From Poland to New Zealand —Janina's harrowing journey

Janina Sarniak Photo / supplied

The story of the Polish children's camp at Pahiatua has been told many times but what is less well-known is the back story of the children's terrible suffering during the years of World War Two before they reached New Zealand in 1944.

Details of their ordeal were revealed at the funeral last week of Janina Sarniak, aged 92, a Whanganui resident for the last 30 years. An outline given of her life which had been documented by her family focused not on the camp, where she spent three happy years, but on the harrowing journey that led her there.

Janina was brought up on a farm in eastern Poland. As a reward for war service, her father, Walenty Marchewa, had been given 14ha where he grew sugar beet and tobacco. Her mother was Leontyna (Lonia) Marchewa. She had an older sister Romana (Romka) and and two younger brothers Bogdan and Mieczyslaw (Miecio).

The first Janina knew of the Russian invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939 was when Soviet soldiers arrived in the area the same day. Three weeks later Ukrainians forced them off their land and they moved in with relatives in a nearby town.

In late winter February 1940 the family was arrested in the dead of night, taken to a train station and loaded onto cattle wagons and deported. Janina was 13 years old. After 19 days in freezing wagons they arrived at a labour camp deep in the forest near Kotlas in north Russia, south of the Arctic circle. Later they were moved to other camps.

Janina later said: "We were told that we were to stay until we died and if you do not work you do not eat. Everyone over 15 had to work. Children under 15 had to go to school. My mother had an exemption from work as she was too sick.

"My father became ill so he was taken to the hospital. Now there was no one in the family who was able to work so we had no food. Mum stopped sending us to school as we were too hungry. After a few days the camp commandant came to see Mum to find out why we weren't in school. As a result we were issued a bread ration even though none of us could work."

Every morning her father would wake her at 3am to queue for bread. Previously Romka used to go but she often came back in tears without bread after being pushed out of the queue.

Janina recalled: "Up until this period I had always been very shy and a polite child but now I started to toughen up. If anyone pushed me I pushed back as hard as I could. I was going to get our share of bread."

Although they spent over 18 months in the camps, the family managed to survive, then after Germany invaded Russia in June 1941 an amnesty for Polish prisoners was announced. This was in August 1941 and the family left the camp in October.

They were joining a mass exodus of several hundred thousands fleeing south towards the protection of the Polish army then forming in Soviet Central Asia.

Everyone was terrified of the approaching Arctic winter, food was scarce, hunger extreme and death became a constant companion.

Janina recalled travelling by train (eastwards through the Ural Mountains into Siberia, south into Kazakhstan and beyond, over 7000km, mortality rate 10-15 percent ) and on river barges and working on collective farms. On 1 December 1941 her beloved mother died aboard a barge on the Amu Darya river in Karakalpakstan.

"Dad and us four kids carried on trying to get to the army. Somewhere along the way we were rounded up by the Russian soldiers and sent to another collective farm.

"There was no water to drink, just holes in the ground with dirty water. We had to boil water before drinking it. I remember Bogdan and myself boiling the water but we did not have enough wood. There was only sufficient boiled water for our father, Romka and Miecio, so we agreed to lie to Dad to say all the water was boiled. Otherwise he would not have drunk his share.

"Dad became very ill again. He had frost-bitten feet and was too ill to work so he was sent to the hospital. Us kids weren't wanted on the kolkhoz (collective farm) as we were too young to work, so no good to anyone. We were sent off to the hospital with our father. My youngest brother Miecio was also becoming very ill.

"At the hospital Romka, Miecio and I shared a bed and Bogdan and my father shared another. While we were at the hospital I caught typhus. Then Dad recovered enough to be discharged".

This was in Kenimekh, Uzbekistan, and on 10 February 1942 Miecio died, aged ten – two years to the day since they were deported.

"I remember him lying there, bones poking out everywhere, just a little skeleton covered with skin. I was lying beside him. After he died they wrapped him in a sheet and took him away and buried him somewhere in a communal grave".

While Janina was still in hospital her father made arrangements with the orphanage for Romka and Bogdan and herself. He then left to join the army. She never saw him again but years later discovered that he died of bronchitis near Tashkent in Uzbekistan two months after he left them.

When she started to feel better she discharged herself from the hospital. "They didn't want to let me go as they said I was still too ill but they couldn't force me to stay. I wanted to be with Romka and Bogdan. I left the hospital but was too weak to walk so was crawling on all fours. I had no idea where I was going. I was approaching a little bridge when I saw two soldiers ahead.

"I recognised the Polish white eagle on their caps but spoke in Russian as I was too frightened to speak in Polish. They asked me where I was going and I told them, 'I don't know.' They asked about my family and I told them that I didn't know where they were".
They picked her up and carried her and to an orphanage that was under the protection of the Polish army.

"This was also the orphanage where Romka and Bogdan had been but all the children had already been moved. They may already have been taken to Persia. By the time we were ready to move to Persia there were about 200 children. All the moves happened late at night to hide us from the Soviets."

The children were taken back to Tashkent and from there to Turkmenistan and eventually most crossed the Caspian Sea to safety in Persia. However, some of the very weak ones like herself who were too ill to cross the sea were transported over the Turkmen-Khorasan mountains in army lorries. This was from Ashkhabad in Turkmenistan to Meshed in Persia and was a gruelling two day journey.

Janina said they weren't going to take her to Persia as she was not expected to survive the journey. However, a staff member refused to let her be left behind. She was released from the Polish military hospital in Ashkhabad and taken to Persia near the end of August 1942. Of that hospital she had vague memory of being told by a priest that Romka had died "the previous day", otherwise Romka's fate is unknown.

After two and a half years in the Soviet Union Janina was free. She was 16 and weighed just 25kg. Soon after arriving in Meshed she was taken to an American Red Cross hospital where she stayed for seven months recuperating before being released to the Polish orphanage.

After being sent to Teheran, Janina learnt Bogdan had survived and was in the Polish youth army in Egypt. From there he was eventually adopted into a family in England.
Janina was then sent to a Polish children's home in Isfahan, the former royal capital of Persia. She was in Persia for just over two years and had wonderful memories of the kindness of the Persian people.

The children were eventually put on a British merchant ship to Bombay. They then boarded the American troopship General Randall which sailed into Wellington Harbour on 1 November 1944 with 733 Polish children and 102 staff.

Footnote: Janina and Bogdan met just the once following their parting in Uzbekistan in 1942. This was when he visited from England in 1985. In 2006 she travelled to the Polish Embassy in Wellington where with other former Pahiatua camp children she was conferred with the Siberian Cross — "an expression of the national memory of Polish citizens deported 1939-1956 to Siberia, Kazakhstan and North Russia".
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Janina Sarniak lost her parents and two siblings in the years after they were deported from Poland.