Out of the shadows: exploring the lives of the Birmingham Polish

280 Pages·2014·2.06 MB·English

by  M. Smojkis

OUT OF THE SHADOWS: EXPLORING THE LIVES OF

THE BIRMINGHAM POLISH

By Maureen Smojkis

A thesis submitted to the
University of Birmingham
For the degree of
MASTER OF PHILOSPOHY
T h e Institute oAfp plied Social Stud ies
C o l lege of Social Scien ce s
U n i versity of Birmingh am
M a y 201 3
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Dedication

This completed thesis is dedicated to my son Alex, my siblings Caroline, Susan,
Tony, Julia, Nina, Jennie and Lisa. With a special dedication to my partner Ashley
who has supported me through this experience.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the continued support and guidance given to me by my
research supervisors Dr. Surinder Guru and Dr. Malcolm Dick. I would also like to
thank the people I worked alongside in the Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary
Mental Health for their ongoing support and humour.

I would especially like to acknowledge and thank all the Polish people and the
people of Polish background who have allowed me to listen to their stories and who
have shared information with me; without them this study would not have been
possible.

With special acknowledgment to three of my friends who have continued to believe
in me when I often couldn’t; Caroline, Rachel and Sandy, let’s hope that there are
good times ahead.

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Abstract

Using an oral history methodology this thesis explores the lives of the
Birmingham Polish people. The first wave Polish migrants who arrived in
Birmingham post 1939 were distinctly affected by the consequence of the Second
World War. The importance of Polish history was pertinent for many of the
respondents of this study and the thesis identifies the relevance of loss and
trauma, resulting from this history to all four waves of Polish migrants in
Birmingham.

These experiences of loss, trauma of war and ethnic conflict, although unique to
the Polish and other migrants fleeing both Stalin and Nazism, resonate with those
of new migrant communities of refugees and asylum seekers today, who also
face issues of loss, trauma and abuse and this affects the way that they live their
lives in the private and public sphere.

The four waves of Polish migrants are not homogeneous and yet are linked by
the Catholic faith which has served to both include and exclude members of the
Polish communities. The four waves independently ascribe negative values to
behaviours that measure them against the ‘other’.

Having been invisible in the host society for over sixty years, the arrival of the
post 2004 Polish migrants has increased the confidence of the Polish as a
community. They are more knowledgeable and informed than previously;
particularly about forming voluntary organisations, accessing funds and linking to
outside organisations. In Birmingham, Black and Asian voluntary groups and the
statutory sectors assisted the Polish club to gain access to funds for housing,
employment and crime concerns, and so there are encouraging signs for both the
Polish and other migrant communities, as well as for social cohesion and mutual
learning and support for shared problems and opportunities, faced by migrant
communities.
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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Introduction 1-12

Chapter 2 Literature Review 13-54

Chapter 3 Methodology 55-92

Chapter 4 War, Deportation, Mass Murder and Loss 93-132

Chapter 5 Home from Home 133-175

Chapter 6 New Arrivals 176-222

Chapter 7 Conclusion 223-245

Bibliography & References a-v

Appendices w-bb
v
Appendices (pages w-bb)

1. Alien registration document
2. Map of interviewees area
3. Interview schedule first, second and third wave
4. Interview schedule fourth wave
5. Consent form
6. Historical Chronology of important events in Poland

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Out of the Shadows: An Exploration of the Polish in Birmingham.
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

The introduction gives the focus of the thesis and the researcher’s personal and
professional reasons for the choice of topic and the chosen methodology. To
illustrate the focus of the research an overview of one person’s story is related and
the chapter introduces the context of the research and research questions.

The focus of this thesis is the Polish people who have migrated to Birmingham
England since 1939. My personal and professional interest in people and how they
exist in this world is a constant in my life, this particular journey began with a
conversation with my father, a Birmigham Pole. At the age of seventy four Boleslaw
Smojkis had told his eight children very little about his life before his arrival in
England in December 1946, he had not passed on his language or the traditions he
had been brought up with and we knew little of the Polish culture. What we did know
was that he was different from our English friends fathers, that sometimes we had to
translate what he was saying despite the fact that he was speaking English and that
we sometimes ate Polish food which was very different from English food and that
this was something to be explained to teachers and friends. In 1971 he took six of
his children and my mother to Poland to visit his Polish family, that was the first and
last time we met our Polish grandparents.

My father, Boleslaw Smojkis, like many working class men of his generation was not
a great talker, unless he was in the company of his Eastern European male friends,
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then they all spoke in Polish, a language his family could not understand and so we
were to a large extent excluded from his pre 1945 world. In recent years he began
to talk about some of his early life experience, it was as if his memories were
starting to overwhelm him and spill out in relatively unrelated conversations. In
January 2001 I listened to and recorded his early life story and his account of his
journey from Poland to Birmingham for my sisters, my brother, my father’s
grandchildren, including my own son, and his great grandchildren; this appeared to
be the right time for him to tell his story. I was surprised at his openness and the
accounts of the experiences he had gone through, they apeared to be as alive to him
in the present as they had been in the past. I feel sure that if I had tried to record this
information twenty years earlier he would not have agreed probably adding “what do
you want to know that for?”, it was his way.

Boleslaw Smojkis’s story was one of poverty, war, enforced labour, loss and
displacement. In 1941 at the age of 14 he had been transported to France from
Wilno in Poland by the Germans. Here he was forced to work in a iron ore mine, he
was given very little food or warmth and he tried to commit suicide twice by running
towards the electric fence; he observed the death of many people. When he arrived
in England in 1946 he was nineteen years old. His journey had started in 1939 when
his country was invaded by the Germans and the Russians and eventually in 1945 at
the end of the Second World War, Poland was under Soviet domination and
remained so until 1989. Wilno where he was born was no longer Poland it was now
Vilnius, but under the Soviets, and the home he had before the war was not there to
return to. He did not know until later that his father was forcibley relocated to
Bydgosz in the west of Poland his mother was sent to Siberia by the Soviets and his
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only brother had died of pneumonia at the age of 14, thus his pre 1939 family was
shattered irritrevably.

Having heard my fathers story I became interested in the untold stories of other
Birmingham Polish people, I thought that because they were clearly ageing rapidly if
these stories were not captured they would be lost, I was curious about the social
exclusion from the host society that was evident in the Birmingham Polish club and
why it appeared to be so important for them to maintain their Polishness. The Polish
migrants were the first large group to arrive in Birmingham post Second World War
in the following years smaller groups of Polish people affected by Communism,
Solidarity and Marshall Law and later larger numbers arrived as a consequence of
the entry of Poland into the European Union (EU) in 2004.

I grew up in a working class family in Birmingham during the 1950s and 60s and
having an English mother and a Polish father, we children were always told by our
parents that we were half Polish and half English, so that is what we said to people
when we were asked. It is not possible to represent this on official documentation, so
like many people in a similar position I am British; this does not really represent who
I am or how I see myself as a person but that does not cause me any distress, it’s
just the way it is. We were not classed as mixed race or considered to be from an
ethnic minority, and so in many ways our Polish cultural heritage was ignored, the
only constant has been the inability of people to say my family name correctly which
often causes confusion and laughter and usually ends with me asking people to “just
call me Maureen”, because it’s easier for them. My father was renamed Barry by his
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