Good memories and miracles

Lech Lubas

At the Polish Children's Camp in Pahiatua we made friends, shared stories, laughed, sang, danced, got into mischief and maintained our traditions. Later, I lived with the Conroy family in Karori, Wellington, for one year while attending St Patrick's College in Wellington. They treated me like one of their own and taught me what I needed to know in this country.

I thought my sister Helena and I were the only ones from our family that had survived World War II, but we later received the incredible news from the Red Cross that our mother and brother were both alive, and that we had a new little sister who had been born when we were taken to the forced-labour camps in Siberia. Though we kept in touch, our plans to return to Poland got bogged down in the daily cares. Helena and I both married and raised our respective families, my mother died, and it was 1996 before I travelled to Poland and was reunited with my brother and a sister whom I had never met before.