The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association has commemorated the ordeal of Polish refugees in Africa during World War II and appealed for solidarity with refugees in today’s world.
On 1 November 2025, Polish and Ugandan members and supporters of ‘NEVER AGAIN’ lit candles at a Polish refugee graveyard in the village of Koja, in the Mukono district of southern Uganda.
Autor/źródło: ‘NEVER AGAIN’ AssociationFrom 1942 till 1952, up to 20 thousand Poles – mostly women and children – found refuge in Uganda and other countries of East Africa. They had been victims of Stalinist repressions and deportations who were evacuated from the Soviet Union after the Nazi invasion against the USSR. The Polish refugees in Africa were met with a warm welcome by the local communities.
This little known page of history has been remembered in the form of a multi-lingual mobile exhibition, also available online, prepared by the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association in cooperation with the Rotary Peace Centre at the Makerere University in Uganda, the most renowned university in the region of East Africa.
‘Our project aims to restore memory of an important page of shared Polish and Ugandan history. By highlighting this story, we hope to build a social climate of openness and intercultural empathy’ – said the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association’s co-founder Dr Rafal Pankowski, Professor at Warsaw’s Civitas University and Rotary Peace Fellow at Makerere University, Kampala. In 2024, he initiated the educational project ‘Building Bridges – Inspire Peace: Towards an Intercultural Understanding Between East Africa and Poland’.
On 1 November 2025, Polish and Ugandan members and supporters of ‘NEVER AGAIN’ lit candles at a Polish refugee graveyard in the village of Koja, in the Mukono district of southern Uganda.
The memory of the Polish refugee experience was presented at the annual Capstone conference of the Rotary Peace Centre in Kampala on 23 October 2025. On 22 October, Rafal Pankowski delivered a lecture for Makerere University students coming from across Africa and beyond on the subject of genocide in world history and the message of ‘NEVER AGAIN’. A special contribution to the session was recorded by Gregory Stanton, the author of the model of Ten Stages of Genocide and founder of Genocide Watch.
Earlier, on 11 October 2025, the ‘Building Bridges’ project had been presented during the multi-cultural Human Rights Academy organized in Warsaw by the Dunaj Institute of Dialogue. On 29 August 2025, the story of the Polish deportees in the USRR who found themselves in Uganda was the topic of a lecture by Rafal Pankowski at the Marc Bloch Library of Civilizations in Chisinau (Moldova).
The graphic design of the exhibition was prepared by Andrei Sergunkin, a Warsaw-based anti-war political exile from Russia and a member of the Memorial group, renowned for its efforts to commemorate the victims of Stalinist repressions.
The ‘Building Bridges’ initiative is accompanied by workshops prepared in the frames of the project. During interactive sessions, the participants are encouraged to reflect on the issues of refugees, migration, international solidarity as well as counteracting racism and discrimination.
The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association is an independent civil society organisation founded in Warsaw in 1996. It has campaigned against racism, antisemitism, and xenophobia, for peace, intercultural dialogue, and human rights across the world.
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Źródło: Stowarzyszenie "Nigdy Więcej"
