Mr.
Franek Herzog, a 82 year old Polish immigrant to United states and
living in Hebron, Connecticut, is planning a visit to Orchard Lake in
Michigan in the first week of August. He would be travelling there
for a two-day reunion with a group of 18 other Polish war survivors
from the second world war. During the reunion, the most prominent
subject that is bound to be discussed, would be their stay in India,
about seven decades back and the arduous, improbable journeys they
made from their war-torn homes in Poland to the erstwhile Indian
princely state of Nawanagar, which provided an oasis for
approximately 1,000 Polish children for four years until the
hostilities ceased.
Their
story opens, right at the beginning of the world war II, in the year
1939, when Nazi Germany and Communist USSR attacked their common
neighbour Poland. Improvised Polish army was no match for the
invading armies and soon the polish nation surrendered. Nazi Germany
and USSR decided to divide Poland between them. Germany holding on to
west Poland and USSR on to east Poland. Both the Nazis and Soviets
sent huge numbers of Poland’s elite, like military families,
police, doctors, teachers, and anyone else suspected of patriotic
feelings to prisons and labour camps. Soviet Union later went a step
further. They decided and deported more than 1.5 Million Polish
citizens to deep interior points like Siberia and Kazakhstan. The
purpose of these deportations were two fold. Firstly it was thought
that it would simplify the polish integration into Soviet empire.
Secondly it provided a supply of labour for Soviet Union's collective
farms. Entire families were packed into railway goods wagons in
Poland and were confined in them for six weeks as the trains rolled
east towards Kazakhstan. Anyone trying to escape was just shot. The
deportations soon got converted into a massacre as starting from
April, 1940, the Soviets killed an estimated 18,000 Polish army
officers and professionals in an event that has come to be known as
the Katyn Forest massacre, after the region in Russia in which the
executions were conducted.
However,
as things turned out later, the same deportations became a
deliverance for the deportees from the Nazi concentration camps and
the subsequent genocide. In 1941, Hitler suddenly attacked Soviet
Russia with a blitzkrieg. This made the Soviets change their strategy
towards the Polish deportees. At that time, thousands of Polish
deportees were in prisons in Russia. It was thought that an army
could be created out of these deportees, who could fight the Nazi's.
A general amnesty was declared to all polish deportees. An exiled
Polish Government in London readily agreed to formation of this army
and an agreement was signed with Soviets. This army was supposed to
fight in North Africa with the British and was to be assembled at
just north of the USSR border with Iran, on its way to middle east
through Iran.
The
soldiers were supposed to gather together in bases in Turkmenistan
and Uzbekistan before proceeding further. All the polish deportees
saw this mass transit of soldiers as an opportunity to escape from
harsh life in USSR and an epic journey of thousands of Polish
families began towards Turkmenistan from all over USSR, who hoped to
join the soldiers and eventually cross over to Iran.
To
take up this journey, many families had to escape from the community
farms (many farm bosses simply refused to allow them to leave.), have
money to buy train tickets and travel for months from Siberia to
south. They had to change trains frequently, sleep on bare floors.
Conditions were filthy with no proper washing facilities at stations.
People were infested with lice and infections spread like wild
flowers. Many of them died just waiting for the train tickets.
Polish
army, along with migrant families, crossed into Iran by ship across
the Caspian Sea or by road at the end of 1942. Some 37000 adults and
18000 children made it. After this, the soviet border was closed and
another Million Polish citizens remained trapped inside forever.
Iranian's were sympathetic towards the polish and treated them
kindly. Some of them stayed in Iran but majority moved towards
Afghanistan and finally to India. In April, 1942, after a month’s
journey, the children arrived at a temporary home by the seaside in
the Mumbai suburb of Bandra. “The first thing we did after coming
to the house was to have a god meal,” Mr. Herzog recalled. “After
the meal, we went to the bathroom to take showers…What a luxury!”
After a three-month stay in Bandra, during which the Polish orphans
were nursed back to health and given basic English lessons, Mr.
Herzog and his companions left for more permanent quarters in the
Nawanagar village of Balachadi.
Navanagar
was an Indian princely state of British India, in Kathiawar region,
situated on the south of the Gulf of Kutch and ruled by Jamsaheb
Digvijay Singh Jadeja, an extremely compassionate ruler. When he came
to know about the plight of the Polish refugees, he once decided to
open his province for the Polish refugees. He, along with rulers of
Patiala and Baroda and Industrialists like Tata's raised a sum of six
hundred thousand Rupees and set up a camp at Balchadi near Jamnagar,
which had special accommodation, schools, medical facilities and
opportunities for rest and recuperation for the refugees. When the
first batch of about 500 severely malnourished and exhausted orphans
reached the camp, he welcomed them warmly. He coordinated with the
Polish Government in exile and arranged to impart education in Polish
language apart from catholic priests.
In
1943, work started on a camp in Valivade, in Kolhapur, another
princely state,(now part of Maharshtra state) that was intended to
provide war-time domicile for 5,000 Polish older people, women and
children from the Soviet Union. It was designed to be “a Polish
village on an Indian riverbank.” Some of the older Polish orphans
from Balachadi were moved to Kolhapur, Mr. Herzog among them. He
threw himself into the scouting unit there, and took several weekend
hikes, including one to Panhala, a fort associated with Shivaji.
Between
1942 and 1948, about 20,000 refugees stayed and transited through
India for a duration ranging from half year to six years in some
cases. After the war was over, the refugees were asked to return to
Poland. However, many chose to be repatriated to the UK, the US,
Australia and other Commonwealth nations while just a few returned to
Poland. The Nawanagar Maharaja gave them a personal send-off at the
station.
Mr.
Herzog says: “I have a few friends from the Balachadi Camp in US,
England, Australia and Poland. But as the years march on, there are
fewer and fewer of us. It is likely that the story of Polish war
immigrants is likely to fade away sooner or later. The great deeds by
the Nawanagar Maharaja, done almost Sixty Five years ago, are already
forgotten in India, but in today's Poland , Maharaja of Nawanagar,
Jamsaheb Digvijay Singh Jadeja is still fondly remembered. Many
survivors even today still recall with emotion and tears, the
Maharaja and his kindness.
30
July 2013
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