In May and June this year, the hall of the Museum of Ceramics at 13 Mickiewicza Street hosts an exhibition shedding more light on yet another episode of our history, which for a long time people tried to silence or even erase from memory.
The exhibition entitled "Wandering Children" presents the fate of Polish children deported deep into the USSR, to Siberia, at the beginning of the war, who later shared the fate of the Polish soldiers of General Anders.
On 17 September 1939, while the September Campaign was still under way, the Soviet army crossed Poland’s borders, seizing its eastern borderlands as far as the Bug River. This resulted from the "Ribbentrop–Molotov" Pact concluded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
From the first moments after the Soviet invasion, arrests, interrogations and the mass deportation of the inhabitants of these territories deep into Russia began. The first major mass deportation started on 10 February 1940. Further ones followed in April and June, with the last taking place in June 1941; approximately 980,000 people were deported at that time. In total, from 17 September 1939 to June 1941, more than one and a half million people were deported, mainly the families of officers, police officers, foresters, judges, prosecutors, state officials, teachers and members of the intelligentsia. Entrepreneurs and settlers were also deported—former soldiers who, after the 1920 war, had received land allotments in these territories. The transports were directed mainly to the northern European regions of the USSR, the republics of Central Asia, western and central Siberia, and occasionally areas of eastern Siberia. These transports, as well as the stay in that inhuman land, claimed many victims.
After the outbreak of the German–Soviet war, as a result of efforts by the Polish Government in Exile, an agreement on mutual assistance in the fight against the Nazi invader was concluded with the USSR on 30 July 1941. As a consequence, the Soviet authorities declared an amnesty for Poles imprisoned in prisons, labor camps, special settlements and the most remote places of exile. Under the agreement, the Polish Armed Forces began to be formed from those granted amnesty. Worsening conflicts in Polish–Russian relations led the newly formed army to decide to leave the USSR. Approximately 78,500 soldiers, more than 37,000 civilians, including around 14,000 children and 5,700 girls and boys organized into youth brigades, left at that time.
The evacuation took place across the Caspian Sea, from the port of Krasnovodsk to the port of Pahlavi, on the Persian shore of the sea. Many died while waiting in Krasnovodsk for the longed-for escape from the Soviet nightmare. People arrived on the Persian shore in a state of extreme exhaustion. The mortality rate was very high; more than 1,000 Polish graves remained in the cemetery in Pahlavi.
From Pahlavi, the civilian population was sent to Tehran, where several camps for civilians were established, including one children’s camp.
After resting and, above all, receiving additional nourishment, the inhabitants of these camps were sent to settlements organized in various parts of the world, mostly in countries belonging to the British Commonwealth at the time. More than half went to the former British East Africa and the Cape territories—that is, to Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia. Other groups, especially children, found themselves in the Union of South Africa, India, New Zealand and Mexico. Some remained in the Middle East, in Persia, Palestine and Lebanon.
The fate of General Anders’s soldiers has generally already been studied in detail; less well known is the fate of the civilian population, children and young people. For this reason, on 19 April 1991, the "Wanderers’ Photographic Archive" Foundation was registered with the District Court for the Capital City of Warsaw, in order to preserve all keepsakes, documents and recollections concerning the period of wandering until the resettlement camps were dissolved. Following an appeal addressed to witnesses and participants, a very rich collection was gathered, including more than 3,000 photographs. The collected material was used to prepare the exhibition. It should be emphasized that the people who personally prepared the individual display panels had lived in these settlements and had also met together at the first exhibition at the Museum of Independence in Warsaw. Thanks to the cooperation of people sympathetic to this idea, an album containing extensive illustrative material and the recollections of witnesses to these events was published. The exhibition at the Museum of Ceramics is accompanied by the sale of postcards from the resettlement sites and the aforementioned album, recommended for school libraries. The Bolesławiec exhibition is the third museum presentation, after Warsaw and Wrocław (at the Historical Museum), and is therefore strongly recommended to teachers and students in the upper grades of primary and secondary schools.
Let the note about the exhibition conclude with the words of a prayer by Rev. Prelate Zdzisław Peszkowski at the opening of the "Wandering Children" exhibition on 10 February 1993: "We thank You for the fact that good people appeared on our paths, people who offered us hospitality in so many countries of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, New Zealand, Mexico and Australia.
...We offer You special thanks for the fact that priests were with us, as were teachers and educators, and for Polish scouting, which restored our dignity in the service of God, Poland and our fellow human beings.
The exhibition is open until 16 June this year, every day except Mondays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; on Tuesdays and Wednesdays until 5 p.m.; and on Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.