10.   L I F E   O F   C I V I L I A N S  A F T E R  E S C A P E   F R O M   S I B E R I A

After evacuation from the USSR to Persia (now Iran) in 1942, people who had not joined the Forces were sent to camps in various parts of the world to recuperate until the war was over.


Julian Plowy describes his life during WWII, as a Polish war refugee at Santa Rosa in Leon, Mexico

Poland's Silenced Refugees. Before being transported to Mexico from India in 1943 on a U.S. Navy ship, these Polish children were for close to two years prisoners in Soviet Russia along with their parents and families. Many of them lost their mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, grandparents and other close family members.

Onetime Polish war refugee collects history so the world won't forget
Julian was 3 years old then. It was 1943. He, his mother and his older sister, were among 1,432 Poles who were resettled in Colonia Santa Rosa in Leon, Mexico, following a harrowing period in the Soviet Gulag during the war.