Season of Life - Polish Refugees in Iran during World War II

Exhausted by hard labor, disease and starvation we disembarked at the port of Anzali. There, we knelt down together in our thousands along the sandy shoreline to kiss the soil of Persia. We had escaped Siberia, and were free at last.

These are the words of Helena Woloch Antolak a Polish woman who worked in forced labor camps in the Soviet Union before fleeing to Iran as a refuge in 1942.

In the year 1942, Iran stood as a beacon of freedom and hope for almost a million Polish citizens released from the Soviet labor camps of Siberia. After enduring terrible conditions travelling across Russia, 115,000 of them were eventually allowed to enter Iran. Most of them went on to join the allied armies in the Middle East. The rest (mostly women and children) remained guests of Iran, their lives totally transformed in the process. In this film, we will go back through the pages of history and trace the lives of the Polish immigrants in Iran.

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