Barbara Wanda Elżbieta Korwin-Piotrowska was born in 1950. Her father, Wacław, was born in Kiev in 1913 which was then part of the Russian Empire. His brother and sister died at a very young age from meningitis and he and his parents then moved to Mołodeczno, now in Belarus. Wacław. He became an army cadet in his early teens as had always been his intention and the proceeded to the Artillery Officer Academy in Toruń where he graduated as a Second Lieutenant in 1936.
 

When Poland was invaded in September 1939, he took part in the very last battle between the Polish army and the Germans at Kock and Barbara remembers him telling how he had to swim across the River Wisła (Vistula) under gunfire in an attempt to escape. He and many others were captured by the German forces and then held at several prisoner-of-war transit camps (Radom, Kielce and Stargard)until being transferred to Oflag IIB Arnswalde in northern Poland, where he spent the entire rest of the War until May 1945. That was a camp a camp for officers, academics and teachers and it was highly disciplined. 
 

Wacław and his compatriots decide right from the start that they were going to survive the imprisonment, putting on educational courses, forming committees and taking part in cultural events including an opera. The inmates learned how to write creatively and draw and even established their own “Olympic Games” at which he won two medals. Although the camp was apparently run under ‘Geneva Conventions’ he had friends who were shot for trying to escape. The food was also terrible; cabbage soup with an occasional potato supplemented by Red Cross food parcels.
 

After the War, Wacław also wrote-off the six years he had spent in confinement as six years of lost life, even telling his wife-to-be that he was that number of years younger than his true age. After the Liberation, he spent two years with the Polish Army in Matera, Italy before opting to come to Morpeth in England. He had always been very artistic and then did a course in paper sculpture as well as studying maths and accountancy.
 

He met his wife to be, Elizabeth, at a hen party in Edinburgh. She was engaged to an American and they were due to sail to New York the following week to get married. But when she met Wacław, she fell in love with him instead! Her parents were very angry that she had chosen an impoverished Pole. The couple moved to London and it was there that Barbara was born, in a flat in Kensington which was at that time in the heart of a large Polish community. They shared the apartment with Polish twins who were so poor they only had one knife, fork and spoon between them and those had been “borrowed” from Lyons Corner House.

 

The family lived in the flat until Barbara was about 4 years old and Wacław had a number of jobs, with British Railways and Walls in Acton amongst others. There were many Poles who had been demobbed from the military and they brought their discipline with them; no individual was allowed to sit down to eat in the canteen until the most senior-ranking ex-officer was seated. Surrounded by his compatriots, Wacław was able to continue life as a Pole and absolutely refused the take-up British citizenship when others about him began to do that.