Poland to Pahiatua - the journey of the Pahiatua Children

Presented by Michael Jarka, son of Pahiatua child Jan Jarka QSM

In November 1944 more than 700 young Polish refugee children arrived in Wellington, facing an uncertain future.
Eighty years on, join Michael Jarka at the Ōamaru library to look back at the journey that brought these youngsters to other side of the world, and what life here was like for those who would become New Zealand’s ‘Pahiatua Children’.


Dunedin resident Michael Jarka is the son of one of the Pahiatua children, the late Jan Jarka QSM. Michael will speak about the children’s deportation from their homeland in 1940 and the two years spent in Russia before being brought to New Zealand. He will share his knowledge of what conditions were like in the former prisoner of war camp where the children were housed when they arrived in Pahiatua, and his father’s subsequent life.