Janina JAGODZINSKA

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(aka Jane Jagodzinski)

 

 

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Janina (nee Makowska) was born on 15 October 1930, in a settlement called Osada Horyce in Wolyn, between Brest and Kobryn. Her father Lucjan, born in Warsaw in 1897, had been a captain in the Polish Army during WWI and the Russian-Polish war, and had been granted land in this settlement. There were 15 to 20 Polish families living in the settlement, and the rest of the surrounding families were Ukrainian, Byelorussian, or Jewish. 

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Lucjan had met Aleksandra Dabrowska in the village, and they had settled there and started a family.  Sadly, she died in 1933, leaving behind her children aged 11, 9 and 3. Janina’s grandparents lived in Zamosze, which was located east of Kobryn, closer to Pinsk, and her grandmother divided her time between the two homes. Within a few years, Lucjan remarried, and their stepmother took over care of the children. In 1938, Janina’s stepbrother Ryszard was born.

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Lucjan did not spend all his time on the settlement. Instead, he hired workers to tend the fields, and he himself spent much of his time in Warsaw, where he worked for the Transportation Ministry. As rumours of the war grew louder, he planned to have the family move to Warsaw and live with him there. But this never did happen. When the war broke out, Lucjan signed up for the army even before being called up. He went to Pomorze several days before the war started and joined the unit that was stationed there.

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Janina, her siblings, and her stepmother, were deported by the Russians on 10 February 1940. The Russians came for them at about 6:00 in the morning and gave them 30 minutes to pack. In a horse-drawn sleigh in -40-degree temperatures, they were taken to the railway station at Antopol where many hundreds were already waiting.  While waiting, they met a lot of people that they knew. The train arrived a few hours later, and they were forced into the cattle wagons; about 70 or 80 people were squeezed into each one. It had the typical iron stove, a hole in the floor that served as a toilet, and planks at each end that served as beds. The family shared their ‘shelf’ with 2 other families, so they ended up almost sleeping one on top of one another. They had enough food for a few days, and then they went hungry. They were not provided with any food on the journey, and no one on the train shared their food with them. 

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There were Poles, Ukrainians, a few Jews, and Byelorussians in their wagon. They had all worked for the Polish government, either directly or indirectly. Most of the adults on the train were women, as the men had mostly gone to war. There were also quite a few elderly people. Janina remembered an older teacher who later was sent to work in the forest - she survived for only 7 days. The atmosphere in the wagon was one of hopelessness and despair - the women prayed a lot. No one sang – not even hymns.

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The first time that the train stopped was in Vologda, north of Moscow. Here they opened the doors for the first time, and volunteers were allowed to go to the station and get ‘kipiatok’ (hot water) for the rest. The trip lasted 18 days. It should have been much shorter, but there were several times when the train was put on a siding and remained there for a day or two. They never learned why this was done.

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They stopped at Plesetsk and this is where they left the train. Plesetsk is situated in a region of taiga, or flat terrain with boreal pine forests. They were taken to a camp called ‘Nukhto-Ozyero” in the Pleszetski District, Archangelsk Oblast, where 1,700 were held prisoner. The family was assigned to one room in the barracks, along with an older couple who had emigrated from France to Poland and were also deported. 

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The first night was clearly a scene from Dante’s Inferno! The number of bedbugs is hard to imagine if you were not there yourself. When lighting a kerosene lamp, you would see that the entire surface of the ceiling and walls was covered with millions of bedbugs. It took months to get used to having them devour everyone’s poor emaciated body every night!  Later, lice were added to the critters that attacked them. During the two years that they spent in the USSR, they never saw a single bar of soap, so personal hygiene clearly suffered. 

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There was a store in the camp, and it had two products for sale: propaganda books, and cologne water!  The two books were Marx’s Das Kapital, and Stalin’s Philology of the Russian Language. As for the cologne water, they later found out that the Russians and Ukrainians at the camp were drinking it, because it contained a small amount of alcohol.

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Every morning, Janina would risk being trampled in the cafeteria by trying to be the first in line for the soup. They opened at 5 a.m. and she would be there by 3 a.m., but there would already be a lineup. People were pushing, children were trampled; it was a mad rush to get some food. The soup was called ‘szczy’ – a watery cabbage soup - and you were lucky to get a scrap of cabbage in it. The type of soup never changed, and generally only half the people managed to get some soup. Working people were also getting 700 grams of bread per day, and those who did not work received 450 grams of bread. 

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People were dying like flies, both from starvation and disease. Scurvy was widespread.  It was horrible. The first stage was night blindness. In the second stage, your nose would start to disintegrate. In the third stage the body disintegrates; the bones become visible. 

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Janina’s sister Maria (aged 17) and brother Boleslaw (aged 15) were assigned the same kind of work: driving a horse and sleigh into the forest and transporting the trees that had been cut down. They would bring these to Birza; the station where all the forest products were delivered. A train would take them from there to their varied destinations.  The forest workers would help load the giant pieces onto the sleigh and then they would transport these over several kilometers to the station. The sleighs were peculiar to that area of the USSR; one had to stand and hold the reins high up to drive it. 

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The summer season in that part of the USSR lasts about 30 days. Some of those days are very hot, and the heat would set off forest fires. This was very good news because they would get 3 times more food to fight the forest fires. So, the workers decided to burn more forest! 

Janina’s stepmother also worked in the forest, while the elderly couple cared for our brother Ryszard. The work was too hard for her stepmother, and she soon fell ill and died.  Janina was too young to work in the forest, so she was sent to Plesetsk (25-30 kilometers from the camp) to work for a Russian family and mind their children. She did not see her siblings again until they were preparing to leave the camp when ‘amnesty’ was declared.

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Not a single letter that they wrote to Poland was ever answered, so they knew nothing of what was happening back home. They later learned that the Germans had taken Lucjan prisoner, but he escaped during the transport and joined the underground close to Warsaw. He met his future wife there. He had been with 7 other prisoners that the Germans had locked in a barn, and they were all to be shot. His future wife pleaded with the German officer, saying that he was one of their workers and he was the one who knew most about the bee hives (her father owned over 100 hives and produced a great deal of honey). The officer was impressed by the fact that they had honey, so she offered him a barrel, and he agreed to let Lucjan go. 

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Later, Lucjan and his entire Home Army unit were forced to join the Russian-controlled Polish Army (Berling’s Army). He was put in command of a unit of Russian mortars. By the mid-1950s, when Janina and her siblings found him through the Red Cross, he and his new family were starving - the result of poor pay and no access to the necessities of life.

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When the Poles at the camp learned of the ‘amnesty’, they immediately volunteered for the Polish Army and set off to cover the 6,000 miles to reach Uzbekistan, where the Army was being formed. Janina was told of the ‘amnesty’ days later. She immediately set out on foot, to cover the 25-30 kilometers to reach the camp, and reached it just as they were about to set off for the south. Several times along the route, the siblings lost track of each other when they would go off in search of food. 

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They eventually made it to a collective farm near Tashkent. However, their 4-year-old brother Ryszard was very ill by then, so Boleslaw carried him on his back a long distance, to bring him to a hospital. He had no choice but to leave him there, with promises to come back and get him when he was better. He did go back 2 weeks later but was told that he had died and been buried in a communal grave next to the hospital. They were all heartbroken with this painful news.

By this time, Maria was very seriously ill and Janina was afraid that she would also die. They managed to buy goat’s milk for Maria, and this helped her recover.  

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They had reached Tashkent during winter, but the climate was much warmer than where they had previously been. The Polish Army had not yet reached Tashkent, so they had to work on a collective farm named for Jozef Stalin. They were paid a kg of wheat per day for the work that they did. They had to grind the wheat and make pancake-style bread with it. The collective farm eventually ran out of wheat, and there was no more food.

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Boleslaw had had no choice but to leave his sisters the when he joined the Polish army. By the time he managed to go back to find them, they were gone. Janina had somehow managed to nurse Maria back to health and, when they were able, they had also gone to Bukhara. They were among the civilians who were evacuated to Persia with the Polish Army.

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Maria ended up working for the Polish Consul in Teheran, while Janina first went to a sanitarium in the mountains, to regain her health. When her health improved, she was sent to the orphanage in Valivade India. She then ended up at Kolonia Santa Rosa in Mexico. Maria eventually went to the Polish settlement in Tengeru, East Africa and then volunteered for the Polish Air Force in the UK. There, she met Jan Osicki, who was in aircraft maintenance, and they were married. Maria was one of the WAAFs responsible for the care and maintenance of parachutes.

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Janina had left Valivade by British ship to Bombay. In Bombay, she boarded the American ship, USS Hermitage, on 13 May 943 – the ship was bound for America. The voyage lasted six weeks. The ship was transporting wounded soldiers to Australia, New Zealand, and America. It stopped in Melbourne, Australia, where soldiers disembarked and food etc. was loaded. The next stop was Wellington NZ, where they stayed several days and were visited by local Poles. A few days later, there was an alarm during the night, and they had to put life jackets on. Sailors later told them there were Japanese and German subs in the area. They reached San Pedro, California, with no further emergencies.

 

On 1 July 1943, the first group of 706 Poles were housed in Santa Anita Park, a horse racing track in Arcadia, California, east of Los Angeles, that had been used for various purposes during the war. They were visited by local Polonia who brought clothing and other articles. They were in San Pedro for two weeks, then took a train to the city of Leon in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, about 250 miles northwest of Mexico City. Hacienda de Santa Rosa was a ranch in the southern state of Guanajuato in Mexico, near the city of León. In 1943, it was adapted into a temporary home for almost 1,500 Polish war refugees, later called ‘La Pequeña Polonia’ (Little Poland).  A second contingent of 726 followed on 2 November 1943.

 

How did they get there?

 

In 1942. General Władysław Sikorski was looking for places where civilians evacuated

from the Soviet Union could find safe shelter. The US was refusing to accept Polish refugees, but there was a suggestion that Mexico could provide help.

 

On 28 December 1942, General Sikorski arrived in Mexico on an American plane, where he was received by President Manuel Camacho. After two days of negotiations, the Mexican government announced that it had agreed to accept up to 5 thousand Poles evacuated from the USSR during the war in Europe.

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Santa Rosa was formed due to the support of four governments: the Polish-government-in-exile in London, the U.S., Mexico, and England. From July 1945 to 1947, only two governments supported Santa Rosa:  the U.S. and the Mexican Republic. Santa Rosa was also supported by organizations such as the American Relief for Poland, the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and Polish American Priests Association.

 

The money for the Camp’s ongoing support was conferred by three sources:

1. The living support of the refugees and the construction costs were paid by the American Government.

2. The education, medical assistance, and the refugees’ clothing, were paid by the Polish War Relief organization.

3. The funds to cover the pre-vocational educational expenses for the youth and adults, the cultural needs, the spots and recreational activities, were provided by the National Catholic Welfare Conference and the War Relief organization.

 

Eventually 1.5 thousand Polish refugees arrived in America by ship and were then taken to the city of Leon by train. Arriving in Leon was amazing! the entire city was covered with red and white decorations. There, on the platform decorated with Polish and Mexican flags, a welcoming committee with the mayor at the helm waited. The orchestra played "Mazurek Dabrowski". A settlement 10 km from the city of Leon was chosen as the place of Poles' residence. Santa Rosa was a colony, a type of farm, with a church, a mill, and houses for the Poles.

 

Preparations to host the refugees in the Hacienda of Santa Rosa were not yet completed when the first group arrived. Consequently, the group was lodged in the school-farm in the City of Leon for a few weeks.

 

Arriving at Santa Rosa during August 1943, they were initially housed 2 – 3 families to a room, which was very crowded. The situation improved when more buildings were completed. Then the old mill was converted into the school building, which housed the kindergarten and grades 1 to 6. Then, the high school was built, followed by various trade school buildings.

 

There are three buildings with 397 bedrooms, 35 showers and 92 sinks. The laundry had 50 washboards. There was also an orphanage, a hospital, a cinema and an open-air theater, 5 workshops, a co-op bakery, a co-op store, a YMCA with sports and recreational facilities, a library, a market, a technical school, a high school and a primary school (which was the biggest in the State of Guanajuato serving 550 students). There was also a self-sufficient farm.

 

Children began schooling right away, although in the early days it consisted of reading a newspaper on the grass under some trees. Later, a nun arrived and began to hold regular classes. When the old mill was refurbished as a school, more staff was brought in: several Polish teachers, Professor Sobota, and Father Jarzembowski, as well as seven Felician sisters of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Felix of Cantalice in Chicago who taught Polish, English, math and other classes. Scouting, a choir, and lots of activities were organized (like excursions around Mexico) to keep the youth occupied and content.

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Janina was 13 years old when she arrived at Santa Rosa, and she had no idea where her brother and sister were. These were lonely and difficult years for her. She continued her education and had to perform several daily chores. On the positive side, she made some life-long friends in Santa Rosa.

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In 1946, a group of nuns from Chicago travelled to Santa Rosa to sponsor some of the children to further their education in the USA. Janina was among this group that went to Chicago. The colony was dissolved in late 1946, and the last group left Santa Rosa in March or April 1947.

For several years, Janina lived in a judge’s home in Chicago, where she continued her education and cared for the judge’s three children. 

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In the late 1940s, Maria, her husband Jan, and their 2-year-old son Ryszard, had moved to Montreal from England, and they were finally reunited with Boleslaw who had come to Canada on a two-year work contract in 1946. Boleslaw eventually found Janina through the Red Cross, and the siblings were able to exchange letters from that point on. In 1950, they had a long-awaited reunion with Janina, who joined them from Chicago, where she had lived since leaving Kolonia Santa Rosa in Mexico.

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They continued to try to locate their father and finally managed to track him down through the Red Cross. It was 1953, and he had also been searching for his children; the Red Cross finally matched their letters and put them in touch. He was living in Warsaw with his third wife and 4 sons, and they were in dire straits because their father could not earn a decent wage. The Communist authorities had learned of his participation in the Russian Polish war in 1920 and punished him by restricting his ability to earn a living. The siblings gathered their pennies, and Boleslaw went to see him in Warsaw. He died soon after and never did see Maria or Janina again.

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Janina moved to Montreal, where she met and married Walter Jagodzinski and had two children: Mark and Ann. In the 1960s, Walter was offered better employment in Chicago, so the family moved there. Many of the Polish refugees at Santa Rosa ended up in Chicago, where, in 1960, they formed the Klub Polakow Santa Rosa.  The club started with about 80 active members and met regularly until it was dissolved in 2013.

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Janina passed away in Chicago on 10 June 2023, at the age of 92 years. She was buried at the Maryhill Cemetery, in Niles, Illinois.​​

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