The project sits on the site of a settlement once known as "Little Poland", built after India's ruling maharaja opened his territory to Polish exiles fleeing the Soviet Union.
Plan of the Polish Housing Estate in Valivade. Photo: IPN Archives/Wiesław Stypuła
About 5,000 refugees settled in Valivade, making it the largest Polish community in India during the war — a town of five districts with roughly 30 buildings each, complete with a church, schools, a hospital, a theater, a cinema and swimming pools. The last residents left in 1948.
Title page of the invitation to the opening ceremony of the Polish Settlement in Valivade on January 8, 1944. Photo: IPN Archives/Circle of Poles from India 1942-1948
The refugees had reached India by a long and difficult route. Under the 1941 Sikorski-Majski agreement signed in London, the Soviet Union agreed to release Poles held in its prison camps and allow the formation of a Polish army under Gen. Władysław Anders. Thousands of soldiers and civilians, including many orphaned children, were evacuated from Soviet territory in 1942, with some eventually settling in India.
The idea for a museum dates to 2016, when the current maharaja, a descendant of the ruler who welcomed the refugees, met Adam Burakowski, then Poland's ambassador to India. A cornerstone was laid in September 2019, but the coronavirus pandemic stalled the project's progress for several years.
Organizers say the finished museum will include a reconstructed Polish family living quarters, rebuilt from archival photographs, along with galleries on both the wartime evacuation and daily life in the town.
Among the planned exhibits are a traditional costume from the Mazowsze song and dance ensemble, Polish scouting uniforms, and photographs and personal items once belonging to the refugees, according to the magazine. Organizers caution that the fall opening date could still shift.
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Source: PAP, IPN