Refugee Schools in WW2 | polishexiles

REFUGEE SCHOOLS IN WW2

MIDDLE EAST

To all practical intents, organized schooling in Poland’s eastern borderlands ceased to function the moment Soviet forces invaded Poland in September 1939. School premises were requisitioned by the occupying power and the teachers cowed into submission through the waves of subsequent arrests and mass deportations to Siberia. Polish children and its youth – those in Poland and those deported to the Soviet Union – were subjected to a systematic process of russification.

After a period of two years, begins the process of reactivation of Polish schooling. With the formation of a Polish Army in the Soviet Union, many small schools begin to spring up. These have a predominantly paramilitary character being attached to the Army. Many types of orphanages and nurseries are also set up.

Small numbers of surviving teachers, some near total exhaustion, come forward to start working with children of school age. They set about their task with great dedication. There are no general curriculum programmes, no schoolbooks, no writing, or other school equipment, but at last, schooling is again carried on in the Polish language. These beginnings will lay the foundations for the great development of Polish schooling in exile.

All Polish refugees who managed to escape from the ‘Soviet paradise’, along with the Polish Army led by General Anders, passed through Iran. Not counting the Army, about 38,000 Poles were evacuated to Iran during the two great evacuation operations (March-April 1942 and August-September 1942) across the Caspian Sea from Krasnovodsk to Pahlevi, and through many smaller evacuations by land from Ashkhabad to Mashhad. Over half of this number were children and young people (not counting those over 16 years of age). Given the situation, the most pressing problem (apart from shelter, food and healthcare), was their education.

Near the port of Pahlevi and on the same sandy beaches where civilians evacuated from the Soviet Union were undergoing initial health screenings and quarantine, small groups of children were already being organized by teachers, who of their own accord and relying only on their memory – were making attempts at some kind of teaching.

The vast majority of this mass of refugees was directed onward to great transit camps in Teheran, later to be sent to the various ‘permanent’ refugee camps and settlements throughout the world. In May 1942, an Education Commission was established by the Representative Office of the Polish Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare in London – active from the 1 April 1942 – its task, to organize and supervise schools. From 1 August 1942, this function passed to the Representative Office of the Polish Ministry for Religious Denominations and Public Education. Schools were first established in Tehran. Within a year, there were ten of them, nine primary schools and one secondary. In turn, others were established in other Polish refugee settlements.

In Esfahan (orphanages), eight primary schools and one secondary school were established.

In Ahvaz (a transit camp, before it was properly set up), there were one primary and one secondary school. In Mashhad, there was one primary school.

Polish schools in Iraq and the Lebanon were established much later, in 1945, with the arrival of Poles evacuated from Iran. There were many Polish schools in Palestine under the control of the Polish military authorities. These were mainly secondary schools for older children, offering either a general, or a specifically technical education.

INDIA

Polish schooling in India presents an interesting and important episode in the history of Polish exile during World War II.

One of the very first Polish émigré schools was established here in 1942. The Polish refugee settlement in Valivade saw the development of the largest wartime Polish education centre anywhere in the world. For around five years, there were over a dozen general and technical schools functioning simultaneously and providing education for several thousand children and youth. The teaching took place in truly spartan conditions, due to the chronic shortage of qualified teachers, schoolbooks, program courses, other school materials, and lack of suitable teaching premises. The extreme climatic conditions, so unfavourable to Europeans, posed a serious additional problem. In practice, given the tropical Indian climate, only six months – November to March – were suitable for regular normal class teaching. For the rest of the year, during the long periods of monsoon rains, or tropical heatwaves, teaching in the makeshift premises with no air-conditioning, was simply impossible. Schooling was also disrupted by the regular outbreaks of various epidemics. The third factor, complicating the schooling process, was the extremely complex organizational structure of the Polish education system in India.

This resulted from the fact that there were four types of refugee settlements, namely,

– the transit camp in COUNTRY- CLUB KARACHI;

– the transit (camps) centres in BANDRA BOMBAY, QUETTA, and MALIR near Karachi;

– the permanent refugee camps in BALACHADI near JAMNAGAR, and in VALIVADE near Kolhapur;

– the rest resort centre in PANCHGANI.

Additionally, some of the older Polish youth were periodically sent to local schools, mainly convents, and generally followed a different teaching programme while there.

Despite the above difficulties, all Polish children and young persons of school age who found themselves in India were able to receive an education. The exact numbers cannot be fully established today. This is because large numbers of refugees were continuously moving from one camp to another. The scale of the problem is illustrated by the fact that 9,974 children up to the age of seventeen, passed through the camps in Karachi in the years 1942-1945.

It should be noted that all refugee camps had many active social organizations, and these would hold their activities on school premises, or somewhere with the school’s active participation. Such activities were closely synchronized with the school’s own schooling program. There were, for example, the Boy Scout and Girl Guide Movements, the Marian Society, the Polish Red Cross, as well as many sports clubs, school choirs, theatrical societies, youth orchestras and numerous hobby clubs. In addition to this, many camps organized supplementary vocational courses. An important element that supplemented the teaching was publishing activities. In the lower classes this manifested itself in the preparation of bulletins, newsflashes or newssheets, for the notice board. The children themselves would edit and produce these. In Valivade, the older schoolchildren published their own and very interesting periodical called ‘Młodzi’(‘Youth’).

Polish schooling, and indeed the whole area encompassing the care and organization of social life of Polish refugees in India, was under the authority of three successive governmental structures. In years 1942-43, all matters pertaining to Polish refugees were administered by Eugeniusz Banasiński, Polish Consul General in Bombay and Polish Red Cross delegate in India. Later, his wife, Kira Banasińska, assumed responsibility for the Polish Red Cross delegation.

The end of May 1943 saw the formation of the Official Representation of the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare (with an Office for Educational Affairs) in Bombay. In the autumn of that year, the Office became the Official Representation of the Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Education, with Michał Goławski as its head. His successor was Zdzisław Żerebecki, who was also school inspector in Valivade.

In 1945, the Allies withdrew their recognition of the Polish Government in Exile. This meant that all its governmental structures had to be wound up. The sole thing that remained was the Polish Committee for the Welfare of Refugees, which continued to exercise competency in all areas of social welfare, including education. The above institutional changes and the periodical differences of opinion as to competence between the various government agencies did not have any significant impact on the unusually dynamic growth of Polish educational schooling in India. However, the foundations for this growth were not laid in India but can be traced back to the evacuation centers for Polish children and the many other evacuation areas for Poles in the Soviet Union, and subsequently, to the collection and mass transit camps established in Iran.

The above-mentioned places not only saw the initial preparatory and organizational work for the provision of general school education for children and youth, but, as in the case of the Iranian transit camps, witnessed the setting up of several points of schooling which started – as best they could – to provide regular schooling. It is interesting to note that during the organization of evacuation transports from refugee transit camps to permanent camps, efforts were made – whenever possible – to keep existing school structures intact.

AFRICA

Polish refugee camps in Africa and Polish schools, were spread across a great area stretching from Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), to southern Africa (the southern reaches of the Republic of South Africa). The distances between them were enormous.

The camps and the schools grew and developed gradually as successive waves of new refugee groups began to arrive. There were also schools that pre-dated their respective camps, which grew around them. Schools were even organized en route, and during longer or shorter stopovers in transit camps. An effort was made not to interrupt the continuity of teaching, even en route, for example, during sea crossings. Often, groups of children already organized into their respective classes would arrive at the destination camp accompanied by their teaching staff. Either way, soon after arrival at camp, a school would be organized. The teachers understood that they were under a binding duty to teach children, who had lost so much time during the exile in the Soviet Union.

Given the initial, most trying conditions – the commonplace shortages of exercise and other school books, writing materials and paper, school premises and school furniture – it was of the utmost importance to guide our children back to their Polish roots, so that they would be able to express themselves in their native tongue. The teachers would recite fairy stories and other tales, would teach declamation, and organize various performances, displays of choir singing and folk dancing in national costumes. All that the teachers had to go on was their personal memory, knowledge and talent. Some schools began precisely in this way. In permanent refugee camps, where material conditions were substantially better, these types of activities greatly aided the regular teaching program. This explains the flourishing activity of youth organizations, such as the Boy Scouts or Girl Guides, the Marian Society, the Polish Red Cross, and such like, as well as, school or church choirs and youth orchestras, and the popularity of YMCA, Scout and Catholic club premises, or the camps’ own community centre, with their respective libraries.

At the beginning, conditions prevailing in the African camps were very difficult and no better than in transit camps. In some camps, for example, Tengeru, schooling began in the open air in the shade of the trees. A single chair would serve as the teacher’s table. The teacher would, of course, teach standing up. The children knelt on the ground and would write using their stools as desks, stools they brought each day from home. The blackboard would be fixed onto a nearby tree. Teaching was also carried on in small cramped single-family huts, in the camps’ own community center premises, in communal canteens, and so on, until special school premises were built. These too were very primitive.

The younger, as well as the older children, were very eager to learn. Lessons of Polish language and history were particularly liked. The teaching could be accelerated, and time that had been lost could be made up, because the children - given their experiences in the Soviet Union – had already reached a level of maturity well beyond their years, and were fully conscious of the fact that they had lost years of schooling. Initially, given the general confusion caused by the transfers from one place to another, the cleverer and more confident children would often apply to be accepted into a higher year class than would have been appropriate, given the schooling they had received. Some of these ambitious and determined individuals

would often catch up with their older compatriots and make up time lost by individual private study. The schools themselves also planned for accelerated teaching in all the ways they could. The school year was shortened, class programmes were accelerated, so that two years’ teaching could be crammed into one, and the more able and mature children were allowed to do individual study and, after the school holidays, sit the entrance exam for a higher year class than the one they would have normally gone to.

In the first years of Polish refugee settlements in Africa (1942-1943), Polish schools on the African continent were under the care of the Official Representation of the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare of the Polish Government in Exile in London. The Delegation was based in Nairobi, Kenya. It was responsible for the total internal organization of Polish refugee camp life. From Autumn 1943, matters pertaining to Polish schools and the whole field of secondary education, passed into the hands of the Official Representation of the Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Education. It was headed by Seweryn Szczepański. Its English title was the ‘Polish Board of Education’. In the larger camps, a schools inspectorate service was established. Its task was to oversee primary and technical schools. General secondary schools were under the direct supervision of the Delegation itself, which fulfilled the tasks of a Regional Schools’ Inspectorate Board.

The Head of Delegation chaired the examination panels at school leaving-certificate examinations. Visiting school inspectors were taken on to call on schools in far-flung refugee camps, situated thousands of kilometres from Nairobi. The Delegation also had supervision over youth organizations, for example, the Boy Scout and Girl Guide movements. The state of the organization of the school system and the numbers of pupils and teachers in Africa was forever in flux. In years 1942-44, these numbers rose as more refugee transports began to arrive. In the period 1945-46, (the middle years of our stay on the African continent), they reached their peak and basically, remained stable. From 1947, they began to fall as Poles began to leave the refugee camps. At the turn of 1943-44, there were 15 permanent Polish refugee camps and two transit camps. These camps differed from one another by the number of inhabitants they contained, from the smallest (Kondoa, Morogoro) which housed 300-400 inhabitants, to the largest (Tengeru, Masindi) which had some 4,000 people. Over 18,000 refugee Poles lived in such camps. Of this number, 4,350 were children attending schools in those camps – 4,060 in primary education and 370 in the lower classes of secondary schools. There were 60 children in nursery kindergartens. Taken together, this was about 70% of the children below 16 years, not counting those above that age.

At that time, there were no higher grammar school, or secondary school classes, nor for that matter, any vocational schools. The latter were much more difficult to establish, given the material conditions in the refugee camps, and considering the difficulty in obtaining the necessary tools and machines, or for that matter, the money to purchase them.

There was a lack of qualified teachers or instructors for the practical activities and exercises. Thus, vocational schools were set up much later. They admitted all those who had completed their primary school education and those much older who had not had any schooling for a long time. There was a great shortage of qualified secondary or grammar school teaching personnel to take the higher classes. As more teachers arrived, higher classes became available. As there were very few fully qualified teachers who had completed their teacher training studies in pre-war Poland – a handful among all the schools in Africa – other personnel was successfully pressed into action; engineers, lawyers, priests and others, even medical doctors.

The maximum expansion of schooling in Polish refugee camps in Africa was reached in years 1945-46. The numbers of children and youth in full-time education during this period were as follows. Secondary schools of a general or vocational nature would even admit young adults up to 24-25 years of age. These were people who, to all intents and purposes, figured as adults in refugee camp records. Thus, an opportunity opened for these people to receive an education and most of them jumped at the chance. In truth, there was nothing much else for them to do. The administration requirements of the camps, schools, hospitals, and camp community centres, slowly began to absorb a small number of them, mainly those who had finished their camp school, or completed their specific course. Initially, secondary schools were only set up in the largest refugee camps (Tengeru, Masindi). Older schoolchildren from smaller camps would be sent to study there and stay in boarding accommodation. During school holidays, they would return to their own camps. In time, and with the arrival of more qualified teachers, secondary schools began to be established in medium- sized camps (Koja, Kidugala, and Lusaka). Where this happened, the schoolchildren from these camps would return to live with their own families. Other children would have the option of transferring to a school that was closer to their own camp. These movements caused a continuous flow of people from one place to another and created links between the refugee camps, despite the great distances that separated them.

In Southern Rhodesia, there was an attempt to set up secondary schools outside and separate from the camps, but this proved too expensive.

Orphanages played an important role in the upbringing of children and young people. These provided care for orphans who had lost both parents, as well as those whose surviving father was serving in the Polish forces at the front. In Africa, orphanages were organized in the largest camps, Tengeru, Masindi, or were set up in totally separate centres. Such orphanages, apart from the children, had teachers, carers and other supporting personnel (Morogoro, and later Rongai and Oudtshoorn). Outside the normal program of school lessons, great emphasis was placed on educating and bringing up these children. Discussions and lectures were held on important topics to prepare these children for the future, performances and dances were organized and put on for the inhabitants of the camp, and even for people living in the surrounding area.

In these separate centres for children, it was this all-embracing nature of the cultural and educational effort that makes it difficult to separate into school and outside school activities. Crucially, it embraced every one of the young inhabitants.

In the camps that had a secondary school, pupils that had to be put in boarded accommodation during term-time, were accommodated in orphanages. In some cases, this did not prove to be an ideal solution. Young people who attended schools taking older students and who boarded in lodgings organized by such schools, have much happier memories of those days. During the period when Poles were leaving Africa in great numbers, refugee camps began to be wound up, starting with those that were situated furthest from rail links and ports of embarkation. The people that remained, including the pupils and teaching staff of closed down schools, would be transferred to remaining camps. Pupil and teacher numbers began to dwindle. Those that remained, continued their schooling in their new place. Teachers would step into the shoes of their departed colleagues and school teaching continued as usual. Tengeru in Tanganyika, the largest Polish refugee camp in Africa, with a good rail link to the seaports, lasted the longest. In the final period of its existence, it was composed of a mixture of inhabitants from all former Polish refugee camps. The same can be said about the schools and it was still possible to obtain a school leaving certificate in 1950. In that year, this last Polish refugee camp in Africa ceased to exit and ended the chapter on Polish schools on the Dark Continent.

EAST AFRICA

Former British East Africa included Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika. Spread over this vast territory, during the war and afterwards, there lived about 13,000 Polish refugees from the Soviet Union.

They were brought here in great waves of transportation from May 1942 to the end of 1943. During this period, 2 refugee camps were opened in Uganda and 4 in Tanganyika. There were also 3 transit camps. The oldest refugee camps in Africa were the small camp in Kondoa, and the two largest, Tengeru in Tanganyika and Masindi in Uganda, almost as big as Tengeru.

In these largest refugee concentrations, there arose the need and possibility to establish secondary schools. These schools would also cater for children in the smaller camps.

The location of refugee camps was usually dependent on the existing communication network. The great distances separating the refugee camps, the sparse railway network and the lack of regular bus connections, resulted in the fact that the camps tended to lead their own separate existences. It was the establishment of a school network that led to the development of inter-camp contacts and even to the establishment of certain emotional bonds between them.

RHODESIA

There were four Polish refugee camps in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), in Abercorn, Bwana M’Kubwa, Lusaka, and the very small camp in Fort Jameson.

Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) had two, Marandellas and Rusape. All the Rhodesian camps came into existence almost a year after the establishment of those in East Africa.

The first transports of refugee Poles from the Soviet Union only began arriving in February 1943. Apart from the camps, two schools were established in Livingstone and in Digglefold, both situated away from the camps. These schools were to cater for the schooling needs of refugee children in the two territories. Additionally, there was a transit camp in Gatooma. This camp acquired special significance in the closing stages of the Polish presence in the two Rhodesias.

All the camps, except Fort Jameson, had their own primary schools. Some had vocational schools, though more often, short professional specialisation courses would be run.

In the first years, boys would attend the State Grammar School for Boys in Livingstone, situated on the southern border of Northern Rhodesia. The girls would be sent to the State Grammar and Secondary School in Digglefold in Southern Rhodesia. The choice of the two locations was dictated by the ready availability of secondary school teachers to be found among the group of people with higher educational qualifications, the so-called ‘Cyprus group’. This was a 500 strong group of Poles, who from 16 September 1940, found themselves in Cyprus, from where it made its way to Romania. Most of these people arrived in Rhodesia within the agreed limits number of people that the British Government had agreed to take in. The group consisted of Senators of the Polish Parliament, generals, university professors, among others. Thus, many people with higher educational qualifications. They were all housed comfortably with full board in hotels in Livingstone.

As time passed, it proved too expensive to maintain these two excellent schools outside of the camps, and a new large education centre was constructed in the Lusaka camp. This was a co-educational grammar and secondary school for the children living in the two Rhodesias.

During the winding up of the refugee camps, there was a transfer of people and pupils to the transit camp at Gatooma, and the children continued their studies in that camp. The schools continued to function normally and even managed to hold one school-leaving-certificate examination.

SOUITH AFRICA

There was only one Polish Refuges Settlement located in South Africa and it was Oudtshoorn. That settlement was situated in a “Cape Province”, on the southern border of the African Continent – in the Union of South Africa. Climate on that geographical latitude was a Mediterranean type, so it was much more suitable for the Europeans than the prevailing one in other settlements located in the areas nearby the equator.

Polish camp-dwellers of Outshoorn were almost as much isolated from different other centers of Poles as those single settlements in Mexico and New Zealand situated far a way from Africa and India.

It should be said that Oudtshoorn was inhabited by a great number of children and youth (most of them orphans) who were sent there from the Polish centers in Insfahan (Iran). In a few years most of those young people grown up, bred and educated in Oudtshoorn have stayed in South Africa for life.

MEXICO

In May 1943, a group of 706 refugees arrived in Bombay after having managed to make their way through Tashkent, Samarkand, Ashkhabat and Tehran. They sailed on to Australia and New Zealand, and crossing the Pacific arrived in Los Angeles. On the 1st July, they finally reached Leon in Mexico. Henryk Stebelski, Polish Consul General in Mexico, was entrusted with their care.

Initially, the refugees were housed in a local school. But after a couple of months, they moved to Santa Rosa, a place that had been specially prepared for them. Their new place of stay was a typical old Mexican landed property, with a large mill at its centre. In a very short time, a primary school and a community centre were set up. Father Jagielnicki became the director of the school. On the 2nd November 1943, another large group of refugee Poles arrived under the care of Władyslaw Rattinger Wysocki. The 1,400-strong community consisted of 800 children (264 orphans). 600 of these children were of school age. The Santa Rosa settlement was also under the care of the American Polonia Council, who paid for the teaching, the hospital, the clothes and school trips. Henry Osiński, Chester Mikołajczyk, and Adam Laudyn Chrzanowski were Council’s successive delegates.

The first delegate representing the Polish Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Education was Professor Felix Sobota. Bohdan Szmejko, represented the Ministry of Labour and Public Welfare. A nursery and a grammar school were established on the initiative of Consul Stebelski. Father Jarzębowski became the director of the grammar school and its teachers were, Zofia Orłowska, Czesław Prywer (an agricultural engineer), Jadwiga Ingarden, and Professor Alfons Jacewicz. A vocational school, set up in March 1944, ran courses in dentistry, silversmithing, and tailoring and dressmaking. Father Leonard Kaszyński was its director. Given the fact that everyone expected to return to Poland after the war, all the schools taught courses like pre-war programmes of teaching, with the addition of courses in Spanish and English. In February 1944, a library was established. It contained 14,000 books. A special library for teachers had an impressive collection of books on child education and teaching methodology. On 23 August 1943, a Scout Group was constituted under the command of Father Zygmunt Jagielnicki, approved by the order of Scoutmaster Skłodowski. Thanks to the initiative of Colonel Jan Skoryna, an exchange of banners took place in April 1945, between the Polish and Mexican scouts, as a symbol of friendship between the two nations. A theatre, directed by Władysław Rattinger Wysocki, was constructed, along with a hospital, three barracks with washing and laundry facilities, workshops, bakeries, and 16 administration rooms.

After the end of the war, and given the political changes taking place in Poland, the future of the settlement became increasingly uncertain. The Delegations of the Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Education, and the Ministry of Labour and Public Welfare were shut down. The building housing the Polish Diplomatic mission in Mexico was handed over to the new Polish government in Warsaw. During this period, the Mexican Ministry of Internal Affairs, granted the Poles authorisation to leave the settlement and – on an individual basis – to establish their own businesses.

In January 1946, US Consul Elias Garza became the administrator of the settlement and announced that the camp would close by the end of that year. That summer, two groups of about 45 people each, left for Poland. They consisted mainly of women and children returning to their families in Poland. Orphaned children departed for the USA, the cost borne by the Polish National Union. The Polish grammar school closed shortly afterwards, its pupils transferred to Mexican schools in León. The former teachers of the grammar school organized an evening course in Polish nationhood, religious instruction, Polish language, and the history and geography of Poland. In January 1947, 73 boys and girls left for the USA. In the meantime, some of the inhabitants moved to Mexico City, where, with the help of Father Jarzębowski, a boarding school was founded. It lasted for five years. Other former inhabitants found work in the tropical jungles of the Yucatan peninsula in the logging and saw-mill industry.

NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand, a country on the opposite side of the world and the furthest possible removed from Poland, and yet, during the war, our refugee children found themselves living there. The New Zealand government agreed to take in numbers of orphaned Polish children who had lost one or both parents during their exile in the Soviet Union, or directly after the evacuation to Iran. 733 children – aged 4 to 15 years – arrived in New Zealand accompanied by 105 adults who comprised the teaching, care and administrative personnel. They were sent to a camp next to the small township of Pahiatua, North Island, near Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.

In the camp – the ‘Polish Children’s Camp Pahiatua’ – schools were rapidly established (a nursery, two primary schools – one for boys and one for girls – as well as a grammar school). During the grammar school’s two-year existence, 30 girls managed to complete their secondary education. After it closed, all the younger children, including all the boys, were sent to local schools, or to do trade apprenticeships. The primary schools continued to function right up to the closure of the camp itself. The overwhelming majority of the children who had ended up in New Zealand, settled there.