Halina Tilsley was always confident she knew who she was.
Born after the end of World War II, she was the daughter of a Polish woman and a British-born Kiwi soldier, a mother of two, a grandmother and great-grandmother.
But two years ago, her life and the lives of her family turned upside down when a chance discovery revealed that the man who Halina had always known as “Dad” was not her biological father.
Then, last year, another bombshell dropped: her biological father was not only someone she had heard about before, but he was still alive, aged 100, and living in Germany.
Her whole life, Halina, now 80 and living near Hamilton, believed her father was Ernest Petersen, a British-born Kiwi soldier who became a prisoner of war in Poland during World War II.
Her mother was Daniela Bem, a Polish woman from Sosnowiec.
After the start of the war in 1939, Sosnowiec was occupied and annexed by Nazi Germany.
Daniela’s brother was sent to a concentration camp.
Her father was working in a coal mine, where he met Ernest, who was forced to work there.
In August 1944, Daniela’s father took Ernest home and introduced him to his family.
“[It] just grew from there,” Halina told the Waikato Herald.
“[Ernest] would come home maybe every three or four weeks ... and would visit Mum.”
Eventually, Ernest and Daniela eloped in Krakow, Poland, in March 1945.
After the war ended, Ernest, like other soldiers, was repatriated to London. Daniela followed him.
Daniela travelled to London alone, from Poland via Prague, Czech Republic, where she gave birth to Halina in September 1945.
“[My mother] used to tell me that I was premature.
“It wasn’t till I got to my teenage years that I started working out, you know, that’s not nine months ... and working out three months premature doesn’t seem realistic – not back then.
“But I never said anything to her and ... just went along with what she said.”
Daniela and Ernest lived in London for a while before coming to New Zealand in 1946.
Ernest, Daniela and Halina lived on Ernest’s family farm in Hikuai that he had purchased.
The start was hard for Daniela, not only because she didn’t speak any English.
“It was so remote, coming from a big city like London to a little Coromandel township.
“[Daniela] didn’t even know where New Zealand was, had never even heard of it.
“[But] she loved the farm life, loved milking the cows ... and she fitted into life here very well.
“Just after they arrived, [Daniela] went to what were the local country dances every Saturday night.
“She went along all dressed up in London fashion. She said the following week, all the young women had copied her style.”
To Halina, Daniela’s and Ernest’s relationship seemed “normal” for the times.
A couple of years after Halina was born, Ernest and Daniela welcomed a son and a daughter.
“As a lot of men in those days, they were absent fathers. He was always with the boys ... He was very hard, very strict.
“[I] never lacked anything, but the love wasn’t there.”
Halina remembers her mother fondly.
“She was just wonderful. She and I were ... [very close] all the way through my life.”
Daniela died in 2013 in Thames.
In 2023, Halina gifted her daughter Wanda a DNA test for Christmas.
After the results, nothing was quite the same.
Aside from Wanda being “a whole lot more Polish” than she thought, the test results showed “no British” heritage, although Ernest was born in the UK.
“[My results were] all eastern European, Baltics and German,” Wanda said.
This meant Ernest couldn’t have been Halina’s biological father.
To confirm, Wanda’s daughter, as well as Halina, her other daughter Stefania, and Stefania’s daughter Summer, also did a DNA test, revealing similar results.
Halina was in shock and disbelief, saying she felt like her whole life had been a lie.
“You know ... all your life ... you know who you are, your identity.
“[But now] I wasn’t who I thought I was.”
Coming to terms with that news was tough, but despite this, Halina said she wasn’t upset with her mother “at all”.
“She did [her] best.
“She must have been a strong woman to carry all of that on her own.”
Halina and her family let the news settle and didn’t do any further research for a year.
When they were ready to start the search for Halina’s birth father last year, they reached out to Halina’s half-sister, who took a lot of their mother’s belongings after her death.
The sister found a letter, written in Polish and dated 1984, from the family of someone named Hubert, who was trying to reconnect with Daniela.
Through Daniela’s wartime recollections, the DNA test results and the letter, the family pieced together that Hubert must be Halina’s biological father.
Through social media, the family tracked down the author of the letter and messaged him.
“He replied within minutes,” Wanda said.
“He was shocked ... and he said... Hubert is still alive.”
He had just celebrated his 100th birthday.
When they told Halina about this, she couldn’t believe it.
“[I thought] ‘No, that’s impossible, it can’t be, it can’t be’. I went home absolutely shaking and stunned. I’m still stunned, it’s just too amazing.”
Halina and her daughters always knew there had been a special man in Daniela’s life before Ernest.
During World War II, nearly 3 million people from Poland were deported to Germany for forced labour.
In 1941, while Daniela’s father was working in the coal mine, Daniela, then 16 years old, and her sister were forced to work for a farming family in Germany.
“[The Kroll family] were ‘good Germans’, they looked after them ... and let [my mother and aunt] visit their parents throughout the war,” Halina said.
The Krolls had a son, Hubert, and her whole life, Daniela never forgot about him, Halina said.
“She would mention the name of Hubert quite often and talk about him. [So we always knew] she must have really liked him.”
Halina said she knew her mother kept in touch with him and even visited him regularly from the 1970s onwards.
While Halina and her family don’t know for sure what happened during the war, they assume love must have blossomed between Hubert and Daniela.
However, a serious relationship was out of question with Hubert being German and Daniela being Polish.
A relationship could have been punishable by death, Halina said.
After connecting with Hubert’s family last year, they sent Halina two video messages of Hubert saying he was “delighted” to hear from her and that it was “never too late” to reconnect.
Halina also learned that Hubert had written to her mother in New Zealand twice, but never received a response.
Hubert kept several photos of Daniela close to his heart and only reluctantly got married in 1964 to an English woman, because he didn’t want to be alone for the rest of his life.
His wife died 10 years ago and they never had any children.
The journey so far has been a “rollercoaster” for Halina.
In February, Halina is flying to Germany to meet Hubert for the first time.
Halina’s family has set up a Givealittle page to cover her flights and travel expenses.
Hubert will also meet his grandaughters Wanda and Stefania, and great-granddaughter Summer, who will fly to Germany with Halina.
“[I’m] overwhelmed, but so excited ... [it’s all] too emotional,” Halina said.
Aside from the big flight overseas and coming to terms with everything, another thing is keeping her awake at night: what to say to Hubert when she sees him for the first time.
“I haven’t come up with anything yet, but it will be something simple.
“I [also] want to know if he knew or suspected he had a daughter,” Halina said.
“I want to hear about [Hubert and Daniela’s] love, because I never got to hear it from [Daniela],” Wanda added.
But most of all, Halina hopes the trip will bring her closure.
“[I hope] That I know who I am, that I found my place in the world – even if it’s on the other side of it,” Halina said.
Danielle Zollickhofer is the Waikato news director and a multimedia journalist at the Waikato Herald. She joined NZME in 2021 and is based in Hamilton.