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Speech at Launch of Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum

Polish Embassy, London, 17 September 2009

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring a message of support for the Kresy-Siberia virtual museum from the many British people who regard themselves as friends of Poland. I am a former Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Poland and a founder member of Labour Friends of Poland.

It has been almost 30 years since I first started to get to know the Polish culture and Polish people.

In that time I have been impressed by your resourcefulness, your humanitarianism and the sense of history it seems that every Polish person carries with them.
 
One of the first things I learned – it was news to me! – was that the country my atlas describes as Poland, outlined by those 1945 borders which were established after the second world war, was never actually ‘Poland,’ on those exact borders, at any previous time in history.

Few countries can have seen their borders change so often and so radically as this nation which is sometimes called the Crossroads of Europe.

And it is that insecurity, fed by invasions from east and from west, by promises of friendships from other countries which too often came to nothing, and Poland’s role almost as a hostage in many of Europe’s conflicts over centuries, which is at the heart of the initiative which we are gathered here to celebrate today.

We worry, with some justification, about the wars that the world has seen even in the 21st century, let alone in the bloody 20th. The statistics of the two great world wars boggle the mind even when compared to the greatest natural disasters that nature has meted out over the centuries.

But one of those statistics, and again one which I was not aware of until just a few days ago, is that the Russians deported up to 2 million Polish people from Poland, from the Kresy, the eastern borderlands, on the orders of Stalin himself in 1940, removing people to slave labour camps, gulags, in Siberia and other parts of eastern Asia.

The Gehenna was as callous and brutal as any invasion before or since.
 
Whatever hopes the people of Poland had that the Russian invasion of their country in 1939 would achieve its purported goal of repelling the Nazis were short lived.

I have read that the Russians branded their action in 1939 as an attempt to free Polish peasants from the yoke of the Polish landlords; yet many of those peasants were deported alongside the other classes.

Perhaps it would have helped if there had been a logic to the Russian actions, a humanitarian reason for taking people away from danger and into a situation of relative safety and security.

The slave labour camps – which were not just in Siberia, as I understand it, but in Kazakhstan and eastern Asia too – were no party.

Again, 30 years ago the Polish people I got to know were those here in London in the west London Polish community, the second biggest Polish community outside Poland, surpassed only by Chicago.

And I realised that Poles had become an almost international race. Over the years I have heard stories about Polish communities in South America, in India, Australia, Canada and even in Africa.

The notion of migration is nothing new to Poles. Even that transportation of hundreds and thousands to Siberia in 1940 was not the first example of this happening as the Tsars set a precedent in the middle of the 19th century. Even prior to that, luminaries such as Frederick Chopin found themselves obliged to leave the country of their birth.

Deportation to Siberia in 1940 was involuntary and without hope. It was followed by a wandering of the globe, in the summer of 1941, with little in the way of guidance.

Why? Because Stalin had agreed to release Poles from his labour camps as a prerequisite for joining the allies in a concerted campaign against Hitler.
In releasing them he abandoned them in one of the most desolate and distant parts of the world.

And indeed it was up to the Poles themselves to make their way away from Siberia and back to where ever they could find their communities, their army and their refuge. That appeared to be anywhere in the world – other than Poland.

As I understand it, very many of the Siberian Poles found themselves in Iran or Persia and even in the British colonies in eastern Africa.

I know that many took their place in General Anders’ army and in that campaign they worked alongside my own father, a captain in the British Army, in the Italian campaign which included, of course, Monte Cassino.

My father never used to talk to me about the war.
He had very few memories of which he wanted reminding and he hated the fact that he had been there at all. But when I saw his old photographs and asked him of his specific memories of the Italian campaign, his most abiding thoughts was of the bravery and the friendship of his Polish colleagues at that time.

Indeed there will be those here in London who were amongst those Poles who were transported to Siberia in 1940 and I hope that we will have a chance to share many of your memories tonight and for years to come, thanks to this initiative.

Many of you will have come to this country during or immediately after the Second World War when you made your homes here.

Perhaps no other group of people has integrated better into British society over the years. Even the most recent wave of migration, since 2004, has confirmed the reputation of most Poles in this country as hardworking, conscientious and community spirited.

A moment ago I mentioned the period since 2004. In 2004 I believe we put an end to the possibility of another conflict between east and west in Europe.
Poland entered the international fold as a truly independent and aspiring democratic state alongside 26 brother and sister countries of the European Union.

I am very proud that in the period 2003-4 I went on 3 occasions to Poland to campaign for a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum that helped bring those changes about.

Yet it is as if becoming a truly European state is not enough! What we are witnessing tonight is part of a celebration that is taking place almost simultaneously in Warsaw, Sydney, Edinburgh, Washington, Chicago and Toronto as well as here in London; a world brotherhood of Poles.

It is a celebration of the collective memory of a nation and in particular those who were forcibly moved from their home and then dispersed at random, coming now tonight to what can only be described as a new ‘virtual’ home.

It is a celebration by children of the lives of their parents, keeping alive the family memories of times and events of a kind we hope will never be repeated, at a time when few remain with first hand knowledge of the Gehenna.

Poland has been a political and national entity in various guises for many centuries. Tonight, using the technology of the 21st century, we are celebrating the launch of a unique museum, a virtual museum.

This is a really appropriate use of the ‘new technology’. It is using the science of the future to keep us in touch with the essence of the past. It is bringing individuals together in cyberspace to create a community which threatens no one and comforts many though without losing – I hope – the capacity to disturb.

Though the exhibits can neither be touched nor smelt nor tasted, at least we can see and read and hear about those parts of the history of Poland and the Polish nation which for many have been kept a secret for too long.

I congratulate all those involved in this magnificent venture. I know that tonight is only the beginning, or an early milepost, of an ever-expanding archive which will celebrate what your forefathers had to tolerate and suffer in the name and in the interests and in the spirit of Poland itself.

Thank you.

Tom Levitt MP
17 September 2009