The Poles of Tehran

From the early 1940s until the end of WWII, Iran hosted between 114,000 and 300, refugees from Poland, that come on the way from Siberia via Uzbekistan. They arrived to the port city of Bandar e-Anzali and they settled in Tehran, but also in Isfahan and other locations like Ahvaz. Most of them left either back to Poland, after the war, or left for New Zealand or UK, but there were also a few - some hundred - that stayed there, settled and eventually married.

Some of the stories of those refugees are the topic of a documentary movie made by the film director and author Khoshrow Sinai, who died this August of Covid 19, The Last Requiem available for free on YouTube (it lasts 1h35). He gathered testimonies of the then refugees between 1971-1983, to which archive films and photos were added.  He is not the only one to cover this topic, among those who documented this Exodus being the photographer Gholam Abdol-Rahimi. 

The wandering started once Poland was occupied by the Germany, with hundred of thousands of people running - sometimes on foot - to the Soviet Union, where they were sent to camps in Siberia. Malnourished and maltreated, some were able to go out and reached Iran, where according to the testimonies they were welcomed with open heart, fed and hosted by the locals. ´They made us feel humans again´, says one of the person interviewed then. Many were sent back to the front but there were many who temporarily or for good worked here, as nannies or music teachers. Polonia, a former bar and restaurant in the centre of Tehran, was a meeting point not only for the local Polish but also by the American and British soldiers stationed in the capital. Sinai is wandering though the Christian cemetery in Tehran or visiting the local church trying to understand what they feel and how they feel now about their past. 

At the time of the production, given the so-called ´friendly´ relations between USSR and Poland, the movie was not distributed in the country, as it openly approaches the hardships the Poles had to suffer on behalf of the Russians. After the end of the Cold War though, Sinai was awarded a high Polish state distinction for his contribution to the understanding of this specific chapter of common history.

Among those hundreds of thousand of refugees, there were also around 1,000 Polish Jews that were saved from the Nazis while being offered temporary refuge in Iran. The survivors, calling themselves ´Tehrani´, do still reunite once the year in Israel to celebrate their escape through Iran. Unfortunately, this topic is not approached in the movie, but in those demented times we live now, it is a good reminder that, in fact, the kindness of the people can easily overpass the craziness of the political regime in power in Tehran.