband was overjoyed that you might be able to locate his brother's grave. My husband's brother died in Tehran mid-1942. A photo of the grave would be appreciated."
So, armed with that small piece of information and some knowledge about the Polish children, the story unfolded as set out in my letter to her from Tehran on 14 November 1987:
No, I have not forgotten you, and it is with my most happy thoughts to you and your husband that I write.
Today I went on an adventure. I went with one of the Armenian drivers from the embassy (Eddie, whose help and company was invaluable) and together, yes you have guessed, we found Ludwik Zawada. We sat together at his grave. I thought of you both and cried, and my tears were for all those years you have all been parted and the sad story behind Ludwik being where he is and you where you are.
I said it was an adventure so I must share it with you, as even as I write, the full events of the day are only just forming solidly in my mind.
Eddie did some research as to where we could start our search. We went to a convent first where the nun we spoke to remembered the story of the children coming from Poland, and we talked a while of the journey and troubles they had during that time. She told us of a Polish cemetery in Tehran, but first suggested we talk to an Italian priest who may know more of registers and names. So we set off again through Tehran to find this man. Another small miracle – we found him. He could help and even gave us a map to the cemetery.
Now, as you have probably guessed, Tehran is not easy to navigate and we
Then we found the cemetery. By this time I was getting the feeling that Ludwik was near, but trying not to get excited in case of disappointment. An old man greeted us and directed us to the Polish part of the cemetery. Here was my real shock – row upon row of small grey headstones lying in the earth, all well cared for and clean. But Stefania, so many small children, so many short lives, so much pain. I really felt it all.
We started to look. I thought to myself to take it easy and that this may just be the start, when suddenly Ludwik's name just jumped out at me. I shouted: "Here he is!" And then I could do nothing but sit by him and cry. So we put some flowers there and I have taken many pictures for you and will send them as soon as they are ready.
If there are any more of your friends I could help with this, please let me know. I am filled with sadness, happiness and joy, but yet feel strangely peaceful. (My first two months here have been a very difficult settling-in time but now I know it is going to be different somehow.)
My postings took me all over the world. Stefania and I kept in touch by exchanging Christmas cards. Then one day in early 2002, when my latest appointment took me back to Wellington, I got a telephone call from Stefania to tell me that she and Józef were going to Iran. "I have a friend in the Tehran Embassy, Bronwen Williams," I said. "She will look after you." Then I promptly got in touch with her.
Bronwen joined them at the Dulab Cemetery in Tehran in a ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the Polish refugees' arrival in Iran.
"It was a sunny spring morning when we drove to south Tehran to the cemetery," wrote Bronwen. "Many people were there waiting for the plane to arrive from Warsaw carrying Polish soldiers, the Catholic bishop, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church and a representative of Warsaw's Jewish community. The religious dignitaries based in Tehran were also there. Just as the Mass began, so did the call to midday prayers at the nearby mosque."
Throughout the ceremonies, Bronwen sat next to Stefania and Józef, and later Stefania said to me: "It was as though the whole of New Zealand was with us offering support."
Vel Puke
Pronounced Pee-ar-chara. It isn't a difficult name to pronounce if you take it slowly. But to see it written down for the first time and because it is Polish, you wouldn't know which end to begin at. Consequently, Joe (Józef) has always been known up our end of the street as Mr Pole.
We have known Joe and his wife Mary as neighbours for 42 years. But known might not be the right word, as Joe was an independent and reserved person who kept pretty much to himself. However, during the last few years of his life, we became friends and would often chat about this and that, and in the process discussed many events which were going on in the world, many of which have gone on in the past, and in this way we eventually came to the events that led to Joe coming to New Zealand.
Joe was one of the "Polish children" whose plight would be well known to New Zealanders who remember World War II. The Polish children arrived in New Zealand in 1944 and were settled in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. Joe was nearly 11 when he arrived and was there for a few years. Last summer, Joe and I went up to Pahiatua and looked over the site which used to be the camp. From his comments, I would say that this was by and large a relatively peaceful part of his life. However, if we didn't know anything about his history we would miss the fact that up to that point he had experienced things in his life that would have amazed and unsettled us. Joe was like that. He would never let on about things like that. He just got on with his life.
Joe came to be here when he shared the fate of the Polish children in Pahiatua. He had a wry chuckle about the ethnic-cleansing debacle in Kosovo – he maintains that he was ethnically cleansed out of Poland years before and nobody said or did anything about it then. On leaving Pahiatua, Joe worked in the meat industry most of his life. He moved from Gear, to Tomoana, to Wakatu, to Ocean Beach, to Ngahauranga (now Ngauranga) and others between. He stayed in single men's quarters and like his mates lived the life of Riley.
I have had many discussions with Joe on a wide range of topics, which led me to the belief that he was a deep thinker who could make reasoned connections between events. He had a good understanding of the history of the Middle East, the evolvement of the Slavonic nations and the modern relationships between the Slavic people. He had a good knowledge of the
Of recent years, Joe did go back to his home area. He said that he would quite like to have returned to Poland to live out the remainder of his life. But he also said he was not going anywhere while his beloved cat Louie was still around.
I was hoping I might have persuaded Joe to record an oral history of his life, but like most things in life I left it too late. I'm not sure that he would have done it anyway.
With friends in the camp's grounds.
Standing: (l-r)
Front: (l-r)
Sheila Quirk
While I was at St Joseph's School in Palmerston North in 1944, our class was sent to Palmerston North Railway Station to hand out cartons of ice cream to the children passing through on their way to the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. I have never forgotten the little girl who insisted on packing her carton in her bag.
Later on, the parish priest of St Patrick's in Palmerston North appealed for people to billet the children who were to be educated at the local schools. My mother, who was the proprietor of Princess Hotel, undertook to take a child. But before he could arrive, the priest asked if she could possibly take two as he felt that it could be very lonely for one child who didn't speak any English. Of course she agreed and eventually two little boys arrived – Leszek Powierza and
They were delightful kids who answered "yes" to everything because it was the only English they knew. As their vocabulary increased, it was one of the house rules that they could speak Polish only when doing the dishes. Naturally, they were eager volunteers for that job.
It wasn't long before the priest was again asking a favour. One of the other boys was not happy in his billet. Could we possibly have him too? And so it was that
Leszek eventually went to Australia where he lives in Noosa. His mother and brothers lived in New Zealand so we have seen him several times over the years – the last time at a school reunion in Palmerston North where we also met up with
They were great years with three wonderful boys.
Valerie Roy-Wojciechowski
I consider myself privileged through my marriage to
I first saw Jan striding across the lobby of the building where I had just begun my first job. Though he could have come from any one of a number of offices, I knew immediately that he must be the Polish accountancy cadet my new employer had told me about. I immediately felt his sense of purpose and determination – a trait I would later find in other Poles.
I knew then he was someone special and hoped that some day he might be special to me. Later when I met the rest of the Wojciechowski family, I was impressed by their neat, comfortable and welcoming homes which stood testament to their hard work and zeal. I was very aware of their closeness and deep sense of family. It was comforting to be accepted and made to feel part of it. They have always been very good to me and willingly helped in any way they could.
Soon I had my first taste of Polish foods – salami, pickled cucumbers,
I met Jan's lively friends and Pani (Mrs) Kozera at whose home they would all gather on a Sunday afternoon. There was animated conversation, more often than not in Polish, with Polish folk music and singing, while Mrs Kozera kept up a continuous supply of open sandwiches the like and quantity of which I had never seen before.
During the two years before Jan and I were married, I boarded at the Polish Girls' Hostel in Lyall Bay, which was another completely new experience. My two brothers were much older than me and I didn't have a sister, but now I was surrounded by girls my own age, and older and younger. I enjoyed being part of this exuberant family.
The Ursuline nuns who cared for us were very kind and down to earth. They teased me by often making me ask for my meals and clean linen in Polish. I had Polish lessons from Sister Alexandrowicz but to my everlasting regret never kept them up. It was so much easier to retain the words I learnt then, than those I have tried to learn since. To be honest, I have given up on
In the first few years of our marriage, before we became too busy with our own family, Jan and I would join his family for Wigilia – the traditional meal held on Christmas Eve. I was unable to contribute to this meal of 13 different dishes, all very different to the roast pork, vegetables, green beans and peas to which I was accustomed. I was also in awe that after all the labour involved in producing this Christmas Eve meal, my sisters-in-law would then prepare a New Zealand-style dinner for Christmas Day. But then everything about my sisters-in-law and Polish women in general fills me with awe – their talents for housekeeping, cooking, sewing, knitting, handwork and gardening are to be greatly admired.
Jan's application to his career, long hours at work and our growing family kept us from the Polish community for many years, except for visits to his family and occasionally with friends. Sometimes I would be quite startled to hear him speak in his own language, but the rest of the time he was just involved in becoming and being a regular Kiwi. It was also many years before he began to tell me of his family's experiences before they came to New Zealand, their home in Poland, their time in the USSR and Iran, and even in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. All of it I learned in little snatches and I am still learning today.
Jan retired in 1994. And having his life back, he made the decision to get involved in all things Polish. He started by offering funds for a course in Polish history at Auckland University. We began to attend Polish Mass every Sunday when we were in Auckland. Because I like to participate fully, I began reading the responses and prayers in Polish. I believe I do not do too badly in pronunciation and it is becoming easier. I am just beginning to know what I am saying as I go along – until now, I have had to just concentrate on each difficult word. I enjoy singing the Polish hymns – they are lovely and somehow it is easier to sing than say.
Over the past few years, there has been a steady pouring of Polish books, videos and music cassettes into our home. I began to record the books in a database as some are rare and precious, and we wanted to keep track of them. Just as it is hard for hands used only for writing in English to be made to write Polish words, so it is for them to type them. The brain must tell my fingers "that combination of letters is wrong" and they struggle to contradict that message. But I persevered, typing letter by letter, sometimes not knowing (when I came to titles with just two words, particularly biographies) which was the title and which the author.
When we established the Polish Literary Club, I set up a database of the
Later, I designed the membership cards for the Sybiraki Society (those deported to Siberia) and the invitations to the annual dinners. To make mailouts easy, I set up databases of Sybiraki Society and the Polish groups around the country, and then began to convert the list of the 733 former refugee children to a database. Luckily for me,
I was thrilled when Jan was offered the position of Honorary Consul for Poland. It was a great honour and well deserved. The long drawn-out processes that such an appointment required made me more impatient than it did Jan and I sometimes couldn't believe it was really happening. In that time, I also gave thought to the responsibilities that such a position would entail, and how I could help and encourage him.
Finally, on a beautiful March day in 1999, family, dignitaries and friends gathered in our garden. Dr Tadeusz Szumowski, the Ambassador for Poland in Canberra, with his wife Agata, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Don McKinnon came for the occasion and made the formal appointment. We were entertained with music by a three-piece ensemble who played, after a very short rehearsal, the Polish national anthem along with God Defend New Zealand. It was a memorable day.
The following day, the Polish community welcomed Jan as their consul at a gathering at the Dom Polski (Polish House). There were speeches by the ambassador and new honorary consul. The ladies contributed Polish food to a beautiful lunch and the children performed Polish recitals, songs and dances. On the Sunday, Father Wrona celebrated Mass for the intentions of the new honorary consul, which was attended by the ambassador and his wife before they left for their home across the Tasman.
We had not been aware that being a consul meant you were part of the Auckland Consular Corp – a wonderful group of people, some born in the countries they represent and others born New Zealanders. The members of the corp and their wives, and sometimes husbands, are down to earth and incredibly friendly. We have wonderful get-togethers for national days, or kings', emperors' or presidents' birthdays.
Highlights have been the 80th birthday dinner of the corp where we were asked to dress in 1920s' costume or our own national dress. Jan and I opted for the latter, borrowing our finery from friends. For me, putting on Polish
I have visited Poland several times, the first in 1990. Jan had visited a number of times before that, but had felt no inclination to subject me to the rigid bureaucracy he always had to endure before Poland regained its freedom in 1989. Plus, I still had children at home. In fact, I had always been anxious each time he went. It seemed to me that it was too possible for some political upset to occur and with his Polish name for him to become caught up in it. I always asked him to phone me when he had left the country.
My first impression of Warsaw, our city of entry, confirmed the only picture I had in my mind of Poland – that of a dull, grey country which had been under the influence of Russia and communism for 45 years. There were still signs of that occupation in the very basic airport, stark hotel in a dull part of the city and warehouse-like shops.
However, it was not long before I sensed something special and extremely difficult to express in words. It was the indomitable spirit of the Polish nation that pervaded the whole of the country, and was so tangible that it seemed you could cut out a chunk of it and take it with you. And take it with me I
Enjoying retirement,
As we moved around Warsaw, Kraków, the little villages and beautiful countryside, it was apparent that Poland was certainly not grey and dull. The beautiful architecture of the cities; the monuments, especially those of Westerplatte where, at the beginning of the World War II, the Poles held off the Germans for four weeks and at Gdańsk where Solidarity was born; the amazing number of stately churches; the quaint little villages, still as they had been for hundreds of years; fields of ripening grain sprinkled with cornflowers and poppies; and wonderfully fragrant lilacs in bloom.
At the shrine of Częstochowa, because we had come so far to see it, we were given a space near the icon of the Black Madonna as it was unveiled to a fanfare of trumpets. This ceremony, epitomising the tremendous faith of the Poles in God and Our Lady, Queen of Poland, and again demonstrating their unconquerable spirit, was incredibly moving.
In 1998, we took all six of our now grownup children to Poland. I was overjoyed to learn that they felt completely at home and part of it – their father's country, their country. We had a wonderful time, seeing everything it was possible to see in a mere two weeks, and when Jan and I dropped exhausted into bed each night, our family went "on the town" to mingle with other young Poles in bars and clubs.
One memory of Poland represents for me my ever-growing feeling of being accepted and becoming as part of the Polish people as a New Zealander of British heritage could be.
We were strolling along the main street of Zakopane, thronged with happy people in holiday mode. Suddenly, we heard the slow clip-clop of horses' hooves and tinkling of many little bells. All stopped to see what was going on. Soon the riders and horses came into view – the former in regional dress, the latter gaily decorated with tiny bells, red bridles and tassels, and pulling carriages. In the first were a young man and woman in regional dress, and we realised they were a bridal couple. In the following carriages sat couples that could only be the proud parents. Then came a cart in which rode the musicians with accordions and violins.
The whole scene took our breath away and we had left our camera with our driver back down the street! The procession came to a halt quite near us and we saw that the party was going into the photographer's. Would we have time to get our camera before they came out?
We tore back down the street and got back just in time to see them emerge. We snapped our pictures while they got back into their carriages. As they moved away, a wonderful thing happened. The crowd, long-halted to enjoy
It was also a wonderful experience in 2004 seeing Jan's biography A Strange Outcome: The Remarkable Survival Story of a Polish Child come into existence. The launchings in Auckland and Wellington were fulfilling, as have been Jan's talks and signings around the country. He has enjoyed the positive responses to these and to his book.
Now I am enthusiastic about "our" Polish museum, which Jan and I have been planning for some time. And it is our museum in that I hope every Pole in New Zealand comes to share in our enthusiasm to make it a success by contributing to it. Every item donated is carefully recorded so that the donor's children or grandchildren can identify the contribution and claim it back if that is their wish. With this assurance, I hope that Poles will be encouraged to allow their precious mementoes to be put into the museum. We hope it will draw Poles and other New Zealanders alike, the latter to learn about Poland as I have and especially the children.
I enjoy all my contacts with the Polish people and the times that I spend with them. I am lucky to be part of this wonderful family of Polish people in New Zealand and hope I can continue to make my small contribution by being a supportive "Pani Konsulowa" as Jan likes to call me.
A need for resourcefulness
Gordon McArthur
New Zealanders are renowned for their resourcefulness. Give us a shilling, a piece of binder twine and number-eight wire, and we can fix anything. How good were we? Myself and a couple of mates from Pahiatua District School learned a thing or two one day on a visit to the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua.
We passed the hat around our class and gathered enough money to buy such things as oranges and bananas to take to the Polish kids at the camp. The idea was to make them welcome and generally fraternise in a friendly way, such as playing ball games and trying to make each other understood. It was great fun as I remember.
However, one Saturday we biked out to the camp, gave our gifts and went out to enjoy our usual games. After a couple of hours it was time to return to Pahiatua but one of our bikes was missing. We searched the camp with the help of the staff and the kids, but alas no joy. The whole matter had become serious and discussions were being held on the appropriate action to take, when somebody announced that the bike had been found.
The discovery was amazing. It was found between the mattress and the frame of a bed totally stripped to the last nut and screw – very impressive. This was a sombre comment on the resourcefulness developed in their need to survive under their conditions in forced exile. I always remembered this and it is a major factor in my respect for these people who are now valued citizens of New Zealand.
Maureen Mokrzecki
When my husband
In Jan's spare time, while working fulltime, he was asked by the late Monsignor Minogue of New Plymouth to design a classroom block and other projects, which made the news in the Taranaki Herald. He also did up an old farmhouse with 8½ acres of land, in which I helped.
In later years, Jan had a bad run of health problems. In the mid-1980s, stomach cancer took a heavy toll on him and despite not having a stomach, we owned and operated a hospitality venue. Also, a heart infection during that period necessitated a valve replacement. On selling the property and business, we bought a large home in Waikanae. After five years and lots of money spent on completely re-landscaping and other cosmetic changes, Jan said: "Let's sell and start to travel."
This man, against all adversity life has thrown at him, owns a one million dollar-plus freehold property, having started from zero. I'm sure all his Polish countrymen and women will, on reading this, be very proud of Jan, as our whole family is. He is an inspiration to us all.
Polish Children's 50th Anniversary, 1994
Jean Eddie (President, Pahiatua and Districts Museum Society)
Labour Weekend in October 1994 was not only a memorable weekend for the Polish children of 1944, but also for the Pahiatua Committee which was able to assist in the preparations. It was a moving occasion.
More than 1,100 people came by buses and cars to celebrate 50 years since the arrival in New Zealand of 733 Polish children and their 102 caregivers on the
Months of preparation for the reunion came to fruition and it was enjoyed by everyone. The arrival of Governor-General Dame Catherine Tizard, Prime Minister Jim Bolger and other dignitaries set the tone for the day at the Pahiatua Sports Stadium. The opening ceremony began with a thanksgiving Mass led by the Papal Nuncio, and assisted by bishops and priests. Welcome! Welcome! Welcome! These words still ring in my ears as the chairman ofthe Pahiatua Community Board Peter Tourell addressed the packed stadium. It was a wonderful invitation for those returning to their first "home" in New Zealand.
Dame Tizard spoke in a similar vein and unveiled a model of the former Polish Children's Camp. This model was then presented to the Pahiatua and
The packed stadium was treated to Polish dancing, so rhythmic and colourful with all participants dressed in their national costumes. After lunch, those present spent time reminiscing, visiting the Polish memorial or taking a walk across the green pastures which were once the site of their camp. The day in Pahiatua concluded with fond farewells, along with many revived memories of 50 years ago.
Jock Aplin of Dannevirke recalls working on the site of the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua in 1942. Before the Polish children arrived, he was employed as a labourer by Gillespies, builders of Dannevirke, who worked for AV Swanson contractors of Wellington. Many subcontractors were local people who were involved in turning Pahiatua Racecourse into an internment camp for "foreign nationals".
The land at the time was very wet. With all the transport carting in the timber, cement and polite (a type of weatherboard), it was a quagmire. Tractors
The Pahiatua Polish Jubilee Committee on the porch of the Pahiatua Museum, 17 September 1994. The museum features many photos of the Polish community and the scale model of the camp.
Standing: (l-r)
Sitting: (l-r)
In 1950, it provided a temporary home for boatloads of displaced persons from war-torn Europe. Today, the land has returned to pasture and there is no sign of what used to be the camp. Only the Polish children's memorial marks the area where the camp was located.
Margery Bentley
Countess Wodzicka, the wife of the Polish Consul to New Zealand, told the representative of The Herald that the Polish girls joyfully anticipated their day out at the gala. All were excited as the day approached and long faces greeted the sound of falling rain in the morning. But the rain must have cleared because the gala did take place at the Pahiatua showgrounds.
The main events at the gala were marching team displays. The Pringles team in the inter-house marching contest wore a red and white costume, and on their hats was embroidered a "P" for Pringles. As they passed the Polish children, the youngsters gave them a special round of applause, calling out "Polska! Polska!" Because white and red are Poland's national colours, the children thought that the "P" was for "Polska", the name of their beloved country Poland.
Before the second section of the inter-house marching competition, the Polish secondary school girls were assembled in front of the grandstand by their lady teacher. They sang two Polish songs and their sweet singing was loudly applauded by the crowd. Later, the girls were invited to stage a counterattraction behind the grandstand. A large section of the crowd was delighted with their singing and folk dancing. During the spell between the marching displays, the Polish girls were offered sandwiches and drinks.
Another time, a story went round about the Palmerston North Civic Band visiting the camp one Saturday afternoon. Such was the rush of the Polish youngsters to follow the band hard on the heels of the pipers, that hundreds of Polish children had to fight for positions. Near the camp hospital, the children were crowded off the roadway, little feet sinking deep into muddy patches. Everyone knew about the spotless camp dormitory floors, so the results of these feet rushing into the dormitories left little to the imagination.
Barbara Cosford
I was then 10 years old and living on Masterton Road, about halfway between the camp and Pahiatua. I can remember the army trucks going past our gate with the Polish children and accompanying adults, who had that day arrived in the country, huddled in the back. The boys wore jackets and short pants, some with caps and close-cut haircuts. The girls were in their overcoats and hats, as were most of the adults.
After the children settled down in their new environment, they were taken to town accompanied by an adult. They walked in twos, singing their Polish songs and greeted us with "hello" in their language. I have since forgotten the word, but we picked it up at the time.
My dad had a poultry farm. When the boys were allowed more freedom, they came over in groups of six or seven and followed dad when he fed the poultry. At that time, the soldiers stationed in the camp would come to buy fresh eggs to take home when they had leave. Eggs were still rationed then. One particular soldier who came for eggs was in charge of the garden at the camp and the teams of boys who tended them. He was telling my mum about his "phantom (nowhere to be seen) gardeners", when half a dozen appeared with my dad. They were the "phantom boys" and they got quite a shock when they saw who was talking to my mum.
The Pahiatua locals welcome the Polish children as the trucks pass through town from the railway station to the Polish Children's Camp, 1 November 1944
I still have my mother's address book. Listed there are Mrs Perkowska, Richard Patulski,
Agnes Diamond
My family is descended from Polish immigrants who arrived in New Zealand in the late 19th Century. Every Sunday afternoon, my mum and dad (George and Rose Treder), Barbara, John and I (the youngest children), and our
The children from the camp were often invited to the Treder farm in Konini. These were happy times in a big family atmosphere. The children would enjoy riding bikes, and my brother George would take both adults and children around the farm on the old Model T truck. What fun.
At the age of eight, I proudly wore the Polish national costume to a fancy dress at Mangamaire School. It had a brown velvet vest with a beautiful sequined butterfly on the back. My sister Barbara looked so Polish that one day she was reprimanded by a Polish adult who thought that she was one of her charges. My brother Bernard and his cousin Pat Connor spent many hours learning Polish so that they could communicate with the girls when they biked to the camp to visit them.
When some of the children returned to their homeland, the Treder family kept contact with many letters and food parcels. Others who stayed in New Zealand have also kept in touch. My husband Paul and I, and some of our children, have visited Poland and feel privileged to have put our feet on Polish soil.
Pauline Ebbett
As a young girl aged 16 years, living on Masterton Road, I recall the arrival of the Polish children to Pahiatua. I was very sad to see the convoy of trucks transporting the children to the Polish Children's Camp. Those dear little souls, so thin that their heads looked like pumpkins on top of their bodies. They were riding on the decks of big GMCs, which were heading for their
They could not speak English then, but the young ones were remarkably quick to learn our language. I think that to be safe and live their days in a peaceful environment was their salvation. As time passed, one could hear them singing and giving much pleasure to everyone.
The Voluntary Aid Division was a band of local women who were attached to the nursing side of the army. They had prepared the beds for the children with sheets on them, and were able to help out with driving vehicles and be of general help where needed. I have great admiration for that very gallant band of ladies who all "helped to win the war".
Alistair MacDougall
Approximately 15 children arrived at Mangatainoka School in 1949, only to stay two terms. As they had been taught English at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, some were better than others, but you could still have a good conversation with them by using signs and a little patience.
They joined in playing bullrush at playtimes and then rugby, as they had been coached at the camp by their teachers
Two of the Polish boys I became friendly with told me how their parents and sister had been shot in a cow bail. The boys were thrown into a cattle truck and railed through days and nights of ice-cold conditions to forcedlabour camps in the USSR. For me, it was difficult to take in.
They learnt very quickly on the sporting ground and their English improved vastly. The army truck would drop them off in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. I spoke with some of them at our last Mangatainoka School Jubilee. Some of them had passed on but they had all done very well for themselves.
The camp and hostels
The Prime Minister's Department and Government took the problems of this unique group of Polish children refugees very seriously, and gave much thought and attention to the details of the administration of the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua and the children's future. With no precedents to guide them, their deliberations would have been especially difficult.
These records also show Prime Minister
At times, the proposals by the officials from the Prime Minister's Department were at odds with the stated opinion of the Polish authorities in the camp. This is not surprising in light of the differences in outlook. The New Zealand Government officials wanted the children's speedy assimilation and the Poles wanted the children to retain their identity. But credit to both sides must be given – their aim was the children's welfare and in the end the children benefited from the best of both worlds.
The conditions under which the camp was administered for the first two years of its five-year existence (from 1944 to 1949) are unparalleled in New Zealand's history. For the first two years, the camp was partly controlled and funded (including Polish staff's salaries, education, children's pocket money) by the Polish Government-in-Exile in London until that government ceased to be recognised by its former allies (including New Zealand). The New Zealand Government provided all the facilities and the supply of goods.
This was an unprecedented and unique situation in which the New Zealand Government ceded some control to a foreign government. The camp became fully funded and administered by the New Zealand Government after it ceased to recognise the Polish Government-in-Exile in 1945.
A report from the Prime Minister's Department, Wellington 15 April 1947
The object of this camp is that it shall be a Polish colony, administered as far as possible by Polish personnel. Until that object is fully attainable, New Zealand will remain to assist and advise. The New Zealand Government will provide and maintain accommodation, camp equipment and all rations.
The camp commandant is responsible for the administration and discipline of all New Zealand personnel, for rationing and messing all personnel (New Zealand and Polish in camp), administration and supervision in a general way of the whole camp.
Responsible for administration and discipline of all Polish personnel in the camp according to instructions from the Polish Government-in-Exile.
Responsible for maintaining buildings, grounds and appliances, fire-fighting appliances, and playing fields in and around camp area.
Accommodation is provided in 14 dormitories and 20 cottages, plus staff quarters for 840 Poles. New Zealand personnel are accommodated in officers' and sergeants' quarters, the Women's Auxiliary Ambulance Corps (WAAC) quarters and hutments for other military staff. Total New Zealand staff approximately 60.
The care of Polish personnel is the responsibility of the Polish lady doctor (Eugenia Czochańska) who has with her as consultant and surgeon Dr HB Lange of Pahiatua. Dr Lange is also a visiting medical officer for New Zealand personnel. Care of sanitation in buildings is the responsibility of Polish and New Zealand personnel. The outside is the Public Works Department's responsibility.
Polish and New Zealand personnel will maintain watchful care over all camp property, but general maintenance is the responsibility of the Public Works Department.
Access to camp will be limited to visiting hours, which are from 1400 to 1600 Sundays, or by arrangement with Polish Delegate or camp commandant. Permission to leave camp for New Zealand personnel will be by ordinary leave pass. For Polish personnel and children, arrangements will be made by Polish Delegate.
A trained team of New Zealand personnel under a fire master will be given responsibility for fire fighting. A detachment of Polish boys are being given instructions and will assist.
Playing fields, including football, basketball, volleyball, have been provided for the Polish children and are the responsibility of the Polish Delegate. A 35mm projector was installed in the camp and pictures will be shown as and when required. Concert parties and bands, etc, have generously offered assistance, and the Pahiatua subcommittee of the hospitality committee will keep a roster and provide entertainment as requested.
A representative committee of societies and organisations was formed to provide clothing, entertainment, toys, etc, which are not otherwise provided by the New Zealand Government.
The Permanent Head
Prime Minister's Department
Parliament Buildings
Wellington
Report of special committee appointed to investigate staff establishments at Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua
We visited the camp on 9 and 10 April 1947, and have to report as follows. The Polish Children's Camp is staffed from three sources – Polish staff, the New Zealand army and the Public Works Department, as shown in the following report which sets out the present strength of the staff and the various duties in which they are engaged. A separate report on each of the three establishments follows.
The last approved establishment for Polish personnel was 11 September 1946. Since then, the number of children has decreased and so has the number of Polish staff.
The present occupant of the position is not medically fit to carry out his duties and will most probably transfer to a social security benefit within the very near future. There is no possibility of filling the position from Polish personnel and it should therefore be cancelled.
We have reported hereunder on the economy of the poultry run. Unless the number of fowls is increased sufficiently to provide a fulltime job for the poultry man, we consider he should be paid the minimum hourly rate under the Minimum Wage Act and employed only half time.
From our discussion with the New Zealand Army Nursing Service charge sister at the camp hospital, we are confident that with the reduction in the number of children, the position of hygiene nurse is not a fulltime job. The number of hospital nursing aides is shortly to be reduced by one, and we consider that the position of hygiene nurse should be eliminated and the present occupant employed in the hospital. She would automatically take some of her work
While the total number of Polish staff employed in the camp appears to be high for the number of Poles living in the camp (ie, 384 children and 108 adults, including staff), it must be remembered that with the exception of bed linen which is washed by outside contractors, a complete domestic service is provided. Furthermore, the work involved for such a large number of children is much heavier than it would be for a corresponding number of adults, and when each separate service is examined, an entirely different picture of personnel strength is presented.
Owing to the language difficulty, the Polish staff engaged in administrative duties is the minimum possible.
The Polish storeman carries out the duties of barrack warden, and apart from his normal duties is responsible to the army quartermaster for furniture and equipment charged out on location to the Polish sleeping quarters, mess rooms, kitchens, etc.
The only Pole employed under this heading as "handyman" is commented upon above.
The hospital is a 40-bed institution and it will be obvious to all that, apart from the hygiene nurse mentioned above, the strength of the Polish staff is insufficient, particularly when it is remembered that at least 80% of the patients are children requiring a good deal of nursing.
Based on New Zealand standards, a total staff of 13 to operate two kitchens feeding 49 people is not excessive.
As the teaching staff is subject to regular reviews by the Education Department, no investigations were made under this heading.
It was not possible to obtain any output figures for the laundry but after learning that the six laundresses, with very poor facilities at their disposal, performed the washing and ironing of personal garments for 384 children, the committee was satisfied that this section was not overstaffed.
Apart from the usual tubs and coppers, the only equipment available in the laundry is two household electric washing machines. These are inadequate and if the camp is to continue for any length of time, serious consideration should be given to the supply of a commercial-sized washing machine or machines to the camp. The provision of this equipment will either make a reduction in staff possible or enable the existing staff to handle, in addition, the washing of the bed linen which at present is done in Palmerston North.
It will be noted that of a staff of 14 seamstresses, 10 are learners, and from the future employment aspect this is most desirable. The work carried out in this section covers the manufacture of garments not only for children in the camp but also for those attending New Zealand schools.
Secondhand clothing, ex-army, navy, air force and other sources is unpicked and remade into children's clothing in addition to clothes being made from new materials. In addition to manufacture, repairs are carried out and the following figures are a typical month's output from the sewing room:
Repairs:
Making:
Alterations:
A good deal of buttonholing is necessary and it is suggested that a buttonhole machine be provided. The National Employment Service has declared such a machine surplus to the War Assets Realisation Board and enquiries could be made as to the possibility of acquiring it. The committee was also satisfied that the sewing room was not overstaffed.
Each of the 11 dormitories is supervised by a dormitory supervisor (female). The supervisor's duties consist of looking after the children during their out-of-school hours, watching their personal cleanliness and of kindred duties. The dormitory supervisors are under the control of the housemaster (boys) and housemistress (girls). These two officers are like father and mother respectively to the boys and girls. The committee was unable to find any reason for recommending the reduction of staff under this heading and the proportion of one supervisor to 35 children is certainly not unreasonable.
The five learners employed in the boot shop are boys in their early teens and they are learning a trade, which will enable them to take their place later in any community. After examining the work done, the committee was of the opinion that this was probably the most economical activity in the camp. The instructor spoke very highly of the boys and their interest in the work. In addition to the ordinary repair work involving approximately 90 pairs of footwear per week, boots and shoes with irreparable soles but good uppers are completely resoled to the smaller size and reissued. These boys also assist in the clothing store and in unloading of coal several hours per week.
The position of poultry man is dealt with in another part of this report. There can also be no question that one hairdresser would be insufficient for a community of this size and the committee was satisfied that two hairdressers were essential.
Army staff on the above camp strength totalled 23 on 10 April 1947. Included in this is one canteen worker and the matron of the hospital. The total of 23 represents a very large reduction from the establishment which became effective on 1 October 1946 and has almost reached a minimum below which the army functions in the camp could not be efficiently carried out.
As there are now approximately 300 fewer Polish children and staff in the
If the reduced establishment which has been proposed by the commandant of the camp should replace the present one, it would appear that not enough consideration has been given to the evident fact that not all the camp duties require fulltime services. The proposed establishment totals 33, which is 10 more than the existing strength.
Fulltime service appears to be necessary in the following army posts:
The other members of the staff perform duties which take a few hours per day on most days.
Until recently, the Army Supply Corp (ASC) had a supply depot in the camp which was responsible for accounting for supplies. The ASC has now handed over to the camp the supply depot minus the accounting, which is done at ASC headquarters. As the accounting represents the greater part of the work, it could be expected that a reduction would have been made in the proposed establishment, but this is not the case as the same number of staff have been asked for.
One of the steam plants in the camp is being converted to oil burning and when this is completed, a reduction of 75% in the coal consumption will be effected. This will have a direct influence on the number of trucks in the camp and on the number of drivers. There appears to be at present one car and one van (commercial type) too many in the camp. After the conversion of the boiler to oil burning takes place, one dump truck should be withdrawn.
Having due regard to the amount of full and part-time duties and amount of work now done by Polish personnel, we consider that an army staff of 22 is essential for the efficient administration of this camp without lowering the present standard of service.
It will be observed from sections of this report dealing with Polish and army personnel respectively, that apart from a Polish handyman whose physical capacity is such that his services are practically of no use, no member of either group is engaged in general maintenance of the camp. This portion of the essential services of the camp is left to Public Works Department employees under the control of an overseer.
In addition to the work required at the camp, the Public Works Department section is responsible for repairing and maintaining government buildings in the Pahiatua district and the military camp in Moki Moki.
For the following reasons, the committee is satisfied that the Public Works Department maintenance personnel is not overstaffed:
In addition to all the maintenance work, the Public Works Department section is responsible for the operation of two steam boilers. A 24-hour service is provided. In this connection, the poor class of coal supplied and power cuts add to the task. On a 40-hour-week basis for a 24-hour service, four boiler attendants are necessary.
Poultry
There are 170 laying hens and they are producing at present 91-dozen eggs a month. In view of the uneconomic rate of production and, in our opinion, the unsatisfactory method of feeding the poultry, we recommend that the
The swill from the kitchen is at present sold to a nearby farmer and this immediately raised the query in our minds as to whether the camp could not maintain a pig run of its own and divert the kitchen swill to it. We would also recommend in this case that a report from the Department of Agriculture be obtained. It is understood, however, that this question was investigated some time ago but was rejected because it would not be possible to locate the pig run sufficiently far enough away from the camp itself to avoid the smell.
We would make the following observations in regard to future staffing:
12 February 1946
A meeting in the acting Prime Minister's office
During the Prime Minister's absence, the acting Prime Minister, Walter Nash (a future Prime Minister), chaired a meeting to discuss the children's future. The following shows a general discussion on the tabled reports, and the meeting's recommendations and conclusions. The minutes reveal the difference of opinion between the Prime Minister and his staff over the policy of assimilation. Tertiary education was not a Government priority at that time, especially for the Polish children.
The points under discussion were whether:
- 1. To assist the decision making, the following information was tabled at the meeting:
- a) Of the total of 733 children in the camp, 90 have a mother or father in the camp with them, 218 have at least one parent overseas, while the balance of 425 are orphans.
- b) Parents who reside at the camp are employed as teachers, cooks, etc c) Permits to enter Zealand have been granted to 24 additional parents, who represent 56 children.
- d) The orphans' ages are as follows:
AgeBoysGirlsUnder 10 | 39 | 48 | 11-15 | 130 | 117 | 16+ | 10 | 81 | - e) All parents are to come to New Zealand if they wish. The majority are with the Polish forces in Italy and they probably consider it impossible for them to return to Poland. The natural refuge therefore is in New Zealand. That would leave only the orphans to be cared for.
- f) A policy of progressive assimilation of these children in New Zealand life would seem best. The Polish authorities resist this. Adoption and boarding out to be carried out as soon as Mr Zaleski, the new Polish Delegate, arrives from London.
- 2. Present arrangements:
- a) During 1945 – their first full year in New Zealand – nine children attended schools outside the camp, though 47 vacancies were offered in schools. Some Polish adults are resisting exposing the children to New Zealand influences.
- b) This year, 67 vacancies in schools have been offered and accepted. The following are going out into employment:
In addition, eight boys are employed under expert tuition in boot and shoe repair at the camp.Hospitals | 10 | Farming | 6 | Hairdressing | 4 | Dressmaking | 7 | Home aid | 6-12 | Tailoring | 7 | Engineering trades | 10 | - c) This programme will succeed only when the school syllabus is revised to teach more English in all subjects at the camp.
- 3. Education:
- a) The Poles maintain a primary and secondary school at the camp, exclusively on Polish lines. The primary school runs to the seventh standard, which is usually entered in the 13th year.
- b) English is not taught until Standard 5. There were only two New Zealand teachers at the camp (at that time) and they can accomplish little with the numbers of children with whom they must deal.
- c) The Polish authorities at the camp have resisted the introduction of English into the schools (though Mr Wodzicki, the Polish Consul, disavowed this in discussions with
Walter Nash in January 1946) The resistance takes the form that English should not interfere in any way whatsoever with the Polish syllabus. - d) If the children are to stay in New Zealand, as appears most probable, then it is essential to absorb them as rapidly as possible into New Zealand life, while affording them the opportunity to retain their Polish associations and identity. It is therefore suggested that:
- i) The syllabus in the camp should be reviewed by the New Zealand education authorities
- ii) The syllabus should adopt English as the main subject to afford the children a reasonable opportunity when they enter New Zealand life. This could be arranged as to give bias to Polish subjects, eg, history
- iii) While it is desirable to defer the final action on syllabus changes, the survey should be undertaken as soon as possible. It may then be discussed with Mr Zaleski, the new Polish Delegate, when he arrives, or if the need is pressing, to be taken up directly with London
- 4. Of the 67 children going to Catholic schools this year, the larger proportion will be boarded in private Catholic homes. Dr Kavanagh has asked whether the Interim Treasury Committee can meet the cost of private board and school uniforms, and the meeting suggested a sum of 30s per week. The question of payment for board in Catholic convents did not arise.
- 5. Board of guardians:
- a) The Supreme Court of New Zealand without any adequate consultation with the New Zealand Government initially appointed the board. While this may have been an embarrassment, it functioned usefully and has assisted the camp commandant.
- b) The board's functions are not precisely defined. It acts as the orphaned children's guardian and therefore has legal status. Countess Wodzicka stated that she considered the board's functions were advisory, though
Walter Nash stated that the primary responsibility rested with the New Zealand Government. - c) The camp commandant should be appointed to the board, though earlier this recommendation was not unanimous.
- d) Mr Zaleski, the Polish Delegate, should be appointed by the Supreme Court and be responsible to the New Zealand Government.
The above recommendations were presented to Prime Minister Peter Fraser on his return from overseas, and his final decisions are contained in the minutes of a meeting held on 1 June 1946, summarised below.
Present were Prime Minister
The original intention was that the children were to remain in New Zealand for the duration of the war and a reasonable time thereafter, and then return to Poland. It was on this understanding that the camp at Pahiatua was
The Prime Minister confirmed his previous assurance that those who elect to stay permanently in New Zealand will be welcomed, while those who choose to return to Poland will be given every assistance to do so. Though the camp will be maintained as long as the interests of the children require, it was desirable to consider the date on which it will be abandoned, but will remain open for a further two years.
The Prime Minister said it seemed unlikely that a return to Poland could be contemplated, in view of the internal situation in Poland, at any time in the near future. Therefore, it is very much in the children's interests if they could henceforth be trained to take their place on equal footing with the New Zealand children. This would safeguard their interests if they elected to remain here permanently.
Mr Zaleski, the Polish delegate at the meeting, was asked for his views on the future of the children. In his opinion:
The Prime Minister approved the following general policy for the future:
New Zealanders were divided in their attitude toward the arrival of the Polish children. Many welcomed them unreservedly but some felt that the Government's first duty was to their own citizens and the British people in general, and resented the help extended to foreigners by the Government. The following shows an example of a typical letter to the editor, followed by the Government's reply. Both letters are courtesy of The Dominion Post.
I wonder how many of your readers have visited the Polish camp at Pahiatua. I had the pleasure of doing so a little while ago. Everything is fine, but imagine my surprise when I discovered Polish families comfortably housed in little cottages of their own. Nobody objects, I am sure, to these Polish refugees being here, but one wonders how many people know that the men folk do no work whatsoever for them and their families' keep, and believe me they have things we never see. Our own men are employed to cook for them and wait on them! One feels it is all wrong in these days of labour shortage and especially when our own boys who fought for us cannot get decent living quarters, never mind being kept. Mr Fraser paid a visit to the camp recently, and told the Polish people he hoped they were all happy and that they could be the guests of New Zealand as long as they liked. Well, I ask you, who wouldn't stay under such circumstances, no work, no rent, no food bills, no fire bills and plenty of everything.
Comment in official quarters on the above was that there are 20 cottages at the Polish camp at Pahiatua occupied by Polish families. The cottages are not up to standard of New Zealand housing, but were provided in the camp to enable some of the Polish families to be accommodated in this way and enjoy some home life after the deprivation and suffering they experienced following the time they had to leave their own country in 1939.
All the adults at the camp make payment at a settled weekly rate for their food and lodging, whether they are accommodated in dormitories or in the cottages.
With the exception of some six adults who, because of their age, are unable to work, all adults in the camp establishment are employed and paid for their services. It is not true to say that the men folk do no work whatsoever – they are engaged in teaching and general maintenance duties in the camp.
No New Zealand personnel are engaged in cooking for the Poles, who do their own cooking and waiting at tables. One New Zealander is employed as general overseer of all the kitchens, and is responsible for the issue and use of rations.
During the visit that he made to the camp recently, the Prime Minister indicated that the Poles were welcome to remain in New Zealand, and that the adults could and should, as soon as possible, take their place in industry. It is not intended to maintain the camp permanently, only as long as it is necessary for the care of the children, of whom some are of primary school age who must remain in the camp for their education. When the children reach secondary school age, they attend schools in New Zealand, and on attaining working age are found employment in industry.
The above correspondence reveals that most New Zealanders were not aware that the Polish Government-in-Exile in London met some of the costs of running the camp, such as the adult personnel's salary and the children's pocket money.
In December 1945, after other countries ceased to recognise the Polish Government-in-Exile, New Zealand followed the British lead and withdrew its recognition, though it stalled with recognising the new Soviet communistdominated government in Warsaw. Three months later, on 9 April 1946, the New Zealand Government took over complete control of the camp. The Child Welfare Division also came into the picture.
I have to inform you that on 17 December 1945, Count KA Wodzicki was informed that his exequatur as Consul General of Poland at Wellington was withdrawn as from that date.
The position now is that we no longer recognise the Polish Government in London but we do not at present intend to recognise the provisional Government of Poland at Warsaw.
The foregoing is communicated to you for your information and guidance. Suitable advice has been sent to Departments concerned.
A milestone in the fate of the Polish children was the Yalta Conference (4 to 11 February, 1945) at which the Allies ceded Poland into the Soviet sphere of domination. This was a severe blow to the adults and children, who saw their world collapse around them with no likely return to their native land for which they had yearned passionately through all their years of exile. A gloom settled on the camp.
There was much friction at that time between the Polish staff and the Polish and New Zealand authorities at the camp as to the course to be taken – whether to assimilate the children into New Zealand society, or maintain the camp and the children's Polish identity in the hope that events will change for the better and that Poland will be free again.
There were serious proposals in government circles to have the children adopted out into New Zealand families but the Prime Minister's conclusion was to leave the children to decide for themselves. Many of the Polish staff resisted the assimilation policy on the basis that the children might still return to Poland, which, after its destruction by war and occupying powers, was short of people. The Polish nation had fought in a war alongside its former allies to maintain its Polish identity and now felt betrayed.
The Polish guardians and children resisted this proposal strongly and there were very few adoptions. It was a difficult situation on both sides at that time. It was particularly difficult for the adults, who felt stranded and helpless to cope in this strange, foreign to them and often unsympathetic society. Unfortunately, they did not leave any records of their struggles to adapt to their new environment.
Shortly after Lord Baden-Powell founded the Scouting movement for boys, it was wholeheartedly embraced by the Polish people. No distinction was made and both sexes were called Scouts. That happened in 1911.
Poland at this time was partitioned (until 1918) and the new Scouting movement encouraged patriotism, allowing the Poles to express themselves, as well as being a youth organisation that was fun and character building. Therefore, it is not surprising that as soon as the Polish children arrived in Iran after fleeing the forced-labour camps in the USSR, Scout companies were formed even before schools were established. When they arrived in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua, three-quarters of the children were in established Girl Guide and Boy Scout troops, Brownies and Cubs under the great leadership of Scout troop leader
In the camp, Scouting was a big part of the children's lives. At first, it filled a void because of the lack of extracurricular facilities and equipment (there were no musical instruments in the camp's early days and only one radio). But even after the sports teams were organised and the camp became more established, Scouting was a mainstay. It was a great leveller and a main form of entertainment.
At school, it was often only the extra bright children that were particularly noticed. But in Scouting, almost all could excel at something. Whether an individual had a particular talent for fire lighting, an especially beautiful singing voice, leadership qualities or the ability to teach others a skill, all of them had the opportunity to shine and develop very close bonds with the other children.
There were many Scout campfires. The first one was dedicated to all Scouts and people who had lost their lives in the unsuccessful Warsaw uprising, so it was a very moving occasion. Those gatherings around the campfire mirrored the children's emotions. To ease their terrible bouts of homesickness, they organised "excursions around Poland", with lots of singing, poetry and regional dancing, and celebrated Polish national days, religious days of importance and various anniversaries. For example, the anniversary of the Polish army's victory at Monte Cassino was a joyous evening which filled us with great pride.
It didn't take the Polish children long to befriend
The friendships, ignited on the first day in New Zealand, continued to grow. Troops met on many occasions to participate in various "drives" and activities, the most important being the blessing of the Polish Scout flag. Guides and Scouts came from Pahiatua to the camp for the day. Kiwis and Poles took part in activities, shared meals, joined ranks to march in parade past New Zealand and Polish Scout and Guide officials, and bowed their heads together for the blessing of the flag. On another occasion, a group of older Polish Girl Guides went to a Girl Guide leadership training camp in Waipawa.
The New Zealand Girl Guide Commissioner was not only present at that camp but led several of the more challenging events. The New Zealand Girl Guides and Boy Scouts accepted the Polish children as fellow Scouts, and helped them to find their feet in this new land through friendship and shared experiences. It is because of this that they are remembered with such warmth and one of the reasons why the Polish children recall their Scouting days with such joy.
As the children grew older and moved to different parts of New Zealand to continue their education or take up jobs, the Scouting movement in the camp grew smaller and eventually ceased to exist. The camp was closed and the children dispersed. In 1965,
But various photographs remain, including a photo of
Official documentation may have been lost but, more importantly for the Polish children, the warm memories of challenges, adventures, badges earned, songs sung around campfires and the friendships formed remain. The Scouting experiences helped to mould them into a large "family" and also into the adults they later became – patriotic Poles and hardworking New Zealanders with a great love of God and country.
"
When the Polish children and their staff arrived in New Zealand in 1944, they firmly believed that their stay would be temporary and that they would return to Poland as soon as the war ended. Therefore, their schooling at the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua was in Polish, and all the children remained in the camp so they could better assimilate back into Polish culture. The teaching of English was kept to a minimum.
However, in February 1945, it became obvious that the children, especially the orphans, would not be returning to their homeland after the outcome of the Yalta Conference. Eastern Poland, where they had come from, had been annexed by Russia and the rest of Poland enclosed in the Soviet bloc.
As a consequence, the camp's Polish staff and the New Zealand Government began planning the relocation of the children and their future. There was much controversy. The Government was anxious to integrate the children into New Zealand society as soon as possible. But on the other hand, the Polish staff feared that if the children went among strangers then they would lose their special Polish identity and religion. Eventually, an agreement was reached between the New Zealand Government, the Polish staff and the Catholic Church on the best way of relocating the children.
The hostel's proper name in the Catholic Archives in Hill Street, Wellington, is Catholic Polish Youth Hostel, but among the Polish people it was referred to as Bursa Męska or Polish Boys' Hostel.
Sister
"When the older boys were leaving the camp to go to Wellington, some to St Patrick's College, Wellington, and some to apprenticeships in carpentry, motor mechanics and other trades, the necessity arose for setting up a hostel for these boys. We were aided in this work by
"On the adjacent section, there was a very little house which was allotted for our use, Sister Imelda's and mine. We managed also to set up a little chapel – a converted army hut – between the hostel and our house. So, on 26 August 1946, Sister Imelda and I moved into the Polish Boys' Hostel in Island Bay, Wellington, beginning a new phase of our work."
Funds for running the hostel were provided mostly by the Government and partly by the working boys who paid for their board. Sister Alexandrowicz said that the New Zealand Government was very supportive of the project to establish hostels for the Polish children who had left the camp and were working or studying in Wellington. Prime Minister
Sisters Alexandrowicz and Imelda took turns in running the hostel, and the boys were responsible for keeping it clean. In the evenings, Sister Alexandrowicz gave lessons to the boys in Polish language and history. Life was busy.
The Polish Boys' Hostel in Clyde Street, Island Bay, Wellington. It was opened on 6 May 1946 to house the first boys who left the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua to work or study in Wellington, and eventually integrate into New Zealand society
The two Sisters, as well as the other Ursuline Sisters who came later, were professionally trained to care for young people, so it is not surprising that the boys under their care in the Polish Boys' Hostel remember the life then as peaceful, the food plentiful and the discipline just.
The atmosphere apparently changed somewhat once civilian staff took over from the Sisters. Some of the civilian staff were obviously less experienced in dealing with young boys and therefore too high-handed in the treatment of their charges. As the boys grew, their desire for independence also grew and trouble arose only when some staff member could not accept that.
Christmas 1950 on the steps of the Polish Boys' Hostel, Island Bay, Wellington, during a visit by the Polish priest. Some of the boys arrived from New Zealand schools to spend their holidays at the hostel.
Back (l-r): 2nd back (l-r): Sitting 2nd step (l-r): Sitting front (1-r):
Most boys remember the hostel as a safe, good place to live in. Brothers, sisters and friends visited them there. When the Polish Girls' Hostel was established, the boys would go there to play games, perhaps dance or even take one of the girls to cinema with the permission of Sister Alexandrowicz.
The boys helped not only with the cleaning of the hostel but also with its maintenance. One boy recalls an amusing incident when they were setting-up the vegetable garden. "The hostel had a large plot of land, so one of the male staff decided he would aid in the economy of the hostel by planting potatoes. He remembered how this was done in Poland and that he would need a horse. A friend of the hostel found a horse in Happy Valley and the boys enthusiastically brought it to the hostel. It was duly tied and placed at the beginning of a row, but the horse did not move. No matter how loud and how often the staff member ordered '
Sister Alexandrowicz mentions in her memoirs that during that period they received nothing but kindness, sympathy and offers of help from Prime Minister
She recalls one lady in particular, Ruby Fleming, who came to the hostel one day and, gesticulating energetically as neither side understood the other, let the Sisters know she wanted to help them. Sister Imelda immediately showed her how to make
In anticipation of establishing a Polish Girls' Hostel, on 26 August 1947 three Ursuline Sisters arrived from France –
As in the case of the Polish Boys' Hostel, it was
On 8 December 1947, Queen's Drive in Lyall Bay, Wellington, became the location for the Polish Girls' Hostel for the next 10 years – a home for Polish working girls and school girls. Father Kavanagh stayed for a few days in the empty hostel, then Sister Brennan and two senior girls (
The Sisters' plan was that the Polish working and school girls, and later the youngest girls from the camp, would stay in the hostel and be brought up in a Polish, Catholic atmosphere. When they no longer needed the hostel, it would be used as a home for new Polish migrants seeking shelter, children of working mothers and older people needing constant care.
However, the Curia had different plans. Soon after the Sisters moved in, Father Kavanagh informed Sister Alexandrowicz that the Curia wished that only working girls live in the hostel. Moreover, half of them would be Polish and half New Zealand. The younger girls were to be placed with New Zealand families. That information was a blow to the Sisters and the Polish people in Wellington. If this new plan eventuated, the most vulnerable group of the Polish orphans would be placed in the hands of strangers, no matter how loving.
"I was in a boarding school in Dunedin at that time and I remember how frightened I was that 'they' would abandon me somewhere among strangers and not let me go back to my friends," says
If this new plan was put into effect, Sister Alexandrowicz foresaw many problems – no Polish, Catholic atmosphere, probably little cooperation of New Zealand girls with Polish nuns, mixed races and different needs, but most of all the youngest Polish orphans would be dispersed among strangers. The Sisters were not against mixed races (they later cared for young children of different races and nationalities) but they wanted to attend first to the special needs of the Polish orphans. "Only tolerance and compassion could heal the scars" in those children, as Father Michael O'Meeghan wrote in Steadfast in Hope.
No amount of persuasion on the part of Sister Alexandrowicz would change Father Kavanagh's mind. So in desperation and after many prayers, she turned for help to the Polish ex-soldiers, especially Captain Tadeusz Szczerbo-Niefiedowicz, formerly of the Polish navy. He, together with some other Polish ex-soldiers, went to see some Members of Parliament with a petition to look into the matter of the Polish Girls' Hostel. The petition was successful.
After a consultation of the Government with the Catholic Curia, it was decided that the hostel would remain the property of the Curia, but that it would be used solely by the Polish people and the Ursuline Sisters would be in charge.
By the middle of December 1947, the rest of the Sisters and more girls moved in and the hostel was fully operational. It began with 80 girls and at its peak accommodated 120.
The first Christmas at the hostel was a moving occasion for the girls and Sisters – familiar and friendly faces, all the Polish traditions associated with Christmas observed and a cheerful, homely atmosphere. Everyone felt that this was their home, and that with God's help they will live there safely and happily.
Sister Augustyna was in charge of all the household cleaning and the convent garden, and sometimes exchanged work with Sister Imelda.
She tried to treat each of her young charges as if she were her own child and bring her up accordingly. A formidable task, but her love and dedication produced wonderful results. Because she created such a caring atmosphere, some of the lucky girls, whose fathers came here after demobilisation from the Polish army, were unhappy to leave the hostel.
"The girls living in the hostel were very happy," says Romualda Waluszewska (Sokalska). "Sister Alexandrowicz was very kind and watched over us like a mother. She often reminded us that the hostel was our 'home'. During the weekend when the girls went out, she would wait until they all returned safely. At times we felt she cared and worried for us too much. It wasn't until we became mothers that we realised she was doing it for our own good."
Over the years, other Polish women helped with various tasks.
With so many girls and so few Sisters, it was necessary to introduce some sort of regulations to make life easier for everybody and perhaps employ some lay staff. Sister Alexandrowicz asked the senior girls for any suggestions. They all agreed there was no need to hire additional staff and that they would do the cleaning. Moreover, they agreed that some sorts of rules were necessary for the smooth running of the hostel. A roster for general cleaning on Saturday was written up, prayer times decided (older girls privately, younger ones as a group), times for getting up and making of sandwiches.
On Saturdays, there was mending and perhaps sewing of clothes. Older girls sometimes even made dresses for the younger ones. On Mondays after work and school there was the washing of clothes. On Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays the older girls could stay out later to 12.30am and on other days the doors were closed at 10pm. If an older girl wished to go out with a boy, he had to be introduced to Sister Alexandrowicz and promise to bring her back himself. During the 11 years of existence of the hostel, the girls rarely broke these rules and never blatantly.
The girls at the hostel were a pious group. They were taught to have trust in God, to thank Him for their deliverance from the Russian forced-labour camps and to take all their troubles to Him. It was not unusual to see some girl praying in the chapel during odd times of the day. On Sundays, the girls dressed in their best clothes and went to Mass, either in the city to Polish Mass once a month or to the hostel's chapel. Sometimes there were Masses in the chapel during weekdays. All the feast days were observed, as well as the Lenten devotions with all the Lenten Polish hymns, the happy May devotions to Mary, the Rosary devotions in October and meditating on the life of Christ.
On Sunday afternoons, the girls would play tennis, basketball or netball, go out for a walk or organise a dance to which boys from the Polish Boys' Hostel, and later Polish ex-soldiers, would come.
Sometimes Polish plays would be put on. Often you could hear somebody singing, practising the piano or playing records. The piano was paid for from the profits of a concert held in St Francis' Hall in which girls from the hostel took part.
Church feast days, national days (such as the Polish Constitution day on 3 May), Christmas, important visits and the 10th anniversary of the Polish children's arrival in New Zealand gave opportunities to put on a concert for which Polish dances, songs and recitations had to be learned. In 1955, Professor Rytel, a well-known Pole from the US who visited the hostel, was amazed at how well the children spoke Polish. One frustration was the lack of written or recorded music – it had to be recalled from memory and played by ear.
The costumes for dancing, on the other hand, dropped from heaven!
Life was happy and busy.
The girls soon grew into young women. On weekends the hostel swarmed with young men, both Polish and New Zealanders. More and more weddings took place, so that by the time the hostel closed there were many children born to those marriages. Some of those children were brought back to the hostel to be looked after by the Sisters while the mothers worked.
The number of inhabitants in the hostel began to dwindle, not only because of the marriages, but as the girls grew more self assured they sought more independence and looked for private quarters (
In about 1952, the Sisters began to accept more and more young children of different nationalities and races – Irish, New Zealand, Italian, Yugoslav, Hungarian, Maori and a Russian girl. Most of them learnt some Polish. One little Italian boy was most entertaining in his patriotism and was very proud of being able to speak Italian. So someone asked: "What's 'frog' in Italian, Alvaro?" Without hesitation, he answered: "Froga!"
The numbers and ages of the children had decreased, but not the quality of care nor the character of the place. As the children were younger and from such varied cultures, more work was required in looking after their physical and educational needs. The Sisters needed at least one other person to help them. With permission from her Superior in Poland, Sister Alexandrowicz asked her own sister, Jadwiga Alexandrowicz, a qualified teacher who lived in Canada. She arrived in 1955 and left New Zealand with the other Sisters. Intelligent, capable and with a pleasing personality, she was of great help to her sister who by then was showing signs of exhaustion.
Ten years had passed since the Polish children's arrival in New Zealand on 1 November 1944. The Sisters and girls decided to celebrate that anniversary in their hostel in May 1955. Official guests were invited and notices sent out to former inhabitants of the hostel.
At the jubilee concert was a representative of the Government (Ernest Corbett, MP), a representative of the Catholic Church (Monsignor Arthur McRae), the Rector of Polish Catholic Mission (Father Broel-Plater) and other priests (Father Huzarski who was a Dominican,
The concert began with very friendly and informal speeches by Minister Corbett, Monsignor McRae, Father Broel-Plater and
Eventually, there were fewer than 40 ex-Pahiatua girls remaining at the hostel, and more and more young children of different nationalities came to stay for
St Anne's Hall, Newtown, Wellington, 9 March 1958. The Ursuline Sisters are farewelled and thanked for their years of dedication and service in the Polish Boys' and Girls' Hostels in Wellington before their recall to Poland. The Sisters are (l-r)
There followed a sad and difficult period of finding new homes for the hostel children and preparing for departure – a painful wrench for the Sisters. Going home did not fill them with joy. Poland was in communist hands where convents were being closed, nuns persecuted and their schools secularised. But most of all, the Sisters in New Zealand had become part of the Pahiatua children's lives and vice versa. They were a valuable asset not only to the Polish people but to New Zealand, but would play only a minor part in Poland. The last of the older girls to leave the hostel were Ola Szulgan, who left in a wedding dress to marry
Sunday. The day began with a Mass celebrated at St Anne's church by Father Broel-Plater. After Mass, the Polish community in Wellington gathered in St Anne's hall. It was full but the people were subdued. The following people gave speeches, all thanking the Sisters and regretting their departure –
Sisters
The wartime refugees (the Polish children), in their turn, integrated well into the Church and the nation, while at the same time preserving their distinctive piety and culture, markedly different from the Irish.
Father Michael O'Meeghan in Steadfast in Hope
It is owing to the calibre of some of their caregivers, such as Sister Alexandrowicz with her band of Ursuline Sisters and the Polish Children's Camp's chaplain Father Wilniewczyc, as well as some lay teachers, that the children kept their faith in God alive and stayed loyal to their motherland, yet became model citizens of their adopted country New Zealand.
St Anne's Hall, Newtown, Wellington, 9 March 1958
We may judge what sort of person she was from the following excerpts from her farewell speech in 1958 before the Ursuline Sisters' departure for Poland. (She was visibly moved and spoke with urgency.)
"Before I leave, I would like to ask of you one thing – do not place too much value on today, on material needs of daily life. We have started this day in church with a hymn to God. Let us raise our minds each day to God and thank Him for sparing us, because all of us who are present here in the hall, were near departure from this world.
"I thank God each day for sending this little band of children who came with us – to New Zealand and not to another country. Two years ago, I visited other countries and nowhere have I seen Polish children living in as good conditions as in this country. The Polish children here received the best and for that we owe thanks to God.
"Do not engage yourselves in material concerns so deeply that you forget about God. Yes, God deserves our gratitude. Let your children know that God delivered you from the hopeless years of misfortune. Let them be aware of your past, speak to them about it, remind them of it, that they too may thank God for your deliverance and be in constant contact with God. Who knows what fate will await them. Do not let them immerse themselves in material life – should misfortune strike them, they will panic. If they accept your example, that will sustain them.
"Most of you were brought up here without family atmosphere, without a home. We tried to create that for you but we could not – we are not your parents. Provide your children with that atmosphere.
Give them what they will not get from the New Zealand way of life. If you do not create a Catholic atmosphere in your home, they will not obtain it from the local environment.
"The Catholics are a minority in this country – your children must obtain that atmosphere from their father, from their mother. I would not like you placing material prosperity before the welfare of your children. Better to be a little poorer but have plenty of family love. And you must give proof of your love – show your love in what you do for your family, not just words."
After the departure of the priests and nuns from this period, their positive influence continued through the work of the Polish priests of the Society of Christ who, since their arrival in 1970, provided for the religious needs of the Polish people in this country. They also understood the need of the refugees to maintain their heritage.
By the end of 1948, there remained only 42 boys in the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua. For the first term of 1949, they attended local schools, which was also their first year completely in English. What they lacked in academic achievement they made up on the sports fields. In May 1949, they sadly departed the camp in army trucks for Linton Military Camp, south of Palmerston North, lived in army barracks and followed army routine. Buses took them to Sunday Mass and to school in Palmerston North. They soon became more fluent in English.
In August 1949, they went by train to Hawera in South Taranaki to their very own Polish Boys' Hostel. It was a large homestead surrounded by trees, an orchard, chicken house and several acres of grassland provided by the St Joseph parish, whose parish priest was Monsignor Francis Cullen. The Social Welfare Department built a long building with two dormitories for the 42 boys. With time and effort, they made it their home. The hostel was cared for entirely by Polish staff. It was managed by
Polish Boys' Hostel in Hawera, Princess Street extension. The hostel existed from 1949 to 1954, having achieved its objective of gradually absorbing its group of Polish children into the community
The living quarters, grounds and gardens were well kept by the boys on a roster basis. They worked hard to create a very large vegetable garden, and restored the orchard to produce a variety of fruits and berries. Each morning and evening they gathered for prayers, and attended Mass on Sundays and holy days at the local gothic parish church. The Polish priest Father Broel-Plater visited every few months to celebrate Mass and devotions in Polish.
The boys completed the 1949 year at St Joseph's Convent School, taught by Sister Pauline and Sister Charles Cowan. The latter came out of retirement to teach "her Polish boys" and taught English syntax and grammar, writing, maths, early New Zealand history, and government and political structures, plus religious instructions, prayers and hymns. A dynamic and gifted teacher with a no-nonsense approach, and powerful singing voice, she prepared them for high school and the New Zealand way of life. Several of the boys achieved academic distinctions, including English and public speaking.
From 1950, the boys attended Hawera Technical High School, some 3km away. They bought bicycles with their pocket money, which was hard earned from after-school and Saturday jobs mowing lawns, gardening or working on nearby farms. The people of South Taranaki were very supportive and provided these jobs for them. The boys earned their respect and lived up to their high expectation of honesty and hard work. They went on bicycle trips on Sundays and grew in strength, stature and responsibility.
The boys were also a dominant presence in the college, especially in sports but also in the classrooms, and were recognised for their dedication to hard work and play. Upon leaving school, the local people readily offered board to them. Some took up apprenticeships or farmed nearby, while others went to college. There was little encouragement to take up professional careers. The attraction was to earn one's own money and become independent.
At the end of 1954, the hostel was closed and reopened as Calvary Hospital under the care of the Sisters of the Little Company of Mary, dedicated to the care of the sick and the dying. Later it became a privately owned rest home and hospital.
The boys had a life full of rich experiences.
Od Lubcza na Antypody, by
Appendix A
Maps
The route of deportation, escape and refuge, 1940-1944
Some of the places where the Polish refugee children attended schools after leaving the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua
Appendix B
Survey of Polish refugee children
In 2003, under the auspices of the Royal Society of New Zealand's Science, Mathematics and Technology Teacher Fellowship Scheme, Gordon Campbell conducted this survey to provide a picture of the integration into New Zealand society of refugee children from a variety of ethnic groups and their subsequent children. The New Zealand Refugee and Migrant Service, together with Victoria University of Wellington's history department, hosted the project.
The group with the best response to the survey (by returning the highest number of questionnaire returns – 86) was the Polish refugee children who arrived in 1944. This is because they were a sizeable cohesive group that had shared an intense experience. They were also unique because they were the first refugee group in New Zealand and in most cases without accompanying parents.
The survey recognised that refugees and immigrants generally have to make adjustments before becoming comfortable in their new surroundings. The refugee children who settled here (and then later their own children) successfully made that adjustment and can be found in all walks of life. The survey also revealed the valuable contribution that ethnic groups are making to New Zealand's multicultural society. For the purpose of this book, the sections of the survey relevant to the Poles are included here.
The Polish refugee children were one of the most homogenous groups of refugees that New Zealand has resettled. There are a number of reasons for this. Everyone in this group had been forcibly removed from their homes in 1940 and 1941. They had all spent up to two years in forced-labour camps or on collective farms in various parts of the Soviet Union. All of them had spent at least two years without their natural parents.
In most cases, this was because both parents had died. And all of them had undergone a great deal of suffering during the journey through the southern Soviet Republics before being taken to orphanages in Iran. It was in these orphanages, established in buildings leased by the Polish Government-in-Exile, that many of the Polish children received their first formal education.
It was originally intended that these children would return to Poland once the war had ended. Because of this, the education they received (both in the
By the time World War II ended in 1945, most of these children had been displaced for four to five years. International agreements made by the great powers resulted in them ceasing to recognise the Polish Government-in-Exile and Poland became a communist state under the dominance of the Soviet Union. Because the majority of the children were without parents, the New Zealand Government, with the support of the New Zealand Catholic Church, offered to look after them.
By this time, the camp had a primary, secondary and trade school. Some of the older children were placed straight into jobs. Those who had completed Standard 6 of the Polish primary school were sent to New Zealand Catholic post-primary schools. The younger girls were sent to the Polish Girls' Hostel in Lyall Bay, Wellington, and attended a New Zealand primary school.
The primary-school-age boys initially attended local primary schools in Mangatainoka and Pahiatua, before being sent to Linton Military Camp from where they attended a primary school run by the Marist Brothers in Palmerston North for only one term. From term two, in 1949, they were then accommodated at a Polish Boys' Hostel in Hawera.
The children who were sent to the various Roman Catholic secondary schools throughout New Zealand found this transition particularly difficult. Not only were they totally unprepared to receive instruction and complete lessons in English, but they were split again from what they regarded as their Polish Children's Camp "family". Thrust among strangers, they felt isolated in what was to them an alien culture.
Virtually all of the 86 former Polish children refugees who returned the questionnaire said they could not speak any English when they arrived in New Zealand. Three said their English was poor. For the reasons outlined above, none had been given the opportunity to study English during their displacement period. As well as language difficulties, the Polish children lacked parental guidance and encouragement during a crucial period of their formative years.
One of the former children reported that he could not remember an adult ever engaging in a conversation with him. During his secondary school years, no one had ever told him why he should study. It never occurred to him that a better education would help him to earn more. (Unemployment was virtually unknown in post-war New Zealand, jobs were plentiful and there was less emphasis at that time on the value of remaining in secondary school
As expected, a large number of those who were in the 11 to 14 year age group when they arrived here left school with no formal qualifications. However, many of these went on to gain trade qualifications. Two who responded to the survey indicated that they did not receive any secondary schooling at all. Despite this, one went on to become a qualified carpenter and the other gained a New Zealand Railways engine driver's ticket. A very low percentage of respondents who were less than 11 years old when they arrived in New Zealand ended up with no formal qualifications.
With the exception of those who did not gain any formal qualifications, there appears to be no particular pattern in relation to the age of arrival and the highest qualification gained. Considering the difficulties that they had come through, a remarkable number of these children gained some form of tertiary qualification. Ten of the former Polish refugee children who returned the questionnaire indicated that they gained university degrees. Surprisingly, of these 10, five were in the 11 to 14 year-old age group upon their arrival in New Zealand.
These former refugee children took up a variety of different occupations. The most popular choice was an occupation that led to a trade certificate. By far the majority of these were carpenters, but a variety of other trades (such as mechanic, panelbeater, electrician, plumber, sheetmetal worker and boilermaker) were also represented. Another type of occupation that attracted large numbers of those who responded to the survey was office and
Graph 2 displays data collected from questionnaires received from the first generation – those born to the former Polish children refugees. These returns also indicate high levels of educational and occupational achievement. All of them had gained some form of formal educational qualifications.
Just over 75% of the group completed some form of tertiary qualification, with more than 50% achieving a degree and one third of these continuing their studies to postgraduate level. Again, these people are represented in a variety of occupational groups – office workers, teachers, the computer industry, technicians/engineers, consultants and owners of businesses. One respondent was an executive manager and others include a technical writer librarian, barrister/solicitor and dentist. The diverse range of occupations taken by these children, as mentioned earlier, is an indication of the way the families have become an integral part of New Zealand society.
Age on arrival appears to have a marked effect on later educational success in all the ethnic groups surveyed. The highest number of those who left school with no formal qualifications arrived in New Zealand at 11 years old or more. While this conclusion is obvious in Graph 3, it may not be a true reflection of the situation concerning refugees as a whole, as many of the respondents in this group came from the former Polish children refugees.
The social attitudes and economic climate of the time encouraged young people to leave school and join the workforce at an early age. If the survey had gained more responses from arrivals in the 1970s and 1980s, then the proportion of those who gained no formal qualifications would, I believe, be lower. This is because of different social attitudes, particularly concerning the importance of education (as well as the increased awareness of the needs of refugee children) in more recent decades.
It seems logical to assume that, compared with refugees who arrive in New Zealand at a very young age, those who arrive late in their childhood will have greater difficulty in gaining educational qualifications. However, this survey indicates that age is not an overriding factor in determining whether or not new arrivals are going to enter the workplace with formal training and qualifications behind them.
Graph 4 reveals that an insignificant number of respondents in all ethnic groups were displaced for less than two years. Many were four or five years between the time they left their native country and their arrival in New Zealand. During this time, very few received regular schooling or had the opportunity to study English. Despite these handicaps and compounded by
It is also significant that, of the 120 respondents, 77 had gained some form of qualification after leaving secondary school. All these children had to overcome considerable barriers to learning. Their trauma of displacement, culture shock, language difficulties and financial constraints means that every bit of educational success was hard won through diligence and effort. Refugee parents are acutely aware that education is the way forward for their children and there is a high level of commitment given to learning.
New Zealand has given sanctuary to refugees for more than half a century. This survey is just a glimpse of the total picture. It has relied on voluntary responses of former refugee children and is likely to be biased in favour of the high achievers who were more likely to be interested in contributing and more willing to respond. However, it is clear that refugees have given (and are still giving) New Zealand society greater diversity and continue to make significant economic, social and cultural contributions to the country.
Appendix C
Statistics: Poles in New Zealand
For the Census usually resident population count – 1991, 1996, 2001
For the Census usually resident population count –2001
For the Census usually resident population count – 2001
Source: Statistics New Zealand 2001 Census of Population and Dwellings Data random rounded to base 3
Appendix D
Other Countries Of Refuge
Of the 20,000 children evacuated from the Soviet Union in 1942, only 733 Polish children found refuge in New Zealand. The remainder were scattered around the world to Mexico, India, Canada, Lebanon and East Africa. Not wishing to offend Stalin who was an ally at the time and a cosignatoyr of the Yalta Agreement, the US would not take them.
The children were taken to a camp in Santa Rosa and cared for by the Felician nuns of Chicago. After the war, they filtered through to the US and did not form a coherent group as did refugee children in other parts of the world.
The largest camp in India was in Balachadi near Jamnagar under the care of Father Franciszek Pluta and the almost fatherly care of Maharajah Jam Saheba. The camp was liquidated after the assassination of Mahatma Ghandi in 1948, so all foreigners were forced to leave India. The children joined the Polish orphans scattered in camps from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, to Kenya and Uganda in East Africa. As they grew up, the children migrated mainly to the UK to join their surviving relatives, take up studies or work.
The refugees in Lebanon are a separate chapter in the orphaned children's odyssey and much has also been written about them. They consisted of older children scattered in hilly villages and townships where they were made welcome by the local population.
The largest orphan camp was in Tengeru, Tanzania, in the neighbourhood of the twin mountains of Kilimanjaro and Meru in the middle of a jungle by the crystal waters of Lake Duluti. Other groups from liquidated camps elsewhere were progressively transferred here. In 1949, the camp was finally liquidated and the children taken to Canada. This move was manoeuvred by the Soviet-dominated authorities in Poland, which expected to more
There were many other camps in Africa, such as the camp in Rongai, Kenya, which was entirely for the smaller children where they lived for seven years.
After the gift of life, the most precious is that of freedom. The children's formative years were under the shadow of freedom-curtailing despots, such as Hitler and Stalin. And even though they had lost their Polish homeland and were scattered to the four winds, they retained their thousand-year-old culture and Christian values.
Source: Stolen Childhood: A Saga of Polish War Children by Father Łucjan Królikowski
Polish refugee children in a camp in Tangeru, Tanzania, take part in choir practice in front of a dormitory. The roof was covered in banana tree leaves or elephant grass, which were chomped by termites day and night.
Appendix E
Further reading
- •
A Bouquet of Thoughts and Reminiscences, the Polish Women's League, Wellington, New Zealand, 1991 - •
A Strange Outcome–The Remarkable Survival Story of a Polish Child, John Roy-Wojciechowski and Allan Parker, Penguin Books, Auckland, New Zealand, 2004 - •
An Unforgettable Journey, Maria van der Linden, Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 1992 - •
Essence, Krystine Tomaszyk, Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 2004 - •
Exiled Children, Exiles Photographic Archives Foundation, Warsaw, Poland, 1995 - •
Gulag: A History, Anne Applebaum, Penguin, London, England, 2003 - •
Heart of Europe: A Short History of Poland, Norman Davies, Oxford University Press, New York, USA, 2001 - •
Isfahan–City of Polish Children, Association of Former Pupils of Polish Schools, Isfahan and Lebanon, Sussex, England, 1989 - •
Journey Without a Ticket, Zdzisława Krystyna Kawecka, Nottingham, England, 1994 - •
Katyn, Triumph of Evil, Louis Fitzgibbon, Anna Livia Books, Dun - Laoghaire, Ireland, 1975
- •
Orphans of the Empire, The Shocking Story of Child Migration to Australia, Alan Gill, Random House Australia, NSW, Australia, 1998 - •
Socio-Political Characteristics of Polish Post World War II Immigrants and their Assimilation to NZ, TM Krystman-Ostrowska, Department of Sociology, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, 1957 - •
Stalin's Ethnic Cleansing In Eastern Poland, Tales of the Deported, 1940- 1946, Assoc of Families of the Borderland Settlers, London, England, 2000 - •
Stolen Childhood: A Saga of Polish War Children, Łucjan Królikowski, Authors Choice Press, Buffalo, New York, USA, 2001 - •
The Invited, The Story of 733 Polish Children,Who Grew Up In New Zealand, Krystyna Skwarko, Millwood Press, Wellington, New Zealand, 1974 - •
The Poles, Stewart Steven, Collins-Harvill, London, England, 1982
- •
Losy Polaków w ZSRR w Latach 1939-1986(Fate of Poles in the USSR 1939-1986), Julian Siedlecki, Gryf Publications, London, England, 1988 - •
Ludność Polska w Związku Radzieckim w Czasie II Wojny Światowej(Polish Exiles in the Former USSR During World War II), Piotr Żaroń, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw, Poland, 1990 - •
My Deportowani(We The Deported), Bogdan Klukowski, Wydawnictwa Alfa, Warsaw, Poland, 1989 - •
Osiedlenie Młodzieży Polskiej w Nowej Zelandii, w 1944 r, (The Invited, The Story of 733 Polish Children Who Grew Up In New Zealand), Krystyna Skwarko, Polskie Towarzystwo Historyczne w Australii, London, England, 1972 - •
Polacy w Kazachstanie w Latach 1940-1946(Poles in Kazakhstan During 1940-1946), Stanisław Ciesielski, Wrocław, Poland, 1996 - •
Polacy w Nowej Zelandii, Wspomnienia Deportacji do ZSSR, 1940-1980, w Czterdziestą Rocznicę(Poles in New Zealand, Memoirs of Deportation to the USSR), Międzyorganizacyjny Komitet Obchodu Czterdziestej Rocznicy Deportacji do ZSRR, Wellington, New Zealand, 1980 - •
Polskie Cmentarze Wojenne w Iranie(Polish War Cemeteries in Iran), Andrzej Przewoźnik, Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa, Warsaw, Poland, 2002 - •
Przyszliśmy Was Oswobodzić(We Came to Liberate You), Zenon Skrzypkowski, Warsaw, Poland, 1991 - •
Tułacze Dzieci(Exiled Children), Weronika Hort, Instytut Literacki, Beirut, Lebanon, 1948 - •
W Czterdziestym Nas Matko na Sybir Zesłali(Mother, They Deported Us To Siberia in 1940), Jan Gross and Irena Grudzińska-Gross, Wydawnictwo Libra and Wydawnictwo Res Publica, London, England, 1983 - •
W Domu Niewoli(In the House of Slavery), Marta Rudzka, Biblioteka Orła Białego, Rome, Italy, 1946 - •
Z Kresów Wschodnich R.P. Na Wygnanie, Opowieści Zesłańców, 1940-1946(Deportations From Eastern Poland, Exiles' Stories 1940-1946), Ognisko Rodzin Osadników Kresowych, London, England, 1996 - •
Za Winy Niepopełnione(Punishment of the Innocent), Irena Wasilewska, Rome, Italy, 1945
- • Polish children's arrival in New Zealand, Weekly Review No 169, National Film Unit, Archives New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand
Appendix F
List of children and staff
This book has established that 733 Polish refugee children and their 102 guardians arrived in New Zealand on 1 November 1944. Though some sources have stated other numbers, extensive research for this book of all available material reveals the figures as summarised below.
Total arrived in New Zealand
Gender
Age of children on arrival
Research into the original arrival lists from 1944 reveals some errors in spelling. This is because the first lists were prepared in a transit camp in 1942 after the children's evacuation from the Soviet Union to Iran, where some of the orphans' names were incorrectly recorded because they could not accurately recall their parents' documented surnames (pronunciation in regional dialects also confused the recorders). In some cases, the names in this book are in accordance with what the children subsequently learnt when they corresponded with relatives after the war. In the case of deceased former children refugees' names, the information for this book was obtained from their family or friends.