The Exile Mission. Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann
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on July 30, 1941, Stalin signed a Polish-Soviet treaty providing for the formation of the Polish Army in Russia and for the release of Polish citizens from labor camps, prisons, and exile.37 After the news was announced to the deportees, large groups of Poles began to travel toward the south, where General Władysław Anders was forming the Polish army and setting up assembly centers. Chaos and destruction accompanied their odyssey: the Polish government in London was unable to provide any substantial aid, and Soviet officials did nothing to facilitate their movements. Hunger, violence, cold, heat, disease, and exhaustion resulted in a rising death toll as Poles arrived in the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union.38 Conflicts about the organization and use of the Polish army as well as the tragic situation of the civilian population resulted in the decision to move all Poles out of the Soviet Union and into Iran. During two large-scale operations in March–April and August 1942, about one hundred fifteen thousand people—including forty thousand civilians, mainly women and children—were evacuated from the USSR.39
The evacuees stopped first in several refugee camps in Iran, including Tehran, Ahwaz, Ashabad, Isfahan, and other places. The Polish population was in urgent need of food and clothing, but especially medical attention. Most were exhausted after the strenuous trip from Siberia and years of malnutrition and mistreatment. Red Cross hospitals quickly filled to capacity with Polish children suffering from serious diseases. The surviving children entered a system of kindergartens and schools established by devoted Polish teachers and educators, themselves refugees from Siberia. Close to two thousand children joined Polish scouting groups organized in Iran. Adult refugees had to deal with grief, look for lost family members, and plan for the future. Prewar political activists recruited new members to their parties. Scientists established the Towarzystwo Studiów Irańskich (Association of Iranian Studies) that sponsored research into the biology, geography, and geology of the Middle East, published the scholarly journal Studia Irańskie (Iranian Studies), and in cooperation with the University of Tehran organized a popular lecture series.40
Great Britain accepted about six hundred fifty Polish orphan children and some of the teachers caring for them in a refugee camp in Balachadi, India. Despite the unstable military situation in 1942, more Poles were evacuated from the Soviet Union and arrived in refugee camps in Karachi. A year later, more than two thousand Polish orphans and mothers with children were placed in a camp in Malir. Valivade became home to about twenty-five hundred Polish refugees, some of them from camps in Iran.41
The largest number of Polish refugee camps serving the Siberian deportees was located in the eastern part of Africa: Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, South Africa, South and North Rhodesia. Between 1942 and mid-1944, East Africa hosted more than thirteen thousand Polish refugees, who, like their compatriots in India, formed schools, churches, hospitals, and cultural organizations. Stefan Remiarz, for example, was only three years old when the war broke out in 1939. His entire family was deported from the Wilno area to Siberia. After his father and older brothers joined the Anders Army, Stefan and his mother were placed in refugee camps in Tanganyika, where they remained until 1948. Stefan remembers fondly his African experience, despite primitive living conditions in small huts made of clay and straw, without running water, electricity, or windows. He received excellent care and education in a Polish school, where nuns working as teachers drilled the children in Polish grammar and literature.42 Several hundred more Polish children arrived in Pahiatua, New Zealand in 1944, where they enjoyed hospitality of the New Zealand government. There were also Polish children and women living in a large camp in Santa Rosa, Mexico, near León.
After experiencing life under Soviet communism firsthand, not many of these refugees returned to Poland after the war. Some of them remained in their countries of first resettlement; others were offered refuge in Great Britain and its dominions, Canada and Australia; and residents of the Santa Rosa camp as well as Polish orphans from India and Africa were directly admitted to the United States. Many other refugees eventually arrived in America, emigrating from other countries as the opportunity arose. Helena Podkopacz, for example, after the loss of one son to disease during the exodus from the Soviet Union and a dramatic search for another lost on the way, was sponsored by her sister and arrived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1950. After a prolonged sojourn in India, Olga Tubielewicz’s son was brought to the United States by the Polish National Alliance and placed with a group of other boys in Polish schools in Orchard Lake, Michigan. Olga and her daughter Roma arrived in Minnesota in 1947, sponsored by a family member who had resided in the United States since before World War I. It took another four years for her to reunite with her husband, who, having survived Soviet captivity, had joined the Anders Army. Stefan Remiarz’s father decided to return to Poland, but his older brothers settled in Great Britain, and Stefan and his mother joined them there. After a few years, disappointed with poor economic opportunities, the family gradually immigrated to the United States.43
The new Polish army was initially formed on the territory of the Soviet Union and consisted of deportees and prisoners freed under the Sikorski-Maiski agreement of 1941. Polish General Władysław Anders took command. After leaving the Soviet Union, the army was eventually incorporated into the British forces in the Middle East and later reorganized as the Second Polish Corps. It also included the Carpathian Brigade, which already had distinguished itself in battle at Tobruk and other places in North Africa.44 The Second Corps participated in the Italian campaign, earning fame at the battles of Monte Cassino, Bologna, Ancona, Anzio, and the Gothic Line. After the defeat of Italy, the corps performed a year of occupation duties there, and in the late summer and early autumn of 1946, was brought to England in its entirety.45
The composition and character of the Second Corps were notable for several reasons. A majority of its members was from the eastern territories of Poland that were annexed by the Soviet Union at the end of war. They had shared the experiences of the deportation period and felt a common hatred of Russia and communism. Heavy fighting in Italy further cemented the brotherhood of arms among the soldiers, who were fully devoted to their commanding officers and especially to General Anders. The Second Corps, “never in close touch with G.H.Q. in London, . . . evolved on its own, with its own schools, theater, newspapers and tradition.”46 The vibrant cultural life of the Second Corps put its stamp on Polish refugee communities at every stage of their exile. While still stationed in the Middle East, a large group of Polish journalists within the Second Corps began the publication of several journals directed toward both civilian and military audiences, and toward children as well. These publishing activities resulted in the appearance of both new and reprinted Polish-language books that were especially welcomed by the mushrooming Polish schools and libraries. The Second Corps also sponsored an active film group and three theater groups that offered entertainment for troops and civilians alike.47
During their Italian sojourn, the ranks of the Second Corps swelled with new volunteers. Tadeusz G. arrived from Sandbostel, an Oflag in which he and many other Warsaw Uprising soldiers had been imprisoned until the liberation of Germany. “I was young, ready for adventure and some sightseeing. DP Germany seemed stagnant, while the legendary Second Corps seemed to offer exciting opportunities,” he recalled.48 Some of these opportunities were, for example, high-school-level education for the soldiers in the Polish gymnasiums in Alessano, Mottola, Rome, and Porto San Giorgio, or enrollment in Italian universities, sponsored and financed by the education department of the Second Corps. Another was work for the new Polish publishing house (Instytut Literacki, or “Casa Editrice Letters,” 1946–47), whose editorial staff, led by Jerzy Giedroyć, put out twenty-eight books and the first issues of Kultura (Culture), the most important émigré journal in the West, later published in Paris.49 Resettled in Britain together with other Polish military units, the Second Corps became the backbone of the Polish community and Polish veteran organizations.50 A substantial number of these veterans immigrated to the United States in the early 1950s, after the amendments to the Displaced Persons Act were passed. On the basis of that law, Zygmunt Tubielewicz left Great Britain and joined his family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1951.
The Second Corps also included units of the Pomocnicza Służba Kobiet (PSK or Pestki, Women’s Auxiliary Service), later the Pomocnicza Służba Wojskowa Kobiet (PSWK, Women’s Auxiliary Military Service). The first attempts at organizing women in the Polish military