The story of how a grandmother’s grave was found, thanks to the Center’s research efforts in Tanzania

Meanwhile, at the Center…

We had the pleasure of hosting Ms. Wanda Kitchen from Australia, along with her daughter and son-in-law from New Zealand, Sophie and Tyler Allan. This family’s history is inextricably linked to the fate of Poles, whom we have been documenting and commemorating for years.
Ms. Wanda’s parents, as teenagers in the 1940s, were deported to Siberia, and then, following the so-called amnesty through Iran, they ended up in Polish refugee settlements in Tanganyika (present-day Tanzania). Wanda’s grandmother, Tatiana Domeracka, is buried at the Kinondoni Municipal Cemetery in Dar es Salaam. Thanks to the Center’s assistance—including photographs taken as part of our documentation work in Tanzania in 2024—Wanda was able to locate her grandmother’s grave during her emotional journey this year and pay tribute to her family’s memory.

Today’s meeting at the Center was filled with emotion, memories, and reflections on the complex fates of Poles scattered across the globe. Such visits demonstrate the importance of our Center’s work—not only for preserving and promoting Polish national heritage abroad, but also for families searching for traces of their ancestors. It is precisely through documenting history and places of remembrance that we can restore family memories and pass them on to future generations.
Thank you for this exceptional visit and the opportunity to learn about the moving history of Ms. Wanda’s family. Behind every documented story lie human destinies, memories, and emotions that endure despite the passage of time…