Visit to Auckland by our new HoM Patryk Błaszczak and our new Public & Cultural Diplomacy Officer Monika Mizgier-Błaszczak

Words from Polish Embassy in Wellington:

“One of the objectives of our new Head of Mission Patryk Błaszczak’s first visit to Auckland was to get to know the Polish community living in and around the city. He was welcomed in the Polish House by the Auckland Polish Association – Polonia Auckland and its president, Ms Nina Tomaszyk. The visit to the Dom Polski provided an opportunity to discuss the Association’s future plans as well as prospects for language teaching and learning in , especially among the young.

Mr Błaszczak also met with members of the Polish New Zealand Business Association POLANZ to talk about ways to further trade relations and to identify business opportunities and areas of economic cooperation between the two countries.

Stories of the #PahiatuaChildren, war memorabilia, memoirs and so so much more… Thanks to Ellen Roy’s kind guidance, Mr Błaszczak took a moving journey to the past at the Polish Heritage Trust Museum in Howick, New Zealand. He also presented the Siberian Exiles Cross to Theo Surynt, awarded by Poland’s President Andrzej Duda to her late husband Jerzy Surynt, one of the Polish children who arrived in New Zealand in 1944.

Mr Błaszczak also had the immense pleasure to visit another “Pahiatua boy”, Mr Jan Roy-Wojciechowski at his family home in Howick. Thanking Mr Roy-Wojciechowski for his many outstanding contributions and his relentless dedication to building relations and to cultivating Polishness in Aotearoa throughout his life was a very special moment!

To mark the 85. anniversary of Stalin’s order – signed on March 5, 1949 – for the NKVD to execute almost 22,000 prisoners of war in the Katyń Forest and other locations in the Soviet Union, Mr Błaszczak laid flowers by the Katyń Plaque at the Cathedral of St Patrick and St Joseph in Auckland.”