All we took with us was a suitcase with an old rug, some pieces of jewellery and family photos.”. “When they arrived in Iran, the country was gravely affected by political instability and famine,” said Reza Nikpour, an Iranian-Polish historian and member of the Iran-Poland Friendship Association. In late 1942 and early 1943, Polish camps in Iran were located at Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad and Ahvaz. Nowadays, considering how the West is treating immigrants, it doesn’t make any sense for them to talk about that exodus.”. Poles arrived in Iran (Persia) by the end of 1942. UK has new grooming gangs discovered daily, adult muslim "refuges" get young European white teenage and even pre-teenage girls addicted to drugs and then use them for sex, passing around and selling to otehr people,. @Farhad, I noticed that you didn't dispute the fact that Iranians themselves did not take care of the Polish, but other European allied forces. Polish children play among the dormitories of a Red Cross camp. By Robert D. Burgener November 4, 1997 The Iranian. During their almost two-year-long occupation, Soviet authorities deported approximately 1.25 million Poles to many parts of the Soviet Union. History revisited How Iran's Isfahan came to be known as 'the city of Polish children' during World War II Records show that refugees evacuated from the Soviet Union were warmly received in . For few of the evacuees who passed through Iran during these years (1942 -945) would never see their homeland again. Many changes have taken place since Stelmach and her mother came to Iran: World War II ended, an Islamic revolution took place in Iran, the Iron Curtain fell, Poland became part of the European Union – yet, throughout all of these years, Stelmach and her mother opted to remain in Iran. Most healthy Polish children over. Numerous schools were set up to teach the children the Polish language, math, science, and other standard subjects. The sun was rising over the hospital for Displaced Persons located northwest of Tehran in a sparsely settled area that didn't even have a name. Several hundred Poles, mostly children, died shortly after arriving in Iran from acute dysentery caused by overeating. This work is a collection of pioneering photographs from the early twentieth century, which offers a window on the changing face of Iranian society during that period. Polish women making their own clothing at a camp in Tehran. Between 4,000 and 5,000 Afghans are fleeing to Iran each day through informal border crossings, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). Between 1942–1945, approximately 2,000 children passed through Isfahan, so many that it was briefly called the “City of Polish Children”. A large number of refugees lost their lives to disease and malnourishment shortly after arrival in Iran. In her diary, self-published in Farsi in 2009 under the title From Warsaw to Tehran, she recalled how Polish refugees died every day in Siberia from the freezing weather, maltreatment and disease. Over 800 Polish refugees seeking safety from war-torn Europe disembarked in Wellington. The cumulative effect of so many different voices discussing similar horrors is shocking and makes this book unlike any other work on the Holocaust. A young Polish refugee does a military salute outside his tent. Poles deported to the Soviet Union often lived under desperate conditions. Those who settled in Chicago set up the Santa Rosa Club and once a year they gather to reminisce the good old daysto the sounds of music remembered from childhood. Currently, Santa Rosa houses an orphanage run by the Salesians of Don Bosco. Those refugees had a tremen-dous impact on urban life in wartime Iran, and their journey from occupied Poland through labor camps in the Soviet Union to Iran illuminates yet another facet of World War II. As a result, Isfahan became known ever after in Polish émigré circles as The City of Polish Children. Polish border guards on patrol at the Kuznica-Bruzgi checkpoint on the Polish-Belarusian border amid the refugee crisis, in Kuznica, Poland, on December 6, 2021 [Kacper Pempel/Reuters] In some schools, Persian was also taught, along with both Polish and Iranian history and geography. The exhibition, which tracks the journeys of the refugees from eastern Poland to New Zealand via Siberia and Iran and shows modern Polish culture in New Zealand, is open to visit, free of charge, until November 17 in the space outside Wspólnota Polska at Krakowskie Przedmieście 64 in Warsaw's Old Town. Katherine Jolluck tells the story of thousands of Polish women exiled to the Soviet Union in 1939-41, and examines the ways in which their efforts to maintain their identities as respectable women and patriotic Poles helped them survive. While most signs of Polish life in Iran have faded, a few have remained. Red Cross evacuation camp for Polish refugees in Teheran, Iran, 1943 Summary Photographs show Red Cross activities and services; Boy Scouts. Men mostly joined the newly formed polish forces fighting with the Brits. To write this book, Jablonka traveled to three continents; met the handful of survivors of his grandparents' era, their descendants, and some of his far-flung cousins; and investigated twenty different archives. This is a unique mix of a diary, oral history and historical viewpoint placed adjacent to a compilation of archival personal photographs. I hope the politicians and voters can temper their xenophobia and learn from the example of hospitality set by the Iranians. These chronicled the hordes of Polish refugee children, and few surviving families, that poured into Iran following Stalin's so-called "amnesty" of Poles in 1941, Poles who were earlier deported to the Soviet Union from November of 1939 through early 1941, following the September of 1939 carving up and . Exile in Iran The refugees remained in Pahlavi for a period of a few days to several months before being transferred to other, more permanent camps in Tehran, Mashhad, and Ahvaz. Thus, following the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941, the Soviets agreed to evacuate part of the Polish formation to Iran. They ended up in Iran, India, Palestine, New Zealand, British Africa, as well as in Mexico.Almost half a century after World War II, in an abandoned, dust . TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Thousands of Afghan refugees are fleeing the Taliban into neighboring Iran every day and the trend could eventually become a crisis for Europe, a top aid official said Wednesday. Poles arrived in Iran (Persia) by the end of 1942. sands of Polish refugees in Iran, and the rapid developments that resulted, are at the core of this article. While intervening in key historical debates across academic disciplines, this book also gives an accessible and memorable account of survival and dramatic cultural dislocation against the backdrop of global conflict. The pace of evacuation of Polish refugees from Iran to Africa was high. Many of those who survived were very weak from the conditions in the camps and from malnourishment. “A few days ago, a group of old Polish tourists came … Also, sometimes foreigners come individually, seeking the names of their grandparents in our archive, and then they place a bouquet of flowers on their graves and leave.”. 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