From the Snows of Siberia to the Snows of Kilimanjaro

Polish Canadian Heritage Day in Alberta

From the Snows of Siberia to the Snows of Kilimanjaro
Join us for this presenation: From the Snows of Siberia to the Snows of Kilimanjaro: A children’s odyssey from Russian captivity to a variety of countries, cultures and, in each, unexpected acts of strangers. 

Writer Irene Tomaszewski will talk about a group of refugees whose harrowing journey took them across four continents and two oceans — but decades later they remembered their refugee camps fondly and even had reunions.  She will talk about her own family in that thread of history and also the unusual constellation of places and personalities that made this happen -  and the politics that kept it from being known.

About Irene

(also Irena Tomaszewska, born May 1940) is a Canadian writer, editor and translator of Polish descent living in Montreal, Canada. Early life. Irene Tomaszewski (Tomaszewska, in proper Polish usage, since she is female) was born in 1940 to Polish parents in the Soviet Union’s Rosochy prison, in the Arkhangelsk Oblast gulag.
Tomaszewski was a founding president of the Canadian Foundation for Polish Studies

Irene spent her childhood in a refugee camp in Tengeru, Tanzania and came to Canada in 1949.  A graduate in history at Concordia University in Montreal, Irene has written two books on Polish history, many articles and reviews in Canadian newspapers, and was editor of cosmopolitanreview.com, an online magazine about things Polish. She is the co-founder and organizer of the international symposium on Polish studies, history and literature called “Poland in the Rockies”.  

MIEJSCE I SZCZEGÓŁY NA PLAKACIE.