大象传媒

George and Maria came from Poland but never talked about the war years. George joined the Polish army and ended up in Italy. He was 14 when war started and 20 when it ended; his youth had been lost. He came from western Poland and the Germans liquidated anyone who was not of any use or seen as a threat.

Maria lived in eastern Poland. Germany attacked from the west in 1939 and Russia invaded from the east 17 days later. The Russians started ethnic cleansing. The family was loaded into cattle trucks and travelled for two weeks to a labour camp in Siberia. Siberia was very cold and there was never much food, just bread, always bread. If you worked you got bread, if you didn't..... Father worked in the forest whilst Maria, who was seven, went to school. She was always in trouble for not saying that Russia was best.

In 1942 the Polish government arranged with Stalin to have an army and 100,000 people were allowed to leave Russia. Men and women were separated. Maria ended up in Rhodesia, coming to England in 1949.

George also ended up in England, meeting Maria in London at a social event where she was a singer in a Polish choir. He managed to go to university, taking a degree in mechanical engineering and later working in industry.

Maria's parents survived the war; her father working in a sugar factory. In 1993 she went to a reunion of school friends from Rhodesia.

(PK)

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