Sikorski Club Glasgow

11.05.2018

I meet, with my sister Maureen, two members of the Dom Polski club in Glasgow, Kenneth Rybarczyk, and Robert Ostrjcharz. The official name of the club is the General Sikorski Polish Society and it was founded by Polish exiles in the early 1950’s as a meeting place and also to promote the centuries old cultural links between Poland and Scotland. As I grew up, history taught in the schools was heavily biased towards English/British version of events and as a result Scots were largely ignorant of historical Scottish-Polish links. In recent years I have been amazed with what I have learned of our connections. My father was not a regular attender at the numerous functions, but he did retain his membership of the Society throughout his life.

Kenneth’s father, Julian, came from a small town near Wilno or Vilnius to give it is current Lithuanian name as it was incorporated into the USSR in 1945 and assigned to Lithuania. Julian has written a comprehensive account of his exile in the USSR from 1939-1942 entitled ‘Neighbours from Hell’. It is a fascinating account, running to 62 pages, complete with photographs and maps of his father and his family’s exile to the USSR in 1939. What it holds for me, is a vivid insight of what own grandmother’s and aunt’s experiences would have been, as they too were deported to Siberia by the NKVD, the USSR State Security Bureau. For me it represents a testimony by proxy. Their route out of exile and subsequent freedom after the Amnesty of 1942, was the exact same as Julian Rybarczyk documents. At the time of the Amnesty General Władysław Anders formed what came to be known as ‘Anders Army’ whose exodus from exile in the USSR was agreed with Stalin on the understanding that they would join the war effort against Nazi Germany, as the Second Polish Army. ‘Anders Army’ consisted of women and children as well as men. What a piece of luck. I would like with Kenneth’s permission to add this to the blog at a future date. As I re-read part of Julian Rybarczyk’s memoirs, it strikes me that on Remembrance Day we only remember the tragic deaths of the armed forces, which is of course correct, but we forget about all those millions of innocent civilians, without a gun to defend themselves against murder, torture, rape and other horrors. We forget the exile suffered by Jews, Poles, Russians, Czechs, French, Dutch, Italians, Belgians, Hungarians, Greeks, the Balkan peoples and yes, Germans too and of course the peoples of Asia and for the British, who although did not suffer exile or occupation lost citizens during the long blitz. Soldiers die for their country, civilians die for nothing. It was ever thus and still is – just watch news coverage on TV. Spare a long thought for them too next 11^th November.

Robert’s knowledge of the Polish forces in Scotland is genuinely encyclopaedic and I’m amazed at the facts he holds. It was as if listening to someone recite a long poem such as Robert Burns’ ‘Tam O’ Shanter’ completely from memory. It really is an oral account of the time from 1940-45. He even possesses information about my father I had never heard of and then he produces a tablet and attempts to show newsreel footage of General Sikorski inspecting a guard of honour at St. Andrews as my father was part of that. In fact we have a photograph of that very ceremony. Unfortunately, the newsreel keeps stopping, but no matter. One interesting fact about my father; he absconded for two weeks, no one to this day knows where he was but he returned voluntarily and served a detention which was subsequently overturned and he returned to action. What on earth was he doing during that period of ‘unauthorised absence’? It was also interesting to learn of the political intrigue and discord prevalent among Generals Sikorski, Maczek and Anders.

Randomly I ask if anyone has heard of an old school friend of mine, Frank Baran, with whom I went to Poland in 1967. It turns out that Frank is a regular attender at the club and I ask Robert to try to make contact with him. So let’s see what transpires.

Ends.