Jan Pradyszczuk was born in Poland in 1914. The Germans invaded Poland from the west on 1 September 1939, and the Russians invaded from the east on 17 September 1939. They divided Poland between them.

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Jn fought in the September Campaign in Poland, was captured by the Russians and sent to a POW camp in Siberia. Released by the ‘amnesty’, he journeyed south to find the Polish Army that was being formed in the USSR. He evacuated to Persia (Iran) with the army and joined the Polish 2nd Corps, serving in the Middle East and in the Italian Campaign.

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Emigrating to Canada:

 

Appreciative of the valiant contributions of Polish soldiers during the war, the Canadian government offered refuge to many Polish vets, prisoners-of-war and refugees who were left stateless after the conflict. With a shortage of manual labour in rural Canada, the government offered full citizenship for these immigrants, provided they spent two years working on a farm.

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From 1946 to 1952, approximately 39,000 Polish veterans, displaced people and refugees poured into Canada. Jan Pradyszczuk was one of those new arrivals in Lambton County, Ontario. He was a veteran who had fought alongside Allied forces in the Italian Campaign, including the Battle of Monte Cassino, a bloody, costly struggle in southern Italy that was the prelude to the Allies’ capture of Rome.

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When fighting ceased in Italy and the young veteran realized there was no returning to his occupied homeland, he decided to take up the Canadian government on its offer. Jan boarded the first ship full of immigrants destined for Canada, which arrived in Halifax on 12 Nov.1946.

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After spending two years working on the Lambton-area Macdonald farm, Jan, like many Polish immigrants in the region, traded toiling soil with work in one of Sarnia’s plants.

He met and married Maria, and they raised four children: Halina, Krystyna, Grazyna, and Irena.

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Jan Pradyszczuk died in Sarnia, Ontario in 1999, at the age of 85 years.

 

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Copyright: Pradyszczuk family

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