Saturday 7 February 2026 - POSK

Commemoration of the 86th anniversary of the deportations to Siberia and the USSR which began on 10 February 1940.
SALA MALINOWA, (2nd floor) POSK, 238/240 King Street, London, W6 0FR (tube station Ravenscourt Park)

3 course meal with a glass of wine

SOUP: Pieczarkowa na bazie warzyw - Mushroom with a vegetable base
MAIN COURSE Polędwiczka w sosie tymiankowym - Pork loin in a thyme sauce
Pieczone Ziemniaki - Roast potatoes

Buraki - Beetroot
VEGETARIAN Goląbki - Stuffed cabbage
                                  Ziemniaki - Potatoes
                                  Buraki - Beetroot
DESSERT Sernik - Cheesecake
Herbata/kawa - Tea/coffee

To register, please reply by 31 January 2026 by email to booking@kresyfamily.com.

Please confirm

the names of those attending (indicate if a Sybirak).
choice of main course i.e. the meat or vegetarian option
any other dietary requirements or allergies.

Please make payment using one of the methods below at the time of booking:

£53.00 (this includes fees) using credit/debit card (VISA, MasterCard, American Express) or PayPal by clicking HERE.

£50.00 by online bank transfer. Sort Code 090128, business account number 89291073, account name Kresy Family Polish World War 2 History Group.

These are the preferred payment methods to avoid delays at the door but, as an alternative, we can accept a cheque for £50 per person at the door if necessary.
Please leave coats in the cloakroom on the ground floor at the main entrance before making your way up to the restaurant.
The seating in the restaurant is limited so we may have to stop taking bookings before the closing date if we are at full capacity. There will be no formal seating plan. Tables will be reserved for Sybiraks and their families. It is an opportunity for families to wear the Siberian Exile Cross - Krzyż Zesłanców Sybiru.
A bar will be available during the meal and remain open afterwards to give us all more time to socialise.
We will be taking photos and videos at this event. By being there, you agree that we may share those images online, primarily on Facebook. If you do not want to be photographed, just tell a committee member, the photographer or wear a “No Photo” badge (which we can provide), and we’ll try to leave you out.

*********************************************************

Petition to UK Government

Review Government's approach to redacting Polish Military Records held by MoD
IF YOU LIVE IN THE UK OR LIVE ABROAD WITH A BRITISH PASSPORT, please help us - the descendants of Polish WWII servicemen and women.
Please sign and share with family and friends who have British passports (even if you/they don’t have Polish background). Thank you.

We are now receiving heavily redacted military records from the MoD (British Ministry of Defence). These redactions mean that our ancestors' details about family, place of abode in Poland, religion etc are BLACKED OUT.

Because of Poland's political situation after WWII (and because a lot of the country was totally flattened by the invading Germans), records in Poland were destroyed, lost, or, even today, suppressed by Russia and Belarus. These Military Records are often the only source of family history that we have, which can also help to find living relatives. As well as helping descendants apply for Polish citizenship.
Click here to sign the petition

*********************************************************

****************************************************************************************************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 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.

**************

Kresy Family Polish WWII History Group

acknowledges and thanks

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

Forever Manchester and Kresy Family members

for their financial support of our projects

Home Page

Guest Speaker:
Martin Stepek is a writer, poet, teacher of mindfulness, and mentor to family-owned businesses. He is the author of twelve books: six on how to live mindfully, five volumes of poetry, and a historical memoir of his father's early life in Poland and through wartime in Siberia and the Polish Navy. He has delivered readings, lectures and talks at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the University of Warsaw, the Royal Institute, London, and also in diverse settings from primary schools through to some of the highest security prisons in the UK.
In 2013, he published his first book, For There is Hope, an acclaimed volume of poetry reflecting on what his father's family endured during World War Two. This was described as "a monument, a meditation, a prayer and an epic" by Neal Ascherson, author of The Struggles for Poland.

Guest Performer:

'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 boasts a varied repertoire that includes: patriotic, folk and scout songs as well as popular 20th century and classical pieces. Today, Mazury is 77 years old, and its membership includes 120 dancers, singers and musicians, spanning three different age groups starting from the age of 7. Fiołki recently performed in the House of Parliament and Westminster Cathedral, and earlier in 2025 in the National Army Museum, the Bal Polski, and a whole company performance in March. We welcome Fiołki to our commemoration for the second time.

Forthcoming Events

In March 2024, he published his father’s long-awaited memoir - Jan Stepek, Part 1: Gulag to Glasgow. Once again Neal Ascherson feted its publication as "A very special book. Because of the fine detail, it is the most eloquent and moving account of that Polish odyssey that I know."
He is currently working on his second book on his father's life - working title Jan Stepek Part 2: A New Life in Scotland - recounting how a survivor of the Siberian gulags became one of Scotland's most successful businessmen and a major social activist and philanthropist. Martin will give an insight into Jan’s struggle for survival, business success and Polish-Scottish legacy.

PAST EVENTS and REVIEWS​​​​​

Saturday 7 February 2026 - POSK

Forthcoming Events

PAST EVENTS and REVIEWS