Iwona Świętochowska was born on 8th May 1930 in Stanisławów, near Lviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine). Her father, Stanisław Tomaszek, worked as a doctor and was a popular social activist.
After the invasion of the Red Army on Poland, he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in a lager as a counter-revolutionist. Several months later, on 13th April 1940, Iwona Świętochowska, together with her brother Jerzy Tomaszek, their mother and grandmother were transported to Siberia. The families of the officers murdered in Katyń were transported on the same train.
The Tomaszek family lived in a kolkhoz in Pieszczanka village. After several months they managed to escape to nearby Presnogorkowka. Their grandmother, Stefania Szumska, died there. After announcing the Sikorski-Mayski agreement, Iwona’s mother, Zofia, decided to go back to Poland. When they reached Turkmenistan mother had to make a difficult decision and left her children at an orphanage to save them from the turmoil of the war. Due to the efforts of Polish diplomates, there was a chance of releasing Polish children from the USSR transport and transferring them to an orphanage in India. This facility was established due to the efforts of Jam Saheb Digvijay Sinhji, the Maharaja of Nawanagar. Iwona Świętochowska, with her brother and hundred and twenty other children, went to India to live in an estate for Polish orphans in Balachadi, Jamnagar district.
During her separation with the children, Zofia Tomaszek started working as a medical aid in the second Polish Corps. After several months she managed to join Iwona and Jerzy. In 1943, the Tomaszek family decided to move to a Polish refugee camp in Africa. Thanks to the assistance of the Zamenhofs, they reached Africa via Pakistan and lived in camps in Kidugali and Kondo, Tanzania, as well as in Tangier, Morocco.
The return journey from the war displacement took them almost 7 years. On 17th February 1947, the Tomaszek family returned to Poland and settled in Bytom. Iwona Świętochowska became a doctor. She worked with the professional liability spokesperson in the Silesia Medical Society, as well as in the Historical Committee. She and her brother were awarded the Cross of the Association of Siberian Deportees.
Interview by Olga Blumczyńska in October 2014 in Bytom
In the meantime doctor Gut, right before the Russian army invaded the country, doctor Gut who had graduated from medical university in Switzerland, says to my daddy: “Staś, I have a big car. We’ll take…”. He had three children and my parents had two. “We’ll take our children, travel across Hungary, we’ll go to Switzerland. I’ll get a job there, I can get you one too and we can survive the war somehow”. But my daddy says: “What are you saying? I am a doctor. People know me here. I can help people here. You want me to run like a rat from a sinking ship?”. This was my daddy. He didn’t agree with the doctor. And doctor Gut did not leave either. His fate was as tragic as my father’s. Only… only… because he also died during the war but he was killed by the Germans because he was a great patriot. So we didn’t leave. We stayed.
So we had to look for a place to live. My mother had this idea, she was a really brave woman, to move and she found an ownerless dug-out. Then it turned out that it belongs to somebody but nobody else wants to live in it so my mother managed to buy it really cheap. A dug-out. A dug-out is a small hut built of turf. People used to dig out turf, there was an extensive field there and you could dig out that turf. One put a piece of turf on the other piece, then… There was not much timber, just some sticks placed vertically and again some turf on top. After that people used to stick clay from the inside and outside, the floor was also made of clay and there was a large stove. The stove occupied one fourth of the dug-out. It was damaged but when we moved there we started fixing things. And some small hall, I don’t even know what it was made of. Anyway, we stayed in the dug-out till the end. We lived in the dug-out. There was no furniture there. Mother managed to get some iron bed where grandma was sleeping and where she died. Boguś was sleeping on a basket because he was small and he could fit in there and we slept on this big stove. We called it “pieczka” and when we had some firewood it was warm. And we could sleep on it, on top of it. And so we slept there. What is interesting is that this dug-out was uninhabited for a while. You could see that nobody had lived there for a while but the creatures in the dug-out, the bedbugs, managed to survive. I thought that they will kill us, those bedbugs, that they will eat us. It was such a calamity with those bedbugs. And we were living with all those bedbugs all the time. And they especially liked that warm place on the stove. I remember that my brother used to lit matches at night to see where they are so that we could eliminate them somehow so that they wouldn’t… Those bedbugs were awful. After that there were lice but that was later. But the bedbugs… And we lived in the dug-out. Me and my brother… we used to bring clay to fix the holes, and the floor – the threshing floor. And we lived there. And my brother, because he was really skilled in precise tasks, and clay was perfect for it, so he made various toys and sold them to Russian children for some change. And so my brother earned a little money back then.
And there was this time when my mother was giving us away to the orphanage. My brother Jurek was strongly against it. He said: “Mommy, leave her with you. If she dies, let her die with you. I’ll go so it will be easier for you. We didn’t make it with those brave men and maybe we can make it with the orphanage but leave Iwona because… because… let her be with you”. But she was persistent and said: “Jureczek, you are older and I give her under your care and I believe that you’ll take care of her”. And she was right. My beloved brother really… Anyway, we are really close to each other. Maybe because there was this warm atmosphere at home but mostly because we were together at the orphanage.
When we crossed the Indian border we took the train and at the railway station, when the children arrived, they were being loaded on the train. The people from the English institutions came to see the poor orphans and, as a matter of fact, we were told that at the time those English people wanted to take those orphans in. They wanted to wind up the orphanage and take the children in. They brought us fruit, sweets and it was really amazing for us. After passing a few railway stations we arrived to Mumbai but, anyway, we all talked about it. Especially the elder children knew. I was also an elder child because there were four-year-olds and a lot of six-year-olds and then there were elder children up to the age of sixteen. So the English behaved really nicely and they were very friendly and open towards the children and they tried to help the best they could. And it all happened again when we were travelling on a train to Mumbai, several times, actually. In Mumbai we knew that we were under the Maharaja’s care because the Maharaja found out that the children are coming and I think he became engaged himself in the process. Anyway, we arrived to Mumbai and we were placed, those one hundred and twenty children, in an enormous villa in Mumbai and the children were transported there.
My brother was somewhere else, he was released earlier. I stayed in the hospital alone. I started sleepwalking. I would wake up… I mean I would get up at night and roam about the hospital, sometimes even to a different floor. Then the nurses were wondering how did this child get here. I think it was quite emotional that I… it would never happen to me anymore. When my mommy was found I stopped sleepwalking. Anyway, I remember that I told myself: “I can bare all that and I ask you, God, from the bottom of my heart, I will be really brave, I won’t cry, I won’t despair, I just want my mommy to come to us”. And it really came true. They cured me and I came back to Mumbai. In the meantime, because it was known that new transports of children are on their way, the Maharaja built a camp for us in Jamnagar, near Balachadi, because there were no more empty villas in Mumbai left. The camp was located near his estate so some elder children were invited to see the Maharaja. My dear sister-in-law and my brother, as the elder children, used to go there and told everyone about the wonders of the Maharaja’s palace. There were a few barracks where the children were living; boys and girls separately. In good conditions. They were nice brick barracks but the rooms were large and everyone had mosquito nets against various insects. When we would go to bed in the evening we had to put that net under the mattress and this is how we all were sleeping. We all got the same uniforms. I suppose it was the Maharaja who financed the uniforms. They included green khaki suspender skirts and boys had trousers and white shirts.
I must mention that Maharaja studied in the UK and Paderewski was his good friend. It was really… Well, you could notice that back then that the Indian Maharaja befriended Paderewski. I guess this is how he loved Poles because otherwise he would not have heard nor knew, why would he like to take all those Polish children in and officially state that he was adopting them? It happened not when we arrived because it was 1942, 1943 and it was still the war. There was no mention about future Poland and nobody knew that some communist authorities will be requesting those children be sent back to Poland. So he didn’t have to make such gestures to keep the children but he made really good care of us.
There was a school barrack, a canteen barrack, they were all barracks but really nice because it was hard to build something so quickly, right? It was all in a desert area so it was difficult to get water there. There were these deep wells or just some water containers where water was really warm because the weather was really hot. We had large bedrooms and separate school rooms where we were taught. And a roll-call square with a mast, with a red and white flag hoisted up every morning during the roll-call and hoisted down in the evening. I remember those roll-calls really well and always in the morning… At first, at first there was something like a prayer and it was “Kiedy ranne wstają zorze” (“When the Morning Lights Arise”) and in the evening it was “Wszystkie nasze dzienne sprawy” (“All our daily affairs”). Oh, how children would sing that. Later there were more of us. When the next two hundred and forty children arrived, that voice of all the children was just so strong. It was like some started at a different time… It was a kind of echo. I remember us singing during those roll-calls and I every time I hear that “Kiedy ranne wstają zorze” or “Wszystkie nasze dzienne sprawy” it just gets soft under my eyes, you’ve seen that.
And in the meantime my mother fell ill with malaria because she’d had it
back in India. We all had had malaria. So my mother was taken to the
hospital. Mother was afraid to leave me so she took me with herself and
hid me under her duvet. Just as I wrote in my diary, when the doctor was
to come she let me out from under the duvet and I would hide under the
bed. I don’t know how long my mother stayed at the hospital and my
brother, when my mother was being taken there, I think he was in some
other part of the ship. Later, he told me that he slept in the bath in
the bathroom but I have no idea why. Anyway, later he found our mother
at the hospital. My mother stopped hiding me and we all managed to get
to Africa. This is where the Maharaja is. His name is…
my conservatory and start to teach children music? There are so many
children here. I’ve never taught at school but I had been taught so
maybe I can do it”. “OK”, doctor Zamenhof said. He talked to the camp
commandant. He also liked the idea because it would stop the youth from
roaming about, instead the youth can have lessons. And again my mother
will get some money from Inka or from some other institution so that she
can start organizing the school. She got a 3-room building and now she
had to organize everything. She got the money and she started driving
around. She knew German, a little French, she didn’t know any English
but she had a car, she was taken by a car, I mean. She was supposed to
find at least two music instruments. So she was travelling around Africa
and looking for those music instruments. And she did find them. She
came back with two pianos and with some score. She didn’t have a lot
score but she had some. When she came back with the score she was really
proud, beaming, over the moon. Me and Jurek, we were waiting in this
house with a thatched roof made of reed and we were crossing our fingers
for mum so that she succeeded and she did and she came back. She came
back and I can’t recall how long she was out there but she was
travelling for some time. She even reached Mombasa and she brought two
pianos with her.
