The Good Maharaja

When 600 to 740 Polish orphan children were freed from the Soviet labor camps and were loaded on ships bound for…no one really knew, their situation looked bleak. The 1941 Sikorski-Mayski agreement between the Soviet Union and Poland resulted in the release of tens of thousands of Polish prisoners of war held in the Gulag and other Soviet camps. included in that number were thousands of displaced children, many of whom were orphans. Sadly, no one wanted these children. They were just another mouth to feed, and times were hard. The children couldn’t return to Nazi-occupied Poland, and the Soviet Union didn’t want them. It was a time of much distrust, and many of the nations who might have been a good destination, refused the ships entrance into their ports.

After escaping from Siberia, the group of children traveled by ship across the Arabian Sea. In those days, with food often scarce, and medical attention almost nonexistent, the possibility of dying on a ship was very real. Nevertheless, even knowing that this was a shipload of children, nation after nation turned their back and a blind eye to the situation. Amazingly, one man was different. Maharaja Jam Sahib Digvijaysinhji defied British hesitation to harbor the refugees. Known as the good Maharaja, Digvijaysinhji of Nawanagar welcomed them, creating the Balachadi camp (or “Little Poland”). He famously told the children, “You are no longer orphans. You are Nawanagaris now”. The children, aged 2 to 17, were housed in Balachadi, near his palace. They were provided with education, food, and a safe environment until 1946.

Digvijaysinhji had been educated at Malvern College in England and was part of Winston Churchill’s Imperial War Cabinet. “He was an extraordinary man, and to the Polish people, he became a national hero … an Indian Oskar Schindler,” former Malvern College teacher and housemaster Andrew Murtagh wrote of Digvijaysinhji. Father Piotr Wisniowski, chaplain of EWTN Poland. He told EWTN News, “The Good Maharaja, Jam Sahib Digvijaysinhji, wrote himself into history through extraordinary humanity. When he welcomed Polish orphans to Balachadi, he said, ‘You are no longer refugees. From today, you are the children of Nawanagar, and I am your Bapu — your father.’ These words were not a public-relations gesture but a pledge to take responsibility for the most vulnerable. After 1941, when Polish refugees were freed from Soviet captivity, Poland was a nation devastated by war, unable to care even for its own children,” Wisniowski told EWTN News. “The maharaja understood that tragedy and said, ‘If God has sent me these children, it is my duty to care for them.’ That is why Poland remains grateful to him — for lives saved, dignity restored, and for the witness that mercy knows no borders of nations or cultures.”

When the children first arrived, it was obvious that they were frightened. At first, foster homes were suggested to house the children, but the Polish government was opposed to separating the already traumatized children. Other options, such as schools and convents, proved unworkable. The viceroy of India set up The Polish Children’s Fund, supported by the archbishop of Delhi and the mother superior of the Convent of Jesus and Mary. Private donors including the Tata family largely funded the project.

At the end of the war, many children were afraid of living under communist rule, having suffered deportation to Siberia from the Soviet regime. Many were terrified of going back to Poland. It was decided that only those children who wanted to return to Poland would be sent back. Eighty-one children were relocated to the United States to build new lives there with the help of Catholic missionaries. Twelve Jewish children were relocated to Haifa in 1943.

When Communism fell in Poland in 1989, the kindness and generosity of Digvijaysinhji was formally recognized by the Polish government. In 2012, a park in Warsaw was named the “Square of the Good Maharaja” and a monument was erected. He was also posthumously given the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. Digvijaysinhji died in Bombay on February 3, 1966, at the age of 70.