Identity & Culture
Autograph books and diaries of Polish children in exile – 1940-1950
INFORMATION
CURATOR OF THE EXHIBITION
WESLEY ADAMCZYK
Wesley Adamczyk is the author of „When God Looked the Other Way”, published by University of Chicago Press, major contributor to “Children of the Katyn Massacre”, published by McFarland and Co., and a contributor to “Polskie dzieci na tulaczych szlakach 1939-1950”, published in 2008 by IPN in Poland. He is also an activist who has devoted his retirement years to the dissemination of information about the deportation of Polish people to Siberia and the Katyn massacre.
Born in Warsaw in 1933, Mr. Adamczyk was deported to Siberia in 1940 and escaped in 1942. His mother died soon after they reached freedom in Persia. Only later, Mr. Adamczyk learned that his father had been murdered in the Katyn massacre. Mr. Adamczyk came to the United States in 1949, at the age of 16, after his ten-year odyssey that took him across four continents and 12 countries. He is a graduate of DePaul University where he obtained a degree in chemistry and philosophy.
His exhibition examines the correlation between identity and culture as shown through the drawings of the exiled children; and through the inscriptions of the children that will reveal what was in their heart and soul during the exile.
FROM THE CURATOR
This exhibition is based on the drawings and inscriptions in the autograph books and diaries of Polish children who were deported from Poland to the Soviet Union in 1940-41 by the Soviets early in World War II. I was one of those children.
After two years of enslavement in inhuman conditions, thousands of us managed to escape in 1942 to freedom in Persia. Most of us were sick and famished, while many others were orphaned. Because of the deportation and exile, I have spent nearly ten years with these children in foreign lands, whether in the mud-huts of Siberia, the camel stables of Persia, or the Quonset huts of England. In spite of the fact that we were homeless and without a country, we brought with us our Polish culture, traditions, and the values our parents taught us. It was for this reason that the ancient city of Isfahan, the old capital of the mighty Persian Empire where many of us settled, was often referred to as “the city of Polish children”.
Our identity with our culture, heritage, and values was not something we thought about, it was a part of our character, as natural as breathing.
Today, seven decades later, when I read the inscriptions thousands of exiled children wrote in their autograph books and diaries decades ago, I became convinced that it was our identity with our culture and heritage that helped us to survive the long exile.
Speaking for a lonely exiled orphan of yester-years, this is what I wrote in my book, When God Looked the Other Way:
“I carried my home in my heart and found a way to escape there for comfort – in times of doubt, for wisdom; in times of fear, for courage; in times of loneliness, for love.”
Wesley (Wiesław) Adamczyk
Chicago, 17 September 2009
