Guests from Mexico Visit the Center!

Today, the Center welcomed a special guest—Mr. Andrzej Rattinger-Aranda and his family. Mr. Andrzej is the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Poland in Xochitepec, Mexico, and the son of Władysław Rattinger, a Siberian deportee and Polish soldier.

Following the amnesty in 1941, Władysław Rattinger was assigned to locate the Polish population living on collective farms in the south of the USSR, transport them to the port of Krasnovodsk, and evacuate them to Iran. He was then assigned to lead a second transport of Poles (728 people, including 408 orphans) from Bombay to Mexico. After a sea crossing and a train journey in November 1943, the Polish population was housed at the Santa Rosa hacienda. Władysław Rattinger helped establish a self-sufficient “Little Poland” in Mexico. He led a theater group and organized cultural activities for Polish children. Having assumed his family was lost, he decided to stay in Mexico. He married Ana María Aranda and moved to Guadalajara. The Rattinger family had five children; one of them is Mr. Andrzej, who keeps his father’s memory alive.

We are extremely grateful for this visit and are delighted that our exhibition on the fate of Polish Siberian deportees at Fort Skotniki has earned his approval. We look forward to continued contact and collaboration.

We would like to thank Mr. Mateusz Zimny for putting us in touch!