The Mystery of the Tanganyika Knife and the Rediscovery of the Polish Refugee Experience of Britain’s Wartime Empire

Genealogy Pub Date : 2024-07-08 DOI:10.3390/genealogy8030089
Kasia Tomasiewicz
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Abstract

My Polish grandmother was sixteen when she arrived in Bolton. By the time teenagers today sit their GCSE examinations, she had travelled the distance of almost three-quarters of the globe. From Drohobycz in Poland (now modern Ukraine) following the arrest and murder of her father by the USSR’s NKVD aged 6, to a detention camp in Soviet Kyrgyzstan, to Iran, Tanganyika, and South Africa, before finally settling in England. Hers is a story of Stalin’s crimes, but it is simultaneously a story of how refugees utilised the global connections and routes created by the British Empire. It is also a postwar story of how she made a home in the nation that facilitated her wartime life. She carried with her few possessions, bar a bone letter-opener knife with an elephant carved into the handle, which she passed down to me. Bringing scholarship around refugee experiences, family histories, and material culture into conversation, this journal article seeks to achieve three things. First, it brings the story of the Polish refugees who utilised the imperial routes, colonies, dominions, and nations of British ‘interest’ to greater attention. While there has been some research into this in Britain, it has been an under-explored aspect of wartime experience which shows us as much about the war in the East as it does the inherently global nature of the war. Second, it asks what role the memory of the Polish refugee experience serves, both for those who lived through it and for subsequent generations. And finally, it addresses how this memory, beyond the Polish diaspora, might be used to explore more the nuances of life during the Second World War.
坦噶尼喀刀之谜与英国战时帝国波兰难民经历的再发现
我的波兰祖母 16 岁时来到博尔顿。在今天的青少年参加普通中等教育证书考试时,她已经走过了几乎地球四分之三的距离。6岁时,她的父亲被苏联国家安全委员会(NKVD)逮捕并杀害,之后她从波兰的德罗霍比茨(现在的乌克兰)来到苏联吉尔吉斯斯坦的拘留营,再到伊朗、坦噶尼喀和南非,最后定居英国。这是一个关于斯大林罪行的故事,但同时也是一个关于难民如何利用大英帝国建立的全球联系和路线的故事。这也是一个战后故事,讲述了她如何在这个为她战时生活提供便利的国家安家落户。她随身携带的物品不多,只有一把手柄上刻有大象图案的骨质拆信刀,她把这把刀传给了我。这篇期刊文章将围绕难民经历、家族历史和物质文化的学术研究结合起来,旨在实现三个目标。首先,它让人们更加关注利用帝国路线、殖民地、领地和英国 "感兴趣 "的国家的波兰难民的故事。虽然英国已经对此进行了一些研究,但对战时经历的这一方面的研究一直不足,它向我们展示了东方战争的情况以及战争固有的全球性质。其次,它询问波兰难民经历的记忆对经历者和后代有何作用。最后,它探讨了如何在波兰侨民之外利用这种记忆来探索第二次世界大战期间生活的细微差别。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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