XPost: soc.culture.indian, alt.fan.jai-maharaj, soc.culture.usa
XPost: alt.politics, talk.politics.misc, soc.culture.india
From: alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com

Forwarded post:

How the 'Indian Oskar Schindler' took in 1,000 Polish
children during WWII

An event that does not receive any attention from those in
the mainstream institutes which are financed by the Samaj.
The even in New York did not receive any attention from the
representatives of the Indian media, or the news agencies
who have clients in India. After all, such events negate
the false image that they want to project about India, and
so have to be buried as deeply as possible.

Namaste.
Ashok Chowgule
May 23, 2018

How the 'Indian Oskar Schindler' took in 1,000 Polish
children during WWII

By Manik Mehta
The Times of India
July 17, 2017

The elegant ballroom of the Indian consulate general in New
York has been the venue for many cultural and other events
attended by Indian and American audiences. But on June 29 a
special event brought two communities, Indians and Jews,
together to witness a hitherto unknown chapter of history,
captured in a documentary film called "Little Poland in
India."

The docufilm, which had a special screening in New York
with the support of the Indian consulate general and the
American Jewish Committee, looks back to the dark chapter
of history during World War II when Hitler's deadly war
machinery rolled over Europe, spreading terror and
destruction on the continent.

Orphaned Polish children -- Jews and Catholics alike --
faced an uncertain future, but in the midst of the gloom a
ray of hope appeared when a kindhearted Maharaja (member of
Indian nobility) in a princely state in Gujarat agreed to
accept the Polish children and look after them.

The emotionally charged subject of children finding refuge
in an alien culture is deftly handled in "Little Poland in
India," produced by enterprising Delhi-based female Indian
filmmaker Anu Radha whose films generally deal with
children's issues.

As the horrors of the Holocaust and WWII unfolded in
Europe, General Wladyslaw Sikorski -- the first prime
minister of the Polish Government in Exile and Commander in
Chief of the Polish armed forces -- wrote to British prime
minister Winston Churchill to plead for the safety and
protection of the starving young children, the "treasure of
Poland," as he called them.

Though India was in the midst of an independence struggle
against colonial British rule and faced a famine, the "Jam
Sahib" (a nickname stemming from the words for "king" and
"owner"), as Maharaja Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja of
Nawanagar was affectionately called, stepped in to help in
the dire situation.

The Polish consulate in Bombay at the time had launched a
drive to raise awareness in India about Jewish refugees,
and had been arranging for their travel to India during the
Holocaust.

A group of about 1,000 Polish children departed for India
in 1942 from Siberia, where, lost and orphaned in the midst
of death and destruction caused by WWII, they had been
shifted after the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland. The
children were welcomed by their benefactor, the Jam Sahib,
but only after a tortuous journey.

The ships carrying Polish refugees from the former Soviet
Union, including a large number of children aged two
through 17, were denied entry when they called on ports
while sailing through Iran to Bombay (Mumbai), then under
British colonial rule. When the Maharaja, who was a member
of the Imperial War Council, was made aware of the plight
of the children in the gulags, he became concerned and
established a camp in Balachadi, about 25 km (15 miles)
from the capital city Jamnagar, for the Polish arrivals.

The camp existed until early 1946; subsequently, the
children were transferred to the Valivade camp in Kolhapur.

"Little Poland in India" is the product of a joint Indo-
Polish collaboration, and is the first documentary film
based on the lives of WWII survivors who were given
protection in India by the Jam Sahib. The film was jointly
produced by Doordashan (India's state TV channel), the
Government of Gujarat and the National Audio-Visual
Institute and Polish TV.

While the Red Cross, the Polish Army in exile and the
colonial administration jointly helped set up the camps, it
was the Maharaja who played the crucial role in the
children's welfare.

Professor Piotr Klodkowski, a former Polish ambassador to
India, has gone on record as saying, "A fairly large school
was established for the children at Balachadi, and the
Maharaja is well remembered."

'You may not have your parents, but I am your father now'

Indeed, according to Polish sources, the Maharaja told the
children, "You may not have your parents, but I am your
father now." The children, in turn, called him "our Bapu"
("father").

Poland has shown its gratitude to the Maharaja in various
forms. Warsaw has a "Good Maharaja Square" named after the
Maharaja. Poland also named a school after the Maharaja,
who was passionate about children's education. The
Maharajah was awarded the President's Medal, Poland's
highest honor; filmmaker Radha was conferred Poland's Bene
Merito award.

At the consulate's film screening, some of the Jewish
guests were privately discussing that Israel could
posthumously honor the Maharaja as it had done with Oskar
Schindler, the German industrialist who had helped save the
lives of some 1,200 Jews in Nazi Germany.

The Maharaja's help is all the more noteworthy considering
that while the world was at war, India was fighting its own
battle -- a non-violent battle for self-determination and
independence from British colonialism, even as a severe
famine and drought ravaged India at the time.

"Little Poland in India" appeals to the heart and head. In
an interview in New York, Radha explained how she became
interested in the subject for her film.

"I was having a conversation a few years back with then-
Indian ambassador to Poland, Monika Kapil Mohta, who asked
me, 'Why don't you do this interesting story about an
Indian Maharaja protecting Polish children?'" said Radha.

Seized by the idea, Radha began researching the subject.

"Having worked with cable television earlier, I had learned
the ropes of the trade. The idea of making a film about
Polish refugee children in India had set me thinking…
cinema is my obsession, my passion. Being a screen writer
is an added advantage because it enhances the creative
power for the film," she said.

But she acknowledged the help she received from the Polish
embassy in New Delhi, which helped her get a hold of a book
called "Poles in India: 1942-1948." The book turned out to
be a treasure trove of information about how the Poles
exiled in Siberia made their way to safety and protection
in India.

And she is "ever grateful" for the active support she
received from "Jam Sahib's" family.

"The doors to the palace were opened by Jam Sahib's son…
this was a rare opportunity which has never been granted to
an outsider before," she noted.

Radha reveals that she is making a commercial film about
the second camp in Valivade in the state of Maharashtra.

"There were Polish refugee children in Valivade from 1943
to 1948. They moved away thereafter with the help of the
International Red Cross and the Polish Red Cross which
could successfully locate their relatives across the world,
including in Poland. Depending on where they had relatives,
some of the children left for the UK, others returned to
Poland," she explained.

Those who returned to Poland even formed an association
called "Poles in India." Both the Jews and Catholics,
housed in the camps, became very attached to India, and
often reminisce in their sunset years in other countries
about that crucial phase of their lives there.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-the-indian-oskar-schindler-took-in-1000-polish-children-during-wwii/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

End of forwarded post.

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj

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