The tragic path that
ON November 11 last year, Poland and the Polish diaspora all over the world celebrated the 100th anniversary of the independence of Poland.
That independence lasted a mere 20 years and was shattered when Hitler’s army invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Seventeen days later the Soviet Red Army invaded Poland from the east and once more Poland was conquered and divided and by its two neighbours.
For Poland, World War II did not end with the surrender of the Germans on May 7, 1945. As the German Army was being defeated, Poland was occupied by the Soviets, who remained in control until 1989. A great number of Polish people found themselves outside their homeland when the war ceased. Many chose not to return because of the political situation there and sought new lives outside Poland, indeed outside wartorn Europe.
Many found their way to Australia and some to Tasmania. These people were different to other European migrants. They came from disparate regions of Poland, not as groups from villages or islands.
Here I tell of the journeys of four Poles who ended up in Tasmania, Janina, Stanisław, Józef and Anna — just normal Polish names — easily pronounceable! Each story is different. Their stories reflect the stories of many other Poles who settled in Tasmania.
Janina was born in 1927, not in Poland but to Polish parents near Hamburg, Germany. Her first language was German, and she was for all intents Polish German. The outbreak of war changed Janina’s status. She was henceforth regarded and treated as a Pole, an alien,
without her previous rights as a German citizen. She could not complete her education and together with her whole family she was committed to labouring for a German farmer.
At the end of the war Janina was considered an enemy by the Allies because of her original German nationality but because she had no official German status, she was taken with her family to displaced persons camps, where she worked in the camp hospitals, assisting nurses and performing various clerical tasks. In one of the camps she met Stanisław.
Stanisław lived with his family in Czestochowa at the outbreak of World War II. He was 21 years old when the Germans transported the whole family to Germany to work as farm labour, replacing Germans called up into the army, for the duration of the war.
Stanisław and Janina were married in Clausthal Displaced Persons Camp in 1948. Janina’s wedding dress was made from parachute material. They decided to migrate to Australia and after being transported to displaced persons camps all over Germany, they arrived in Naples, Italy, where they boarded the SS Svalbard bound for a new life at the other end of the world. Their first home in Australia was the Bonegilla Migrant Camp.
When it was time to choose a more permanent home, and knowing very little about the different states of Australia, they happily accepted passage
Ed Kremzer
on the Bass Strait ferry Taroona to Tasmania, and in 1949 arrived at the Brighton Army Barracks to start their new life in Tasmania.
Józef was 23 when the war started and already an army reservist living in Silesia, Western Poland, near the German and Czech borders. With the fall of the Polish government, units of the Polish Army were evacuated from Poland to regroup elsewhere. In 1939 Poland’s eastern border neighboured Hungary and so the fleeing soldiers crossed into Hungary and Romania, where they were interned before travelling through Greece and across the Mediterranean Sea to join the Polish 2nd Corp being formed in (then) Palestine. Józef fought as a sapper in the Carpathian Brigade in North African campaigns, including Tobruk alongside the Australians, Monte Cassino in Italy and other campaigns liberating Italy from the Germans, before being stationed in England after the war. It seemed somewhat ironic that the Polish Army was used by the Allies to liberate Italy, but they were unable to join the battle to liberate Poland. Józef never saw his family again.
In September 1947 Józef was one of the original members of the Carpathian Brigade to arrive in Tasmania to take up work with the Hydro building the electricity infrastructure in the Central Highlands.
On the eastern side of Poland, occupied by the Soviets, Anna lived with her family. She was just 11 years old when the family was taken from their house, packed into cattle wagons and transported to the Archangel area, about 1000km north of Moscow, a train and truck trip that took weeks. In this frozen, desolate area Anna’s mother and younger sister died of exposure and sickness. Anna recalls they were buried under barely inches of soil because it was frozen solid, and during the night they heard the baying of wolves probably attacking the frozen bodies. Anna survived about 18 months in subhuman conditions.
When Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the Soviets and Poland technically became allies and in mid-1941 the Soviets granted the Poles an amnesty to leave. Anna with her remaining family, father and younger brother, travelled across the Soviet Union, through Kazakhstan
and Turkmenistan, across the Caspian Sea to a transit camp in Persia (now Iran). In 1942 Anna’s father passed away and she and her younger brother were left orphans.
Many Polish families in Iran were resettled in other counties. New Zealand took 733 orphans and 100 support staff and placed them in an orphanage at Pahiatua, north of Wellington, arriving there in November 1944. Here Anna regained some normality of childhood, learning to read and write fluently in English before working for a bank in Auckland.
Meanwhile, Józef working in Tasmania’s Central Highlands for the Hydro, had began a pen-pal friendship with Anna. After an exchange of photos, Józef travelled to New Zealand and returned to Tasmania with his future bride. They married in Hobart in March 1951.
Janina, Stanisław and Józef have all passed away and never returned to Poland, even for a visit. Anna maintains an active life, beating all the hardships thrown at her during her 90-plus years. Hobart’s Ed Kremzer is Honorary Consul for the Republic of Poland.