Urszula Dąbrowska
The resourced attention of people from Poland makes Polish people in New Zealand want to learn about their identity, learn about their ancestors. This is especially important in a multicultural country where history has little meaning.
Urszula Dąbrowska, a journalist and president of the Cultural Education Association, who attended the 80th anniversary celebrations of the arrival in New Zealand of 733 Polish orphans and half-orphans evacuated from the Soviet Union, writes about the Polish ‘Pahiatua children’ and the lives of successive generations of Poles thrown to the antipodes by the war. In 1940 and 1941, these children and their families were forcibly deported from their homes in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland and settled deep inside the Soviet Union.
The full article in Polsh is here: https://swiatsybiru.pl/pl/pahiatua-miejsce-w-ktorym-odpoczywal-bog/
The English version of the article is coming soon.
Material prepared as part of the project ‘Poles in New Zealand – queries, digitisation and access to private archives’, carried out by the Cultural Education Association “Widok” and the Sybir Memorial Museum. Subsidised by the Polonika National Institute of Polish Cultural Heritage Abroad.
