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Barbara ŚWIĄTEK 

Barbara Swiatek was born on 04 March 1924. On the 13th of April1940, she and her family were deported from Lomza to the Pawlodarowka settlement (Kokczetaw Obv.) in Kazakhstan. Before the family’s deportation, the NKWD (Soviet Secret Police) had arrested her father, and the family lost all contact with him. He managed to give his gold ring to his wife before he was taken away.

 

Only many years later did the family learn of her father’s fate … He was part of the KATYN massacres by the Russians.

 

In May 1941, the family was moved to the town of Atbasar (Akmolin Obv.). Her mother died there in June 1944, succumbing to disease, malnutrition and exhaustion. Barbara found employment on the railroad line and then returned to Poland on  August 1946.

 

She eventually joined the Siberian Association, and it is on her initiative in the19 80s that a Monument to the Sybiraks in Brojce Gryficki was created. She later became the President of that association, and she wrote her memoir.

 

Barbara Swiatek survived the bombing of Lomza by the Germans, and she survived the Siberian deportation by the Soviets, but she died tragically on 7 December 2008, hit by a car in a hit-and-run accident.

Copyright: Swiatek family

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