COLLECTIONS
A piece of art from the “Inhuman land”
After World War II, the Vilnius region was incorporated into the Soviet Union, and repressions against the local Polish population were continuously intensified. Fearing persecution, Jadwiga Urban—daughter of Jan Urban, a Home Army soldier killed in action in 1944—entrusted her relatives with the care of her daughter Czeslawa and fled to Riga.
‘Souvenirs’ from the Africa
The Pałka family was deported by the Soviets from Stryj in April 1940 to Kazakhstan. After many vicissitudes, the family ended up in Rhodesia. The Pałkas returned to Poland in 1947.
(No) ordinary toolbox
The Babiel family from Łomżyca near Łomża was deported by the Soviets to Kazakhstan in 1941. From exile, they brought back to Poland a toolbox that helped them survive.
Dad didn’t want to be photographed…
“On 4 September ’45, several families left here—I mean, from Biysk—so we handed one lady the group photograph, so that she could pass it on to you. This lady comes from Bielsk Podlaski. You surely must have received it already. Dad is the only one missing from the photo, because he didn’t want to be photographed.”
Parents came home!
Anna (Hanka) Pawłowicz (married name Szelewicz), was born in 1925. Her family lived in Jozefina near Poświętne, where her father, Aleksander Pawłowicz, worked in the private forests of Princess Mirska. When the Soviets came in 1939, Aleksander was arrested and taken...
Diary of Ada Didyk
On 21 March 1940, NKVD officers burst into the home of the Didyk family living in Lviv. They arrested the father of the family, Stefan – a postman and member of the underground and, in the past, of the Polish Military Organisation. They put him in prison and then murdered him in Kyiv with a shot to the back of the head as part of the Katyn Massacre.
Decorations and immortelle of Wacław Bzik
On 10 February 1940, during the first mass deportation of Polish citizens from the occupied territories, the Soviets deported to Siberia, among others, Wacław Bzik, a forester from the Sokółka Forest District, and his wife Stanisława.
Jerzy Gromadzki’s dugout, siktjach, Yakutia Autonomous Soviet Republic
The Gromadzki family was deported to, Yakutia in June 1941 from the Szikszniai estate near Kibort in the Vilnius district of the Republic of Lithuania.
Commemoration book of the Auchimowicz Family, Nairobi, 1944
This small booklet is used by Orthodox believers to record the names of loved ones of the deceased. It belonged to the Auchimowicz family.