Wladyslaw STASIEWICZ
Polish 2nd Corps
Wladyslaw Stasiewicz was born on 21 April 1919 in the small village of Knyszyn in the former Eastern Borderlands of Poland. On 13 April 1940, Wladyslaw, his mother, and his 5 brothers and 2 sisters, were taken from their home and sent to Siberia by the Russians.
The family were forcibly taken from their home at gunpoint, by Russian soldiers. They had been given less than an hour to pack what they could, without knowing where they were being taken. They took what they could carry and had to leave the rest behind.
They were taken to the railway station and loaded into cattle cars with 50-60 other people. This included infants, toddlers, children, teens, adults, and seniors. Most of the adults and seniors were women. The cattle car had two shelves at either end, where people could sit or sleep – the rest had to make do with the floor. There was a cast iron stove, but they soon ran out of wood to fuel it. There was also a hole in the floor that served as a toilet.
They travelled like this for weeks, and were given some water, stale bread, and watery soup, only a few times. When someone died, their bodies were cast out next to the tracks and left there. Many infants and elders did not survive this journey.
When they reached the work camp in Siberia, they were told that this is where they would eventually die, but in the meantime, they had to work to earn their daily ration of bread.
Aside from the extreme cold in winter, and extreme heat in summer, they had to contend with hordes of mosquitoes and black flies, as well as infestations of bed bugs in the barracks. There were no medical facilities in these camps, and diseases ran rampant, leading to a high death toll.
In June 1941, Germany turned on its ally, Russia. Stalin then quickly changed tactics and allied himself with the west so that the allies could help him defeat the Germans. This led to the signing of the Sikorski-Majewski agreement that called for the freeing of Poles imprisoned in POW camps and labour camps in the USSR, and the formation of a Polish Army in the southern USSR.
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.
Wladyslaw and his older brother Edward made this perilous journey to the southern USSR to join the Polish Army being formed in Kazakhstan. They joined the Polish Army in May 1941 and evacuated to Persia (now Iran) with them. The Polish 2nd Corps marched via the Persian Corridor into Iran and subsequently the Middle East. In December 1944, the Corps sailed to Italy, where they played a role in capturing Monte Cassino during the Battle of Monte Cassino.
Along with the rest of the Polish 2nd Corps, Wladyslaw went to the UK from Italy in 1946. There, he joined the Polish Resettlement Corps and was finally demobbed in February 1948.
Wladyslaw emigrated to Argentina, then in 1953 he emigrated to the United States and settled in Stoughton, Massachusetts. Wladyslaw worked at Vulcan Shoe in Brockton for many years before retiring in 1992. He was a member of the Polish White Eagle Club in Brockton.
Wladyslaw passed away in Stoughton on 14 February 2012, at the age of 93 years. He was buried at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Stoughton. Massachusetts.
Click HERE to view his brother Edward’s photos from the 4th Armored “Scorpio” Regiment of the Polish 2nd Corps. He was a Sherman Tank Driver.
Copyright: Stasiewicz family