That the Western Allies knew all about the deportations is clear from their relief efforts in their behalf in the Soviet Union and the Middle East. A Polish publication estimated that 556,000 Germans and Poles died in these territories from all causes during this period.30 The West German Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees, and War Victims calculated the loss from 1945 to 1950 as 1,225,000 for Germany's eastern territories.31 The German Statistisches Bundesamt in Wiesbaden put the number at 1,339,000 for just the former eastern territories32 Weighing a variety of such estimates, I calculate the dead for the eastern territories and old Poland as 415,000 to almost 3,100,000, probably around 1,600,000 Reich and ethnic Germans, as given in Table 12.1. After the Polish Army had left the Soviet Union, the attitude of the Soviets towards the remaining Poles worsened. African radio stations ran programs in the Polish language and there waseven a Polish press. Despite the fact that in 1918 all Jewish organizations were against the rebirth of Poland, in1926 Poland gave full citizenship to some 700,000 Jewish refugees from USSR ,while at the same time Jewish refugees who escaped to France remained stateless until WWII. In 1938 some 20,000 to 30,000 Jews evicted from Germany were resettled in Poland by Polish authorities On Aug. 22, 1939 Hitler delivered a secret speech in which he stated that the complete destruction of Poland and especially its population was his primary target. To relieve ourselves, we had to jump out of the train whenever it stopped. This was a small fraction of the approximately 1.7 million Polish citizens who had been arrested by the Soviets at the beginning of the war. It appeared in the "Miedzy Nami" in one of Canadian newspapers A commandant usually a British official stood at the head of the administration of each of the settlements. No doubt "Uncle Joe"(Joe Stalin) homo sovieticus barbarosus incarnate must have been grateful to the Western Allies for their conspiracy of silence, for preserving the "good name" of Archives in New York, English version: http://dione.ids.pl/~ijp/ang/onas.html. The settlements were divided into sections and groups, and the heads of departments of education, pastoral care, health care, culture and work were appointed. It triggered an amnesty for the Poles in the USSR. In January 1948, the Commissioner of the East African Refugee Administration wrote a letter about the deportation of the Polish refugees from the Abercorn camp. Bogdan Harbuz stayed at Koja camp: "We did not receive any money for food, we only got 5 shillings a month for our expenses. Among the deportees 52 percent were Poles, 30 percent were Jews, and 18 percent were Ukrainians and Byelorussians. The dead were buried at various graveyards in East and Southern Africa. The main wave of Polish refugees sailed away from Iran to Africa. The main street of the camp was named after General Tadeusz Br-Komorowski. The soldiers of Anders' army went on to fight in many battles, including the one at Monte Cassino; the civilians, because they could not be repatriated, were forced to remain in foreign lands for the remainder of the war. [3] Thanks to a remarkable reversal of fortune well over 110,000 Poles, including 36,000 women and children, managed to leave the Soviet Union with Anders' Army. 00-263 Warszawa Illnessestyphoid, dysentery, no restrooms in cars. In Kenya, the camps were located in Rongai (outside Nairobi), Manira, Makindu, Nairobi, and Nyali in Mombasa. The adults were uneasy and afraid of the unknown, but us, the children, were happy for an adventure. Only about 3,800 Polish refugees from Africa decided to repatriate to the country, which accounted for about 20% of the total. Witness History speaks to one of them. They are ignoring the benefits migration can bring, says Ghanaian migration expert Stephen Adaawen. The sworn deposition provides evidence of Soviet responsibility for the 1940 massacre of some 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest and other places in what was then the Soviet Union. 23cm. That was when Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin signed a non-aggression pact that divided several eastern European countries, including Poland, into German and Soviet spheres of interest. If this site was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to keep it going. Another transport arrived at the Mombasa port in Kenya on September 19. There was a kindergarten, a men's school, a women's school, and a middle school. On November 1, 1944, USS General George M. Randall (AP-115) arrived at Wellington, with 733 children on board. Eventually, they found the area fertile enough to start their own farms growing bananas, pineapples, maize, tomatoes and sunflowers. Between March 24 and April 4, 33,069 soldiers left the Soviet Union for Iran, as well as 10,789 civilians, including 3,100 children. 65s. camps, the Nazis murdered from 15,003,000 to 31,595,000 people, most likely 20,946,000 men, women, handicapped, aged, sick, prisoners of war, forced laborers, camp inmates, critics, homosexuals, Jews, Slavs, Serbs, Germans, Czechs, Italians, Poles, French, Ukrainians, and many others. "African countries were on their way to independence and didn't want reminders of colonial rule," said Devlin. We were very poor, there were no jobs, kids had their classes in the open, there were no books." Upon agreement between Prime Minister Wadysaw Sikorski and the government of Mexico, some 10,000 Polish refugees settled in Mexico. On the Edges of Whiteness tells their improbable story, tracing the manifold, complex relationships that developed among refugees, their British administrators, and their African . Ukrains'kyi arkhiv. t.208. The Polish migration to Africa has its roots in an event from August 1939. The Polish consulates in the USSR issued in-land temporary passports for those being evacuated: These had to be presented at the border crossings in order to proceed. At that time, the Poles were the largest minority of European origin in East Africa. From 1942 to 1950, nearly twenty thousand Poles found refuge from the horrors of war-torn Europe in camps within Britain's African colonies, including Uganda, Tanganyika, Kenya and Northern and Southern Rhodesia. Own farms were run. They were going from Kigoma to Dar es Salaam and from there by ship to the United Kingdom, where their next of kinoften husbands and sons who had been fighting in the warwere getting courses and training for civilian jobs. Gadam. In January 1944, the Polish staff in all East African camps had been reduced. Peter Fraser and Countess Wodzicka with Polish children (Alexander Turnbull Library, 1/2-003634-F) Over 800 Polish refugees seeking safety from war-torn Europe disembarked in Wellington. Abercorn camp 4.1. It is no longer just a footnote in history. Altogether, in 1943-44 there were 26 schools for Polish refugees in the Near East.[12]. After aggression of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the conclusion of SikorskiMaisky agreement in July 1941, when Poland and the Soviet Union became allies, authorities in Moscow allowed the Polish population to leave the place of exile. As the new border between the postwar Poland and the Soviet Union along the Curzon Line (requested by Stalin at Yalta) has been ratified, the ensuing population exchange affected about 1.1 million Poles (including Polish Jews) as well as close to half a million ethnic Ukrainians. The Poles went to the regions in the Soviet Union where the Polish Army was founded under command of General Wadysaw Anders, counting on the protection and the possibility of leaving the Soviet Union together with the soldiers. In order to ensure the highest quality of our services, we use small files called cookies. When they arrived they . Union under the provisions of that tenuous "amnesty" of 1941. of the deportees from Eastern Poland who managed to get out of the Soviet From 1942 to 1949, Gerech lived with her siblings and parents in a simple thatched hut in Tengeru in what was then the British-administered territory of Tanganyika (now Tanzania). the deportees until the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany on June Language--U. Krakiv, 1995. came to be known as the "City of Polish Children." The refugees arrived on African shores in two stages. Language--U. Varshava, There's lots more.Continue on with Poland page 2. It was by this circuitous route that the Polish deportees arrived in Tanzania, South Africa, Zimbabwe and other parts of British Africa to see out the rest of WWII. centr. Only three or so trips were allowed, so, sadly, those who arrived too late were unable to get out. [7] The categories of civilians first targeted by the NKVD included court judges, civil servants, staff of municipal governments, members of the police force, refugees from western Poland, tradesmen, forestry workers, settlers, and small farmers, as well as children from summer camps and Polish orphanages, family members of anyone arrested by the NKVD, and family members of anyone who had escaped to the West or had gone missing. A large Polish settlement was also founded in Mexico. Refugees in Poland were, until 2022, a relatively small group. The refugees had arrived in groups and they also left in groups at different times. The British people were now resigned to the fact that Hitler had to be stopped by force. Also: Language. The Polish representative to the Potsdam conference claimed there were only 1,500,000, the United States estimated 2,000,000. 00-202 Warszawa The Koja settlement covered an area measuring over 700 acres and was located on several hills overlooking the lake. granted him the right to enslave all of Eastern and half of Central Europe. In August 1945 the number of Polish refugees in Northern Rhodesia was 3,419 of which 1,227 stayed in camps in the capital Lusaka, 1,431 in Bwana Mkubwa at the Copperbelt,164 in Fort Eventually, they migrated mostly to Australia, Canada, and Great Britain. Dluga 6 After Yalta The Polish civilian population could not stay in Iran for along time due to the tense international situation and the threat of a German offensive. 29. list of polish refugees in east africa and rhodesia. list of polish refugees in east africa and rhodesia list of polish refugees in east africa and rhodesia. Additional Polish transports arrived in late 1943. Camps: 8a Soviet reoccupation of the Borderlands (1944-45) 8b Repatriation (1944-47) After the hell that we survived, Tehran was a different world. Expectations and the execution of rules concerning the refugees . Offices, institutions and offices of the RP, Coronavirus: information and recommendations. Dyrektor mgr Krzysztof Patek She hoped we would return to Poland some day. In Ahvaz, "Camp Polonia" was one of the main exit centers for Poles leaving Iran, and the last Ahvaz camp closed in 1945. Archiwum Panstowe w Przemyslu The Polish refugees also have a positive memory of the locals, says Durand. Records which I can't recall at the moment. Moreover, several Polish periodicals were published, Polish amateur theaters were founded, and Polish business enterprises flourished. 22sm. Tehran was a gate, through which we were sent, in groups, to different parts of the world. And from 1939 to 1941, they deported en mass about 1,6000,000 Poles, including 400,000 Jews. Africa provided another safe harbor for the Poles. Korespondencja, m.in. in the plans, and two days later all of the refugees were shipped off to Ukrainian Catholics and Orthodox in Poland and Czechoslovakia. 68p. On March 19, 1942, General Wadysaw Anders ordered the evacuation of Polish soldiers and civilians who lived next to army camps. Southern Rhodesia, then a self-governing colony of the United Kingdom that is located in the now-independent Zimbabwe, entered World War II along with Britain shortly after the invasion of Poland in 1939. 37-700 Przemysl Warszawa Poland, The Head Office of State Archives And none of these monstrous figures even include civilian and military combat or war-deaths. Adamem i Iza Zamoyskimi, Zofia, Janowa,Tarnowska, oraz w sprawach Further Polish transports went to India by sea, from the port of Ahvaz to Bombay. http://www.mapywig.org/m/wig500k/MAPA_POLSKI_1_500_000_PRZEMYSL_12_WYDANIE_LOTNICZE.jpg The Polish refugees who were going to East Africa were shipped from Iran, or taken from Iran to India and shipped from an Indian port, to different African destinations. July 30, 1941, provided for the release of all Poles in Soviet exile as At the peak period, 4,018 people lived in it. I will never forget the journey on trucks through the mountains from Ashgabat to Tehran. Korespondencja do cz?onkw rodziny (1945-1946). Here's a map that shows Regards, Richard P. From Videofact International, Documentary Press, here is Part 1: At the end of 1944, there were 13,364 Polish citizens in three countries of East Africa, of which 6,331 in Tanganyika. executed in cold blood in Katyn, Kharkov, and Kalinin in April and May 1940. 20sm. Among the victims on this altar of silence were the 14,500 prisoners of war interned in Kozelsk, Starobelsk, and Ostashkov and Locals from Tengeru and the Poles even sometimes celebrated mass together, said Devlin, the head of the Center for Flight and Migration at Germany's Catholic University of Eichsttt-Ingolstadt. By clicking an e-mail address provided as a link, you consent to the processing of your data (e-mail address and other data provided on a voluntary basis in the message) in order for the recipient to send a response to the submitted questions. On the left, smiling and with her arms crossed that was my grandmother," says Durand. Having unloaded H.M. Troopship Nevasa at Karachi, then in India, now West Pakistan they were tasked to sail to Khorramshahr, in Persia, now Iran on the 17th of March 1944. The possibility of relegating Polish civilians to northern and southern Rhodesia and the Union of South Africa was also taken into account. Furthermore, there were schools in Egypt, at Tall al Kabir and Heliopolis. 3. People kept their own gardens, with vegetables. 4. World War Two: The deportation of Polish refugees to Abercorn camp in Northern Rhodesia. Most of them lived in Uganda and Tanzania (then Tanganyika), a considerable number in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) and Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) and some in . During and afterWorld War II, his Polish grandmother Kazia Gerech had lived in a refugee camp in what is present-day Tanzania the stories of her childhood near the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro had burned into his soul. The document, The housing was primitive: dwellings made of clay, with roofs made of grass and banana leaves. In Northern Rhodesia, 245 evacuees were accepted for permanent residence. [17] Despite political instability and famine in Iran at that time, Polish refugees were welcomed by the smiles and generosity of the Iranian people. 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