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"The Man He Would Have Been But For The War"

online resource
posted on 2024-06-05, 17:28 authored by Their Finest Hour Project Team

My father was Polish and grew up in the Carpathian mountains, a highly educated man. He was in the army before the war started. Their town was invaded by Russians after Germany invaded Poland, and he ended up in a Siberian concentration camp. Eventually, the British government persuaded the Soviets to release the Poles and conscript them into the Allied army, and he ended up in Italy for the rest of the war. Afterwards, he came to Britain as he felt unsafe going back to Poland now that it was Soviet-occupied. He never saw the majority of his family ever again. Here, he developed significant mental health problems, and married an Irish immigrant who he could barely understand and started a family on a remote farm above Todmorden. I only got to know the real him, underneath the trauma, after my mother died.

This story was shared during an in-person interview at a Digital Collection Day. A transcription of the interview is attached to this record.

History

Item list and details

1. 2x certificates - Anna thinks these might be acknowledgments of her father's contributions as a Polish soldier to the British Army (but isn't sure) 2. Certificate of registration as an alien resident in the UK, and visa for an unknown country, possibly early 1950s 3. Picture of father as a soldier and of Anna's art submission for uni talking about his experience in Siberia - photos of prisoners all taken at camps her father was imprisoned at, though none are of him 4. PDF scan of Anna's handwritten story

Person the story/items relate to

Janusz Karol Demkowicz-Dobrejanski

Person who shared the story/items

Anna Demkowicz

Relationship between the subject of the story and its contributor

Father

Type of submission

Shared at Todmorden Library, West Yorkshire on 24 November 2023.

Record ID

101977 | TOD012