The Indian maharaja who gave hundreds of Polish orphans a home during World War II

When the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland in September 1939, in coordination with Nazi Germany's invasion from the west, Soviet authorities began deporting hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens to labor camps deep in the interior, among them the families of teachers, civil servants, military officers, and other members of what Soviet policy identified as the Polish intelligentsia. Conditions in the camps were brutal, and many deportees, including large numbers of children, did not survive the harsh climate, forced labor, and food shortages of the following two years.

The situation shifted in 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, prompting Moscow to align with the Allied powers and agree to release the Polish citizens it had deported, under an amnesty negotiated with the Polish government-in-exile. Freed but with nowhere established to go, tens of thousands of Polish survivors, including large numbers of orphaned or separated children, made their way south through Soviet Central Asia toward Persia, modern-day Iran, in a chaotic evacuation that claimed further lives along the way from disease and exhaustion.

Persia became a temporary staging ground, but it could not permanently absorb the refugee population, and Allied and Polish authorities scrambled to find countries willing to take in groups of Polish evacuees, particularly the orphaned and unaccompanied children among them, for the duration of the war. Many governments, wary of the practical and diplomatic complications of hosting refugee populations mid-war, proved reluctant.

Among those who agreed was Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja, the ruler, or Jam Sahib, of Nawanagar, a princely state on India's western coast under British colonial suzerainty. Digvijaysinhji offered to host a group of Polish children at Balachadi, a coastal site near his capital, establishing what became a dedicated settlement and school for several hundred young Polish refugees, most of whom had lost one or both parents to the war and its aftermath in Soviet custody.

The decision was not without complication. India itself was under British colonial rule and dealing with its own severe wartime pressures, including famine conditions in parts of the country, and the logistics of housing, feeding, and educating a large group of foreign refugee children fell substantially on Nawanagar's own limited resources, supplemented by support from Polish and Allied relief organizations. Digvijaysinhji personally took a close interest in the children's welfare, reportedly visiting the settlement regularly and becoming known to the children as their "Bapu," a Hindi term of affectionate respect meaning father.

Life at Balachadi combined elements intended to preserve the children's Polish identity, including Polish-language schooling, Catholic religious practice, and Polish cultural traditions, with the unfamiliar experience of life in a new and different climate and culture. Surviving accounts and later testimonies from former residents describe the settlement as a place of genuine safety and care after years of trauma, even as the children grappled with displacement, grief, and uncertainty about relatives left behind or lost.

The settlement operated through the remainder of the war and into the postwar years, with the population and needs of the community shifting as the broader Polish refugee crisis evolved and as some children were eventually reunited with surviving family members or resettled elsewhere once the war ended. Digvijaysinhji's role extended beyond Balachadi as well; he was involved in broader discussions, including at the League of Nations before the war, regarding the treatment of refugees, reflecting a sustained personal engagement with the issue rather than a single isolated gesture.

The episode remained relatively obscure outside specialist historical circles for decades, overshadowed by the vastly larger scale of wartime displacement and by the more widely known refugee narratives centered on Europe. In more recent years, it has received renewed public attention and formal commemoration in Poland, where Digvijaysinhji has been honored with streets, plaques, and cultural tributes recognizing his role, and where surviving former Balachadi residents and their descendants have worked to keep the story known.

For the children who passed through Balachadi, many of whom went on to settle in Poland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere after the war, the settlement represented a formative chapter bridging catastrophic loss and eventual stability, made possible by a ruler of a small, distant state who agreed to take in refugees other governments were unwilling to accept.

The story of Nawanagar and its Polish children endures today as one of the lesser-known instances of wartime refuge extended across vast cultural and geographic distance, a reminder that humanitarian response to the era's displacement crises came not only from the major Allied powers but also, in this case decisively, from a princely state whose ruler chose hospitality over caution at a moment when few others did.