The Second Homeland is the story of the group of Poles who, having been deported to the Gulag by the Soviets, were settled in temporary camps in India after their escape from that“ inhuman land” in 1942. They were part of a much larger group of some 50,000 civilians evacuated from the USSR together with the army of General Władysław Anders, the Polish II Corps that was to be based in the Middle East and fight under British command. Their odyssey ultimately spanned several continents, every segment of it marked by tragedy and uncertainty, but also by the unexpected kindness of strangers and their own indomitable spirit. This book focuses on the Indian sojourn of Polish children who rediscovered their childhood among people who were welcoming and kind, in a land of great beauty where exotic fruit and elephants were a part of the natural landscape.
But Anuradha Bhattacharjee’ s opening chapter begins with a much grimmer story, with Katyń, the murder of over 20 thousand Polish reserve officers held as POWs by the USSR. She notes Vladimir Putin’ s invitation to Polish officials to commemorate the Katyń Massacre in April 2010, and Boris Yeltsin’ s 1990 delivery to Warsaw the documents that definitively acknowledged Soviet responsibility for this crime. She makes clear that she is writing about one of the greatest unacknowledged war crimes, a violation of human rights that was compounded by a cynical cover-up of the massacre, and an official silence about the mass deportations to Siberia. Not a few of the children whose story she tells lost their father at Katyń.
That the author does so is indicative of her profound understanding of her subject.
Bhattacharjee knows that while she is telling a heartwarming story about orphaned children welcomed by a loving Maharaja, their trauma runs deep. She never loses sight of these two strains of the narrative and this is what gives her book its power and beauty.
Following a brief historical background, the author moves on to 1941 when the plight of the Poles held captive in the USSR becomes known, a situation of no consequence to the Soviets, awkward for the British, and a humanitarian crisis for the Polish governmentin-exile. Relief supplies are urgently needed and among the first to take action is Kira Banasinska, the wife of the Polish consulgeneral in Bombay( Mumbai) who immediately begins a campaign of awareness and fundraising.