The General Langfitt Story
Chapter 5 - Dispersal (continued)
Independence for India in 1947 meant that the Polish tenure in Valivade was running out. Deeply disillusioned after the agreements signed between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt at Tehràn in 1943 and the Yalta and Potsdam conferences in 1945 (Thomson, 162, pp. 742-4, 752), the refugees learnt that Poland was to remain under communist rule. Although about five hundred people returned to Poland to be with relatives when a representative of the new communist government of Poland came to visit Valivalde in 1946, and some 3500 left for England to join menfolk newly discharged from the armed services6, others rebelled. The Polish government representative was met with great hostility and many people refused to return home to a communist regime. For a substantial number of people, 'home' was not even in Poland any more, as the eastern regions of Poland were now firmly claimed as Soviet territory. They believed they had nothing to return to but danger. By refusing to return, they incurred the wrath of the new Warsaw government, who duly revoked their citizenship. By the time Valivade was closed in early 1948, the remaining inhabitants were not only stateless but homeless, with nowhere to go.
Students from Valivade secondary school on excursion,
India, 1946
(courtesy of Urszula Trella-Paszkowska)
Stranded without the resources of the Polish government in exile, which was no longer recognised by Britain or the United States of America, it was now up to UNRRA to find a new refuge for these displaced persons.
Someone arrived and tried to get us to sign papers so they could move us to camps in Europe. From there we knew they would move us on to further destinations. We had heard that the conditions in the camps in Europe were horrific. But we didn't sign anything and so they couldn't really transport us to Europe. We were quite a dilemma for them and then the IRO took over from UNRRA. We heard that UNRRA had strong affiliations with the Russian regimes. We had to get out of India because the camps were being closed, so they decided to move us to East Africa because there were vacancies in some of the camps there when people from East Africa left for England to join their husbands. Adults with children went to the camp in Koja, Uganda and the orphanage went to Tanganyika. Eventually the orphans found their way to Canada. (UrszuIa Paszkowska)
For some people, this turn of events was a great sadness. East Africa seemed like 'the end of the earth'. But Boguslaw Trella put a different light on it:
Some people believed that they couldn't take the risk to return to Poland but with me, and I suppose for a lot of the young people, we had become used to adventure. Our life was the sort of thing you read books about. To be quite honest, I thought that if we returned to Poland it would be grey and drab but, if we refused to go back, there would be another adventure in front of us. And we were quite right because we left India and went to Africa. That was for the youngsters who looked at the exciting part of it. It was not for the adults because their attitude was different. They did want to return to Poland, but not to a communist Poland.