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I lived in Poland during the war and I was six. I got up and cleared a hole in the frost on the window and I saw a Russian soldier following our neighbour with a rifle. I called my father and he called me away to look himself. So everybody got up and got dressed in the next few minutes Russian soldiers were in the house with rifles. They told us to leave the house. My father tried to collect a few things but the soldiers said leave it it’s ours. Despite the threats my father got a few things. They took us to the main hall in the village then we were shoved on cattle trains and sent to Siberia. It was a terrible journey the train was very cold there were no sanitary facilities only little wooden benches to sleep on like sardines. When the train stopped people ran to get food, which was soup in buckets and you had to run as to not get left behind. Anybody dead was thrown off the train. We ended up in Siberia in barracks in the woods made by the Russians years before. My parents had to work at any jobs available — cutting timber which was a job a woman wouldn’t normally do. We were there just over a year. Three brothers and a sister died of starvation only me and my sister survived. When the Germans arrived they said we could go anywhere we wanted — we went to Uzbekhistan and then transport was provided to Persia where they were Polish camps. My father looked after young soldiers and from Persia we went to Africa, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe and Nairobi and stayed there until the end of the war. Some people went to Australia my family came to England in 1950 and I was 17. I was so used to the gypsy life being shoved around I wanted to keep travelling but after about ten years it felt like home. There was still rationing when I got to England. I’ve never been back to my old home it is still occupied by Russia but I have been back to Poland itself. I wouldn’t want to live there now everything has changed, apparently my old house and village was demolished to make a communal farm so it’s pointless anyway

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