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Borderland
Voices has a unique connection with its local Polish community.
The
book and exhibition telling the Staffordshire-Polish story emerged from the discussions
and workshops organised by the group with folk still living in this part of the
world.
Polish come to Leek
The terrible years of the Second World War were sometimes at their
most terrible in Poland.
As, first, the Russians joined up with the Germans to invade the
country, and then, after 1941, became Poland's most oppressive "allies",
the experience of the ordinary Pole must have been almost unbearable.
As Poles fled the oppressor either to fight in Polish divisions
within the British army or to refugee camps all over the world,
they hardly knew what their future would be.
Unbelievably,
about two thousand of them ended up, after the war, in an old army camp on Blackshaw
Moor near Leek.
Living in primitive conditions, but safe - and free - they
gradually built again a community.
The
Polish Connection - a creative writing and digital technology
project - recorded the experience of the Polish community from Blackshaw
Moor of their post-war years.
The project has now resulted in an exhibition, touring round Staffordshire
libraries this year (see our What's
On pages for details), and a book of personal accounts.
A
Long Way From Home...
... is the name of the book of stories.
As our
reviewer Mark Stewart discovered, the truth it contains is often hard to read.... A
Long Way From Home... review
After 1945, some 140,000 displaced
Poles were offered a home of sorts in Britain.
Despite the bravery of Poland
in the war, many British were suspicious of these foreigners on their doorstep,
and prejudice against these Catholic east Europeans was very high.
But,
after the horrors of the war-time, the Poles who settled at Blackshaw Moor could
suffer the prejudice, knowing that those previous horrors could not return.
This
booklet of nearly sixty pages records the stories of nearly a dozen of those Polish
folk, told in their own words.
It's almost unbelievable to hear how the
Russians treated their neighbours.
As whole families were shipped to Siberia
for doing nothing but being Polish, the trains they were herded into became nothing
but freezing, living tombs.
On a journey of three weeks across Russia, people
literally starved to death - even they didn't freeze first.
Some escaped
- however to uncertain lives. Strangely, some Poles ended up in refugee camps
as far away as Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) or Persia (today's Iran).
America
refused to accept the exiles, and, again bizarrely, it was Mexico that offered
some refuge.
And so to England. The state of these refugees, ill-fed and
thin, must have been pitiful to behold. But in these accounts, the men and women
forced themselves to find work, to create homes, to build churches.. And finally,
finally, to begin lives again.
To read these simple but powerful memories
of life in wartime Poland, and then here, is very moving - and a tribute to how
the human spirit can survive.
MS
A Long Way From Home is available from Leek
Library or from Borderland Voices at £5 per copy. Borderland
Voice's address is:- Ball Haye Cottage, The John Hall Garden,
Fowlchurch Road, Leek, Staffs ST13 6AT
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Memories
If
you too have memories of the Polish experience, we'd love to hear from you and
record your thoughts on our talk-board.
See Polish
Experience Talk
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