A Polish Christmas: Ritual Drama and the Experience of the Pahiatua Poles

Abstract

The Christmas play that is the focus of this paper belongs to a group of Polish refugee children who came to New Zealand in 1944. The children and their parents were taken from their homes in eastern Poland during the Soviet deportations of 1940-41. They spent the next two years in prison or hard labour camps, mostly in Siberia, until released by an amnesty negotiated between Stalin and General Sikorski, the Polish Prime Minister. The intention was that these released prisoners would form a Polish army on Russian territory. But in 1942 relations between Stalin and Sikorski became so strained that Stalin decided he was best rid of the trouble-some Poles. They were evacuated to the Middle East.