Beeches Green Friendship Circle

OUR Friendship Circle held it's May meeting on May 19, 2015.

Rosalind our chairperson gave apologies for those unable to attend and welcomed new members to the group.

She then went on to introduce our speaker Jola Malin who had come to give us a talk about a book she had written called 'Faith Hunger & Song'.

As a child a strong memory for Jola was her grandmother's reverence for food.

If food was dropped on the floor it had to be picked up, kissed and eaten.

Food to her was holy and this story explains a little of why that was.

The story tells of her grandparents who married in 1912.

They were farming people who lived in Eastern Poland near the Russian border.

They had eleven children of which only five survived the Second World War.

The family were self sufficient and lived a very simple life working the land, attending church (they were very devout Catholics) and often finding reasons for a celebration as they loved to sing and dance.

In September 1939 the Russians invaded and occupied Eastern Poland.

Arrests were made and one of the family members taken, her only crime being that she worked as a clerk in a local council office.

She was sentenced to eighteen years imprisonment in a gulag camp.

By April 1940 their land had been taken from them and the family along with almost two million other Poles were deported to Siberia to work in labour camps and on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

They travelled for around two weeks in what was known as cattle trucks.

These were windowless and many died.

The humiliations suffered during this horrendous journey do not bear thinking about.

In 1941 Germany invaded Russia and Russia, with the help of Britain, formed a Polish-Soviet pact enabling the Poles to form a Polish army on Russian soil.

The British army agreed to feed and clothe them.

The deported Poles were granted amnesty.

Two of the female members of the family gained military status as army nurses and because of this the remaining family were able to obtain exit visas.

Three of the family died of typhoid and the grandparents and two other children were taken to Uganda to refugee camps where they would stay or the next five years.

While there they were helped to build their own Polish church within the camp and on the wall were able to hang a painting they had rolled up and carried with them since leaving their farm.

It was a reminder to them of the woodland and lakes of their beloved Poland and it gave them enormous strength.

After the war, the family were not able to go back to Poland.

They left Africa in 1948 to go to England but sadly without Jola's grandfather who had died just two months before.

Once again the picture went with them.

The family settled in London as did many other emigre Poles.

One of the main centres for the Polish community was the Catholic Church and as a child Jola was deeply moved by the gusto and passion expressed in the songs heard during Sunday mass and also by the art work commemorating the victims of the Holocaust and of the Katyn massacre.

Jola's talk was accompanied by a slide show of photographs of her family.

The members of our group found the talk extremely interesting and thanked Jola for giving us an insight into her family history.

Our next meeting will take place on Tuesday, June 16, 2015 and will be a visit to the Rococo Gardens Painswick.