A unique, first listening to the radio report “Siberian Fate” by Aleksandra Sadokierska from Polish Radio Białystok will take place on Friday, June 13, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. in the permanent exhibition space of the Sybir Memorial Museum — free admission.

The main theme of the reportage, produced in cooperation with Polish Radio Białystok, is the story of the ancestors of Zbigniew Popławski — one of the “Pahiatua Children,” now a New Zealand citizen and retired surgeon. His family was exiled to Siberia following the January Uprising and, before the Bolshevik Revolution, helped establish a vibrant Polish patriotic community in Tomsk, Siberia. After the revolution, most of the family returned to Poland — only to be struck by Siberian fate once again during World War II, when the Soviets deported them to Kazakhstan.

The author of the reportage is the award-winning radio journalist Aleksandra Sadokierska.

The story of the “Pahiatua Children” – 733 Polish orphans evacuated from Siberia and warmly welcomed by the New Zealand society in 1944 is part of the permanent exhibition of the Sybir Memorial Museum.

Materials for the report were collected, among others, as part of the projects implemented in New Zealand by the WIDOK Cultural Education Association from Bialystok and the Sybir Memorial Museum with funds from the The POLONIKA National Institute of Polish Cultural Heritage Abroad and the city of Białystok.

The radio reportage “Siberian Fate” will be broadcast on Sunday, June 15, 2025, at 6:05 p.m. on Polish Radio Białystok, and will also be available online simultaneously at https://swiatsybiru.pl/en/ and www.radio.bialystok.pl.