大象传媒

We stayed a few weeks in a camp which provided us with food and accommodation. After that my mother, sister and I lived in a single room. By that time we had become quite accustomed to doing so. Unfortunately, we were attacked by a new illness, malaria, which frequently irritated us. I went on a nurisng course with the Red Cross and worked in the 1st Polish Civilian Hospital in Teheran, granted to us by the Shah. I also looked after my mother and sister, who by now was attending a school run by Italian nuns.

We stayed in Teheran until the late summer of 1945. We could not go back to our home in Poland beacuse, according to the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Polish Eastern Borderland had become part of the USSR.

From Teheran we travelled mainly by train and coach through Iraq and Syria to lovely Lebanon. We stayed in Antoura near the town of Zouk-Mikall ("Zuk"), 20 kms from Beirut. Here, at last, Iwas able to finish my education and get a diploma fromthe Design and Technology College. My sister Asia went to a Polish primary school.

On the 9th October 1947, we left beautiful Lebanon and travelled through Israel, Egypt, the Mediterranean Sea, Gibraltar and Liverpool to finally arrive in Morpeth, near Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the north of England. We were, again, first housed in army barracks, but we did not stay there long and left to start our independent life in Bradford. I found work and we found a flat. My sister, who by now was nearly 10 years' old, started at St Joseph's Convent School.

My father came to join us after demob from the army. My brother "Antek", who had been fighting with the Polish Army at Monte Cassino in Italy, also came to join us. He had been injured by "friendly fire" from the Americans, but was not seriously hurt. Some Poles did go back to Poland, but many of them ended up in prison or back in Siberia. It is only thanks to God that the whole of my family survived our Soviet exile.

In 1948, I met my husband, Sylwester Zakrzewski, in Bradford. He was in the Polish Army in 1939 and, when the Germans were pushing it to the east, he escaped to Hungary, Yugoslavia and France. When France collapsed, he came to England and went up to Scotland. From there he was sent to Russia to act as a liaison officer in the Polish Army. He served in the 2nd Polish Corps throughout the Middle East up to the end of the War, after which he travelled back to England.

In March 1948 we got married and had two children, Ewa and Lech. We then moved to Leamington Spa. My parents, who have been dead for some years now, and my husband, who died in 2000, are all buried there. My brother "Antek", married and had a daughter Krystyna. He died in 2003 and is buried in Bradford. My sister "Asia" lives in Warwick and has four children, Ursula, Zofia, Conrad and Marysia.

I Now live in Poole in Dorset and have five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. We are a very close family.

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