From the family archive

At my parents' in London. My parents have been looking through their old photographs, and this one (right) caught their eye.

My mother, then 18 years old, receiving her teacher training diploma from General Anders, Nazareth, June 1946.

Along with her family, she was deported on 10 February 1940 from her home in Wołyń (then eastern Poland, today in Ukraine). Along with around 140,000 Polish citizens rounded up and deported that day, my mother's family was transported deep into Russia and resettled in a labour camp. My mother was 12 years old at the time.

Having left the USSR with Anders' army after the "amnesty" granted by Stalin to Poles in August 1941, my mother travelled through Iran (then Persia), via Iraq to Israel (then Palestine). She stayed in the Middle East throughout the war, studying, and arrived in Britain in 1947.