Until now, it was widely believed that Boleslaw Augustis, the author of the largest collection of pre-war photographs from Bialystok, who moved to New Zealand after the war, no longer photographed in exile. Meanwhile, four volunteers from the WIDOK Cultural Education Association and the Siberia Memorial Museum brought back material proof from their trip to New Zealand that it turned out otherwise, including negatives and prints of the photographer. They also recorded 14 interviews with Siberia deportees from the antipodes, including the family of Boleslaw Augustis.

The four volunteers from Bialystok travelled more than 20,000 km, visiting the North and South Island, doing about 2,500 km by car to meet with New Zealand’s Polish community.

The volunteers met with the Polish community in three of New Zealand’s largest cities: Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. They conducted 14 interviews with Siberian deportees and their family members and digitised around 200 archive photographs, including photographs taken by Boleslaw Augustis in New Zealand.

During the expedition, the volunteers met the sons of Bolesław Augustis, Zbigniew and Stanisław, who used the surname Augustowicz in his new homeland, among others. It was they who decided to pass on to Poland what had been preserved from their father’s legacy: 18 pages with 147 prints from an album, a photographic record of Bolesław’s wartime trail with the Anders Army, and a dozen rolls of negatives, mainly from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Augustis’ photographic output was also previously unknown to the Polish community in New Zealand. It was first presented to her on 29 October during the anniversary Pahiatua Picnic Day at the Polish House in Auckland.

More recognisable in the local Polish community was his wife Maria, a member of a large Polish family of Zazulaks who settled in New Zealand and a “Pahiatua child”, as a group of 733 orphans rescued from Siberia is called, who arrived in New Zealand on the USS General George Randall on 31 October 1944 at the invitation of the country’s Prime Minister Peter Fraser.

Adrian Andrzejewski