I have shared this before on the forum but I think this is a unique watch but with a common story.
It's a very rare 1945 IPI Watch Co Chronograph, four body 38mm 18k gold watch. The dial has a wonderful salmon patina with gilt raised indexes, baton hands and two sub-dials. The movement is a Landeron 48 calibre, which is rhodium plated, strip decorated, with fine matted steel parts and has a Glucydur screw balance.
Despite extensive searches the brand name remains a mystery to me, it is without doubt 'Swiss Made' and the accompanying paperwork dates the watch to1945. The only other record of a IPI Watch is an Aviator Chronograph in a nickel chrome case which was auctioned in Melbourne, Australia on 10th July 2009.
In my opinion this IPI Watch is beautiful but what makes it truly special is the providence. In 1939 all the newspapers were full of the possibility of war and none more so than in Poland. On the 1st September Nazi Germany stormed Western Poland and on the 17th September the Soviet Union attacked from the east. Both Hitler and Stalin divided and annexed the whole of Poland to install murderous regimes. Two days later and without warning Russian soldiers arrived at my grandparent's farm and at gunpoint were given minutes to collect a few possessions before matching them to the local railway station. Informed that they were a threat to public order and that they had been slated for deportation they knew that they would be shot if they tried to resist. Along with many other Poles, they were loaded onto wooden cattle wagons for a one-way journey to the unknown. There was no privacy, no food except the little that they had brought with them. There was no escape even for the sick. Little did my family know but their journey would take one month, their destination was Siberia and a Gulag, a Soviet Labour Camp, where many were to die.
In September 1939 the Soviet Union ceased to recognise the Polish state and about 500,000 Poles were arrested, imprisoning civic officials, military personnel and other "enemies of the people" including the clergy and teachers: about one in ten of all adult males. Almost all of the captured 300,000 Polish soldiers were murdered by the Russians, a crime known as the Katyn Forest Massacre. The 'lucky' ones were sent to a Gulag which was no different than a concentration camp; men, women and children were forced into hard labour. If you were unable to work you simply did not survive, approximately 150,000 Poles died in the camps from 1941 to 1943.
When Hitler attacked The Soviet Union on 22nd June 1941 an amnesty followed, the Sikorski–Mayski agreement. The Poles were released from their imprisonment and allowed to travel to southern Russia. Those who survived the Gulags where escorted to barges and trains to take them on a journey in freezing conditions that would last for months. Again there was little or no food and many died. Their destination was a transit camp in Kazakhstan where finally the sick and starving were given help from the Swiss Red Cross and the British Authorities. It was here that 583 surviving men were enlisted under British command into the Polish Free Army. Both my grandfathers and great uncles enlisted and went on to fight the Germans at the Battle of Monte Casino. My maternal grandfather was severely injured and remained hospitalised for 11 years.
Like many other children my father suffered Typhoid, he was so sick that it was thought that he had died. It was only the quick action of an Iraqi morgue orderly that my father survived, he noticed that my father was still breathing. His childhood memories were published in a book War Through Children's Eyes: The Soviet Occupation of Poland and the Deportations, 1939-1941, published by the Hoover Institution Press in 1981.
My father was lucky, a British doctor helped him and arranged for him to be sent to Palestine (Israel), where he recovered to attend a British Army Cadet School in Jerusalem. In 1946 he travelled to England to study Civil Engineering at Imperial College, University of London.
My mother survived because my grandmother proved very resourceful and was able to scrounge food. Because my mother appeared 'healthy' she was tasked with jobs including digging children's graves, her rewarded was a bowl of soup. My mother's journey was indeed difficult but she too was able to escape Russia via Persia (Iraq) to a British refugee camp in Tanzania, where she remained until the age of thirteen. My mother arrived in England 1948 onboard the transit ship Empire Trooper see
http://www.polishresettlementcampsinthe ... rooper.htm. It was not until 1955 when finally she was reunited with her father. Sadly my grandfather never saw his wife again as she died en-route to England onboard the ship and she was buried at sea.
It took a further ten years before the remaining members of my family were to be reunited. My parents met in a Polish Displaced Persons Camp in Essex, England where in 1957 they married. Only in 1961 were my family finally free of any restrictions and were no longer required to report weekly to the local police station, until then my parents were classed as aliens. Growing up I never witnessed any bitterness only gratitude. My family settled in both England and the USA to enjoy a good life.
There is a lot more to their journey that I could write but I'm conscious that this is a watch forum. However their story provides the background to the providence of the watch and as to why the watch is so special to me. Records show that in 1946 the Swiss government presented the IPI Watch Co, Suisse, Extra No.12931 to Knud Rasenstin, a Swedish National. This was in recognition of his humanitarian work in helping the displaced Poles. Like many humanitarians of today he placed himself in great danger, always threatened by the Russians he provided comfort and security to a handful of surviving Poles. He had volunteered to work for the Swiss Red Cross at the onset of the war and records show that amazingly Rasenstin had accompanied my mother on her journey from the Gulags to Tanzania.
For reasons unknown his watch was auctioned on 16 November 2002 in Frankfurt, Germany. We can only speculate as to why it was sold. At auction the watch was purchased by a Polish collector and historian with special interest in the Polish Diaspora. I was able to obtain the watch from him on 9th September 2014 in Krakow Poland, 75 years after my family were displaced.
I forgot to add, I paid £700 for the watch the same as a
C63 Sealander Automatic.