In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland from the west, and Russia invaded from the east two weeks later. Life changed completely under Russian occupation. Then Stalin put into action his plan to ethnically cleanse the eastern borderlands of Poland - he ordered the deportation of an estimated 1.7 million Poles to Siberia.  On 10 February 1940, Tadeusz and his family were forced at gunpoint from their home in northeastern Poland (near Dubno) and taken by cattle train to a labour camp in Siberia. The soldiers told the family to collect some warm clothes and food and be out of the house by 6 a.m. Tadeusz’s family hurried out of the house and into cold uncertainty, leaving their home, and dozens of farm animals and the family dog behind. Tadeusz has said that this broke his father’s heart, and he never fully recovered.  It was a particularly brutal winter, with temperatures dipping into the minus 40s Celsius, so the conditions in the unheated cattle cars were beyond belief. Russian troops arrested hundreds of thousands of Poles. Their crime: simply being Polish. It was an act of ethnic cleansing of the eastern Polish borderlands.  Born in 1924, Tadeusz was 16 years old when he and his family were deported.  At the nearest train station, Polish citizens were loaded by the hundreds into cattle trains dozens of cars long. The train car was barely fit for animals. Frigid winds rushed through cracks in the wooden walls as the train chugged eastward. About 40 people were crammed into each car, with only wooden shelves

on either wall to sleep on. The toilet was a hole cut in the floor, under which snow-covered tracks rushed by.  They travelled this way, robbed of privacy and dignity, for weeks. Their train lumbered deep into the Siberian interior. During the train’s infrequent stops, a bucket of gruel and some stale bread was thrown into each car.  There was never enough to go around, and some people died of starvation or disease. Soldiers heaved their bodies out beside the tracks, where they froze solid, unless the wolves got to them first.  One day, the train rumbled to a halt in a barren, frozen steppe and Tadeusz’s family was put to work in a

labour camp. For 12 hours every day, Tadeusz hauled logs by horse from a forest to a riverbank, so they could be floated to a mill downstream. He and his horse were feasted on by clouds of mosquitoes. The moss packed into the cracked walls of the workers’ log cabins swarmed with other bloodsucking bugs that tormented them when they got a rare chance to sleep. In dozens of camps across Siberia, countless Poles worked in similar inhuman conditions, brutally punished for no crime. They worked in freezing temperatures from dawn until dusk. It is estimated that tens of thousands died. The Poles were being systematically exterminated by overwork and starvation.  Hope came late in the summer of 1941 when ‘amnesty’ was declared for the enslaved Poles. Germany had invaded Russian-held territories, turning the former Russian ally into an enemy. The Poles were told they were free, and those who were able to fight could join the Polish army to battle Germany.  Freedom was a relative term however, since they had no money and no transportation out of Siberia.  Tadeusz and his father built a ramshackle raft of sticks and roes, loaded it with the few belongings the family still had, and pulled it dozens of kilometers down a shallow river to the nearest town.  Along the way, they begged for food and accommodation from Russian villagers. Eventually, they boarded a train – no better than the one that had taken them into Siberia – and heated south for Kazakhstan.

Tadeusz’s younger brother Stanislaw was wasting away from malnutrition. Their mother tried to trade her wedding ring for a glass of milk. It was too late. Tadeusz recalls his brother saying, “I’ll never return to Poland, An angel came to me and is going to take me away”. He died on Christmas Day in 1941, in Kazakhstan. The ground was hard, and Tadeusz had to claw at the soil in order to dig a shallow grave for his brother. As he resurrects the memory, he pounds his fist on his knee, as if trying to replace the emotional pain with physical pain. “All these years and I still cry”, he said.

After Stanislaw’s death, Tadeusz’s father’s conditioned worsened, both mentally and physically. He was starving to death. Once, when Tadeusz and his father were collecting kindle for a fire, a stray dog wandered up to them. His father handed him a heavy stick and told him what to do. “I did not want to kill it, but we had not had any meat in months”. Tadeusz still recalls how the dog did not try to run away, and how it slumped over when he clubbed it. How his father had skinned it beside a river, and how they shared the meat with another starving family. The meat sustained Tadeusz’s father, but only temporarily. Three weeks after he buried his brother, Tadeusz buried his father in an adjacent grave, again clawing at the frozen ground. When he could dig no more, he dragged his father`s emaciated body into the grave and covered it with stones. He stared at the graves of his father and brother, side by side in the shade of a tree in Kazakhstan. He vowed to avenge them – and to avenge all his fellow Poles who had suffered.  With nothing to lose, and two lives to avenge, Tadeusz jumped a train heading south, where the Polish army was forming in the USSR. He evacuated to Persia (Iran) with the army. After he was nursed back to health, he trained in Iraq and Palestine, and fought battles in the Italian Campaign. The Allies won the war, but Poland was never the same. Maps were redrawn, the eastern borderlands were now part of the USSR, and the rest of Poland was under Communist rule.

Tadeusz studied engineering in England, where he met a pretty girl named Joyce while waiting for a bus.  They married on Valentine’s Day in 1953 – 12 years and a day after his father’s death.  Tadeusz has lived in Canada since the 1950s. He has written and self-published a book, in Polish and English, about his family’s Siberian ordeal. On the cover is a black and white photograph of his family.  The picture is sliced into several pieces with German swastikas and Russian sickles splitting the family’s survivors from those who died in 1941.  Memories like these are burned into the minds of the Poles who lived through the brutal Siberian deportations of 1940-1941. Wherever they found new lives after WW2, the survivors bore both the physical and mental scars caused by abuse, starvation, and grief.

Many refused to talk about their ordeals in Siberia, fearing reprisal from the same Soviet System that had enslaved them. Others remained silent because they could not find words to convey the horrors.  But now, as the decades pass and the legacy of the deported Poles fades deeper into historical obscurity, more and more survivors are sharing their stories.

Those old enough to remember Siberia are now old. They want to tell the world what happened while they still can. This is what Tadeusz is trying to do.

Source: Polish Exiles of WW2 interview

Permission for publishing this material at kpk.kitchener website was obtained on March 23, 2024 from

Krystyna Szypowska, representant of Polish Exiles of WW2, by email sent to bulikjerzy@gmail.com

Additional information about Tadeusz Pęcak.

It is said above: ”and fought battles in the Italian Campaign”. One of them, which he fought, was the battle of Monte Cassino.

He was very active in Polish community of Kitchener – Waterloo and surrounding area. In particular he was very much engaged in activity Polish Branch of Royal Canadian Legion, nr 412 (he was its president for several periods) and in activity of Kitchener district od Polish Canadian Congress (he was its chairman for several periods). He organized “Club of 1000” for playing cards as well as “Association of Polish Community of Kitchener Waterloo”.

He is the author of one patent (Nr 455 7473) and co-author of another one (4613127) Information about his grave

Tadeusz Pecak

BIRTH 6 Jul 1923

DEATH 21 Sep 2013 (aged 90)

Waterloo Regional Municipality, Ontario, Canada

BURIAL

Woodland Cemetery

Kitchener, Waterloo Regional Municipality, Ontario, Canada 

GPS-Latitude: 43.4364528, Longitude: -80.443545

Cremorial Gardens MEMORIAL ID 173200654

Władysław Zagaja urodził się 27.X.1919 roku w Borzęcinie, w powiecie Brzesko. Wychowywał się we Włoszynie koło Szczurowej, a następnie w Zakrzewie koło Wojnicza. Do szkoły powszechnej uczęszczał najpierw w Szczurowej a potem w Wojniczu. W maju 1939 roku złożył egzamin dojrzałości w Liceum im. Kazimierza Brodzińskiego w Tarnowie. Plany studiów wyższych pokrzyżował wybuch drugiej wojny światowej. Jako żołnierz wziął udział w kampanii wrześniowej.  Do konspiracji przystąpił i został zaprzysiężony w Wojniczu, w grudniu 1939 roku. Działał w Narodowej Organizacji Wojskowej, a następnie w Armii Krajowej. Pełnił funkcję kolportera prasy podziemnej i łącznika między placówkami NOW w południowo wschodnich powiatach Okręgu Krakowskiego (w podokręgu „Chrobry”, a także kuriera Komendanta Okręgu Krakowskiego NOW. Wiosną 1944 r. oddelegowany został do plutonu dywersyjnego NOW w powiecie brzeskim, dowodzonego przez „Borzęckiego” – „Swobodę” (Józef Wojdak). Walczył w oddziale partyzanckim „Janina” pod dowództwem por. „Jawora” (Jan Gomoła) i w I Batalionie 16 pp. AK „Barbara” pod dowództwem kpt. „Leliwy” (Eugeniusz Borowski). Po demobilizacji batalionu „Barbara” pozostawał nadal w konspiracji. W oddziałach partyzanckich walczył wraz za swym bratem, Józefem Nie widząc możliwości dalszej działalności i w obawie o własne życie opuścił Polskę w październiku 1945 r. Przedostał się do Włoch, gdzie wstąpił do 2 Polskiego Korpusu pod dowództwem. Gen. Władysława Andersa i został skierowany do pracy w wywiadzie wojskowym. Od września 1946 r. przebywał w Wielkiej Brytanii, skąd w maju 1947 r. odpłynął do Kanady. Zamieszkał i założył rodzinę w Kitchener – Waterloo. Działał aktywnie w Polonii Kanadyjskiej. Polskę odwiedził tylko raz w 1992 r. Utrzymywał kontakt korespondencyjny z Towarzystwem Przyjaciół Ziemi Wojnickiej w Wojniczu. Zmarł w Kitchener 17.III.1996 r. Jest autorem książki „w wojnę i po wojnie” i wierszy, które zostały zamieszczone w tejże książce. Książka dostępna jest w Bibliotece Polskiej im. Mikołaja Reya, w Kitchener.

Antoni Caputa was born in Poland, in Pietrzykowice, in 1907.  He became a member of the Polish Army Ski Team in the thirties. He fought against Germans when they attacked Poland in September 1939.  When Germany occupied Poland in 1939, he tried to escape to Hungary where Polish soldiers were given a possibility to travel to France, where the Polish Army abroad was being organized. Unfortunately, he was caught by Slovakian police, which was collaborating with the Germans, and sent back to Poland.  Here he became one of first prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp (his camp number: 312).  He survived this and two other of Nazi Germany's most notorious concentration camps: Mauthausen (11281) and Dachau (39027).  After the war he arrived in Canada to make a new life for himself, and help others from Poland to do the same.  He settled in Kitchener – Waterloo in Ontario, where he passed on May 3, 1995.  He was very active in Polish community and in Polish organizations. 

He published two volumes of his memoires: “Z Pietrzykowic w szeroki świat” and “Póki my żyjemy”.  The former was published in English under the title: “From Pietrzykowice across the world”

Thomas Anthony Brzustowski, OC FRSC (Polish: Tomasz Antoni Brzustowski; April 4, 1937 – June 19, 2020) was a Canadian engineer, academic, and civil servant.

Born in Warsaw, he came to Canada with his family when he was 11. He received a B.A.Sc. degree in engineering physics from the University of Toronto in 1958. He received an M.A. degree from Princeton University in 1960 and a Ph.D. degree in aeronautical engineering in 1963.

He then joined the University of Waterloo teaching in the department of mechanical engineering. From 1967 to 1970 he was the chairman of the department and from 1975 to 1987 he was Vice-President, Academic. From 1987 to 1991 he was the Ontario deputy minister of Colleges and Universities. He was president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council from 1995 to 2005.[1]

From 2005 to 2012[2] he served as the inaugural RBC Professor in Commercialization of Innovation at the University of Ottawa and wrote the book The Way Ahead: Meeting Canada's Productivity Challenge.[3] He coined the phrase "Necessity may be the mother of invention, but competition is the father of innovation."[4] He was also the first Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Institute for Science, Society and Policy[5] at that university.

He was chair of the board of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo from 2006 to 2014,[6][7] chair of the scientific advisory committee (SAC) for the national Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) from 2010 to 2013; from 2016 to 2019 he sat on CCA's board of directors.[8]

He died on June 19, 2020, at Grand River Hospital following a brief illness.[9]

Honours

Brzustowski has received honorary degrees from the University of Guelph (1994), Ryerson Polytechnic University (1996), University of Waterloo (1997), McMaster University (2000), University of Alberta (2000), University of Ottawa (2000), École Polytechnique de Montréal (2001), Concordia University (2003), Royal Military College of Canada (2003), Brock University (2005), the University of Victoria (2005), York University (2005), University of Northern British Columbia (2006), Carleton University (2007), and Lakehead University (2011).[10]

In 1997 Brzustowski was elected to Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.[11][12] In 2001, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2002, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.[13] He is an honorary member of the Royal Military College of Canada, student # S143.

Books

• Brzustowski, Thomas A (1969). Introduction to the principles of engineering thermodynamics. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. ISBN 978-0201007503.

• Brzustowski, Tom (2008). The Way Ahead: Meeting Canada's Productivity Challenge. Ottawa: Univ. of Ottawa Press. ISBN 978-0-7766-0669-9.

• Brzustowski, Tom (2012), Why we need more INNOVATION IN CANADA and what we must do to get it. Invenire Books. ISBN 978-1-927465-00-4

Lieutenant Konstanty Piekarski fought during the German invasion of Poland in September 1939.  He was wounded in the Mokra battle and found himself in a hospital, which along with the surrounding territory, was soon invaded by the Soviet Army.  Piekarski escaped from the hospital to Warsaw and joined the AK (Home Army).  Arrested by the Gestapo, he was tortured and sent to Auschwitz in September 1940.  There, Piekarski witnessed the martyrdom and heroic death of Saint Maximilian Kolbe.  In the concentration camp Piekarski joined the underground resistance organization headed by the legendary cavalry captain Witold Pilecki, and led one of his groups.  The underground movement organized escapes and helped prisoners, installed radio communication in the camp, and sent out secret reports from Auschwitz to inform the Free World about the atrocities taking place in the heart of Europe.  In 1943 Piekarski was sent to Buchenwald.  Shortly before the war ended, Piekarski escaped from the concentration camp in Germany. He joined the American Army where he met AK soldiers - survivors of the Warsaw Uprising. The unit created from them, under Lieutenant Piekarski's command, fought the German 9th SS Division in Harz Mountain. 

After the war, Lieutenant Piekarski served in the Polish Army in England, graduated from London University and received his M. Sc. in Metallurgy Mechanical Engineering.  After immigrating to Canada in 1951, he worked and taught at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, for over 30 years.  In 1968 he also obtained his Ph.D. from Cambridge University.  Towards the end of his life, encouraged by his friends and war-time companions, he wrote the memoirs of those tragic years.  He started work on the Polish translation of this book and planned to publish excerpts of Escaping Hell in Polish magazines, ut he was not able to finish.  After an active and committed life he succumbed to heart disease and died in London, Ontario, on December 6th, 1990. 

Professor Czesław Rodkiewicz remembers his friend this way:

"Kot had something mystical in his personality. He was searching for a spiritual truth. Kot pursued the philosophy of life. He loved nature and took care of his faithful Siamese cat. In his journey through life, he manifested a profound intelligence and his love of the home land was full of nostalgia. Kot lived life to the fullest. This fullness included an important element of helping others. Here no amount of time, personal involvement or cost were too much to help someone. As a grateful friend of Kot's, he will remain in my heart and mind as the brave man who was able to control his destiny regardless of the unfortunate fate of our generation"