Between 1943 and 1945, Iranian Studies was also the name of a Polish-language journal. Studia Irańskie was published by the Towarzystwo Studiów Irańskich (Society for Iranian Studies) in Tehran, where some of the most celebrated academics of twentieth-century Poland spent their wartime exile. Distinguished figures, including economist Bronisław Minc, Sovietologist Wiktor Sukiennicki, historian Stanisław Kościałkowski, and pianist Stefania Niekraszowa, wrote about Iran’s economy, geopolitics, history, and music. These articles, however, became a curious footnote in their biographies. Their exile proved temporary; some departed for Beirut, others continued on to London or New York, but most returned to Poland. Katarzyna Rodacka’s rich book reconstructs this episode in the lives of thousands of Polish refugees.
Chapter 1 opens in Bandar-e Anzali, then Pahlavi, with an evocative scene of cultural encounter. As Polish refugees disembark from their ship onto smaller boats, local Iranians surround the vessel, requesting empty bottles for reasons that remain mysterious. Upon reaching shore, some refugees vow never to return to Russia, while all express relief at seeing Polish soldiers. Rodacka’s narrative emphasizes friendly foreigners: local Iranians, whom she credits with a tradition of hospitality; British Colonel Alexander Ross, who had previously served in Poland and learned Polish before joining the Middle East Relief and Refugee Administration (MERRA); and Indian doctors and English nurses with the Red Cross. The chapter will be of interest to the growing historiography of international humanitarian aid and civilian presence in Iran.
Although Polish voices are woven throughout the narrative, they take center stage in chapter 2. With a journalistic eye, Rodacka shifts from the international context—a de facto protectorate that facilitated both departure from the Soviet Union and onward travel to Baghdad or Jerusalem—back to the border, where Soviet soldiers meticulously inspect personal belongings. This brief chapter powerfully evokes the anxiety surrounding travel permissions. Its protagonists are often children. Some traveled with their parents, others in orphanage convoys. More recently, the journey of approximately 1,000 such Jewish children who continued onward to Palestine was the subject of a notable book by Mikhal Dekel.Footnote 1
Set in and around Tehran in 1942, chapter 3 showcases the value of these memoirists to historians of wartime Iran. Who would have thought that downtown Tehran reminded Polish refugees of Lublin? For social historians, the observations of a Polish maid working in a Tehrani household are surely promising. But it was mostly professionals who could afford to live in the city itself. Most refugees lived in camps. In the camps, pupils followed a Polish curriculum. Adults, even if their encounters with the city were managed, were not entirely sequestered. They worked in diverse settings: as domestic staff and bartenders, in restaurants and hotels, and even sewing clothes with government-provided machines. Rodacka’s sources spotlight the bureaucratic challenges of obtaining permits from British, Polish, and Iranian authorities to establish Polish businesses, such as restaurants. They also reveal how community leaders negotiated on behalf of Polish workers with Iranian owners. Conservative intellectuals decried the presence of Poles across social strata, but even they could not stop Lalehzar Street—Tehran’s Champs-Élysées or Times Square—from becoming a veritable Polish enclave.
Life in Tehran was not without hardships. The chapter concludes with descriptions of bread riots, inadequate hospitals, and a rapidly filling graveyard. Chapter 4 throws deprivation into greater relief. Even if they endured worse in the Soviet Union, children suffered from inconsistent staffing and unreliable food supplies, not to mention ailments and nightmares. The chapter celebrates the strengths of communal organization. A Polish family, resident in Isfahan since before the war, welcomed the refugees. Networks soon extended throughout “the East,” allowing the printing of textbooks in Isfahan, and also in Jerusalem. Stefan Juzwa, a former officer, was quickly dispatched to organize the children into scouting platoons. One wishes Rodacka had paid closer attention to the elements of control infused in such initiatives. Those who shirked their scouting duties, she tells us, were denied permits to visit the town, or even their mothers.
The following four chapters alternate between the two cities. Chapter 5 portrays the continued flourishing of Polish cultural life in Tehran in 1943. More importantly, it excavates mounting tensions. Many originated from without. The London press, for instance, reported that Polish officers harassed Jewish comrades in Tehran. The bread riots mentioned in chapter 3 pitted locals against newcomers. However, a rabbi’s repudiation of the allegations, along with an amicable and well-attended football match between Poles and Iranians, facilitated local de-escalation. Harder to allay were anxieties about departing from the camps. Some young women left for the city in search of personal freedom at the cost of even further precarity. Many others departed for destinations far beyond, including Latin America and Africa. These departures were not entirely voluntary: some left due to rumors that stoked fears of deportation back to Siberia, whereas others faced expulsion. The thin stratum of intellectuals was better positioned to maintain a low profile.
Chapter 6 returns to Isfahan, where Rodacka’s lens focuses on social control mechanisms. The Polish children there lived even more isolated lives than their counterparts in Tehran. Their world centered on an eventual return to Poland and lacked meaningful interaction with local youth, who were mentioned only as disrupting screenings of Polish films. The persistence of the war brought increased Polish prostitution and the dismissal of “problematic” personnel, heightening anxieties among all parties: Polish, Iranian, Soviet, and British. The chapter then breaks free from this Polish ghetto. It recounts the shah’s meeting with the Polish children of Isfahan and then elaborates on the fate of the Sisters of Charity’s Vatican-subsidized mission. Following its closure, the girls relocated to the historic center and then to New Jolfa. This is one of the most vivid and revealing tales in the entire book, featuring surprising protagonists such as Armenian seamstresses who retrofitted American-donated clothes to suit local tastes.
The subsequent chapters advance the story to 1944, with Tehran receiving the briefer treatment. Rodacka presents a fascinating financial juxtaposition: at the governmental level, the Polish government-in-exile feared that the establishment of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration would result in their takeover of camp administration and funding. Simultaneously, despite the budgetary burden the camps placed on the British Empire, Poles at the grassroots level collected funds for Warsaw’s reconstruction. This three-page account—comprising two pages on governmental perspectives and one paragraph on grassroots efforts—feels too brief. Historians interested in developing these topics will be pleased to learn that the Archiwum Akt Nowych in Warsaw holds archives of many Polish institutions in Iran, although notably not those of the Red Cross.
Compensating for the limited archival work, Rodacka crafts moving descriptions from memoirs and testimonies. Chapter 8 opens with Polish girls in Isfahan studying carpet weaving under Iranian and Armenian artisans—a craft they were expected to bring back to a liberated Poland. Working up to seventeen hours daily, these girls produced carpets that made the British officer hesitant to deliver those prepared as gifts for Roosevelt and Churchill. The vignettes demonstrate continuities punctuated by changes: graduating from a high school in Isfahan with a diploma qualifying for university admissions in Poland; folk dances alongside broadcasts about the Warsaw Uprising; an Iranian child “adopted” into an orphanage and assimilated to Polish life but unable to continue with the group to Lebanon; portraits from Isfahan discovered and published in 2010; hundreds of children departing for what was intended as a New Zealand stopover but proved permanent.
Chapter 9 and the epilogue trace the road back to Poland through a camp in Ahwaz. However, some refugees remained in Iran permanently. Rodacka concludes with intriguing glimpses of love: ecclesiastical threats of excommunication for mixed marriages, an Iranian poet dedicating verses to his Polish beloved, and unions that produced Catholic children raised in Tehran and New Zealand. Although these stories serve to demonstrate that the Iranian episode is not one that Poles could easily close in 1944 and move on, they also provide a wealth of other topics for research and potential witnesses for historians of Iran. What might Polish lovers teach us about the social history of the Iranian family and its youth?
Writing for a general audience, the author made some compromises that scholars will dislike. There is a bibliography, but no footnotes. However, observations, quotations, and experiences are unambiguously attributed to their authors. The preference for Polish witnesses means that, with few exceptions (like the poet mentioned above), Iranian, British, and Jewish sources are underutilized.Footnote 2 Yet no book can accomplish everything. For scholars of wartime displacement, communal resistance, and, indeed, modern Iran, Domy na piasku is a stimulating and highly readable contribution that deserves to appear in English and Persian as well.
