Katarzyna was born to Jan Tuczyński and Maria (nee Goj Jaworska) on 29 November 1929, in Suszno, Lwow province, Poland. Her siblings were: Franciszek, Hanna, Stanisław, Adam, Katarzyna and half-siblings: Marian Jaworski, Jozefa Jaworska.

 

Katarzyna was six years old when she began school and was in third or fourth grade when the Russians deported her, along with her whole family and community to Siberia. She resumed her schooling at Polish refugee settlements in Persia, Karachi, Uganda and England.

 

On February 10, 1940, the Russians deported the entire family to Siberia. They came early in the morning with guns and woke the family, giving them only 10 minutes to gather belongings. At the time, her family lived on a large farm in the Bobiatyn Settlement in Tarnopolski province. The Russians took them and other families to the train station and packed them into boxcars, in which they rode for about two weeks to Siberia. They spent two years in Werużonowskoj Posiołek-Ustiański region, Archangelsk where they were forced to labour in work camps under very difficult conditions.

 

When the amnesty was declared, all imprisoned Poles were freed and allowed to leave Siberia, but the departure was very difficult as they had to make their own way out. Katarzyna’s family had to pull one of the brothers on a makeshift sleigh, as he had badly injured a leg. Those with family members who joined the Polish army were permitted to travel with the army on transport trains, and they spent two months in boxcars making their way southward toward army gathering points.

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 The Tuczyński family was accepted onto one of the trains. Katarzyna’s mother, Maria, died a day before they reached the border. The train could not wait, so the family did not have time to bury their mother, and her body was left at the Czok Pak station near Krasnowodsk. An officer told the family that the Red Cross will handle the funeral, as with many others who had died the same way. They reached the Caspian Sea and sailed to the Persian port Pahlevi along with thousands of other Poles.

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A Polish escort and the Red Cross led them off the ship to a gigantic tent on the shore where they showered with soap and received new pyjamas and blankets. Their old clothes were burned for the purpose of disinfection. Katarzyna, her father, and sister came in the first transport, and lived in tents in a Polish camp in a suburb of Tehran. Her brothers left to join the Polish 2nd Corps. She was twelve years old at the time. From Tehran she, her father and sister Hania were sent to Karachi in India, to an area that now belongs to Pakistan. They lived in tents there for four to six months before being sent on to the Koja refugee camp on Lake Victoria in Uganda, Africa. There, Katherine joined the Polish Girl Guides (as a Cub in Teheran and a Girl Guide in Uganda). Katarzyna’s best memories come from Uganda where she lived in the Polish refugee camp with her father, sister, and thousands of other Poles for almost five years.

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From there, Katarzyna, her father, and her sister Hania sailed to England where they lived for a year. In 1948, Katherine sailed to Canada from England along with her father, Jan whose sister lived in Saskatoon; she had left Poland in 1929. Hania had married a Polish soldier, and they stayed behind in Edinburgh. Katherine and her father sailed to Halifax by ship; from there they reached Saskatoon by train, spending three weeks in third class train cars. They lived in Saskatoon, where she met her husband, Wacław Sawicki. He had a two-year contract to work on a farm to pay back the cost of his transportation to Canada, as did many other soldiers. Katarzyna’s brother Franciszek also came to Saskatoon, on a two-year contract working on a farm.

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Katarzyna worked in Saskatoon as a seamstress. Katarzyna married Waclaw Sawicki on New Year’s Eve, 1949 in Saskatoon, and they had 4 children: Wanda, Henryk, Stanisław, and Marysia.

 

Moving to Ontario, Katarzyna worked in Simcoe on a tobacco farm for three years. In the spring of 1964, she and her family moved to London, where Katarzyna worked for Lac-Mac industries, sewing uniforms for hospitals. In the 1970’s she worked in the dietary department at Westminster Hospital where her husband also worked.

 

Joining the SPK in 1967, Katarzyna volunteered in the kitchen and was also involved with the Polish Girl Guides and the Catholic Women’s League.

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Katarzyna passed away in London on 7 February 2023 and was buried at the Holy Family Mausoleum, St. Peter’s Cemetery in London, Ontario.

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Copyright: Sawicki family

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