Seweryn Ozdowski was born on 24th June 1949 in Poznań. His family was from Roszków in the Jarociński poviat. In October 1939 the Ozdowski family was displaced and moved to Opoczno.
Seweryn Ozdowski graduated from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, faculty of law and sociology. He worked at the Polish Academy of Sciences, in the Jurisprudence Institute. He conducted pioneer study on the awareness of the Polish workers whose results anticipated the establishment of the Solidarity labour union. Back then Ozdowski did not manage to publish the results of the study in Poland. Later it was printed in the US. Seweryn Ozdowski frequently took part in anti-government demonstrations. He was arrested for having such books as “1984” by George Orwell.
At the beginning of the 1970s Seweryn Ozdowski and his wife decided to leave Poland. At first, they were to depart only for a few years to see the world. Their first stop was Germany, where between 1974 and 1975 Seweryn Ozdowski was studying at the Hamburg University. Their next stop was Australia. In 1982, at the University of New England in Armidale Seweryn Ozdowski received his doctoral degree.
Due to his experiences as an emigrant and immigrant, as well as his knowledge obtained during his studies, he worked as a senior consultant in the prime minister’s cabinet back in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1996 and 2000 he was the chairman of the Multicultural Office in Adelaide and between 200 and 2005 he worked as the commissioner for inequalities and human rights in the Australian government.
In 2000, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland and in 2005 the Solidarity Medal.
Interview by Edi Pyrek in May 2011 in Australia.
It was a good time for me, I was studying, I attended a great high school and I started working. Before leaving Poland I was working for the Polish Academy of Sciences, at the Jurisprudence Institute, where I was hired by professor Adam Łopatka. We were doing some research. It was really interesting because we were studying the legal awareness of the Polis workers. We anticipated the Solidarity movement. Our studies were carried out in the thirty largest Polish factories and in additional workplaces. The studies anticipated the Solidarity and foretold what was going to happen. However, we couldn’t publish that in Poland. I only could publish the results in the US, after leaving Poland. Before the war my family from my father’s side had an estate in Roszków, in Jarociński. It was a lease of over 1,000 hectares, including a sugar mill, distillery and over 500 horses. In 1938, my grandfather had earned over 100 thousand Australian dollars after taxation. I saw his accounting books. At the time, it was really something. My grandfather worked for the community. He founded scholarships and was one of the founders of the Agriculture Bank in Jarocin. After that the Germans invaded Poland and it all ended. All the money from the Agriculture Bank were taken to Germany. Germans, as always, were very honest and they wrote receipts for all the money they took but that money was nowhere to be seen. My grandfather from my mother’s side was a businessman. He was a distributor of kerosene and gas in the Jarociński poviat. He had a number of colonial depots and he was a wealthy man. What is interesting is that all of them were displaced from the Jarociński poviat in October 1939 and send to Opoczno, south-east Poland.
My decision to leave Poland was influenced by two things. In a way it was fuelled by my curiosity about the world. I was young, 22 or 23 years old, I wanted to travel, to see the world. When I talked with my wife we planned to leave for about 5 years, to travel around the world and come back to Poland and work there. The second thing was that we weren’t satisfied with the situation in Poland back then. My flat, my parents flat was searched a couple of times by the secret police. I was arrested a couple of times for smuggling books from the UK, for instance “1984” by George Orwell and during a demonstration in 1938. I was also disillusioned with Poland and looking back at Poland it seemed that nothing will change in the next 1,000 years. I just didn’t want to raise my children in such a country and I didn’t want to live there either. In a way, I had these feelings, not defined yet. I was aware of them but I finally understood them when we left for Germany and that was the beginning of our travel around the world to earn some Marks so that we could go to the next destination because, at the time, Polish zlotys had no value at all. After 10 months our passports weren’t extended and so we had to travel to Australia holding German documents saying that we have no citizenship. It was scandalous. After all, I still believed in Poland. In Germany I believed that Poland, despite being a communist country, was still my homeland. I’d never asked for asylum in Germany. I believed that my passport should be extended and that it’s because of red tape. After all, we were going back to Poland. However, our passports weren’t extended. Afterwards a young man came to our room in Hamburg and said that he is from the Polish trade mission in Bonn and offered to help us to get our passports extended if we cooperate and send reports to him once a month. This wasn’t the solution we were looking for. Germans treated us well and we didn’t want to travel with that kind of burden on our hands.
I remember when we first arrived to Sydney. In a way, we hated Australia because when the plane was approaching, it had to fly around the western districts of Sydney. We were unaccustomed to Australian architecture. We were looking down to those detached houses, rather unimaginative, with red roofs. I said to my wife: “Christ, we don’t want to live in those chicken houses”. This is how I perceived it. Then the plane landed and at 6 in the morning when we were going to the hostel for immigrants. We were passing the western districts, very beautiful. Then, in the evening, after having slept of a bit, we took our son, put him in the stroller and went to see the surroundings. There were no pavements so a wheel fell off our fine German stroller. It was a disaster because we had to buy another stroller. So, at the beginning, we really didn’t like Australia at all.
We didn’t have an emigrant’s suitcase with us because we wanted to go back to Poland. Thus, we didn’t take any items with us that reminded us of Poland. Those items were sent to us later. We received a portrait of Saint Severinus that had been hanging in my grandfather’s office before the Second World War and later in my parents’ flat. This portrait was very important for me. We got other items but they were just personal belongings and the most important for me were the letters my parents would send to me and the letters I would send to them. My parents wrote to me about the situation in Poland, described political changes and what was happening back there. I wrote them back what happened to me in Australia.
It’s really hard and I wouldn’t want anybody to be put in my shoes. It’s like being totally uprooted, devoid of the place you came from but, at the same time, it’s a totally new chance. It’s a chance to succeed in a new society and from my perspective probably the most important thing is not to look back. If you look back and you have too much sentiment, or too much family connections, especially financial ones, obligations to help one’s family in Poland, then it’s really hard to move on. If one comes to a new country and knows that there is no going back, it’s a lot easier.
Poland is my homeland. The country I originated from. Poland is an idea. Poland is something wonderful what we aspire to. Back then it was everyday life and now it’s perfect. Australia is my home. Australia is the country that took me in. Australia is the country where my children were raised. And I suppose Australia is the country where I’ll die.
I think something that you can do for the others is of value. It’s valuable that you can transfer some ideals and equities from the Polish reality and implement them in emigration. Those are certain imponderables and I think that every man should aspire to them. Faith in social justice, religious tolerance. In Poland, when I was 13 or 15 I was a Catholic. For 12 years I was an altar boy, I attended three masses a day. It was my mother’s ambition to make a priest out of me. She definitely overdid it and one day I rebelled and quit but I still have respect for the Catholic culture, for some Catholic ideals in me. I’ve forgotten my youthful anger and I still feel strongly connected with Polish culture, with Catholic culture. I believe that we should allow others coming to this country to do their best. It’s not just the matter of ideology but economics. The accent the people use in this country is not important. It’s important how far we can spread our wings to make Australia the best country in the word.
I became the Ombudsman in 2000 due to two reasons. Firstly, I was involved in human rights movement and I was a member of the first Australian Human Rights Commission that had been established in 1983, I think, but I was also supported by the prime minister. I knew prime minister Howard and, of course, that fact was in my favour. However, when I became the Ombudsman I faced various problems. One of the most serious issues was the fact that a lot of people from Indonesia and other countries of the Pacific came by boats to Australia asking for asylum. Those people were kept in refugee camps and, at the time, there was this law in Australia ordering their immediate confinement after having arrived to Australia. It was obligatory. They had no choice, the authorities didn’t have any choice because that was the law. So they had to be kept there, in the refugee camps until they received the Australian visa. 90% of them received the visa but it took quite a while. I observed one of such cases when I was investigating the immigration camps… I’m sorry but my English is far better than Polish. At work I used English all the time and I’m trying to speak Polish but it’s really difficult for me because I my English is far better than Polish, especially when I speak of my work but let’s try to wade anyway…There was a child, a little girl in the immigration camp in Australia who spent de facto five years, five months and twenty days closed in a cheap prison in the desert. Afterwards she received the refugee visa and our authorities decided that it was time to send her to school. They said: “Listen, child, it’s time to go to school so that you can be a good Australian citizen”. This is one of the most extreme cases. Many people spent from six months to two years in such conditions. And I believed the system to be really unfair because if someone came to Australia by plane and asked for asylum then nobody locked them in prisons. They could wait, being a part of a community, to have their case settled. Their chance to get asylum was really slight, about 25%. So why should we now lock those people who come by boats to Australia for such a long period of time? I believed that from the economic perspective it’s simply unfair, it’s inhumane. I believed that all those people should be freed, allowed to travel around Australia, to work, to lead normal lives. And if it turns out that they are not refugees, then we can send them back.
Of course, it’s a matter of history. Australia has culture that fears invasion from the north, from China, Indonesia, Vietnam. This was the reason why Australia unified in 1901. We are simply afraid of the people invading our country from the north. Thus, Australians want everyone, who comes here by boat, to be sent back or at least to treat that person unkindly enough to discourage others to come by boats to Australia. I was wondering how to play this. The previous Ombudsman wrote a report on the issue and claimed that it’s against all human rights but the authorities threw that report into the bin and nothing changed. I had to find a more effective method. Thus, I concentrated on children due to the fact that there is an international children convention that says that children should not be locked in such camps and if they need to be locked, it should be done for the shortest period possible. So I investigated. The commissioner initiating an investigation in Australia is given vast powers. I could call up witnesses and every selected official or clerk of the federal authorities has to be a witness. I had the right to access any documents so I organized my investigation in such a way to be accessible and I invited the media for every witness examination. Thus, I gave the authorities a two-year campaign on the sufferings of such people during the immigration process. The result was that the public opinion has changed. When my report reached the federal parliament 65% of Australians believed that children should not be locked in refugee camps. In effect, Howard’s cabinet changed their policy and, as a consequence of my report, all the children were allowed to live in Australia and I am very proud of that.
The media is very important. It’s the same for people at the top. Irrespectively, if it’s a democratic society or the totalitarian system, like in Poland. And a good example was when I decided to invite my parents here one year after our arrival to Australia. They didn’t want to emigrate, I just wanted them to stay with us for six months. Poles refused to issue them passports. At the time, I was still being punished for leaving Poland without a permission. So I sent an ultimatum to the Minister of Internal Affairs saying that if within three months my parents won’t get their passports, I’ll organize a hunger strike in Sydney. I received a reply from an Internal Affairs official and I’ll miss out his last name here because he is still working there. He wrote that I’m a terrible, unpatriotic boor, and that I don’t love Poland. He wrote that such a person who had never given anything back to Poland had no right to write such letters. I still have that letter but when three months passed I decided to organize the strike. In the meantime there were negotiations pending because my uncle, Jerzy Ozdowski, was the deputy prime minister of the Republic of Poland and he managed to get one passport for one of my parents and the other was to stay in Poland. I sad that it’s unacceptable because normal people get passports so why shouldn’t my parents get their passports as well. I argued that they are retired and what could they do to this poor Polish Peoples Republic? So on 21st March, I think, I went to Martin Place. That was back in 1976. And it was an interesting lesson for the Australian society and for me also because at first I put my signs on Martin Place and a police officer approached me and said: “Listen, it’s a public space for recreation. You mustn’t demonstrate here. You cannot organize any political protests here. If you want you can go to the park but this place is no good for that”. He also said: “I’m going to have to arrest you”. In the meantime I had arranged a TV coverage so that the TV cameras were already in place. I replied: “No problem, just arrest me but you’d have to carry me and there are a few of my friends supporting me here”. So the policeman came a bit closer and said in a quiet voice: “Why are you messing around? Go to the stairs of the post office. This is the federal territory, not the state’s and I have no jurisdiction there”. So I said “Thank you”. I moved my signs two metres back, I went up the post office stairs on Martin Place and due to the fact that it was federal territory and there weren’t any federal police officers around, I could start the hunger strike there. And so I started to collect signatures. In a day I collected over two thousand signatures supporting the release of my parents so that they could visit their grandchildren, which was really quick. At the time I would also hand over pieces of paper with the phone number to the consulate asking people to call the institution and ask why they aren’t allowing the grandparents to leave Poland. My hunger strike didn’t last long. It was just three days because on the second day in the evening I got a message that both of my parents received their passports. Of course, I didn’t believe that. I didn’t want to move. So… I waited till morning and I called my parents. They confirmed that they have their passports and so I ended the strike. I must say that it worked really well because since then the communist authorities didn’t touch my family.
There hasn’t been any time that I missed Poland. I was proud that I’m a Pole and I was proud of Polish achievements. I agonized about the martial law in Poland and I spent a lot of time helping Poland during communist period, I was the head of many organizations. I transferred many millions of dollars to Poland. However, it wasn’t a longing like I wanted to go back. We invited my parents and my parents-in-law. We also invited my siblings here. After the political transformation we started to visit Poland when we felt it was safe for us to go there. Australia is our homeland now. We’ve stayed, settled here, we rooted here. This is the country of my success. This is the country of my children’s success and now we belong to Australia. I suppose one day I’ll be looking for a cemetery and it will be an Australian one despite the fact that we have a beautiful tomb back in Jarocin. We celebrate Polish holidays here but it’s different here than back in Poland. I’ll never forget the first and the second Christmas here. It was in Armidale when I started writing my doctoral thesis and we decided that it all has to be like in Poland. My wife cooked many dishes, I wore a suit, we dressed our children nicely and we all waited for this first star to appear to start the Christmas Eve. It was December and the temperature was 35 degrees and the evening started about 10 p.m. so after that we decided to modify this Polish tradition that we really love. More and more often we spent the Christmas Eve by the sea. We had different food but we maintained some Polish traditions, some Polish elements. We sang Polish Christmas carols and we had saint bread but there were no more suits, we’ve skipped the formal character of Christmas. It was just… It’s different but, at the same time, it’s still Polish.
