21/06/2026
For Refugee Week and we are sharing stories of people who have made Thetford their home.
At the end of the Second World War, thousands of Polish servicemen and women found themselves in Britain.
Among them was Stefan Zurowski, a young Polish soldier who arrived with his army unit in August 1946. Within a few hours of passing through Dover, he was dancing with a young lady in Thetford’s Guildhall.
For Stefan, it was a very happy end to a long, eventful and dangerous journey. Stefan was born in the Polish town of Lvov.
In 1939 Hi**er and Stalin divided Poland and the Zurowski’s were taken to the local railway, along with hundreds of other Polish families, and forced into cattle trucks.
They travelled for two days without food, water and sanitation until they reached a Russian labour camp in Siberia, where they were forced to work in freezing conditions with very little food.
When Hi**er invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin issued an “amnesty” for the Poles allowing the formation of a Polish Army. At the age of 16 Stefan joined the army and was trained as a motor mechanic.
He served in Italy, fighting at Monte Casino After peace was declared in 1945, Stefan eventually settled in Thetford where he ran a motor repair garage for many years.
It was several months after his arrival in England before Stefan learnt the fate of his parents, brother and sister. They had survived the duration of the war in the Siberian labour camp and eventually returned to Lvov, still under Soviet occupation and very much a part of the Soviet Union. Their old house had been taken over by the State and they were eventually located an apartment in the town. Sadly, the consequences of the war were to live on for many more years, and although Stefan was able to correspond and regularly send a few parcels of luxury goods to his family for many years, he was never to meet them again.
The young lady he met at the dance that first evening became Mrs Zurowski.
