Finding Poland

Following the partitioning of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, Matthew Kelly's great grandmother and her two daughters were deported to the East. Thus began an extraordinary ordeal that took them, and many thousands like them, on a journey stretching from Siberia to Pakistan, and beyond. Their male relatives endured a parallel journey, arrested, exiled, and held as prisoners of war. Countless numbers were summarily executed by the Red Army. They saw the steppe, they were put to work in labour camps, they built sections of the trans-Siberian railway, they cleared forests, they toiled on collective farms. They knew hunger, exhaustion, disease and death. Persecuted by the Soviet Union, Poland was to become its unexpected ally following the German invasion in 1941. A new Polish army, 'The Anders Army' was assembled in Palestine. For a brief moment, in Kazakhstan, families were reunited, before being evacuated, to India, to Britain, to Mexico and East Africa, and from there, across the world. The experiences of these Poles had consequences far reaching and enduring, both to Poland, to Polish identity, and to the families that survived, reverberating through generations.These incredible stories remain largely untold. In Finding Poland Matthew Kelly embarks on a journey through his ancestor's footsteps, travelling through places they lived, and landscapes they survived, to provide an account of these extraordinary people and their unique history. Part memoir, history and travel book, it is also a profound meditation on the experience of displacement and exile, of the impact of such seismic disruption, and the deep legacies such trauma bequeaths.

Préface
An expansive, insightful and moving history of the Polish experience during World War Two, and its lasting legacy

Auteur

Matthew Kelly

Texte du rabat

Following the partition of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, Mathew Kelly's great grandmother and her two daughters were deported to the East. Thus began an extraordinary ordeal that took them, and many thousands like them, on a journey stretching from Siberia to Iran, India and beyond.

They saw the steppe, they were put to work in labour camps, they built sections of the Trans-Siberian railway. They knew hunger, exhaustion, disease and death. Their male relatives endured a parallel journey: executed, arrested, exiled, and held as prisoners of war.

What would happen to them at the war's end? The answer to this question had consequences far reaching and enduring, both to Poland, to Polish identity, and to the families that survived, reverberating through the generations. Matthew Kelly embarks on a journey through his family's footsteps, travelling through the places they lived and landscapes they survived to provide an account of his extraordinary family and their people's unique history.

'A fascinating blend of biography and history, which poignantly evokes the pain and loss attendant on exile, in both wartime and peace' Daily Telegraph

'A cracking story which he tells with compassion, verve, and the professional historian's restraint and accuracy' Irish Times