Memorial for WW-II Polish refugees to be unveiled in Maharashtra

Memorial for WW-II Polish refugees to be unveiled in Maharashtra

Kolhapur: 80 years after the outbreak of World War II, when thousands of persecuted Polish refugees esaped to India and made Valivade village near Kolhapur their home, a Memorial Pillar shall be unveiled here on Sep. 14, officials said.

It was during the World War II that around 1000 Polish children from the war-ravaged and occupied Poland and Soviet Union concentration camps in Stalin’s Siberia managed to travel to India and reached Jamnagar kingdom of Gujarat, in 1942.

Most reached India via the land or sea routes – in trucks from Ashkhabad in the erstwhile USSR travelling via Afghanistan – and others by the sea routes along with two major evacuations of Polish Army from USSR to Iran through the Caspian Sea in March and August, 1942.

The then ruler of Jamnagar, Jam Saheb Digvijaysinhji R. Jadeja (1895-1966) at great risks, welcomed them wholeheartedly and took them under his fold even as the world fought a war and India fought for its Independence from Britain.

He built camps for them at Balachadi, near his summer palace, around 25 kms on the outskirts of Jamnagar, to make them feel at home, and this small gesture later saw many more thousands of Polish refugees coming to India and being accepted by other countries in the world.

Besides the 1000 Polish children in Balachadi, later, around the late 1940s, around 5,000 Poles settled in Valivade, which symbolized a typical, independent Polish town, and became the single biggest Polish settlement in India.

Valivade had its own administration with all amenities like a church and community centre, five primary schools, a general and a commercial high school, a humanities college and a teaching college, post office, cinema, theatre, workshops, a cooperative setup called Zgoda, fixed-price market and finally a cemetery which has 78 graves.

After the WW-II when the situation normalized, a majority of those children returned to Poland and others to different countries globally. However, many – now in their 90s or above, keep coming back to Valivade and Jamnagar to relive memories of those years they spent here.

Grateful for Indian hospitality during their hour of need, the Association of Poles in India erected an obelisk at the Mahavir Garden Park in Kolhapur with an eagle at the top.

Later, in 2011, Poland posthumously conferred the “Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Polish Republic” on Jam Saheb Digvijaysinhji R. Jadeja and at least six public and private schools are named after him in Warsaw.

A prominent square in Warsaw’s Ochota district is dedicated as “The Square of the Good Maharaja – Jam Saheb Digvijaysinhji” with a statue erected in his memory, in 2013.

The Maharaja’s contributions were immortalized in an Indo-Polish co-production film, “A Little Poland In India” (2013), depicting him as the lone crusader who safeguarded the lives and future of thousands of orphaned Polish children who sought refuge during the dark days of WW-II.

The inauguration of the Memorial Pillar on Saturday shall be done by Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz, in the presence of Poland’s Ambassador to India Adam Burakowski, President of Poles in India Andrzej Chendynski, Maharashtra’s Guardian Minister for Kolhapur Chandrakant Patil and Rajya Sabha MP Sambhajiraje Chhatrapati, the 13th direct descendent of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.

Two delegations, one comprising Poles in India and another consisting of high-level business representatives shall also be present as some of the Poles remember and share their fond childhood memories spent in this former royal state in Western Maharashtra.