Hard road from Poland to Pahiatua
Kazimierz Jan Rajwer carpenter b October 24, 1932 d February 14, 2020
If you have a keen eye and are browsing Te Papa’s immigration section, you might spy a picture of some Polish children in the back of an army truck.
That photo – taken on October 31, 1944 – features a cheeky 10-year-old, Kazimierz ‘‘Kazik’’ Rajwer, on a journey to New Zealand, alongside 732 other Polish child refugees who were displaced by World War II.
As a young boy in Poland, Rajwer’s family’s house burnt down and their crops were destroyed. They were on the move, and stayed with friends to evade capture.
Ultimately, they were rounded up by Soviet authorities into a cattle wagon. Rajwer would spend a month on that wagon with next to no resources, being deported to Siberian forest, where unimaginable horrors awaited him.
He would beg and steal morsels of food for the family, and was forced to work in slave labour camps. The only comfort each day was a small allocation of cabbage soup and bread.
There were mosquitos, lice, bed bugs. Cow dung was piled on to the side of the mud house to dry for fuel.
In the words of his son Jan, Rajwer survived thanks to his spirit of faith, joy and a trust in God.
Eventually, he would journey south into what was then known as Persia – now Iran – via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The trip saw the birth of his younger brother in a mud hut, in stifling summer heat. Hunger and sickness continued to afflict his whole family.
His father, separated from his wife and children, perished from typhus. After that, Rajwer was given his dad’s belt to hold up his oversized, cut-down trousers. It was his only memento.
‘‘How lucky we were to have a father who came home every day,’’ son Jan would later read at Rajwer’s funeral.
In Iran, Rajwer’s family were in a period of settlement in a refugee camp – there was no more travelling, just waiting. There, he made sling shots to propel stones at local boys.
His mother would later leave him in the care of the Red Cross to send him to New Zealand as part of a Polish children’s refugee programme. He left her, as well as two brothers and one sister, behind, promising one day to return.
The Polish Children’s Camp at Pahiatua – east of Palmerston North – was to become his new home. There, he would swim in rivers, ramble through bush and countryside and carve chess pieces. But there was also discipline, routine and structure in the school and camp life.
For his secondary education, Rajwer was transferred to St Peter’s College in Auckland, where he boarded with various families and settled in to yet another new location, another new life. He became a carpentry apprentice and an active member of the Catholic youth movement in O¯ ta¯ huhu.
Rajwer would save up and send money and clothing to his family, who had returned to Poland after the war, in hopes of seeing them again. That day eventually came, in 1961. But he had no possibility of staying there permanently.
Back in New Zealand, a building boom was helping him knock out house after house. He was handsome, energetic, witty, tenacious and hard-working. His passion for wood came from an early age when he started making propellers – his son Jan says it was his love and his life.
But poor nutrition as a child had caught up with him, and he had a heart attack at 33. Even then, he was dismissed from a job in the railway workshops for working too fast.
He fell in love with Kazimiera ‘‘Kazia’’ Hajduk, also a Pahiatua child refugee, one afternoon while showing off his adventures in Poland and the United States.
She lived in Frankton in Waikato, and Rajwer would often make the journey from Auckland to Hamilton during their courting.
Perhaps the finest piece of carving he ever did was for his yet-to-beannounced fiance´ e’s 21st birthday – however, it nearly cost him his relationship because he was late to the party trying to finish it, to make sure he presented his best work to her.
All was forgiven, and they married. They established a family home in Favona Rd, Ma¯ ngere, by shifting a house on to the property – it had a small coal range for cooking, a tea chest, a long drop and a wire-bound bed with a kapok mattress to cuddle up in.
Rajwer was a resourceful and environmentally minded man, wasting nothing – old railway tracks and office block timber frames were repurposed, toasters and washing machines were always repaired. Things were collected because they had value: the possibility of new life and purpose.
Food scraps were kept for the chickens, while spilt corn from railway wagons took care of the ducks, which were a favourite trade for vegetables with the local Chinese market gardener.
At Favona Rd, Rajwer took their children to primary school, picked them up from sports and would eat dinner at the table each night, followed by prayers and cleaning up. Saturday was for property maintenance and development – the kids would help out when needed, in between Polish school and sports.
Sunday was time for church, followed by a visit to friends and family, then maybe going out on a trip to the park, the beach, or on a bush walk.
Rajwer was a compassionate person. He would visit his elderly neighbour each night, and would go around his neighbourhood and rest homes collecting newspapers to fundraise for the Scouts his children belonged to. He spent months on end building boxes, benches and tables for the Scout jamboree from old packing cases.
He knew the limits of his cooking ability – soup – and would buy the family KFC on Mother’s Day as an annual takeaway treat.
Rajwer would never miss celebrations – 21sts, weddings, baptisms and first communions were all large family affairs. He was always late, even to church and Christmas dinner.
At a last count, Rajwer was on more than 19 medications. He used to tell his eight children he didn’t know how long he’d be around for, but the family had heard him saying that for more than 40 years.
Rajwer was 87 when he died, surrounded by loved ones. – By Andre Chumko
Sources: Jan Rajwer, Boguslaw Nowak