“I had a very good friend in Mannheim DP camp (in 1946 I was eight years old). Toys were not available, but life goes on, and somehow we began to make out own toys. One of the things that were very popular was a scooter, in Polish called a ‘hulajnoga.’ We made our own ‘hulajnogas’ out of wood, leather straps, and ball bearings that were available because the Germans just abandoned a lot of that stuff. We made our own guns out of wood, because that was what we were exposed to… we played soldiers, we had races on these ‘hulajnogas’; bicycles were not available at all, especially for kids our age. I don’t know how people obtained these bikes; they were male bikes, with a bar across… We were not tall enough for these bikes so we learnt to ride the bike under the bar.”
George Hayward, born Jerzy Maciej Siennicki, of Illinois, USA. Born nr. Warszawa in 1938, his father attempted to escape Poland with his children in 1944. He was captured and placed in a labor camp. The family lived in 9 DP camps in Germany until George emigrated to the USA in 1952 as an orphan.
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'Pogoń'- "Uczymy się dla ewentualnej wojny." (Preparation for war which would lead to Poland's liberation from the Soviets) England, 1950.
"Za dużo już upadku i nazbyt z nim swojsko
I zbyt nikczemna losu pogania nas kolej;
Duszno mi w tym nieszczęściu i dość mam niewoli,
Róbcie co chcecie - JA BĘDĘ ROBIŁ WOJSKO."
Kazimierz Wierzyński "Manewry Strzeleckie"
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Stuttgart DP Camp, Germany. From the collection of George Hayward.
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“Because the Polish Army could not get the jobs (in England) for which they were trained before the War, because there were attorneys, doctors, architects, whoever they were, they did not have the language and so did not have the ability to go into the work they were trained for. So, in England, the Polish forces were being retrained for something that they could actually do to support their families. A lot of them were trained to be gardeners, building jobs, things they could do; my father was one of the officers assigned to the training camps that had been established to take the Polish forces that were coming from Italy to be retrained. For example, one of our dearest friends was a captain in the Polish Navy and he became a gardener. I was in a boarding school and he was the gardener at the school. It’s amazing the stories you come across.
We moved to New Zealand because my father felt that the British were not happy to have so many Poles… They kept saying: “Go home, why don’t you go home.” They were very happy to have us help them (during the War), but after the War, from every side all you heard was: “Why don’t you go home?” My father encountered that so often. “Why are you retraining your troops to stay here? Tell them to go home, send them home.”
Mother would get letters (from Wilno) with cut-out lines and words, so the letters meant practically nothing. Once she got a parcel back that she had sent. They had removed some things, and sent back the unimportant things and written: “We don’t need any of these things here in Russia, so don’t send any more.” It was very hard communicating with Wilno. It was easier to communicate with the family in Szczecin, but we always felt that they were very cagey about what they wrote, that they did not really open up. They did not really answer questions and always told us not to send anything because they didn’t need anything, which of course was not true. When I visited (in 1959) I left them everything I had, even my suitcase, because I saw that they were poor, really poor by comparison. I came to America (to study) with nothing but the clothes I was wearing.”
Roma Michniewicz King, California, USA. Born 1939,Wilno, Poland; deported in 1940; between 1942 and 1946 she lived in Persia, Lebanon and Egypt; from 1946-51 she lived in England at which time her parents emigrated to New Zealand; Roma came to study in the USA in 1959 and stayed; her parents moved from New Zealand to Australia where her 90-year-old mother lives today.
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“We didn’t trust the Soviets, for obvious reasons, …. The NKVD officers came and told us to stay put and wait for transportation to Poland. We thought “Poland? Hello, how about Siberia!” Half of our group (of 40) decided to return to Poland on their own, so they stole tractors and lorries from the local Germans, looted whatever they could and went to Poland. The second half of us decided to go to the Americans. It was very risky because of course we were in uniform, and very funny uniforms, American uniforms from World War I vintage. We were stopped many times by Soviet officers who asked us who we were. We told them we were Polish prisoners heading east, going back to Poland. We then proceeded to go west, but not a single Soviet soldier or officer knew where east or west was so nobody stopped us. After three days we reached the American lines.
Everybody was waiting, nobody knew for what, but something had to happen. Actually we were bored, just waiting for something to happen.”
Andrzej Kazimierz Sławinski, London, England. B. 1929, Łodowa, Poland, participated in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, taken as POW to Germany, his camp was liberated by Soviet troops. From Germany he went to Italy to join the Polish schools being formed there, and then to England where he completed his high school and attended Polish University College in London.
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Italy 1945, including Romuald Michniewicz, (back row, third from left), father of Roma Michniewicz King.
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"We couldn't stay in Italy any longer. Time to go to England. Letters written by friends proclaimed England as a starving country. Food was rationed and housing for us was only available in cold barracks left by the Americans. English people kept to themselves and were not eager to start any conversation. There was also very little possibility of staying in England. I never even thought of becoming an English citizen. The attitude of English people deteriorated. From allies and brothers in arms, we graduated to foreigners, and finally to "bloody foreigners." I was tired of hearing this and decided to go to the country where nearly everyone was a foreigner, and a foreign accent was not a disability. Meanwhile, we received news that the families from the eastern part of Poland, after their return to Poland, were sent by the authorities right back to Siberia. Those soldiers, who returned to Poland, were degraded to a lower miliatary rank and treated as traitors who deserted Russia during hard times. This depressing news stamped my faith...there will be no returning to Poland." Eugene Lachocki, quoted from 'No Return,' Luthers publishers, 1996. Now resident in Florida, USA, he was deported to Russia in 1940; after the amnesty he joined the Polish Army and saw action at Monte Cassino, Italy. He lived in England from 1946-52 at which time he and his family left for the USA (his mother, grandmother and sisters came to England from Ifunda, Africa).
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