Polish refugees land in New Zealand

On 1 November 1944, more than 800 Polish refugees from war-torn Europe landed in Wellington from the troopship USS General George M. Randall.

For the 732 children and 102 adults on board it was the end of a long and perilous journey. They had survived deportation to the Soviet Union, forced labour in Siberia, and evacuation to the Middle East prior to reaching New Zealand.

The Poles’ tragic story had begun with the 1939 German invasion of Poland. Following the subsequent Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, an estimated 1.7 million Poles were deported to labour camps in Siberia. Conditions were grim – starvation, hard labour, disease, and the freezing cold took a terrible toll on the deportees.

Most expected to perish in the camps but Germany’s surprise invasion of the Soviet Union – her former ally – prompted Joseph Stalin to release the Polish prisoners. In early 1942, the Soviets agreed to the evacuation of more than 120,000 sick and malnourished Polish soldiers and civilians to Iran. From there, Polish soldiers went to fight alongside the British in North Africa and Italy, while more than 40,000 civilians languished in Iranian refugee camps.

The Polish government-in-exile in London appealed for help finding temporary homes for them. New Zealand was among a number of countries to offer the Poles shelter.

In 1943, Prime Minister Peter Fraser, encouraged by his wife, Janet, and Countess Maria Wodzicka, the wife of the Polish Consul-General in New Zealand, invited a group of Polish children to New Zealand for the duration of the war. Most had lost parents and siblings in Soviet labour camps.

After they landed in Wellington on the morning of 1 November, the children and their caregivers were taken by train to a camp near Pahīatua in Wairarapa. The Polish Children’s Camp – dubbed ‘Little Poland’ by the locals – was to be their home until mid-1949.

The authorities expected that the children would eventually return home, but most of them chose to settle in New Zealand after Poland came under Soviet influence at the end of the war. Some were joined by relatives – more than 100 Polish ex-servicemen were reunited with family members in 1946 – and a small number returned to Poland.

During the 1970s, members of the Polish community built a memorial on the site of the former Polish Children’s Camp in appreciation of the shelter given to them by the people of New Zealand.