Leslaw Zielinski

Masindi, Uganda

Leslaw (Lech) was born in 1930 in Postawy, Poland. In 1939 Germany attacked Poland from the west and Russia invaded from the east. The Russians soon arrested all persons who were in the military or government, and forcibly deporting entire families to Siberia.

After his father was arrested and sent to an internment camp in Lithuania, Leslaw, his mother, and his brother were deported by cattle car to a labour camp in Northern Kazakhstan where they were set to making bricks from clay and straw.

When the Germans attacked Russia in June 1941, the Russians agreed to set Polish prisoners free to form a Polish army in the USSR and help fight the Germans. Consequently, they issued an ‘amnesty’ for all Poles held in POW and Labour camps.

The news of this ‘amnesty’ did not reach every camp, but where it did become known, the men and boys soon made plans to make their way south to join the army. For most, this meant walking thousands of kilometers and only occasionally getting on a train for part of the journey. Many did not make it, and those who did were emaciated skeletons by the time they got there. Leslaw’s father and brother made this perilous journey and joined the Polish army.

General Anders oversaw the army, and he tried hard to get the Russians to provide the food and equipment they had promised. When this became increasingly impossible, he negotiated the right to evacuate the army to Persia, where the British would provide what was needed.

Anders insisted on taking as many of the civilians that had reached the army as possible – Leslaw and his mother were among those who were evacuated with the army. There were 2 mass evacuations: in March/April 1942, and in September 1942. Then Stalin changed his mind and closed the borders. Those who had not been evacuated were now stuck in the USSR.

The evacuation took place by ship over the Caspian Sea to Pahlavi in Persia (now Iran). The ships that were used were oil tankers and coal ships, and other ships that were not equipped to handle passengers. They were filthy and lacked even the necessities, like water and latrines. The soldiers and civilians filled these ships to capacity for the 1–2-day trip. When there were storms, the situation got even worse – with most of the passengers suffering sea sickness.

Leslaw, and his mother were sent to a Polish refugee camp in Uganda. They sailed to Mombasa where they took a train and a steam ship to Masindi, Uganda.

Contrary to today’s refugee camps around the world, the Polish refugee camps were equipped with schools – elementary, middle school, high school, and a technical school; a YMCA with sports and recreational facilities and a reasonable library; a cinema covered by a roof on stilts but without walls; and an open-air theatre. There was a co-op bakery, and a co-op store sold a modest supply of sundries along with foodstuffs from the settlement’s impressive farm. Established to make the settlement as self-sufficient as possible, the farm accomplished this with great success, combining crops native to Africa as well as – climate permitting – old favourites from Poland.

There were a number of Polish refugee camps in Africa, as well as in India, Bew Zealand, Mexico, and the Middle East. Leslaw, and his mother spent 6 years in Masindi. He went to school, joined the scouts learned to sail and learned to play the mandolin.

In 1947 they sailed to England where they joined his father and brother. Leslaw completed high school and graduated from Regent Street Polytech. In London he met and married his first wife and had two children, Mark and Julie.

In 1964, he was offered a place at Bell Northern Research Labs and sailed to Canada. While at Bell he completed a degree in Electrical Engineering. He and his first wife separated and subsequently divorced. He met and married his second wife Margaret, and in doing so acquired a second family of Kirsten, Simon and Jonathan. He did research in acoustics at Bell ( later Nortel) until he retired.

In retirement he did volunteer work for CESO in India, enjoyed his many grandchildren, played the mandolin, golf, tennis, bridge, sailed, and travelled widely.

Leslaw died on 8 March 2019 in Ottawa, at the age of 89 years.