Kazimierz Szantyr
| Town/City | Shepparton |
|---|---|
| First name | Kazimierz |
| Last name | Szantyr |
| Country of Origin | Poland |
| Date of Birth | 7/22/2014 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 1948 |
| Submitted by | Zofia Szantyr |
Story
At the age of 17 my father was taken from his home (in a small town in Poland) and from his family by the German army. I don’t know what happened to him during the next 5 yrs but as far as I know he never saw his family again. When the war ended he went to italy and from there took a ship to Australia. He was in a migrant camp in or near Sale in Victoria.
My mother was a teacher who taught the children of the migrants there and that is where they met. They were married in 1952 and had 8 children who were born in various towns and cities around Victoria. They moved often because my father didn’t feel comfortable anywhere. He suffered from a mental illness possibly caused by his experiences during the war. He was extremely hard to live with and sometimes violent towards my mother and his children. Just after his youngest child was born in 1962 he left and never came back. I was four yrs old. My mother rarely spoke about him so I grew up knowing very little about my own father or my Polish heritage. I don’t believe he ever talked about his war experiences even to her.
I always thought we were given Polish names by my father but my mother told me that she chose them because she liked unusual names and I was named after some cute little child she taught at the migrant camp. So I grew up as a very Australian child with a very foreign name who knew nothing about the culture behind the name; and I grew up without a father.
My father died in 1982 and I went to the funeral of a stranger.
Thanks to the internet, in 2005 I found my cousin, the daughter of my father’s youngest brother who now lives in Canada; and from her, learned many things about the Polish side of my family. I learned that my father’s eldest sister and my grandfather were taken by the Russian army during the war and never seen again. His other two sisters stayed in Poland, married and had familes. One of them is still alive.
Unfortunately by 2005 my uncle was in his seventies and had alzheimers. Like me, my cousin had wondered for years about her long lost relatives in Australia. Now, we are in contact almost every day.
Maybe it’s because of my family’s experiences that I feel empathy for all migrants. Also, I love that we have such a multicultural country.