This is a full text transcript of jolanta-kutereba-interview.
Oral history recording transcript Duration: 1 hour 42 minutes ---- Chapters 01 Family Roots and Parents’ Wartime Stories 02 Life in Abbey Wood and Growing Up Between Two Cultures 03 The Birth of Karolinka: Passion and Determination of Jolanta’s Mother 04 Polish Schools and Cultivating Identity 05 The Value of Community and Contemporary Challenges 06 Polishness as a Part of Life
🕑 00:00:00
Barbara Furmanowicz: Today is the 28th of March 2021, my name is Barbara Furmanowicz, I'm interviewing Jolanta Kutereba. Jola, I would like to ask the question that goes to the very beginning for you. I would like to ask you how did your parents meet and how did they settle in England?
🕑 00:00:28
Jolanta Kutereba: OK, OK, a long time ago. So, my parents’ meeting… So, at the very beginning of the war, my parents were taken out of Poland. They were told to leave their houses and they were taken by cattle truck, if you like, or trains, as it was then, cattle trains, to Siberia. They took a journey that many Poles took at the beginning of the war when they were taken out of their houses, when they were told to leave their houses. My dad, travelling from Lwów, which is now in the Ukraine, and my mum from Wilno, which is now part of Lithuania, and they were taken east into Russia, into Siberia, and eventually found their way down south through Tehran, Iran, all down that way down to Persia. My mum found herself in Africa with her family and my dad found himself in India. That's quite a quick story. But along the way, my dad with his family, my dad was orphaned during the war and he then travelled to an orphanage that took him and a huge amount of children, along with his sister, to India. And he was settled there in the Maharajah's Palace. The name of the place was, you know, I remembered it earlier on and I can't remember, I'm going to try and think about it again… Jamnagar. That's right, Jamnagar. He settled into Maharajah's Palace, which was then given over to orphans from the war, and he spent possibly something like five to six years there before he then…, actually about five years, before he then travelled with his sister by boat all the way down south, as you can imagine, all the way round to England in about 1945.
🕑 00:02:23
My mother, on the other hand, who was about three years younger than my dad, so she was about three when she was evacuated… well, not evacuated, when they were torn from their homes, and she found herself with her family in Africa. She remembered a little bit less about her journey. So we have fewer stories of my mum's story, of my mum's experience. But she also then… Her father was in the army, in the Polish army, and he worked as a mechanic. And she, with his family, was then given the choice after the war had ended to go to… The Poles had a number of choices because they were the allies: America, Canada, Argentina, France, England. And my mum's parents chose England and they found themselves in the UK after the war.
🕑 00:03:14
Both my father and my mother were then settled in the Midlands, where there were a number of camps for the Poles, and they settled into the different schools and the camps there, and initially were in two completely different places, but I can't tell you where exactly. Certainly my mum's family settled in Birmingham, so it would have been in the Midlands there somewhere. And eventually what happened was that they met through activities that the Polish communities then started to create, where young people would come together and they were educated in Polish because they were thinking that the Poles would end up returning to Poland. But when Poland became a communist country, there was no possibility for them to return or the decision was made for them that they wouldn't return. Or perhaps they made the decision not to return. I don't think it would have been easy. And they settled in England. And what happened after that was that both my parents finished their education in England, studied for a degree, so went to study further and became teachers.
🕑 00:04:25
And before they became teachers, if I could just go back a little bit, when the communities were then mixing and joining together, my parents would meet. My parents would meet when those communities got together and my dad remembered seeing my mum for the first time when her school was doing a gymnastics display in one of these community meetings outdoors. And she had a ball and they were doing… If you think back to the 1950s and the sort of gymnastics displays that young people would do then as part of their school PE curriculum, my mum had a ball and she'd be throwing it and the girls would be catching it and then be doing it in unison. And my mum dropped the ball. [laughter] And my dad remembered looking at her and watched her drop the ball, and he was always a bit of a joker and I think she was 14 at the time. And my mom said that it took her a while to come around to liking my dad because whilst he was this big joker and probably gave her quite a lot of attention, she wasn't interested because she thought he was a bit of a show off. But I think ultimately, being the dancer and the performer that my mum was, and the performer and the sort of sportsman that my dad was, it was a bit of a, sort of, match made in heaven. I think they basically sort of migrated towards each other and got together. I think then it must have been when my mom was 15 or 16, actually.
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