​​​Past Events 2023

Past Events 2022

 PAST EVENTS and REVIEWS​​​


Saturday 10 February 2024 at 12.30 (Doors open 12:00)

The event is now FULLY BOOKED so please do NOT make any payments.

Your email booking can be added to the waitlist.

Kresy Family Polish WWII History Group and the former Ognisko Rodzin Osadników Kresowych warmly invite you to commemorate the 84th anniversary of the deportations to Siberia and the USSR which began on 10 February 1940.
Łowiczanka Restaurant, POSK (Polish  Cultural and Social Club) 238/240 King Street, London, W6 0FR
3-course meal with a glass of wine*

Guest Speaker:    ​​












Guest Performers:  

















To register, please email by 31 January 2024 to book@kresyfamily.com with the number of tickets required and the names of the persons attending indicating whether a Sybirak. Please make a payment using one of the methods below.  Note that the seating in the restaurant will be limited so we may have to stop taking bookings before this date if we are at full capacity. Importantly, please specify in the registration if you wish the vegetarian or other dietary option for the restaurant to ensure it is available. It is unlikely that new orders for the vegetarian option will be available on the day.


Payment by

- £40.00 by online bank transfer. Sort Code 090128, business account number 89291073, account name Kresy Family Polish World War 2 History Group
or 
- £43.00 by online using Credit/debit card (VISA, MasterCard, American Express) or PayPal by clicking  HERE
These two methods are preferred to avoid delays at the door but as an alternative

- By cheque at the door.  


*













Management Committee
Kresy Family Polish WWII History Group 



​​****************************************************************************************************​​​​​Listen to past radio broadcasts


BBC Witness History

The Katyn Massacre
Tens of thousands of Polish officers were secretly executed in the USSR during World War 2. The German occupying forces reported the first mass grave, in the village of Katyn in 1943, but Moscow only admitted to the killings in 1990. Dina Newman speaks to the son of one of the murdered officers, Waclaw Gasiorowski. 

BBC Witness History
Polish refugees in Africa

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct1x88

During World War Two, close to 20,000 Polish people found refuge in Africa. They arrived after surviving imprisonment in Soviet labour camps and a harrowing journey across the Soviet Union to freedom.

Casimir Szczepanik arrived as a child in a refugee camp in Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia). He talks to Rob Walker about his life there and the impact the war still has on him.


Syrena Songs - BBC World Service available on Iplayer
Broadcast on 5 August - Monica Whitlock tells Syrena Record's story and travels to Warsaw to hear from a new generation of musicians recreating Syrena's sound. Syrena Records was created in 1904. It sold millions of discs to new audiences hungry for shellac delights - opera singers, cantors, political humour and Yiddish theatre. Success allowed founder Juliusz Feigenbaum to invest in state of the art recording technology. By the time independent Poland was reborn in 1918 Syrena was well placed to shape the sound of a new nation. 
Hot tango and jazz were performed by superb musicians and singers, mostly Jewish, mostly of a generation breaking away from the old world and facing the new. Adam Aston, Hanka Ordonka, Henryk Wars, Mieczysław Fogg and others cut disc after disc before playing in the elite nightclubs of Warsaw. Some 14,000 records by artists at the top of their game. Outpourings of Yiddish tango, slinky foxtrots, romantic ballads. Records in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish. Songs such as The Last Sunday and Donna Clara went international.
In 1939, invasion and war ended Syrena and the Polish nation. Its factory and archives destroyed, its artists murdered or scattered in exile. But there was one last tune to play. Henryk Wars, former musical director at Syrena, formed an orchestra that became the soundtrack of Poles in exile and in military uniform. From Tehran to Palestine to the fortress of Monte Cassino, those musicians and singers that had once been the heart of Syrena now played songs of a lost nation, creating the anthemic Red Poppies of Monte Cassino.  

Available on repeat on BBC Iplayer radio 

 


A Helping of History  - Broadcast on North Manchester FM but available online

Broadcast on Tuesday 7 August - Ann Siburuth is interviewed about the Resettlement Camps in North Manchester and tells of the story of the people of wartime Kresy.

https://hannahkate.net/north-manchester-fm-a-helping-of-history-tuesday-7-august-12-2pm/

 

Still Here: A Polish Odyssey - BBC Radio 4 available on Iplayer

Broadcast on 6 and 8 August - Jane Rogoyska meets Polish people who were exiled to Siberia as children by Stalin and their descendants.  The changing winds of war took them from Siberia and Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan, Persia (now Iran) and onto India or Africa - then to Britain. They thought that Britain was another stopping point on their odyssey home to Eastern Poland but they and their descendants are still here.  With the participation of Kresy Family members.

Available on repeat from BBC Iplayer radio -  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bd7zj4

 

The Odyssey of General Anders' Army

Listen to the radio program by Monica Whitlock by clicking here

​By the summer of 1940, a quarter of a million Polish prisoners of war had already been sent to Soviet prison camps. More than a million civilians deemed undesirable by Stalin were packed aboard cattle trucks to the far east of the Soviet Union. Many died on the journey, many more would die in the harshest conditions, toiling, starving and freezing on collective farms or labour camps in Siberia, the Urals or Kazakhstan. But then unlikely salvation came with the opportunity to join Anders Army.


Formed in the aftermath of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, in a deal brokered between Churchill, Stalin and the Polish Government in exile, this was, on paper, to be an army formed of Poles now held on Soviet soil to help fight the Nazis. Stalin reluctantly released 390,000 Polish prisoners of war and their dependents. Less than half would finally make their way to freedom.
General Wladyslaw Anders, who had languished for two years in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison, fortunate not be shot along with 33,000 Polish officers at Katyn, took command. He remained insistent that as many women and children who could would join this new fighting force. Anders knew this was the last and best chance of escape for everyone.
What followed was a 9000-mile journey to freedom. Thousands died en route before crossing the Caspian Sea to safety in Iran. Orphans found new homes in Isfahan. Large numbers of Jewish Poles - including Menachem Begin, who became Israel's sixth prime minister - left to become part of the fledgeling Zionist army in Palestine. Thousands more fought on as the Polish 2nd Corps in the crucial final battle of Monte Cassino in Italy in May 1944.
By the war’s end, General Anders had gathered 41,000 combatants and 74,000 civilians, and brought them to freedom. But for the majority, there could be no return home to a Soviet-dominated Poland. The majority settled in Britain, others lived new lives as far apart as New Zealand, Kerala and Kenya.
Although this astonishing odyssey has changed the lives of two generations of Poles - and Poland itself - the story is not well known: suppressed in Communist Poland and barely told in the West.


The survivors of Anders Army, Danuta Czerkaska, Elizabeth Piekarski, Michal Giedroyc, Jadzia Osostowicz, Majer Bogdanski and Danuta Gradosielska, tell their story.


BBC News Magazine - A Polish girl's journey across three continents by Monica Whitlock BBC World Service
Click here to view the article or here to listen to the broadcast.

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Kresy Family Polish WWII History Group  

acknowledges and thanks 

the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Londonthe Polonia Aid Foundation Trust,

Forever Manchester and Kresy Family members

for their financial support of our projects


Home Page 


Rosól z domowym makaronem

Noga kaczki, buraki zasmażane,  puree    ziemniaczane, sos jabłkowy 


Opcja wegetariańska
Zupa krem z selera
Gołąbki wegetariańskie, sos grzybowy, puree ziemniaczane, buraki na cieplo 

Tort kostka orzechowa
Herbata/kawa

Antonia Bifulco is second generation with a Polish father and English mother. She has explored and published on her family history in line with her academic interests as a Professor of psychology and an expert on trauma and resilience.  She has become increasingly aware of how her own generation are of interest in the study of ethnic groups in the UK.

Forthcoming Events

Professor Antonia Bifulco is the joint author of “Identity Awoken in Second-Generation British Poles in the UK” - Bifulco, A., & Smojkis, M. (2023). Professor Bifulco’s talk will cover emerging themes on second generation Poles born in the UK. They grew up in communities exposed to the Polish language and culture and as a community held a low profile and received little recognition. And yet it is a unique and fascinating group which has retained its identity despite integration and has forged its own resilience.

   

Mazury, led by Zosia Lesiecka and her husband Lucjan Santos Witkowski, is part of the Polish YMCA in London, which was founded in 1949. Today, Mazury's membership includes 120 dancers, singers and musicians, spanning 3 groups and starting from the age of 7.   Mazury's dance repertoire is made up of both regional and national Polish dances.  In June 2024, Mazury celebrates its 75th anniversary at The New Wimbledon theatre.

Chicken broth with homemade noodles
Leg of duck, creamed potato with cooked beetroot and apple sauce


Vegetarian option
Cream of celery soup
Vegetarian stuffed cabbage with mushroom sauce, creamed potato and cooked beetroot 


Walnut cake
Tea/coffee

'Fiołki', Mazury Dance Company's choir was established in 2020 as a small group of singers by Jadwiga Słomka, Musical Director, during the Covid pandemic. The choir also boasts a varied repertoire that includes: patriotic, folk and scout songs as well as popular 20th century and classical pieces.