Aging Polish Refugees Remain in England Camp

More than 40 years after the end of World War II, 130 elderly Poles still live in former U.S. Army barracks inside Britain’s only remaining Polish refugee camp.

“Most have no relatives, nothing,” said a longtime resident of the camp, nestled among the green hills of Devon in picturesque southwestern England.

The residents, women in head scarfs and elderly men with an almost military bearing, were worried recently by press reports that the government planned to close the camp and move them to nursing homes.

But concern that they would be uprooted turned into joy when the Social Services Ministry announced that the camp would stay open.

Known as the “Polish Camp,” or “Little Poland” to local villagers, it is one of 40 refugee camps set up after the war to house and teach English to Poles who fought under British command during World War II and their dependents.

Only this one camp, run by the Department of Health and Social Services near this village, remains.

“After the war, when Polish troops from Italy came here, their families joined them,” one resident, a former Free Polish soldier, said.

Most of the refugees, he said, had been peasants in eastern Poland. Along with thousands of other Poles they were sent to Siberia in 1940.

By 1947, about 650 homeless Poles had moved into drab, one-story brick barracks that had once housed American soldiers and German prisoners of war.

The arrangement was supposed to be temporary, and most of the refugees were relocated, moving into the British stream of life. But 130, most of whom have not mastered English, stayed in their little piece of Poland.

“They couldn’t integrate, the language was difficult and most are disabled,” the ex-serviceman explained. The camp became their haven in a part of England known for its rolling hills, wind-blasted seascapes and clotted cream--a place where they could have Polish sausage and borscht and collect mushrooms in the woods as they did at home.

They also raised hens, trading eggs and Polish recipes for bread brought by the village baker’s van.

Forty years later, the camp, officially called Ilford Park, has all the trappings of the old people’s home it has now effectively become.

“There is warmth and good food, and I am very happy it is staying open,” said 80-year-old Halina Zuchowska. Camp director Maurice Clark said many of the Poles wept with joy when told they could remain.

“Even a slight move on site can be very disruptive to these Poles whose home this is,” agency spokesman Peter Davies told reporters.

Camp officials say the refugees still have nightmares about the war, when some were driven out of their homes to spend two years as slave laborers in Siberia.

“People cannot wipe out the memory of being forced from their homes at night all those years ago,” said Stanislav Sokolowski, 69. “Any movement, even to a better place, would bring back those memories. We would rather stay in the same accomodation.