Władysław had no idea, when he joined Nisko military school in 1939, that he would follow the family tradition of fighting for one’s country outside its borders.

​

His father, Jan, had been living in America when he volunteered for the French forces during World War I, and earned several French medals and promotion. After Polish independence in 1918, Jan Piotrkowski fought the Bolsheviks in the 1919–1920 Polish Soviet War and was awarded the Polish Cross of Virtuti Militari.

​

Jan’s failing health forced him to retire to his land, in the Krechowiecka settlement in Bajonówka, about 12 kilometers from Równe in eastern Poland’s Wołyń province.

Jan and Zofia Piotrkowski’s farm was typical of the area; self-sufficient and included an orchard. Their children started their education at the two schools the settlers had built in Bajonówka and Krechowiecka.

​

Once the Soviets invaded Poland on 17 September 1939, all schooling in the area stopped. As the Russians emptied Polish shops and gave local Ukrainians power to seize Polish goods, Polish farmers had little incentive to continue working their land or harvesting crops.

​

Jan took the family to stay with his sister in Równe, and soon afterwards he escaped with Jerzy westwards to find the Polish army. Władysław believed that his father felt that he, as the oldest son, could look after the rest of the family. They stayed in Równe for “two or three months,” then returned to Bajonówka.

​

In the early hours of 10 February 1940, harsh knocks at the door revealed a Russian NKVD officer accompanied by six Ukrainian militia members with red bands around their arms.

​

The unwelcome intruders led the fatherless family away at gunpoint and bundled them onto a sled bound for a railway station. Władysław did not recognise any of the Ukrainians but identified the Russian through his inability to speak Polish. He found out later that local Ukrainians accompanied NKVD officers from house to house in Polish villages and helped to evict thousands of Polish families in the same way.

They were forced onto a goods train and journeyed for several weeks. Their train eventually disgorged nearly 4,000 Poles into an NKVD forced-labour camp deep in the taiga forest of Siberia.

​

The forced-labour camp holding Władysław, his mother Zofia, brother Zbigniew (12) and sister, Maria (3), supplied timber for the railway and Soviet army. At 17, and the only provider for his family, Władysław worked as hard as he could to get maximum payment.

​

In 1941 they learned that German troops were heading towards Moscow and that the Polish Prime Minister General Władysław Sikorski had made a deal with Stalin; an ‘amnesty’ had been granted to all Poles in the USSR; a Polish army was indeed being formed on Russian territory.

​

Special trains were being made available to take the Poles from the forced-labour facilities to enlistment stations in Uzbekistan.

​

In Bukhara, Władysław left his mother with Zbigniew and Maria in a civilian camp and walked 30 kilometres to the nearest military camp. All four left the USSR via the Caspian Sea in mass evacuations organised by the Polish army in 1942.

​

When Władysław joined the army, Zbigniew joined the Polish military cadets and spent the war in Palestine and Egypt. Zofia became a housemistress at a Polish orphanage in Isfahan, Persia (Iran) and kept Maria with her.

​

Władysław served in the 3rd Carpathian Field Artillery Regiment’s Fourth Company, a heavy machine gun unit that converted to heavy mortars. He participated in all the battles of the Italian Campaign, including Monte Cassino.

​

As well as the Cross of Valour, Władysław received the Polish Monte Cassino Cross and four British war medals, the 1939-45 Star, the Italy Star, the Defence Medal, and the War Medal (1939-45).

​

On 1 November 1944, Zofia and Maria Piotrkowska, among more than 800 Polish refugees, arrived in Wellington New Zealand, and chose to stay. They were later joined by Zbigniew and Władysław who spent several years in the UK.

​

While British politicians argued about his fate, Władysław received a year’s training at an electro-technical school in Ascoli Picento. He appreciated the sophisticated Italian machinery and skilful teachers.

​

Władysław wanted to continue the electro-mechanical course in Italy but the Polish Resettlement Corps had by then arranged temporary housing in the UK for the Polish soldiers and cadets. At least 170 vacated army and air force barracks, scattered on the outskirts of towns all over England, Scotland and Wales, became their own versions of “Little Poland” after mothers, wives, brothers and sisters joined their fathers, husbands and siblings

​

Władysław was assigned to a camp in Bowers Wood, near Beaconsfield, and soon found a job as a machinist at a wallpaper-printing factory. Deciding to join his family in New Zealand, Władysław travelled from England on the SS Tamaroa, which docked in Wellington on 1 February 1949.

​

There, he met Anna Piotrkowska (née Zatorska). Anna was 18 and he 29 when they married in January 1953. They had two children, Basia and Bogdan. Life had its ups and downs. The joy and support of family helped temper Bogdan’s death from cancer in 2013.

​

Both Jan and Jerzy Piotrkowski survived the war. Jan fought in northern Poland’s Elbląg area and died in Poland in April 1953. Jerzy, aged 14 in 1939, stayed in Warsaw and served with the Polish Home Army (AK). He did what so many other young people did for the Polish resistance there - relayed messages and information between units in different parts of the city.

​

Jerzy was seriously wounded during the Warsaw Uprising and had a substantial amount of “metal” inserted in his leg. He visited New Zealand with his wife in 1983, the year Władysław retired, and helped Bogdan build his first house.

 

Once Poland was free from communist rule, Jerzy became a Chief of Police in Warsaw. He died in 1997.

 

​

​

Copyright: Barbara Scrivens

(from the 2014 interview with Władysław)

​

​