"It’s with you for the rest of your life."
I ambled along Morning Lane in Hackney after a hard day’s work in central London. There was nothing to eat in the fridge and I felt too tired to pop into Tesco’s for a take-away. Then I saw lights on in Brew for Two, the day-time café just yards from my house. I peered in. Lively groups of diners sat under dimly lit crystal chandeliers, waiting for the first course of their Lebanese food. Eylem, the owner, was holding a supper night.
“Over here, Eithne” shouted a voice from the back. “Join me.”
Intrigued, I made my way to the back of this quirky café. Flowery English tea pots in rows on shelves, wooden chairs upholstered in African cloth, arty photographs of Istanbul on the walls – a fusion of styles, reflective of Hackney and the eclectic tastes of its owner.
Basia pulled out a chair, as if she had been expecting me. I knew her from when we were working in adult education south of the river. It was good to catch up. Basia, of Polish origin but born in the UK, was interested in my research.
“Wiktor, my neighbour, has a fascinating tale to tell.”
Wiktor was born in Poland and came to the UK as a child after World War Two.
“I’ll ask if he's happy to be interviewed.”
I took a short bus ride to Dalston and knocked on one of the large rambling houses that Basia shared with her mother, an artist. She took me to round to Wiktor’s house on Cecilia Road, introduced me and left. Wiktor, a tall man in his eighties, with a sturdy frame, an open face and a shock of white hair, welcomed me warmly into his maisonette converted from a large, flat-fronted Victorian house. But he seemed hesitant. “I’m not sure I can remember much. It was such a long time ago.” But minutes into the interview it was clear that Wiktor, born in eastern Poland in 1935, could remember his early life in great detail. “We had a good house, nice barn, cattle and horses.” Wiktor’sfamily was well established and liked in the neighbourhood - his grandfather, a skilled blacksmith, made equipment for the local farmers. But political events soon intervened.
By the late 1930s Hitler was openly campaigning to take back land that, through the Treaty of Versailles after World War 1, had become part of newly independent Poland. In August 1939 the Soviet Union and Germany made the Nazi/Soviet Non-Aggression pact, agreeing to carve up eastern Europe between them. Poland was attacked on both sides - by Germany from the west and by the Soviet Union from the east. The Soviets, needing extra manpower, targeted men likely to resist annexation. Wiktor’s father, on the pretext of having failed at some minor task, was one of a million Poles sent to the gulags in Siberia. Only the toughest survived.
Hitler promised independence to the Ukrainians if they exterminated the Poles. Wiktor’s Ukrainian neighbours, with whom his family had lived peacefully for years, attacked the Polish farms. Wiktor, aged seven, his mother, two brothers, sister and grandparents fled. “They were skinning people alive, torturing them like wild animals. They had axes.” The Ukrainians were not rewarded for their brutality. “Once the Ukrainians had done German’s bidding the Nazis turned on them too.”
As we sat in his comfortable maisonette, surrounded by silver-framed family photographs, Wiktor told me how his mother, grandparents and siblings were loaded onto open carts and transported to Germany. Here, in a large open space reminiscent of a slave market, the family waited to be picked out from hundreds of other Poles by elderly farmers desperate for labour - their young men had been taken away to fight. The family was separated. Wiktor was taken with his mother, youngest brother and grandfather to work for an ageing couple with two daughters. The rest of the family were taken to a neighbouring farm.
“They had a pig house and above it they had rooms - that was our accommodation. Mother wasn’t paid. They told her she’s working to keep us fed.” They often went hungry and Wiktor, then aged eight, was set to work. Every day he pulled the cart laden with milk churns back to the farm after the day’s milking, a task done normally by Alsatian dogs. He would pull the cart with one hand and hold his younger brother’s hand with the other, ducking fire from fighter aircraft above. “We had to lie in ditches as the bullets flew all around us.” When Wiktor wasn’t working, he played with his two younger brothers in the woods nearby. There was always something new to discover - guns one day, grenades the next and even dead soldiers, their limbs scattered amongst the undergrowth. It was difficult for Wiktor’s mother to keep an eye on the boys as she was always at work. But one day she heard a gunshot ricocheting through the trees. She rushed screaming to the woods to find her middle son with a gun in his hand. He had fired at the youngest. Thankfully, her middle son was a lousy shot, but it had been close. She must have wavered between rebuking her sons or hugging them tight. Would they survive this war, she must have thought? Would she see her husband again? If only he was here to help care for, and control, the boys, to tell them right from wrong.
As the war progressed it became clear the Germans were losing and on the retreat. One morning, at the sound of heavy artillery nearby, Wiktor’s family rushed to the cellar where the farmer, his wife and children had already taken refuge. It was the only place they could think to hide. As the two families sat cramped together, the door opened. It was German soldiers in search of the enemy.
“It’s only women and children here” the farmer begged.
The Nazis left and Wiktor’s family sighed with relief. Fifteen minutes later the door opened again. English soldiers with Tommy guns in their hands and bushes on their helmets peered into the dark.
“You, Germans, stay here” the soldiers instructed. “The rest of you, out.”
Wiktor, his mother, grandfather and brother were given free rein whilst the German farmer, his wife and daughters languished in the cellar. “The English soldiers looked after us. They gave us tins of food and for one week we could take whatever we wanted. We could eat something decent for a change. Not turnips, potatoes and bread. Mother didn’t want to take anything, but the soldiers insisted and brought her dresses from the farmer’s house.” Wiktor recognized that his family had been lucky even though work on the farm had been gruelling. “Those in camps, surrounded by barbed wire, died. They weren’t concentration camps, but they were cold, with no food. The farm, at least, had orchards and we could eat apples if we were hungry.”
Wiktor, his mother, brothers, sister and grandparents were taken, with thousands of others, to a Displaced Persons camp organised by the British. They were among seven million people displaced in Allied-occupied Germany and 11 million across Europe. For the first time, since the Brodzinskis fled Poland, they ate three meals a day and Wiktor and his siblings attended school. But they all missed their father. They had heard nothing from him since he had been taken by the Soviets and they feared the worst. But one day Wiktor’s father, having tracked down his family through the Red Cross, appeared at the camp. “Well obviously it was a big rejoice!”
Wiktor was aware of how much his father had suffered in the gulags. “It was very hard for him in Russia, very hard”. But he also spoke of his ability to survive and his involvement in World War Two. When Germany’s attack on the Soviets brought the latter into the Allied camp Stalin agreed to the formation of a Polish army to help fight the Nazis. Having heard of the so-called ‘amnesty’ Wiktor’s father, like many Polish prisoners, set out on the long trek to the recruitment centres. He joined the Second Corps under General Anders, a Polish General who had formed the Polish Army in Exile. Wiktor’s father fought in some of the major World War Two battles including at Monte Cassino. Wiktor had every reason to be proud of his father’s role in the war. “He was fighting in big battles everywhere, but mainly in Italy.”
Wiktor’s father arranged for his family to be transferred to a camp at Barletta in Italy near to where he was stationed in Bologna. “We were determined not to be separated again.” Returning to Poland was not an option. In 1945, the map of Poland was redrawn. The east was absorbed into the Soviet Union and the west was governed by a Communist government controlled by Moscow. The new regime considered displaced Poles as potential enemies. There was no guarantee, if the family returned, that Wiktor’s father would not be sent back to Siberia, imprisoned or even shot. Besides, the family farm had been burnt down.
After a three month stay in Italy the whole family set sail for England with the Second Corps. This was as part of the 1947 Polish Resettlement Act in Britain, a recognition of the important role played by Polish troops in the war but also a response to Britain’s urgent need for labour. The Act allowed 150,000 Polish people connected to the armed forces to settle in the UK - the first time a law had been passed to enable such a large number of migrants to settle in Britain. Poles, and other Eastern Europeans, were considered to be 'ideal' immigrants. They were white and Christian.
Although the family was relieved to be finally together the voyage was harrowing and took longer than expected. “Because of mines floating in the sea it took two weeks. We were going around in circles. My mother was terribly sick, and we were quite sick too. It was no joyride.” On arrival in the Royal Albert Dock in Liverpool Wiktor’s family, with many other Polish families, was sent to a Displaced Persons camp in the grounds of Keele Hall. Such camps, recently vacated by Americans and Canadians, had been established in the early 40s in the grounds of large country estates across the UK. Wiktor and his family were accommodated in Nissen huts while officers were accommodated in the big hall. “With ration books and things, it wasn’t so joyous being there. We kept animals, ducks mainly, to supplement the food we got from the communal kitchen.” Wiktor was taken by army truck to and from St Patricks School in nearby Newcastle-Under-Lyme. “We couldn’t use the bus as we had no money.”
Wiktor’s family moved on to a camp above Trentham Gardens near Stoke-on-Trent and finally to Blackshaw Moor near Leek, Staffordshire. The site is now a caravan park with a granite plaque, installed in 2015, that commemorates the Polish people who stayed there.
In Commemoration of the Polish Soldiers who fought alongside the British Army in WW11 and their families who made their home on this site 1946 - 1964.
Father Paweł Sargiewicz, who served as Polish parish priest for families living in the camp, was also a resident at Blackshaw Moor. He and Wiktor’s father must have had a lot in common. He too had been deported to Siberia by the Soviets and had joined General Anders' Second Corps as the unit’s chaplain. He also took part in the Italian campaign and fought at Monte Cassino. ‘He was much loved by his parishioners, having gone through the same hell as they, he understood their fears and anxieties’ wrote Zbyszek Hryciuk on the website Polish Resettlement Camps in England and Wales 1946 - 1969.https://www.polishresettlementcampsintheuk.co.uk/blackshawmoor1.htm
I imagined Father Paweł and Wiktor’s father sitting outside the Nissen huts, talking about their experiences in Siberia and at Monte Cassino, about the millions of Poles who died fighting Nazi Germany, of their disquiet, even anger, at the British government’s decision to ban the Polish Armed Forces from taking part in the post-war Victory Parade in London. The British government wanted to avoid offending Russia. Or perhaps Father Pawel and Wiktor’s father preferred not to talk about the horrors they had experienced, the betrayal of the British for not honouring the loyalty and sacrifice of the Polish armed forces. I wondered if Wiktor’s father, after he moved to Huddersfield, kept in touch with Father Paweł, mourned him when he died in a car accident in 1967. The priest is buried in the family grave with his parents in Białystok, Poland. Wiktor’s parents and grandparents are buried in Huddersfield, in the north of England, where the family was sent as part of the resettlement programmes. These ensured that the Polish worked in industries across the country most hit by shortages such as building, coal mining, textiles, hotels and catering, agriculture and engineering.
In Huddersfield Wiktor’s father worked long hours in the clothing factory allowing him to buy a semi-detached house to accommodate his growing family —his wife gave birth to a further six children. But Wiktor spent much of his youth in a full-time Polish boarding school in Linford Park, Milton Keynes, where he gained a qualification in engineering. He rejoined his growing family in Huddersfield to take up an apprenticeship. Since then, apart from a 20-year span running a Polish delicatessen in London, Wiktor has worked with some of the leading engineering firms in the UK.
Wiktor recognises the long-term impact of his childhood. “At a young age we had to cope with whatever was thrown at us. It’s with you for the rest of your life”. He chose his words carefully, not wishing to appear ungracious, ungrateful. “Only thing against the grain was that, at first, certain jobs were not allowed for foreigners. They worked mainly on roads, farms and quarries. People with qualifications were not allowed to work in responsible positions.”
Wiktor is not able to return to where he grew up in Eastern Poland. The family’s farm was burnt down and the village, as he knew it, no longer exists. “It’s occupied by Ukrainians now. A priest, from there, went back and tried to speak to some of the elder folk who might remember what happened. They were very hostile. They wouldn’t talk about certain things.” Most of the generation of Poles who came to Britain as a result of the war — around 200,000 people — never went back. Those who did were often persecuted by the new authorities.
Wiktor first went back to Poland in 1970, over 20 years after he had left. Now he sometimes visits Warsaw where his partner’s family lives. He enjoys the opportunity to speak his mother tongue but does not feel entirely at ease. “I understand everything, but they use some modern words I’m lacking and somehow I can’t express myself in a modern way. They can detect straight away that I don’t live in Poland.” Wiktor feels he has lived a very different life from those who stayed in, or returned to, Poland after World War Two. “This Communist time, when everything was communal, no private businesses, nothing. And when Communism dropped people started to live differently again but there’s still poverty.”
Wiktor has no wish to return to Poland other than for a visit. “Somehow I don’t think I would cope if I went to live there now.”
