CHILDREN OF POLAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 272, 8 September 1944, Page 13

CHILDREN OF POLAND

ANY people in New Zealand have appreciated the fact that 700 Polish children are being brought to our country; many have made toys for the young refugees so far from home; but all who know anything of what these children have had to suffer during the past few years will agree that as yet we have done practically nothing to make up to them what has disappeared from their lives-a natural childhood. "In a foreword to the magazine "Polish Children Suffer," which has just reached us, Helena Sikorska says: "Poland was a country rich in children; before the war there were 11,000,000. The realisation of the children’s needs and provision for them, and also assistance for mothers, was increasing always. The. number of creches, kincergartens, mother’s welfare centres, clinics, children’s libraries, summer colonies, etc., increased with every passing year. There was no discrimination in the education available, the way to knowledge was open to all, and efforts were made to fgcilitate the acquisition of it. All Polish children entered school at the age of seven, and elementary education was obligatory. Wherever possible, the most modern school houses were erected. "Tf the mother was working, she was able to leave the smallest children in a creche, where they received care and food until her return."

But war has changed all this. Without parents, without homes, without schools, often with insufficient food and clothing, thousands of children have become _ persecuted, wandering the face of the earth in search of a bare existence. It is from these refugees who finally landed up near Teheran, in Persia, that the 700 who are coming to New Zealand will be brought outaway from the reality of war. On September 1 this year the people of Poland commemorated the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the attack on. their country. The liberation of Warsaw, seems to be an event of the very near future. But much will have to be done to counteract the effects of a war in*which, perhaps more than) in any other, children have suffered so greatly.