An Ordinary Polish Boy

AN
ORDINARY
POLISH BOY
JOURNEY TO ENGLAND


This is the story of a fourteen-year-old boy living in south-east Poland at the beginning of the Second World War. The small town he lives in becomes the site of a massive battle involving a million men from three armies (German, Polish and Russian).

An Ordinary Polish Boy describes how the Germans took over the area and how they controlled the local population through murder and forced labour. It also describes what happened when they built the first extermination camp close to the boy's town. It follows his journey after he was taken into forced labour from Berlin to Italy, where he eventually joined up with the Polish Second Corps, and finally to England. He arrived there as a refugee with thousands of other Poles who could not go back to their homes and families because of treaties signed at the end of the war which allowed Russia to annex part of eastern Poland and control most of Eastern Europe.