An exceptional man in extraordinary times: Jam Saheb Digvijaysinhji of Nawanagar

Eighty years ago, on the eve of Passover on 19 April 1943, the skies above Warsaw echoing with gunfire turned red. About 750 young Jews stood behind a 10-foot-thick brick wall in the ghetto determined to face the full fury of the Nazi war machine. These untrained men firmly held bottles filled with gasoline, some rifles, a few pistols, a handful of grenades and a small number of machine guns. Grouped under the leadership of the two self-defence units the bravest of the brave defended the community with dignity and courage. In Europe in the 1940s, the usual Jewish experience was death. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were deported by the Nazis to the gas chambers. For the heartless Nazis, the day, 19 April 1943, represented the day before Hitler’s birthday. An appropriate birthday present was due. The Nazis unleashed hell with flame throwers. For the next 28 days, Warsaw witnessed the horrors of Nazi brutality and the bravery of the vastly outgunned band of Jews who fought against desperate odds. At the end of the doomed resistance the former Jewish quarter was annihilated. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum confirms at least 7,000 Jews died fighting and 7,000 were captured by the SS to be transported to the Treblinka killing centre. Another 42,000 were sent to forced labour camps for systematic extermination. This was recorded in world history as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. More madness was to follow. On 1 August 1944, the Poles took over large parts of Warsaw and theirs was the second major armed resistance against the Nazi occupiers. The dreaded SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the bulk of his German divisions to decimate the city. Despite the heroic and desperate fight of the Poles, the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was brutally suppressed. Nearly every citizen was killed, and every house was burnt. By October, between 200,000 and 250,000 civilians lay dead. Warsaw, one of Europe’s most beautiful cities and the intellectual capital of Poland was looted and razed to the ground. Five years earlier on 1 September 1939, Poland became the epicentre of history’s most devastating conflict. The invasion of Poland by Hitler was merely the opening act of the global catastrophe that would follow. Hitler’s monstrous Nazi mindset then rolled over Europe, spreading terror and destruction across continents. The combined attack by the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union on Poland shattered the nation and left thousands of children bereaved. Welsh historian Norman Davies in his book Heart of Europe: The Past in Poland’s Present, has recorded, “Of the estimated two million Polish civilians deported to Arctic Russia, Siberia, and Kazakhstan, in the terrible railway convoys of 1939-40, at least one half were dead within a year of their arrest.” Among them were numerous orphaned children of Polish soldiers who were left to die of hunger or diseases in Siberian gulags. These heartbroken children, Jews, and Catholics, without any fathers or mothers, survived for days on one slice of bread enduring the horrors of WW2. In the summer of 1941, Stalin joined the Allied effort, and the political landscape changed. The orphans were now set free to travel to other countries. However, they faced an ambiguous future as no nation was keen to accept them. The freshly evacuated orphans began a long and arduous journey overland by slow trains and sometimes on foot from cold Siberia through Ashkabad and Krasnovodsk towards the warmth of India unclear about where they would end up. Having lost a proper childhood, they also lost their loved ones while traversing the continent due to inhospitable weather, malnutrition, dehydration, and starvation. Even though the terrors of the Holocaust continued in Europe the Hukumat-i-Britannia was reluctant to relocate the Polish children to India. They put difficult and high-priced conditions insisting on special camps and educational facilities for the refugees. After an excruciating, nearly two-year-long journey across continents, the traumatized Polish children in the middle of a life-and-death struggle finally alighted in India after being denied entry in most ports. They were a sad lot reduced to mere skeletons with overgrown shabby hair and worn tattered clothes. In Bombay (Mumbai now), the Polish Consulate which had been established in 1933, provided support to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. India retained a distinct record over centuries of being the only nation where the Jewish people had never been persecuted. The dynamic Polish Consul Eugeniusz Banasinski, along with his wife Kira working with Polish Red Cross swung into action and moved heaven and earth. The Banasinskis spread the news about the plight of the children amongst the Indian royals. The news of the children’s immeasurable suffering and pain reached the Kingdom of Nawanagar with a population of half a million. This was a small principality (in Gujarat state) well-known for its Jam Sahibs and the Asiatic Lions. Here Maharaja Digvijaysinghji Ranjitsinghji Jadeja, the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar had succeeded his uncle, the famed cricketer Colonel Sir KS Ranjitsinhji to the throne as Raj Pramukh on 2 April 1933. Later in an interview with the New York Times, he revealed that he had taken a considerable cut in pay after ascending to the throne as prior to this he was a private businessman with significant income. In 1942, the newly knighted Maharaja was particularly moved by the terror faced by the Polish children. His own interest in Poland dated from meeting the musician statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski in the Morges, Switzerland as a child. The lion-hearted Maharaja now transformed into a man with a mission. He decided to save the Polish lives when the whole world seemed to be collapsing around them. At great personal risk and enormous expense, the Maharaja boldly volunteered to provide hundreds of children with a ‘Home Away From Home’ in Nawanagar. He also met every requirement of the Hukumat-i-Britannia’s approval relating to the children. His decision gained global appreciation and on the other side of the globe New York Times on 17 October 1942, published the news “Indian Prince Offers His Estate to Polish Refugees”. The ship transporting the first set of children was ordered by the Maharaja to dock at the Rosi port in his province. Almost overnight a camp was established at Balachadi, a small seashore town in north-western India, 25 km from the Maharaja’s sixteenth-century capital Jamnagar. The group of around 500 Polish orphans in the age group of 2 to 17 years accompanied by some adults entered Nawanagar. Most carried only tragic personal stories as baggage. At the welcome feast, Maharaja affectionately greeted the youngsters and said, “You are no longer orphans. From now on you are Nawangarians , and I am Bapu, father of all Nawangarians, so I’m your father as well”. By this single stroke of compassion, the Maharaja demonstrated the ancient Indian culture of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the World is one Family) and Atithi devo bhava (revering guests with respect reserved for Gods). The Polish children suddenly found themselves landing in an oasis. They lived in newly constructed spacious dormitories with separate beds and were provided fresh sets of clothes. Besides their personal space, they had special food cooked by seven Polish chefs and learnt to savor Mangoes. Overnight the Maharaja’s guest house was converted into an elementary and secondary school headed by a Polish priest Father Franciszek Pluta with a proper classroom with benches and tables. The school library accumulated Polish books to keep the children conversant with their mother tongue. A pre-war Polish footballer, Antoni Maniak, a player for Pogonia Lwów was at hand to train the skinny kids in competitive sports. The Indian head of the sanatorium Doctor Amrutlal Ashani acquired a working knowledge of Polish to have heart-to-heart talks with the children and provide medical care. On hearing the sound of airplanes flying overhead they initially ran to seek protection in the fields. Slowly they got accustomed to the coastal life in western India, swam in the Arabian Sea, played soccer with the local schools, and enjoyed camping. Additionally, the children practiced Polish folk dances, like the Polonaise, Kujawiak, Krakowiak, and the Highland Robber’s Dance. The local population was friendly and caring towards the children. The youngsters began to experience inner peace for the first time in years. The cricket-playing Maharaja regularly visited the camp situated near his seaside residence. During his visits, he attended special performances at the camp and gave away substantial cash prizes. He wanted the children to recover their health and forget the past ordeal. He celebrated all the festivals with the children including Christmas complete with a specially dressed Father Christmas arriving on a Camel with presents for all the children. The Polish children who had missed Christmas during their time in Communist Russia trembled in delight at receiving the gifts. They lovingly called the Jam Sahib, ‘Bapu’ and privately nicknamed him ‘the Big Jam’. Nawanagar was the place where the Polish children rejuvenated and began to live a normal life far away from the trauma of the past. Following the success of the ‘Little Poland in Nawanagar’ another camp came up in Valivade in the princely state of Kolhapur. It provided war-time domicile to 5,000 Polish older people, women, and children evacuated from the Soviet Union. Then over two years later on 17 January 1945, Warsaw was liberated, and by May 1945 the war ended in Europe. The much-sought-after moment finally arrived at the children’s camp. It was time to return to their homeland. The Maharaja let them go with a heavy heart. The shy bunch of small children had grown to a group of nearly a thousand glowing young adults. They half-heartedly departed from Nawanagar to multiple destinations. The Polish children scattered all over the world eventually organized themselves into the Association of Poles in India 1942-1948 and a group called ‘Survivors of Balachadi’. As the years went by Maharaja Digvijaysinghji was regarded in the newly independent nation as a patriot and an asset to the country. The Maharaja become a diplomat and was appointed as the Chairman of the United Nations Administrative Tribunal in New York. In his interviews with the New York Press, he dispelled many misconceptions about the lives of Indian maharajas among Americans. [caption id=“attachment_12430492” align=“alignnone” width=“300”] Skwer Dobrego Maharadzy - the Square of the Good Maharaja in Poland< Image courtesy Bhuvan Lall[/caption] Maharaja Digvijaysinghji Ranjitsinghji Jadeja, the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar died on 3 February 1966 and was posthumously awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit by the Polish President. Today there exists in the capital city of Warsaw, Skwer Dobrego Maharadzy - the Square of the Good Maharaja. It has a marker in Hindi, English, and Polish dedicated to the memory of the kind-hearted Maharaja. The Maharaja was also named the Honorary Patron of the popular Warsaw Bednarska High School. On 31 May 2022, a tram named ‘Dobry Maharaja’ was inaugurated in the Polish city of Wroclaw. History came a full circle in the winter of 2022 as Poland provided shelter to over 6,000 Indian citizens fleeing the invasion of Ukraine. And even eight decades later the heartwarming story of a lion-hearted Indian Maharaja’s kindness to Polish children during WW2 continues to remain the deepest link between the two nations. (1845 w) The writer is the author of The Man India Missed The Most Subhas Chandra Bose and The Great Indian Genius Har Dayal. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.