Irena Mrówczyńska, From Kowel, through Siberia to Lower Silesia… Growing up in exile

In the latter half of 1941, over 100,000 Polish children lived in an area extending from Arkhangelsk to Nakhodka Bay; in the Altai Krai and the Soviet Socialist Republics of Central Asia. Among them there were a growing number of orphans in exile. There is no detailed information concerning the fate of these Polish orphans, who were placed into Soviet instructional and educational institutions, so-called “diet domy”. Most of the institutions taking in Polish children treated them as Soviet citizens but did not report this fact to any Polish institutions responsible for their care and wellbeing. Moreover, given their ‘Soviet’ status, the orphans had neither the right nor the occasion to contact the Polish embassy in Kujbiszew or any of its representatives. And for the younger children, their stay in these so-called “diet domy” usually resulted in instant Russification and Sovietisation. Irena Mrówczyńska’s account describes her childhood memories of pre-war Kowel, the children in exile in Siberia who were taken from summer camps in June 1941 and about post-war times in Jawor, a small town in Lower Silesia. Her story is exceptional because she grew up in exile. She was taken from school without her parents’ consent, put into the Soviet “diet dom” in Bojarka along with other children, before later being sent to the Polish Orphanage and Disabled People’s Home in Bolszoj Konstantinovce, where she spent 6 years. A twist of fate enabled her to contact the Polish embassy in Kujbiszew and report that there were other children in the Polish Orphanage and Disabled People’s Home that had also been “taken” from the summer camps in 1941. This account describes how traumatic the “kidnapping of children from the summer camps” was, resulting in the then 10-year-old girl being sent to the Soviet children’s home and the subsequent indoctrination of Sovietisation that thereafter influenced the rest of her life