| Original caption: “Polish youngster with his arms loaded down with bread made from flour supplied by the American Red Cross. Smile is in anticipation of enough bread to eat, something he would not get if he had stayed in his native Poland.” Following the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941, the Soviets agreed to evacuate part of the Prisoners of War from their 2-year occupation of Poland there. Non-military refugees, mostly women and children, were also transferred across the Caspian Sea to Iran. Despite a lack of food, resources, and transportation, Iranians openly received the Polish refugees, and the Iranian government facilitated their entry to the country and supplied them with provisions. Polish schools, cultural and educational organizations, shops, bakeries, businesses, and press were established to make the Poles feel more at home. Starting in 1942, the port city of Pahlevi (now known as Anzali) became the main landing point for Polish refugees coming into Iran from the Soviet Union, receiving up to 20=500 refugees per day. General Anders evacuated 74,000 Polish troops, including approximately 41,000 civilians, many of them children, to Iran. In total, over a 116,000 refugees were relocated to Iran. Approximately 5 or 6,000 of the Polish refugees were Jewish. As the Poles gathered in Iran, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Szymanski (July 4, 1898 – November 6, 1959), an American military liaison officer, wrote a detailed report dated November 23, 1943, describing the facts he had learned concerning the earlier deportations of Polish men, women and children into the Soviet Gulag: “The plan was very carefully worked out, and its purpose was the extermination of the so-called intelligentsia of Eastern Poland…Families were broken up and in many cases the husband shot. Very little time was given for preparation. One or two suitcases were all that was permitted to be taken…the destinations were forced labor camps, concentration camps, and prisons …because of the lack of vitamins, scurvy, beriberi and many other diseases were prevalent. Night-blindness and loss of memory resulted from the same causes …Pictures taken by men in Pahlevi indicate the privations that those people had to undergo in the land of the Soviets. The children had no chance. It is estimated that fifty percent have already died from malnutrition. The other fifty percent will die unless evacuated to a land where American help can reach them. A visit to any of the hospitals in Teheran will testify to this statement. They are filled with children and adults who would be better off not to have survived the ordeal.” When the evacuation staff, made up of Poles, and British and Indian officers and men, arrived at Pahlevi on March 25, 1942, they found the 1st ship already in the harbor ready to disgorge its cargo of desperate humanity. Solider Ryszard Zolski, a veteran of the 1939 war who would join the Polish Ambulance Corps, recalled his arrival: “Now we could see many Army officers, wearing several kinds of uniform, English, Persian and Polish/English, like mine. They seemed very grim, as they surveyed the cargo of human wreckage being unloaded. Perhaps they were trying to assess what potential was left in us. Their faces expressed pity, and disgust – that once healthy, stalwart men had been brought to such a state of misery and dejection…Spontaneously, I and many hundreds of us, knelt on those golden sands, raising our eyes to heaven, silently thanking God for our safe journey and at last our longed for freedom. Bowing my head, I reverently kissed the sands of Persia – that free land. Emotion was so strong that many of us were weeping from sheer joy. Even some of those who greeted and checked us in, had eyes filled with tears.” The soldiers were immediately separated from the civilians and taken to a camp where they “had to strip, have a shower, a haircut, be powdered with insecticide and were issued with new tropical uniforms.” For many civilians getting on a ship was a matter of life and death: some mothers not on the list even threw their babies into the cargo nets of the departing ships in the desperate hope that at least 1 member of the family might survive. The Polish soldiers tried to help as many families as possible. Irena Szunejko (May 16, 1930 – ????) and her mother had a lucky experience: at Tashkent they met a Polish soldier who was searching for his family, which had been deported to Siberia. On hearing that Irena’s mother came from the same part of Poland as he did, “he took her hand and said: ‘Come with me – you are my sister and you can live.’ We never saw the man again.” United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill (November 30, 1874 – January 24, 1965) was appalled at the number of civilian dependents arriving in Iran and telegraphed Foreign Minister Anthony Eden (June 12, 1897 – January 14, 1977): “Are we going to get nothing but women and children? We must have the men.” General Tadeusz Klimecki (November 23, 1895 – July 4, 1943), Sikorski’s chief of staff, telegraphed Lieutenant General Władysław Anders (August 11, 1892 – May 12, 1970) : “In view of the great food difficulties in Iran it is necessary to stop absolutely transport of families until agreement is reached with British authorities as it may hamper or restrict military evacuation. How many members of families have you already evacuated and how many do you intend to evacuate?” Polish Government in Exile Minister of the Interior Stanisław Kot (October 22, 1885 – December 26, 1975) sent a similar telegram ordering Anders to be discreet about the evacuation; so many Poles were arriving in the south of the Soviet Union hoping to leave the country that they were exacerbating the already desperate food situation. In total, 31,189 soldiers and 12,408 civilians were evacuated in March-April 1942. The civilians, like the soldiers, reached Pahlevi on the Caspian Sea suffering from the effects of the prolonged starvation, hard labor and lack of health care that had characterized their exile in the Soviet Union. Their arrival surprised the British and Indian officers and troops, who had been led to expect only Polish soldiers. Uniforms were at hand to clothe the soldiers, but nothing was available for the civilians until the wife of the counsellor at the British embassy in Teheran, Adeline B. D. Fox Holman (1906 – January 21, 2005), wife of the United Kingdom Embassy Councillor Adrian Holman (December 22, 1895 – September 6, 1974) organized a vigorous charity drive and, within 3 days, clothing and bedding were being rushed to Pahlevi. None of the evacuation staff had any knowledge or experience of the feeding of starving people. The Poles, unsurprisingly, were desperate to eat as much as they could, often with tragic consequences. The meal most often served in Pahlevi was mutton stew with rice, which was too rich for digestions weakened by long-term starvation. Several 100 Poles, mostly children, died on the beaches from acute dysentery brought on by too much food. Some Poles warned their compatriots against the dangers of over-eating and against a sudden introduction to a rich diet. Renia Kochanska (1930 – ????) instinctively realized that she could not manage what she was given but, being 12 years old, was too shy to ask for something different, so in order not to appear ungrateful she buried her food in the sand. She had been so weak on her arrival at Pahlevi that a soldier had had to carry her off the ship. Iranian traders made a fortune as the Poles purchased vast quantities of boiled eggs and fruit, which they had not seen since leaving Poland 2 years earlier. The health of the evacuees was appalling. Illnesses included typhus, dysentery, pellagra, other fevers and diseases caused by starvation, and respiratory diseases. The August evacuation also brought an upsurge in the number of malaria cases. The peak figure for the sick was on September, when there were 868 Poles in hospital and a further 2,000 recuperating in the convalescent camp. When the Poles departed for Teheran, they left behind 568 graves of their fellow countrymen at Pahlevi in the Armenian cemetery. The unexpected influx of civilian refugees necessitated emergency measures to house them in Teheran. A large machine gun factory was requisitioned next to the Iranian airfield at Dosha Tappeh, a few miles east of the city. It was capable of housing 5,000 people, although the accommodation was rudimentary; concrete platforms served as beds and the overflow had to sleep on the floor. Adjacent land was leased from the Iranian Government and a tent city grew up, named Camp Number 1, and was followed by the creation of 4 further camps. The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (October 26, 1919 – July 27, 1980) had loaned an unfinished orphanage to the British Army, and this was adapted to be a hospital for the Poles. Stanistaw Milewski (January 22, 1931 – October 1, 2013), who later became a journalist, arrived in 1 of the 1st transports to Teheran and remembered: ‘We were warmly greeted by the Persian people with gifts of food, dates and clothes. We were simply amazed by the sight of smiling people and a bustling city full of open shops and traffic.”* His testimony is supported by others who also recall the generous welcome they received in Teheran. After spending several days in quarantine in warehouses near the port of Pahlevi, the refugees were sent to Tehran. There were so many refugees that government buildings and centers were allocated to house them. Army personnel were 1st sent to training centers near Mosul and Kirkuk in Iraq. After training, most of the Polish soldiers joined Allied forces fighting in the Italian campaign. Thousands of the children who came to Iran came from orphanages in the Soviet Union, either because their parents had died or they were separated during deportations from Poland. Most of these children were eventually sent to live in orphanages in Isfahan, which had an agreeable climate and plentiful resources, allowing the children to recover from the many illnesses they contracted in the poorly managed and supplied orphanages in the Soviet Union. Between 1942-1945, approximately 2,000 children passed through Isfahan, so many that it was briefly called the “City of Polish Children.” Other children were sent to orphanages in Mashad. Numerous schools were set up to teach the children the Polish language, math, science, and other standard subjects. In some schools, Persian was also taught, along with both Polish and Iranian history and geography. Because Iran could not permanently care for the large influx of refugees, other British colonies began receiving Poles from Iran in the summer of 1942. The refugees who did not stay in Iran until the end of the war were transported to India, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa, among other countries. The Mexican government also agreed to take several 1,000 refugees. A number of Polish refugees stayed in Iran permanently, some eventually marrying Iranian citizens and having children. While most signs of Polish life in Iran have faded, a few have remained. Nearly 3,000 refugees died within months of arriving in Iran and were buried in cemeteries, and many of these burial sites are still well tended by Iranians today. A Polish cemetery in Tehran is the main and largest refugee burial site in Iran, with 1,937 graves. There is a separate area in the cemetery belonging to the Jewish community of Tehran. Each of these 56 graves exhibits a Star of David and the name of the deceased in Polish. Photo by Nicholas J. “Nick” Parrino (May 24, 1914 – February 14, 1979), with the Officer of War Information (OWI) in Africa and Italy. A photographer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer before the war, he was Head of Photography for City Service Oil Company in New York City afterwards. He traveled with Don Whitehead (April 8, 1908 – January 12, 1981) of the Associated Press, who frequently mentioned Parrino in his memoirs. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0756.jpg |
| Image Size | 911.11 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2706 x 2944 |
| Photographer | Nick Parrino |
| Photographer Title | Office of War Information |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | January 1, 1943 |
| Location | |
| City | Pahlevi |
| State or Province | Gilan |
| Country | Iran |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-111-SC-170234 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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