Nobleman lived life of courage, honour
FEW families in Toowoomba would, on the loss of a loved one, receive official condolences from the head of the imperial Nguyen dynasty of Vietnam, the princely/ducal house of Gulgowski-doliwa in Poland and the titled nobility of Portugal.
The Helon family of Toowoomba did receive them on the passing of Zbigniew “Alan” Helon whose tumultuous life of courage, hard work, generosity and humour inspired so many.
Zbigniew Helon entered the world on June 3, 1937 when Europe was on the brink of war.
Coincidentally, the date of his funeral, February 10, 2012, was exactly 72 years after the most horrific day in his life and in the lives of 429,000 Polish people from the Kresy region.
In the early hours of February 10, 1940, toddler Zbigniew Helon, his baby sister Leokadia, parents Michal and Genowefa, uncle and grandparents were brutally awoken at their home in Krzywe, Eastern Poland and pushed into the snow at gunpoint by the Soviet NKVD - the Russian Secret Police.
The women and children were bundled into an uncovered sleigh while the men were forced to trudge in the waist-deep open snow. Those who were aged, ill or too slow were shot or bayoneted on the spot.
The Helon family had been deported without notice or charge to the now infamous wastelands of Siberia and the Asian Tundra where they were forced to work as slaves in the Gulag Archipelago for a small ration of bread and fish entrails each day.
Tragically, Zbigniew’s grandparents and baby sister perished.
By 1941 more than 2.6 million Poles were exiled, with only 115,000 making it out. Zbigniew Helon at the age of four was one of the lucky ones although he remained an enemy of the state because he came from a noble and ancient royal family.
By the end of the war, the geo-political maps of Europe were redrawn and Zbigniew’s ancestral home was now in the Ukraine.
Sent to a displaced person’s camp in Bwana M’kubwa in Northern Rhodesia, Zbigniew and his mother were to be separated from his father for many years to come.
In 1947, they returned to Poland where his mother found work, but Zbigniew was ostracised and bullied so badly that he fled to the United Kingdom under the guise of a holiday to see his father.
In 1958 his life took a turn for the better when he met his wife to be, 15-year-old Elzbieta Misiura, at a Polish Association New Year’s Eve Ball in Wombourne. She immediately became “the apple of his eye”.
Zbigniew was a hard name for his English workmates to pronounce and so one day they took it upon themselves to give him a pub baptism and christened him “Alan” for no particular reason.
“Alan” Helon pursued a career in the automotive design industry, working as a fitter at Vickers Ltd in Wiltshire then qualifying as a mechanical engineer.
Fate lead him to meet an Australian engineer who sponsored him to relocate and the Helon family, with three young children Stephen, Izabella and George, arrived in Melbourne on April 6, 1970.
Zbigniew and his family relocated from Bundaberg to Toowoomba in 2002 for the climate and also because son George, who has a 4.5cm inoperable brain tumour, could be closer to specialists.
George Helon praised his father’s devotion to family.
“Despite his own harsh life Alan Helon was a wonderful father,” he said.
“He never hit us, yelled at us, or otherwise. But in his own way he nurtured and developed us, leaving us to our own resources and devices.”
The Helon family brought a little of their Polish culture to Australia and educated all their children in the art of Polish cuisine ensuring family favourites were passed down, including pierogi, capusta, borstz, cabbage rolls and gerkin soup.
Alan also became a cat lover. His cats were always called America and they would follow him everywhere throughout the day.
Alan Helon was a man of very few words, but a man steeped in knowledge and understanding.
He rarely spoke of his past but when he did the children would hang on every word, fascinated about their family history and very proud of their father for having lived through so much without being consumed by bitterness and anger.
Zbigniew Alan Helon, Count of the Polish kingdom and commonwealth of Poland-lithuania, Prince of Zebulon, passed away peacefully at the Toowoomba Hospital surrounded by his loving family.
He is survived by his wife Elizabeth “Babcia”, his three children, four grandchildren, great granddaughter and cat America.
Niech Odpoczywa w Pokoju - May He Rest In Peace.