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Eugenia SMOLNICKA

Eugenia was born on 12 March 1939 near the village Bohusze, near the town Lachowicz, near the larger centre of Baranowicze in the eastern territories of Poland, which is today in Belarus.

She lived on a small farm with her mother Antonina (nee Barancewicz) and her father Michal Piotuch.  Her mother was born in 1900 in Baranowicze. Her father was born in 1897 in Minsk (also now in Belarus). Michal was a forest ranger, looking after the forest and looking out for poachers.

The Szczara River was nearby and it had a flour mill on it. There was a major road nearby which was a major access road from Warszawa to Barancewicz to Moscow.

Antonina had a younger sister ‘Eva’ who was married to Jozef Zywica and they lived in the town of Nieswiez about 20 kw away.

Michal, Antonina and Eugenia were forcibly deported from their home to Siberia, in the first of four mass deportations carried out by the Russians during WW2. The family ended up in Posiolek Polundiowica (a work camp) in Arkhangelsk.

It was during the night of February 10, 1940, that the NKVD (Russian secret police) and Russian soldiers entered their home. They gave the family an hour to pack up and load the sleigh. They took them to the railway station in Baranowicze. Trains were already at the station, and there were a lot of people in the goods wagons. The doors of the wagons were still open.  Antonina heard the voice of her youngest sister Ewa, and ran to that wagon, but the soldier slammed the door. She never saw her sister again.

The train started and everyone in the car wept and prayed. They travelled for several weeks until they got to where the railway line ended. They were unloaded  off the train and were fed (each one got fried meat on a stick).

Half of the Poles were left on the spot, and the other half were transported further, with horses and sleds. They rode all day in these open sleds in minus 40C temperatures, and reached the Posiolek Polundiowica camp.

Eugenia’s father worked in the forest, as well as building a school and new barracks in the summer. An epidemic of typhus broke out in the sprung, and a number of Poles died. They were constantly hungry because a portion of bread per day was not enough. On Sunday, people from nearby collective farms brought herbs and other food products, and the Poles exchanged their clothes and underwear for this food. Some girls later came to play in beautiful Polish nightgowns, thinking that they were ballroom dresses.

After the ‘amnesty’, thanks to the help of the Polish Government-in-exile in London, they were able to leave the camp. They headed south, where the Polish Army was being formed. They left at the end of 1941, in November, and on Christmas Eve they reached the station in Bukhara.

On the way, at one station, the train stopped and Eugenia’s father, with another man, went to look for something to eat. They stood in front of the slaughterhouse and were surprised that there were sausages on display. They were willing to spend all their money for a sausage. They went into the store, politely greeted the butcher and asked for one sausage. The butcher laughed and said, “Friends, it’s a painted wall - I have nothing in the store".

Often there were buckets of salt at the train stations and people took as much as they could. After a few weeks they reached Uzbekistan and progress on the train was slower. It often stopped in a field and they had no idea where the Uzbeks came from and they all asked for salt. For a cup of salt, they gave two cups of rice.

 

In Bukhara they waited a few days at the railway station. Then people came and took them to the collective farms. Each family was assigned a one-room hut (made of straw and clay bricks), with one door, and no windows at all. Michal found a large piece of glass and made a window out of it.

A few kilometres away, at a larger collective farm, the delegate of the Polish Government, a soldier of the Polish army, opened a Polish Orphanage. Antonina and other Polish mothers, knowing that this is an opportunity to improve the lives of their children, led them there and enrolled them.

After a few days, a military truck came to the Orphanage and drove them to Bukhara and then by train to the port of Krasnowodsk. There they waited a few days while sitting on the beach by the Caspian Sea. From time to time, they got something to eat.

They walked to the ship on foot. There was no normal walkway to board the ship, only a wide plank of wood. The children were very afraid to climb this plank. One of the caregivers went on the ship, lay down, stretched out her hand, and told the children to crawl on the plank and not look down, and this is how they boarded the ship. The children were told to go down into the ship's interior. It was a cargo ship and it was hot and very stuffy down there. But it was necessary so that the Russians would not know how many children were on the ship.

Eugenia can't remember how long they sailed on this ship. She was too sick and weak, and she can't remember coming off the ship. They reached Pahlevi in Persia (now Iran). The next day, an older boy cut their hair with a razor, and then they went to the bath. After bathing and being deloused, all the children got men's shirts and that's how they walked around for a few days. The clothes they arrived in were burned. They lived in large tents by the sea. The food was good, but Eugenia couldn't eat. She could not even gather the strength to go with her group to welcome General Władysław Sikorski when he visited Pahlevi.

After a while, they were sent to Tehran, and Eugenia was placed in the First Camp. Her father was already with General Anders' Polish 2nd Corps in Palestine. A friend of his came to Tehran to find his family, and her father instructed him to try to find his wife and child as well. It had been nine months since the family had split up. Eugenia’s father told her later that when he asked in his office whether Antonina and Eugenia Piotuch were in Tehran, he was told that Antonina had never come to Tehran and that Eugenia was on the list of the dead. While he was still speaking with the person in the office, a lady entered the office with a list of children released from the hospital. Eugenia’s name was on the list and so, her father finally found her. It was 1942. Unfortunately, Anronina did die in the USSR in 1942.

Eugenia was sent to the Childrens' Camp at Pahiatua in New Zealand, and her father eventually joined her in New Zealand after the war.

Copyright: Smolnicki family

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