Few people are aware there were 66 Polish refugees on board the Windrush 70 years ago. Their presence was unacknowledged and their disembarkation was not captured among the vivid pictures of cheering Caribbean migrants.

Any photos of the Poles would probably have shown a more sombre mood. Their arrival was the culmination of an apocalyptic story stretching back a decade. My mother-in-law, Janina Folta, was one of the Polish passengers.

Janina Folta aged 79

She was 11 when she boarded the ship with her mother and sisters in Mexico in 1948. They were travelling to rejoin her father and brother, from whom they had been separated for five years.



The family had been among 1.5 million Poles wrenched from their homes by Russian soldiers in the middle of the night in 1940-41 and sent on cattle trucks to Siberian labour camps.

In the camps the dead had to be buried twice, because the ground was too hard in winter so they were preserved in deep snow until spring. After two years, some of the captives escaped but fewer than 10% survived the 3,000-mile journey to get out of the Soviet Union and into Iran, eating dogs and tortoises to survive.

The men joined the Polish free forces fighting with the allies, and their families were sent to refugee camps all over the world. Mexico took 1,500 and it was

from that cohort that the Windrush Poles came.



Quick Guide Who was onboard the Windrush? Show More than half of the passengers on the Empire Windrush had left homes in Jamaica. According to the official passenger list – held by the National Archives – 541 people gave their last country of residence as Jamaica, out of a total 1,027 onboard. Bermuda was the last country of residence of 139 passengers, while Trinidad was listed for 74 people. Sixty-six passengers came from Mexico, but their nationality was recorded as Polish. A further 44 passengers were from British Guiana (now Guyana) on the northern coast of South America. England was listed as the last country of residence for 119 people – 12% of the total onboard. Fifteen people came from other parts of the UK: 10 from Scotland, four from Wales and one from Northern Ireland. Among the passengers were small numbers from countries as far apart as Burma (five people), New Zealand (two), Norway (one) and Uganda (one). A couple of stowaways were also mentioned on the passenger list: a 39-year-old dressmaker from Jamaica and a 30-year-old from Trinidad. Photograph: PA

Janina was six when she arrived in Mexico in 1943. She remembers the hacienda that housed the family for five years while her father and brother were fighting in Europe. For the first time in her memory, she had regular food, warmth, safety and education.

In 1948 the British government arranged for the women to travel to join the men in England, where they had been given the right to settle. Their former homes were now permanently in the Soviet Union, so they could not return.

Onboard the Windrush, Janina and the other children didn’t know how to use cutlery to eat the food that was provided. The food in Mexico had been mostly stew and tortillas; in Asia they had eaten whatever scraps they could find. Janina remembers the crew trying to teach them to hold a knife and fork, and how this embarrassed the older girls.

They travelled in berths below the waterline, paid for by the British government. Janina recalls it being musty and dark and they were all seasick. They were not allowed to roam freely on the boat; they could only go out on deck in escorted groups and she never saw any of the other passengers.



Janina aged 12, taken shortly after she arrived in England probably at Baron’s Cross Polish army camp Leominster.

When they disembarked at Tilbury in Essex on 22 June 1948, her father and brother were waiting on the quayside, still in their forces uniforms. Janina remembers feeling a sense of anti-climax; it was cold and damp, a contrast to Mexico, and she hardly knew her father. They had to register as immigrants and report to the police if they moved house or job or got married.

Janina wasn’t even aware she had been on the famous ship until I told her this year. I had been researching her past and found her name on passenger lists from ships that transported the refugees.

The story of the Poles sits bizarrely alongside the official narrative for Windrush Day. They have never identified as a Windrush generation, even though more than 100,000 Polish refugees from Siberia came to the UK after the war on other ships.

For them, the Windrush was simply a point in time, the real story being what they had left behind and could never go back to.