{"id":37110,"date":"2025-04-09T14:59:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T12:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sybir.bialystok.pl\/?p=37110"},"modified":"2025-05-23T10:32:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T08:32:37","slug":"april-exhibit-of-the-month-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sybir.bialystok.pl\/en\/april-exhibit-of-the-month-2\/","title":{"rendered":"April “Exhibit of the Month”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As part of the “Exhibit of the Month” series, we present selected items from the collection of the Sybir Memorial Museum \u2013 each month featuring different ones \u2013 giving a wide audience an opportunity to gain deeper insight into the lives of Sybiraks. In the current installment of the series, visitors can see memorabilia related to the Pa\u0142ko family, who was deported to Siberia in April 1940.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The monthly meetings and the stories that accompany them are of great value to the Sybir Memorial Museum. Thanks to those who chose to donate their family mementos to us, we are able to preserve and share their history \u2013 passing it to future generations and thus building a bridge between the past and the present,” said Professor Wojciech \u015aleszy\u0144ski, Director of the Sybir Memorial Museum, during the inauguration of the series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In April 1940, 60,000 people fell victim to the Soviets. Most of them were women, children, and the elderly. The beginning of the deportations marked the start of an entirely new chapter in their lives\u2014the one that often led them to places they would never have imagined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ignacy Pa\u0142ka was a professional non-commissioned officer in the Polish Army between the wars. In 1923, he married Helena Wierzbowska. The couple had three children: W\u0142adys\u0142awa Janina (born in 1924), Antonina Halina (born in 1925, died in 1926), and Zygmunt Jan (born in 1928). After the outbreak of World War II, Ignacy had to leave Stryi, where he lived with his family, and went to join a regiment in Przemy\u015bl. Around September 21, 1939, he crossed the Polish-Hungarian border. Interned in Hungary, he stayed there until the end of the war. Meanwhile, in April 1940, the Soviets deported his wife, daughter, and son to Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In case of our family, life in exile was very different. My mother went to a kolkhoz<\/em> for a while, but my grandmother and my little uncle did not. Grandma Helena was a seamstress. When it came to deportation, they happened to come across a \u201cgood\u201d NKVD officer who let them take whatever they could with them. They were lucky that they were already packed, because they had been moved from apartment to apartment. Thanks to this, they managed to take a bit more stuff than in other cases, when people were woken up suddenly in the middle of the night and in all the confusion did not know what to take with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grandmother had, for example, a prepared \u2014 though still unfinished \u2014 costume and other items, which she later altered or exchanged. Some of these items were valuable and could have been exchanged for food \u2013 a bit of flour to make lepeshka, sometimes a piece of butter \u2013 anything that helped them survive in those harsh conditions,” said Teresa Orlikowska, granddaughter of Helena Pa\u0142ka and daughter of W\u0142adys\u0142awa Janina Orlikowska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the fall of 1941, the family left the place of deportation and reached D\u017ealal-Abad in June 1942. Eventually, they were able to evacuate to Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In October 1942, the family was sent to the Settlement for Polish Refugees in Marandellas, Southern Rhodesia Africa (now Zimbabwe). Helena became the manager of the Women\u2019s Tailoring Workshop there, and her children continued their education, interrupted by the war and deportation. In June 1945, Zygmunt Pa\u0142ka died of tuberculosis. Two years later, Helena and Janina left for Poland, where they met Ignacy after years of separation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exhibits that can be seen in the April edition of the series:<\/p>\n\n\n\n