"My mother never forgave me for not returning to Poland. She said that "there is enough bread for everyone in Poland except for you."
My brother had trouble getting into Technical College after the War because I was in the West. It was only on the 3rd try when my mother pleaded with the administrator not to note that he had a sister in England that he was accepted... Things were difficult in those days."
Cecyclia Kabala Wojciechowska, London, England, b. Warszawa, Poland, 1924; deported to Dachau and then to a labor camp in Innsbruck, Germany. She came to England via Italy in 1946, and lived in Fairford Polish Hostel, Gloucestershire, from 1948-58.
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Fairford Polish Hostel, Gloucestershire, England, creche, 1948.
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Fairford Polish Hostel pre-school, 1954.
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Polish School, Rome, Italy, 1945. Cecylia Kabala Wojciechowska and Stefa Kowalczyk Bączkowska are in this photograph.
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Stowell Park Polish School for Girls, Gloucestershire, England, 1947.
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“There were no books, papers, pens, in the school (in Italy); you had to memorize everything. The mathematics teacher had no chalk board or chalk, and so he wrote on the dirty wall with his finger – we just had to imagine what he was writing. He also used students to represent numbers and symbols in equations.
There was pressure (in 1946) for us to return to Poland. However, our teachers were in touch with General Anders and he told them to discourage us from returning. Knew were coming through about the imprisonment and beatings received by returnees.
We left Italy by train, heading for Calais, France. We were due to have supper at 8 pm. At 8 pm we were in Germany but the train stopped; 10 o’clock passed, 12 o’clock passed and we were still standing, very hungry. Someone told us that there was a problem (the train was also carrying Polish troops). The train driver, who was English, knew that we were supposed to be in West Germany and yet he realized that we had landed-up in East Germany – the train tracks had been sabotaged to divert us to the east and force us to return to Poland.”
Stefa Kowalczyk Bączkowska, London, England. B. 1924, Baby, Poland, 1942 taken to labor camps in Germany and Austria, 1946 arrived in England, and attended school in West Chiltington and Stowell Park before moving to London in 1950.
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“The conditions in the Polish camps in England were very primitive, there was a communal kitchen staffed by 'cooks', (people like ourselves); some of us starting working in the camp administration. The camps eventually closed and people left, mainly to work in factories, on farms or in the mines; they worked physically. Those of us who had been in India knew English because we had studied it there, others didn’t and so there was no social contact with the English. Those who left for Australia or New Zealand knew no English – they learnt it there. There was some ‘antagonism’ towards those who decided to return to Poland – even our teacher reluctantly bid them goodbye. Many students and soldiers returned and were badly treated by the Communists. My husband’s friend returned and endured much hardship.”
Danuta Suchecka Szydło, London, England. b. 1925, she was deported to Russia with her family. After the Amnesty she travelled to Persia and then India, where she stayed for four years as an orphan. She was reunited with her father in England in 1947.
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Daglingworth Camp, Gloucetershire, England, one of the camps lived in by Danuta Suchecka Szydło. From the Northwick Park Camp collection, www.northwickparkpolishdpcamp.com.
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Balachadi Polish Orphanage in India, where Franciszek Herzog lived from 1942-47. He was born in 1921 in Lubaczów, Poland, deported to Russia in 1940, he lived in England from 1947-52 at which time he moved to the USA with his wife, Kamila Mikucka Herzog. She had also been deported to Siberia and spent two years living in Iran and then Lebanon. She came to England in 1947.
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"We came to England: I didn't experience any: "go home foreigners", I think that was mainly happening in 1945-46. What I gather from my brother is that the British public was influenced by the press who were saying: "Poles go home." Bevin was anti-Polish. So there was some pressure to go. But if they had really wanted us to go they could have said at the end of the War: "the War is ended, go back to Poland." Instead they ran the Polish schools, Polish University College in London, they didn't have to, and the Polish Resettlement Corps that gave us two years to adjust." Franciszek Herzog, Connecticut, USA.
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