Bombay City of the 1940s will always have a special place in the hearts of the Polish people. It was from this city that two overland truck convoys were organized and sent into the Soviet Union to rescue Polish children, women, and the elderly, who were released from the Soviet gulags (prison camps) soon after the Soviet Union joined the Allied powers in 1940 to fight Nazi Germany. To cater to this influx of refugees into Bombay, the Polish consulate general and the Polish Red Cross set up an entire ecosystem of a Polish hospital, the Indo-Polish library, the Federation of Poles in India[1], and an administrative hub to oversee the housing and education of Polish children. The older children stayed in the city and the younger ones were sent to Balachadi Camp in the princely kingdom of Nawanagar, Kutch, and Valivade Camp in the princely kingdom of Kolhapur.
To understand the critical role that Bombay’s Polish mission played during the War years in rescuing 5,577 refugees, as per the consulate general’s 1945 report, and keeping them safe till they could return to Poland, it is necessary to revisit its early history.
Bombay’s first Polish consulate[2] was also the country’s first in Asia and established in 1933. This consulate, like most in the city, was focused on expanding Poland’s trade with India, and especially with Bombay City and its Presidency. In its early years (1933-39) bilateral trade was largely in agricultural products, pharmaceuticals, and machinery and tools imported from Poland. Exports from India were mostly rice and spices.
This first Polish diplomatic mission in Bombay closed in September 1945 when Poland became part of the Soviet Bloc. But it left its imprint on the city during the War years, a time when it geared itself to “search and rescue” the thousands of Polish children, women, and elderly who were released from the Soviet gulags (prison camps) when the USSR joined the Allies in 1940.
There was a desperate urgency to rescue those released. Not only were these survivors dispersed across the Soviet republics often exposed to the cold winters there, but the invasion by Germany and the Soviet Union[3] resulted in a systematic decimation of Poland’s population.[4] With the release of Polish prisoners from Soviet prison camps, the young men joined hastily formed Polish regiments, while the women, children, and the elderly became refugees.
It was from Bombay that the Polish Consulate General Dr Eugeniusz Banasiński, the consulate staff (notably the press attaché Wanda Dynowska, named Umadevi by Mahatma Gandhi), and the consul general’s wife, Kira (the India representative of the Polish Red Cross), set about organising three overland expeditions from Bombay into the Soviet Central Asian states of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan where these refugees were scattered.
The first expedition from Bombay, which consisted of a convoy of trucks carrying essential supplies, reached the Soviet Union in late 1941 and carried back the first batch of Polish children to Bombay in mid-1942. The children were sent to camps hosted by the princely states of Nawanagar and Kolhapur.
The consulate had to arrange finances and oversee the administration and logistics of those camps and also for the older children studying in Bombay’s St. Mary’s Boys Institution, and for the Polish girls studying in a convent school in the nearby hill station of Panchgani.
After the November 1943 Tehran Conference, the British government withdrew support for the Polish government-in-exile. This loss of diplomatic status was managed by the consulate general in Bombay by converting itself into a mission of the Polish Red Cross.
Under the aegis of the Polish Red Cross, the first-ever Polish hospital[5] overseas was established in Bombay. The Times of India of 3 June 1944 reported the inauguration of this hospital which once occupied the third wing of a charity building run by the Sir Akbar Peerbhoy Sanatorium Trust, located exactly opposite Charni Road Station. On one part of this plot today stands the Saifee Hospital. But the wing occupied by the Polish hospital was east-facing and opened on a back road.[6] Quoting Kira Banasiński, the consul general’s wife and representative of the Polish Red Cross, the Times reported that as the refugees arrived in very poor health and could not speak the local language, having a Polish hospital staffed by Polish nurses overcame not just this barrier but the difficulty of finding hospital beds in the city. In addition to foreign funding, local well-wishers of the Polish refugees generously contributed over Rs 9,000 towards this hospital.[7]
After the War ended, most refugees returned to their Polish homeland — then in the Soviet Bloc — and the city’s first Consulate General of Poland officially closed. The office in Bombay was re-opened in 1963, nine years after Poland re-established diplomatic relations with independent India, a relationship that completes its platinum jubilee this year and is being celebrated with the Indian Prime Minister’s visit.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, a strong reconnection with India was made, especially by the children from the camps. Over the years, they have travelled often to India and have jointly memorialized in a book their experiences and the hospitality they received in India. The Jam Sahib Digvijaysinhji of Nawanagar and the royal family of Kolhapur who played stellar roles in the lives of these children, are remembered in Poland with reverence. In the capital city of Warsaw, eight schools are named after the Jam Sahib, and two memorials exist, one to the Kolhapur royal family and the other to the Jam Sahib. It is here that Prime Minister Modi laid a wreath as a remembrance of the compassion that enjoined the two peoples.
The memories of the younger children from the camps who survive today, form the bedrock of the India-Poland relations. But it is also important to revere those who enabled their life and liberty in Bombay — the first Polish consulate and its staff, the Federation of Poles in India, the many Indian doctors at the Polish Red Cross Hospital, and the city’s benevolent citizens who all contributed in ways big and small, to save Polish lives and made possible their return home.
Sifra Lentin is Fellow, Bombay History, Gateway House.
This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.
Support our work here.
For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in.
©Copyright 2024 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited.
References
[1] This Federation was founded by early Polish refugees of 1940-41 in Bombay.
[2] The consulate’s status was stepped up to consulate general, adding diplomatic engagement to trade, in early 1939. This was just months before the outbreak of World War II, began with the Nazi invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, and a few days later by Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. Through this, the Polish consulate never closed its offices in the city, which was then on the third floor of Whiteway Laidlaw Buildings (today’s Handloom House) on Hornby Road (Dadabhoy Naoroji Road). It continued its work under directions from its government-in-exile headquartered in London and headed by General Wladyslaw Sikorski.
[3] The Soviet Union invaded Poland on 17 September 1939.
[4] Some estimates state that the Soviets deported between 1.6 to 2.2 million Poles as slave labour to the prison camps and recruited young men forcibly into the Red Army.
[5] The Times of India, 3 June 1944, page 6.
[6] The case of Saifee Hospital Trust, https://misbah.info/judicial-triumphs/the-story-behind-the-landmark/
[7]The hospital was set up for people from the Polish camps but was open to all patients subject to the availability of beds. It began with just 40 beds and had an operating theatre at the time of its inauguration.