A prominent member of Dundee’s Polish community, who endured the horrors of the Nazi occupation of her native land as a young woman, has died at the age of 88.
Stefania Rulinska never returned to Poland to see her brothers and sisters after the war because of her objection to its continued occupation.
Her son Konrad (52) said, “Her Catholic faith was very important to her. She wanted to see good in everyone and was always mystified and unhappy when people turned bad or did things that were wrong.”
Born in Boryslaw near the Ukraine border, Mrs Rulinska grew up in a land that had been under Austro-Hungarian control.
The second world war brought a German invasion and Mrs Rulinska was transported to Germany where she was sent to work in labour camps.
The camp was liberated by the US army in 1945, but she couldn’t return to Poland and became one of millions of displaced persons following the defeat of the Nazis.
She chose to make a new life for herself in the United Kingdom, and after a spell at a base in Preston she was nominated to come to Dundee where she stayed at a hostel in Broughty Ferry.
She found work in the Eagle Jute Mills in Victoria Road and then as a nurse in Ashludie Hospital.
She met her husband, Konrad sen, who was based with Polish troops at Menzies Castle near Aberfeldy, at gatherings of the Polish community.
They worshipped together at the Polish mass in the basement of St Andrews Cathedral in Nethergate, and also attended the Polish club in Magdalen Yard Road, which they took over when they were married.TalentThe couple’s talent for business saw them move on, and they took over a shop in Princes Street, running it is a delicatessen before opening a similar shop at the corner of Albert Street and Park Avenue.
“Polish delicatessens have opened in Dundee quite recently as more Polish people have come to live in this area, but my parents were way ahead of them,” her son said.
“Through their shops they became very well-known in the community and in the grocery and business world in Dundee in general.
“After my father died in 1975 things changed and my mother gave up the shop a few years later, but, in total, she was involved with the shops for over 20 years.”
Mrs Rulinska lived with her son in Douglas. Her immediate family still live in the Dundee area her daughter, Renata Leslie, is in West Ferry but she left her two brothers and two sisters in Poland.
“My mother wrote to them and sent them packages and things, but she never went back,” her son said.
“She loved her family and loved Poland, but she couldn’t bear to go there because of how she felt about its occupation.
“She grew up when it knew of Austro-Hungarian rule, then there was German rule and for more than 40 years after the war it was under Russian control she just wanted Poland to be free.
“That did happen, in the end, but she was an older woman by that time and because of circumstances she didn’t go back.”
He continued, “My mother had a remarkable life it could have made a book or a film. Younger people today don’t appreciate what people like my mother had gone through.
“There was what she went through in the war years and before that.
“When the war broke out she was 17 and even by that time she was an accomplished cook and seamstress.”
He added, “After the war she worked in a leather manufacturing factory in Edward Street, and she was given a special role in checking the assembly of parachutes for British forces serving in Korea.
“It was specialised work and no one could do it as well and as carefully as my mother.”
A devout Roman Catholic, Mrs Rulinska attended St Joseph’s Church and latterly St Pius, where her funeral mass will be held on Wednesday.