A talk from Dr Monica Janowski, given on Tuesday 11 June at the Horniman Museum. Given as part of the Collections People Stories project. www.horniman.ac.uk/about/collections-people-stories

1. Polish Food: Memories in
Deportation and Exile
Monica Janowski
School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London

2. ‘We are sort of displaced people And I was brought here, but to me
Poland it is my country… To us that country’s precious. But we can’t be
there, we can’t live there’. (Aniela Polnik, 26 January 2009)
(Painting: Memories 3, by Alicja Edwards)

3. Osadniki of the 1920s -
peasant settlers building
Poland in the eastern
borderlands
Group of military settlers
Church on an osada
(settlement)
‘Our place, 84 of them from the
same cavalry regiment … got land
at Wolyn near Rowno, and was
beautiful soil…Poland was 123
years under Russia, and they took
from the landowners, rich ones,
they took it from them.’ (Danuta

4. ‘Leaving Home’ - painting
by Alicja Edwards. Used to
illustrate her book ‘And
God Was our Witness’.
Deportations of
Poles from Eastern
Poland 1939 and
1940

5. Food as portal to memories: Kaz and his mum
share holy bread and stories

6. QuickTime™ and a
H.264 decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

7. Poles on kolkhoz in Kazakhstan, 1941
Destinations East: Siberia, Kazakhstan
and beyond the Urals

8. Aniela Polnik, born
1937.
Jadzia Osostowicz, born
1925.
Danuta Gradosielska,
born 1925.
Regina Dyszynska, born
1932.
Irena Miluska, born
1938.
Michalina
Pluciennik, born
1922.
‘Sybiranki’ share
food diaries and
stories in the
2000s

9. ‘I remember Christmas
and Christmas tree and
my mother frying fish.
And that’s all I
remember.’ (laughs)
(Regina D.)
‘On weekends when we came
from church we had dinner
and then something quick in
the evening, like pancakes,
or placki kartoflane.
(Danuta G.)
‘I remember that the food was lovely, very
tasty, very nice, and I remember exactly
the dishes that we had, it was always meat
and always soup. (Jadzia O.)
‘…my mum always made bread..
(Michalina P.)
Memories of food from home
Painting: Memories 1
by Alicja Edwards

10. Growing your own:
peasant pioneers’ food
‘.. it was fresh and
healthy, because was
everything fresh and made at
home, no artificial things
added, you know. It was very
good. I think that’s maybe
what helped me to survive
Siberia…’ (Danuta G.)

11. QuickTime™ and a
H.264 decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

12. March 2013: Visit to Horniman
Danuta Gradosielska,
Aniela Polnik and Bolek
Polnik

13. QuickTime™ and a
H.264 decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

14. Home in Poland: parental
roles and order
‘..(in the kitchen) my
mother was definitely
the mastermind… (Jadzia
O.)
‘…my father worked
in a rafineria…
When there was a
little bit (of work
in the fields) we
helped mama, but
when there was more
she paid people…she
fed them well’
(Michalina P.)
‘My father was forester..
in a big estate’. (Regina
D.)

15. Women,
food and
family

16. The obiad meal: ritual
of family togetherness
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Rosól z
makaronem
(broth with
noodles)
Mięso z kartoflami i z
salatką albo z
jarzynami (Meat with
potatoes and salad or
vegetables)

17. Chleb (bread): central
to all meals

18. Dairy foods and health
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTime™ and adecompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Biały ser
(fresh white
cheese)
Zupa
mleczna
(‘milk
soup’
with
grains or
noodles)
Mleko (milk) Smietana
(cream)

19. Sweet food and hospitality
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture. QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Makowiec
(poppy
seed
cake)
Chrusty
(fried
dough
twists)
Babka
(yeast
cake)
Pączki
(doughnuts)

20. QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Bigos
(cabbage
and meat
stew)
Pierogi
(dumplings
)
Placki
ziemniaczne
(potato
pancakes)
Kiełbasa
(sausage
)
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Everyday peasant dishes…
later to become iconically
‘Polish’

21. Polish national foods?
Byelorussian
pierogi
Ukrainian potato pancakes
Nevertheless strongly
associated with a Polish home
and with Polskość….

22. ‘Hunger’ - painting by
Alicja Edwards, used to
illustrate her book
‘And God Was our
Witness’
‘I dreamt about bread every night. …we would go several
kms away to pick raspberries, …So we had the raspberries.
(sighs) We would then pick some nettles, and cook them.
But there was hardly anything else, Monica, hardly
anything else (Jadzia O.)
‘(My brother Adam) … killed the dog. So … they put him in
the corner… and every time a soldier or a policeman or an
NKVD walked past, they would kick him… and the third day
he just collapsed and died. He was 16.’ (Aniela P.)
Deportation
and
starvation

23. ‘Those ones from town, they maybe were clever, but they
just didn’t know anything, anything… they had such a hard
time’ (Michalina P.)
Tuligany, Siberia:
Michalina P’’s father,
a peasant osadnik,
with a university
professor and his sons
Peasants and townspeople
‘We were lucky… we were able to bring a lot with us -
sacks of flour, we killed some chickens, we had things
to trade…others weren’t so lucky. (Danuta G.)

24. Danusia G. with friends
in the camp at
Monastyriok, Siberia,
‘It was not a normal life at
all. .. there was no structure
to meals. It was more like
animals’ type of feeding. You
were hungry, you ate what you
found.’ (Regina D.).
Food and family structure in
the Soviet Union
‘I would buy a portion of this
barley, and they put a teaspoon
of oil, they made a little hole
and put some oil in the middle.
So I would save this oil for
Sundays..’ (Jadzia O.)
‘…mother was absolutely
crazy how to feed the
children so they don’t die.’
(Regina D.)

25. ‘..the only thing that we had to eat was some
bread, but only some, because it was rationed, and
it was a very clayey, heavy bread.’ (Jadzia O.)
Bread in the Soviet Union

26. QuickTime™ and a
H.264 decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

27. entral ritual: wigilia (Christmas
Wigilia meal at Nowosiolowo,
Krasnojarski Kraj, USSR, 1943
‘..wigilia in Siberia …were without alcohol, but
they meant exactly the same or even much much more
than now’ (Michalina D.)
‘..my grandmother sent us from Poland Christmas
parcel… It wasn’t big parcel, but it was a great help
for us. And opłatek was there.’ (Danuta G.)

28. Escape from the Soviet
Union
General Władysław
Anders
Future soldiers crossing the Caspian Sea from Krasnovotsk to Pahl

29. Overwhelmed with food
‘It was heaven…’ (Michalina P.)
‘Oh, so much food, is it possible, can there
be so much food in the world?…
It was actually quite dangerous, because
people, they had starved and so many of them
could not eat any solid food’ (Jadzia O.)
Michalina P. at
Pahlevi
Distribution of bread to Poles
arriving at army collection point in
Krasnovotsk

30. Where our ladies went
next
• Danuta Gradosielska: joined 216th
Transport Division of Polish Army
• Irena Miluska: Polish Camp, Masindi,
Uganda
• Aniela Polnik: Polish camp, Lusaka,
Northern Rhodesia (Zambia)
• Michalina Pluciennik: Polish camp,
Tengeru, Tanganyika (Tanzania)
• Regina Dyszynska: ‘Orphanage’ boarding
school, Palestine
• Jadzia Osostowicz: with parents in
Palestine; parents working at Polish
schools

31. Polish children in
orphanage/boarding
school in Persia after
1943
‘.. I remember that we had hams, we had proper
lunches – kotlety, that’s Polish, pierogi, and
things like that, Polish food…that was proper
boarding school, beautifully kept. Proper food we
had.’ (Regina D.)
Regina in the orphanage:
children as hope for a Polish
future

32. Meal to celebrate end of
driving course for Danuta
G. and other girls of the
316th Polish Transport
Division, 13 March 1943
‘Mostly we had rice with sheep meat cooked
together…That’s what they had, they didn’t have
potatoes’ (Danuta G.)
Danuta: into the Army

33. Irena, Aniela and
Michalina: Polish camps in
Africa
Aniela P’s friends in
Polish costume at Lusaka
Camp, N. Rhodesia
Tengeru Camp, Tanganyika:
Michalina P.’s class in the
gardens
Irena M. and her school class
at Masindi camp, Uganda
‘Except potatoes, we ate everything what
you can eat…But you had every day fresh
meat, except Sunday.’ (Michalina P)
‘I remember lots of fruit, we had’ (Irena M.)
‘Sunday and Saturday my auntie would try
and cook something, you know, something
different, in our hut.’ (Aniela P.)

34. Transforming alien
foods into something
familiar
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
‘(In Palestine) we used to
stuff aubergine.. that’s not
Polish at all…I do exactly
the same now…and I use
exactly the same mixture as
for goląbki (cabbage stuffied
with rice and meat)’. (Regina
D.)
(In Russia) we lived in a hut with
another big family, of boys . . .
.And they remember picking the
green sort of salad—it’s called in
Polish
lebioda —it’s like salady thing,
green. And they chopped, without
eggs, nothing. But they made it
into kotlety (mince meat patties)
and fried it and ate it like that.

35. After the war: Yalta and
displaced persons camps in
the UK
Kelvedon
Camp.
Essex

36. A return to self-
sufficiency?
Vegetable garden in Kelvedon
camp, 1950s Back garden turned over
largely to vegetable
growing, 1969

37. I learnt gradually and I cooked a lot, a
lot, yes, I took it very seriously then, my
duties as a cook, as a Polish mother. I
cooked Polish food, but I was always very
happy when I was given some English food. …I
didn’t really learn properly. (Jadzia O.)
I didn’t have mother or father to teach me
to cook… I had to learn from book…. That’s
why I don’t feel confident, you see,
because I learnt from books. (Regina D.)
Setting up a Polish home in the UK

38. Maintaining the Polish
extended family: meals in the
UK
Extended family meal, 1950s Corpus Christi meal, 1950s
Wigilia meal, 2007 Opłatek meal with parish
choir directed by Aniela P.,

39. What does it mean to be truly
Polish?
When I first went to
Poland, I was so happy
when people I spoke to
didn’t realize that I
came from England… they
thought I was properly
Polish… (Irena M.,
deported age 1)
People are envious of me, because both my
children married Polish people. I’m not so
sure about marrying Pole from Poland now, like
my son, because we are different… Polishness
of us is completely different from Polishness
of Poles in Poland. (Regina D.)
‘My first memory is from
Siberia. Certain things,
vague.. Food… I remember
being hungry, and I
remember being cold, very
cold.’ (Aniela P., deported
age 2)

40. Food as icons of
‘Polishness’
‘The icon is a reminiscence of a celestial
archetype…. a window onto a deeper,
transcendent world.’ (Paul Florensky,
Polishness heaped up on a plate:
sausage, bigos, pierogi and
stuffed cabbage

41. Some final thoughts: women, food,
belonging and the moulding of new