Podcast: STORIES FROM THE EASTERN WEST #29 - ORPHANS

How 700 Polish children made an unlikely journey from the depths of Siberia to the New Zealand countryside.
After the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east in 1939, many thousands of Polish families were deported to Siberian forced labour camps. There they not only faced bitter cold but constant hunger. Then Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and the families that were now allowed to leave tried to get as far south as possible. In many cases, only their children made it all the way to safety in Iran. Some Polish orphans were resettled in places like South Africa and Mexico, but a group of 700 would end up travelling on a US Navy ship to the small island nation of New Zealand, on the other side of the world.
How did the children survive their perilous journey from Siberia to Iran, and end up in a place called Pahiatua in the New Zealand countryside? How did they adjust to a new life surrounded by sheep and cattle, and what happened when the camp they had begun to call home was finally shut down for good?
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Episode Credits:
Written, produced & presented by Peter Wolodzko
Edited by Adam Zulawski & Wojciech Oleksiak
Scoring & sound design by Wojciech Oleksiak
Stories from the Eastern West is a podcast from Culture.pl telling little-known histories from Central & Eastern Europe that changed our world. It was brought to you by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.