Local writer, Irena Clarke née Kossakowski recently met with the Polish Ambassador, Arkady Rzegocki at the Polish White Eagle Club in London.

Irena’s first book, A Homeland Denied was published in November, detailing her father’s harrowing experiences during the Second World War. Irena was giving a talk and book signing at the club in Balham that was attended by the ambassador, who spoke to Irena for sometime about the photos on display and congratulated her on a well-presented talk.

Waclaw Kossakowski was a Polish prisoner of war and was later involved in the campaign to liberate Italy. Irena has written not only a military history book, but a story for everyone, about a young man whose only wish was to return home to his girlfriend and family. Irena launched her book with a talk at the Royal British Legion Mill Club in Kingsbridge in November.

She explained at the time: “For years my dad had nightmares and would wake up shouting in Polish. We knew something had happened, but knew nothing of his life during or after the war.”

After a while, Irena decided to keep a record every time her father mentioned something about the war. She later investigated his war records and travelled to Poland for research. Waclaw was studying maths at Warsaw University and due to being a Polish cadet, was imprisoned in the notorious Kozelsk prison and later sent to a labour camp in the Siberian Arctic Circle. Waclaw was forced to dig runways in temperatures reaching as low as minus 50 degrees Celcius, while under constant threat from sadistic guards. He lived an indescribable living hell that Irena only found out about in snippets throughout his life. He endured and witnessed atrocities which were to haunt him for the rest of his life, with many friends murdered or frozen to death in the unforgiving cruelty of Siberia.

Later fate intervened, and he was liberated and sent to the Middle East, where Waclaw was enlisted to fight for the Allies in the Italian campaign at Monte Cassino, Ancona and Bologna.

Waclaw’s desire to return to his homeland never left him, but after the war, Poland was governed by the Soviet Union and it was impossible to return for fear of imprisonment or death.

Waclaw settled in England. He studied textiles at Nottingham University, met Irena’s mum and started a family. He didn’t know if his mother and family had survived the war until 1959 when he received his first censored letter. He finally returned to see his family for the first time in 1966 and was sent to prison for a week. It was only with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 that the true story of what happened to the Poles during the war became apparent. Waclaw died at the age of 94 in 2014 on the Isle of Wight. His ashes were sent to Poland for a soldier’s burial.

Irena settled in the South Hams, after falling in love with the coastline while her son was studying at Exeter University. She is now travelling all over the world giving talks about A Homeland Denied, having just returned from a month in southern Australia.

A Homeland Denied is published by Whittles Publishing.