Dariusz Zdziech
Prace Historyczne, Numer 139, 2012, s. 149 - 166
https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.12.010.0779
Pahiatua Welcomes the Poles for the Second Time
The article contains information concerning the arrival of DPs (displaced persons) in New Zealand in the years 1949–1953, chiefly from the territories of Central and Eastern Europe as well as Southern Europe. Their number is estimated to have been at the level of nearly 5 thousand. The new inhabitants of Aotearoa had spent the period of adjustment to the New Zealand conditions in the Pahiatua camp on the Northern Island. A considerable number of the new arrivals were persons of Polish nationality. In this way, the Polish language had found its way to the region of Pahiatua for the second time. The Poles had arrived here for the first time in 1944, during the Second World War, when 733 Polish children and over 100 caring personnel came here at the invitation of New Zealand’s prime minister Peter Fraser, in search of a safe haven. Since the year 1949, the Pahiatua camp has served the displaced persons from Europe to become adjusted to life in the new motherland. Due to a lack of more exhaustive information and analysis concerning this topic in Polish academic sources, the issue of post-war transports of DPs from the “old Continent” to New Zealand, with particular emphasis on the Polish-speaking groups of emigrants from Europe, was subjected to a more exhaustive analysis.