The General Langfitt Story
Chapter 5 - Dispersal
En Route in Pahlavi and Tehran
On the shores of the Caspian Sea at Pahlavi, Iran, the Polish evacuees found a hastily constructed camp of tents and open shelters nestled in the sand. Królikowski (1983, p.69) described the songs and prayers which could be heard throughout the day as Polish refugees gave thanks for their deliverance at altars which had been erected along the beaches. Many people recalled the joy they felt at their first taste of freedom.
Pahlavi looked very nice to us. After two years, we couldn't believe that there was so much food, especially the fruit on the stalls. In the mornings the Iranian boys would come along the beaches selling raw or cooked eggs. It was a beautiful feeling. The army made very primitive camps - some very large tents and thatched roof shelters which leaked when it rained. We slept on the sand and the latrines were a meeting place where we could chat because you had to wait fifteen or twenty minutes in a queue. (Zdzislawa Wasylkowska)
Make-shift hospitals were constructed to cater for the many people with illnesses such as dysentery, malaria, typhus, eye and skin infections. Królikowksi (1983, p.70) cites a report entitled Polish Pastoral Service Abroad which estimated that around six hundred people died in Pahlavi, 'at freedom's doorstep'. Many of those who succumbed to disease were children. Unaccompanied or sick children, and some whose families were too weak to care for them, were placed in orphanages where the weakest of them received special care. Kazimierz Sosnowski was 'amongst the skinny young blokes they took to a sanatorium. There we had nothing to do but eat the seven very small, very nourishing meals they were giving us every day. Still not everyone survived. By October we were well enough to travel from Pahlavi to Tehràn in army trucks. It was very rough and tiring'.
Many people observed how inappropriate the provision of food in the Pahlavi camp was. While one or two people mentioned a light diet of biscuits and tea, daily provisions consisted of corned beef and a very fatty meat soup, tasty and well meant, but guaranteed to create havoc in constitutions weakened by disease and hunger. Halina Juszczyk, who arrived in Pahlavi in August 1942 with her sister Krystyna, their mother and aunt recalled:
By the time we got to Pahlavi my eyes were very sore and mother took me to the hospital. The treatment was very painful but at least I could see after that. Then both Krystyna and I had diarrhoea. Being skeletons, as we were, a week of diarrhoea and you would be gone, so mother sold my father's very valuable red-gold wedding ring for a little bag of rice to try to save our lives. She wouldn't let us eat anything from the common kitchen. The organisation of those camps was in tatters. They were organised very quickly just to get people out of Russia and all these hungry people were just like people from concentration camps. They gave us, people who were not used to eating anything but a piece of bread a day, this very fatty meat soup. Our stomachs could not take it. They should have given us nourishing drinks first, then rice or something made of flour, not fatty foods. A lot of people died in Pahlavi because they were so hungry they would eat anything.
Polish Children, Pahlavi, Iran (Persia), about
1942
(Courtesy of Tadeusz Dobrostanski)
In Pahlavi, the evacuees had to undergo a quarantine process to rid them of lice. Those whose heads had not already been shaved in Krasnovodsk had to submit to this on arrival and photographs from these camps show skeletal girls and women still proud enough to have improvised scarves to hide their compulsory baldness. Everyone was sent to communal disinfectant showers to remove the lice which infested the whole refugee community. Urszula Paszkowska recalled that although 'women and men had to go to separate showers, my brother was somehow detached from the men. He remembers hundreds of naked women, with only small towels to cover themselves. That poor boy! It was a terrifying experience for him. I started yelling at him even though I knew it wasn't his fault. I have read the memoirs of one of our friends and he had the same experience. He said it was like Dante's Inferno! It must have been the same for my brother'.
Clothes were removed for burning and replaced with an odd assortment of garments, which, along with blankets and sheets, were donated by Polish organisations in America through the Red Cross. Many people remembered with wry humour the 'silly old things' they found themselves wearing: boys could find themselves wearing girls' combinations, some women were given nightdresses or even men's pyjamas, and many who were children recalled having to double up the legs of men's shorts and tie up the waists. No one complained; these were simply observations hinting at the range of indignities which accompany refugee status. As Aleksandra Wisniewska observed, it didn't matter while they were all together in the Pahlavi camp but 'when we got to Tehràn you can imagine how we felt when people looked at us!'
The evacuees stayed in Pahlavi for anything between a few days to several months awaiting lorries to transport them to Tehràn. When they finally set off, it was a journey few forgot. 'It was a beautiful drive through forests until we got to the mountains. Those hairpin turns! Every moment you expected to be down in the ravine, especially because our driver was always starting last and arriving first! But we survived and suddenly we were in the desert. In Tehràn we were in Camp Number Two, again in tents, sleeping on the sand. Later, we moved into a barrack divided by sheets into cubicles.' (Regina Tabaczynski)
Królikowski (1983, p. 70-71) maintained that the authorities in Tehràn were not ready to receive such large numbers of refugees and had little conception of what a poor state they would be in on arrival. Accommodation was assigned as it could be found and ranged from an 'incomplete munitions factory' to 'veritable tent cities' scattered throughout Tehràn. As a consequence, many people experienced both separation and reunion in Tehràn. For example, Aleksandra Wisniewska was separated from her mother. When she went to the authorities for help:
<< Back | Contents | Continued >>They told me to look for Mum in a mortuary. There were corpses up to the ceiling. A I0-year-old looking for her mother there? That was terrible. Anyhow, I found her in hospital and that is where we were reunited. Mum said we had to find my sister. The Polish authorities had no knowledge of her whereabouts. I became sick again and was in and out of hospital and then they put me in a special camp, Number Five, for sick children who had to be built up physically. From that camp the Red Cross organised outings for the children in Tehràn. There was a band and lots of soldiers and I was standing there watching the young cadets and I looked and saw my sister. I pushed and ran calling her. We were in the centre of the crowd, crying and hugging. That is how we got together. My sister was discharged from the cadets and joined us.