Limited edition, A4 sized book with 352 pages, packed full of photos. Includes 49 veterans' stories plus accounts from the post-war community in the immediate decades which followed.
Over 160,000 Poles came to Britain during the Second World War.  Just over 300 of that number settled in Rotherham. The Polish community’s presence on these shores was as a direct result of the War, and today it is one of the largest minority communities in Britain. However, outside their circle, relatively little is known about how or why Poles came to this country. This second (expanded) volume attempts to give a more thorough summary of the wartime experiences and lives of the Poles who settled in Rotherham at the War’s conclusion, drawing on representative accounts. It also examines the community’s development in the decades that followed; a community which, sadly, has all but disappeared.
Amazing facts resulting from extended research include: the people of Rotherham sponsoring a Spitfire to fight the Nazis - flown by a Polish pilot; one of the Rotherham veterans worked as Oscar Schindler’s ‘office boy’ (Schindler's List). His father also worked here but as a porter in the Deutch Emalien Fabrick (Schindler’s factory). After the War, the town's WWII link continued with General T.Bór-Komorowskitwice visiting the ex-servicemen's group in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Finally, one of the late veterans has been identified as being in the1st Independent Parachute Brigade under general Sosabowski and the General’s private driver-chauffeur.