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

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.