FAMILY and friends gathered to celebrate the 100th birthday of the remarkable Roma Loboda.
Roma, believed to be the oldest Polish resident of Redditch, has lived in the town since 1948, raising a family and working in the needle and spring industries.
However her story also takes in the carve up of her country by Stalin and Hitler, labour camps in the freezing wastelands of northern Russia and a flight to freedom that saw her enlist in the WAAF – Women’s Auxiliary Air Service – in what is now Zimbabwe, but back then was Rhodesia.
The Lakeside resident, who was one of nine children, said: “In Poland my father had a big farm, we had a pond with fish, lots of beehives and farm animals.
“We often had workers over from Ukraine to help with the harvest.”
However when Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Russia jointly invaded her country in 1939 that idyllic life was shattered.
Roma’s daughter Chris said: “In February 1940, aged 15, mum and her family were put in cattle trucks and moved to northern Russia near Finland where they were put to work chopping down trees. It was practically slave labour.”
All that changed in 1942 when Russia, now fighting the Nazis, offered an amnesty to the Polish labourers – although for a price.
“My father had had a nice suit made before the war and he sold it to a Russian schoolteacher to raise enough money to buy our freedom,” said Roma.
The family travelled south, through what is now Uzbekistan and Iran to eventually take a ship to Africa where they joined a camp of Polish refugees near what was then Salisbury and now Harare in Zimbabwe.
“One day a woman came round from the WAAF looking for volunteers and I immediately put up my hand,” said Roma.
Thus began, she said, a happy two years in her life, stationed 200 miles away at RAF Heany near Bulawayo.
She also started working as a nanny, and quickly become fluent in English.
Chris said: “She embraced it all, and broke a few hearts too.”
In 1948, three years after the war, the family set sail for Southampton, settling in Redditch where there was plenty of work available as the country got back on its feet again.
In 1949 she married her husband, Ludwik, who had fought with the Polish Army at Monte Casino in the Italian campaign. The couple went on to have three children.
Redditch has a strong Polish community and the family quickly became key members of it, enjoying trips out, dances and ‘Polish Days’ as well as meeting up at the old Polish club on Oakly Road.
Ludwik died in 1979 aged just 59 and since then, with the help of her family, and latterly the support of big hearted Redditch charity Carers Careline, Roma has enjoyed a peaceful retirement, topped this week by a card from the King and Queen congratulating her on 100 years well lived.
And the secret of her longevity?
“I’m a very placid person, and never lose my temper – always gentle,” said Roma.
“And it’s in my genes too as my great grandfather lived to be 115.”
