The General Langfitt Story
Chapter 5 - Dispersal (continued)
The Settlements in East and Southern Africa
In total, there were twenty-two different camps for Polish displaced persons, scattered throughout East and Southern Africa, all of which had been receiving Polish refugees since late 19427 Królikowski (1983, p. 84) claims that 'the reason for this dispersal of the camps from the equator to the Cape of Good Hope remains still a secret of the British government'. Given the numbers of people involved, a simple though obvious explanation may have been the sheer logistics of supplying these people with food and necessities. In total these camps held some 19 000 people, including 3500 older men who were unfit for military service, 6000 women and approximately 8000 children, including some 1500 adolescent girls (Królikowski, 1983, p. 85). They were, as one participant observed, an 'incredible pool of femininity' who united to develop lively and creative communities in which to nurture and educate their children.
It is not possible to discuss all of these camps here, although many members of the 'General Langfitt Group' spent varying periods of time in several of them before finally being transferred to Tengeru as numbers in the other camps diminished after 1945. A brief selection of people's recollections of some of the major camps gives a sense of the community life which developed in each settlement, and the kinds of transitions which many people had to make as they were moved from place to place.
People who had been in Valivade in India remember being taken aback by the conditions they found at the Koja settlement in Uganda. Located in a beautiful setting on a peninsula jutting out into Lake Victoria, surrounded by water on three sides and jungle and savanna on the fourth, Koja was some 30 kilometres from the nearest railway station and 60-odd kilometres from the capital city, Kampala, too far to allow for much contact with the outside world. At its peak, Koja accommodated around 3000 Poles. Bogdan Harbuz recalled how, when they arrived at the camp, they:
were slightly disappointed. After the luxury of India it looked rather primitive to us. The camp consisted of four administrative divisions and what we called the 'high life', the homes on the hill where the administrative workers lived. Right on top of the hill in the centre of the camp stood a church and a canteen shop.
Location of Polish refugee camps in Africa,
1942-50
(Adapted from Fr Lucjan Królikowski's book Stolen
Childhood, 1983)
We were not given money to buy our provisions, just five shillings a month spending money. We were given provisions - some rice, flour, a bit of meat, salt, sugar, tea and coffee once a week, and most people had their own little gardens for vegetables. We felt very dependent on UNRRA for everything, including clothing. Our group from India sort of rebelled. We were not used to the strictness of the camp regulations so we tried to improve the conditions.
I was just a youngster and was more concerned with social life, high school and the Scouting movement. The rest of it didn't interest me at the time. I did not have to worry about where the next meal came from. That was my mother's worry. I liked what I saw around me: the big lake, the beautiful jungle, the animals, the fruit in the jungle, the Africans. To me it was an adventure.
Others, who were older, also recalled how they found the Koja settlement less democratic than Valivade. Urszula Paszkowska remembered it as:
a very poor existence. My mother couldn't start work because there were no vacancies. I found work in the hospital but conditions there were much more primitive than in Valivade, where we had Indians looking after toilets and cleaning floors, which was very hard physical work. I only worked under such conditions because mother was not able to find work, but then the chief medical officer said there was a vacancy in the Polish part of the European hospital in Kampala. I went there with pleasure because they had surgical cases there and I wanted to get away from the conditions we were living under.
The conditions in Kampala were quite satisfactory. We had orderlies to clean the floors, serve the patients' meals and wash the dishes, and we had separate quarters and someone cleaning our rooms and helping in the kitchens. We worked for six weeks and then had one day free. It was not the best pay, and we worked seven days a week, but the work was interesting and I liked Kampala. The only disadvantage was that it was hard to get back to the camp so I had to correspond with my mother and brother for most of the two years we were in Uganda.
Other young adults, used to the relative freedoms of the Valivade establishment, spent their whole time in Uganda at the Koja Camp, feeling more and more helpless with the passing of time.
Some lucky people were given jobs in camp administration, although they were paid very low salaries. My father worked in food stores where the food was issued. At the beginning I tried to get some clerical work, but on the whole Polish people were discouraged from working outside the camp. It was a very silly policy. My impression was that we were kept in the camps because they wanted to keep us together, hoping that we would all go back to Poland. I applied to the office of the IRO in Koja and was engaged as a typist/secretary. My salary at the IRO was 120 or 140 shillings a month, which was considered very high. It was certainly more than my father was getting at the food stores. I worked there for two years. We had to keep track of all Poles living there because at that time the IRO wanted to resettle those people. There were not many takers. A Canadian mission came but they took only quite young people.
I was one of those so-called hard-core cases because I had elderly parents and it was assumed that I was the only one that could support them and that I wouldn't be able to do that. There was no hope of being resettled anywhere. I applied for residence in Kenya. I could have settled there but my parents were not accepted because of their age. My father had a lot of friends in England with whom he was in touch but it didn't seem hopeful that we would leave for England. Then the Australian Selection Commission arrived. (Regina Tabaczynski).
Meanwhile, in other parts of Africa, many other Poles were being moved from settlement to settlement, awaiting some resolution to their increasingly unpredictable futures. For example, Zbigniew Patro spent some years in the settlements at Rusape and Marandellas, before being moved to Tengeru:
I was in the group of about five hundred that went to Marandellas. One utility had been sufficient to take everyone's possessions to the camp from the railway station. So you see we had very little. At this camp Mother started to write to the International Red Cross looking for my father and to the Polish army about her older brother. We had mixed feelings because, although we now had freedom, we found out that father had died in Katyn and that my uncle had died from some disease while in the Polish army in Russia. My grandmother's other son was in the war so she was worried about him. But life went on. For the children who were too young to understand the difficulties, life was beautiful. We were, free, the adults were working, I had many friends of my own age. We went to the dining room for food, to school and on Sunday to church.
Krystyna Jarzebowska and her sister Halina Juszczyk arrived in Africa in February 1943 and spent seven years there. During this period they moved four times. At the camp at Rusape they completed their primary schooling before moving to Digglefold, south of Salisbury, in April 1944, where a secondary school for girls had been established. Their mother joined them there to work as a seamstress a few months later. Digglefold had been a farm until the owners' 4-year-old son died in an accident. Unable to stay there with their memories, Mr and Mrs Diggle donated the farm for conversion to a school when they read about the plight of Polish refugees in the Salisbury newspapers.
Some of the expenses of running the school were paid by the Rhodesian Government, but the bulk of it was paid from the Polish gold which was taken to London at the start of the war. There were about two hundred of us there, in very lovely surroundings and we had very good teachers, all Polish people, and so Digglefold High School had a very high standard. I remember the Polish literature and language teacher best. At the beginning she taught us from memory because she had no books. She was a Polish patriot who tried to influence us with her love of Poland. She told us we must learn because one day we would go back and take our knowledge to Poland. This was very important for a country torn by war. After class there was the Scouting movement and afterwards we had craft work and dancing. There was also a library and a piano. At the front of the school we made a Polish white eagle out of shells and small white stones and created flower beds in the shape of the Polish map. It is still there because Digglefold is still a boarding school and they left the eagle as a memory of us being there during the war. The three-and-a-half-year stay in Digglefold was very pleasant. By then we had sort of forgotten the horrible things that happened to us. Being young, the wounds heal quicker than at any other time. (Halina Juszczyk)
In January 1947, as many of the African settlements were being liquidated, Halina, Krystyna and their mother were moved to Gatooma Camp in Southern Rhodesia, where they joined Poles from many of the other Rhodesian camps. Their schooling continued for another year until the schools had to close as teachers and pupils left for England and other destinations. Once again, a commission from communist Poland arrived to 'encourage' them to return to Poland, which most refused. Branded as traitors and stripped of their Polish citizenship, these 'remnants' were moved to Tengeru early in 1948.
Kidugala settlement was located in Tanganyika, near the border of Nyasaland. Królikowski (1983) estimates that there were around 1000 Polish residents at this settlement. Stanislawa Jutrzenka-Trzebiatowski (Adamska) recalls her time there with great pleasure:
When I arrived I expected the land to be black, but the land is not black, the people are black. When we first arrived in Africa we were told we could go to Tengeru, Ifunda, Masindi or Kidugala. I thought about these names. Kidugala was the highest place, some 2500 metres above sea level, it was cooler and I liked the name. In May and June it was quite chilly there. We liked it there and I think it was the best camp. It was small, not like the other camps, and we felt like one big family. We lived together in big groups and a Polish priest by the name of Maciaszek helped to keep the village in good spirits. There were lots of children there so there was a high school where I taught Polish language and geography and I was busy with Scouts and Girl Guides. It was a good time there because after the time in Russia we started to feel free. We had a very good quartermaster who taught us some English. We never thought we would ever need this language!