The Polish children of Pahiatua

Hundreds of children who came from Poland in 1944 were reportedly the first refugees to be recorded in Aotearoa New Zealand.

It has been 75 years since they arrived - namely fleeing the horrors of World War II. They were just a small group among the thousands of Polish children who had been uprooted from homes, endured war and conflict, and lost one or both parents.

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After the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east in 1939, many thousands of Polish families were deported to Siberian forced labour camps.

There, they not only faced the bitter cold but also constant hunger. Then Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union.

This led to an amnesty for Polish citizens and those families that were allowed to leave tried to get as far south as possible.

Sadly in many cases, only their children made it all the way to safety. Among them, this group of about 700 Polish children would end up travelling on a US Navy ship with caregivers to our small nation of New Zealand on the other side of the world.

In this Voices episode, Stanislaw Manterys (83) and Stefania Zawada (85), who live in Lower Hutt, and Wisia Schwieters (88) who resides in Auckland share their memories about the past.

Producer Poland based Piotr Wolodzko, was born in Poland but immigrated to New Zealand with his parents when he was 2 years old.

Piotr met these seniors this year, 75 years after their arrival in New Zealand to hundreds of smiling school children and welcoming New Zealanders.

Now in his twilight years, Stanislaw Mantereys still recalls it was a tough life back then.

"The food was not enough to sustain life. You virtually had to sell things that you had.

By the time the two years elapsed we hardly had anything...clothing was, you know, rags...not sufficient to survive in the cold there. But we did survive."

He remembers a hillock, a horse-drawn vehicle, which seemed to be occupied by bandits.

"They're all bearded, and skeletons and rags...so I started to run, run, away.

And there was this Polish woman, she called out to us, she said: dzieci, dzieci, children children, don't run away. I think these are the Polish army....so...so they took us," said Stanislaw.

While some Polish orphans were resettled in places like South Africa and Mexico, Wisia Schwieters was among those who got to New Zealand.

"Dad wrote a letter and said - it looks like we're not going to have [the] free Poland we're fighting for. If you can, go to New Zealand. If I survive, I'll join you," she said.  And the rest is history.

Click here to hear the two part podcast episode in full. Find out more about how these children survived their perilous journey from Siberia to Iran and ended up in Pahiatua New Zealand, and how they adjusted to their new life surrounded by sheep and cattle. You can also hear what happened when the camp they had begun to call home was shut down for good.

*This episode was written produced and presented by Piotr Wołodźko as a collaboration with Stories from the Eastern West and Culture.pl with the help from the Embassy of Poland in Wellington. Find them at www.sftew.com or wherever you get your podcasts.Thanks to Ambassador Zbigniew Gniatkowski and Anna Gołębicka-Buchanan for helping to get in touch with the protagonists in this episode. Also thanks to Stanisław Mantereys, Wisia Schwiters and Jozef and Stefania Zawada for sharing their story, and to Karolina Palej for her assistance.