Wincentyna was born to Wojciech and Apolonia (nee Krych) on 20 May 1926 in the Tajkury settlement, Zdolbunwow, Wolyn province, Poland. Her siblings were Maria (1922), Ewa (1929), Lucja (1931), and Zofia (1934).

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In 1921, 26 Polish settlers had been given land in Tajkury. They were veterans of the Polish Bolshevik war, who got the land for their participation in the Battle of Warsaw. Wojciech, a military settler, received Plot 19 in 1922.

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Upon arrival in the village, the settlers began to build their homes and develop the economy. They were mainly engaged in agriculture.

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The Sobierajski family was deported on 10 February1940. They ended up at a labour camp in Volgoden, Wlogodzka Oblast, Russian SFSR, and in 1941 they were moved to the Omsk region. The Sobray, Chojnów and Podhorodeckie families, together with all the other Tajkury settlers, were also deported to Siberia on 10 February 1940.

 

In July 1941, an ‘amnesty’ was negotiated between Poland and the USSR. It allowed people like Wisia’s father and her 19-year-old sister, Marysia, to join the Polish army. On their way to an enlistment station, their train stopped, and Soviet soldiers bundled 48 of the Poles off “in the middle of nowhere.” Soviet authorities had decided that the group should help dig part of a new canal system.

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The 48 Poles shared four crude huts in what was apparently an abandoned kolkhoz out of sight of any other human life. Whereas the work camps in Siberia had provided meagre rations, the Uzbekistani supervisor handed out only wooden spades. The children scoured the landscape for tortoises to eat, and the adults ensnared roaming dogs. A lame horse that the supervisor shot extended their lives but, as their situation deteriorated, her father and two other men left to find help.

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The remaining women and children soon started to die of disease and malnutrition. Wincentyna buried her mother, Apolonia, on what she thought was 17 April 1942. Apolonia had helped her dig a similar grave for her six-year-old sister, Zofia, four days earlier, but could barely move when Marysia died two days after that. The Uzbekistani supervisor had removed the spades when his labourers started to die, so they used whatever they could find to make hollows just deep enough to cover the bodies, topped with stones to weigh them down. Wincentyna and her younger sisters, Ewa and Lucja, were the only ones left alive.

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Wincentyna always said that life in Siberia was not a fraction as bad as it had been in Uzbekistan. No matter how harsh the conditions at Iszim, the forced-labour facility, at least they could work for their daily slices of bread, and she had been adept at foraging for things like mushrooms and berries.

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Wincentyna and her sisters evacuated to Persia later that year, but they left separately. Polish officials had taken Ewa and Lucja to an orphanage et up by he army, but 15-year-old Wincentyna was left to fend for herself.

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From the Middle East, the sisters were sent to the Masindi Polish settlement in East Africa, and also spent some time in the Rongai and Tengeru settlements.

In late 1943, Wincentyna volunteered to join the Women’s Auxiliary Service at the RAF station, Eastleigh, in Nairobi.

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Wincentyna settled in New Zealand after the war. She married Bill Wwatkins, and they raised five children: Roger, Janet, David, Billy, and Desna.

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Wincentyna died in New Zealand on 22 September 2015, at the age of 89 years.

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Copyright: Watkins family

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