When the world closed its ports, one man opened his conscience

In 1942, as war ravaged continents and nations retreated behind their regulations, a ship wandered the Arabian Sea. It moved slowly, like a floating coffin, laden with silence and fear. On board were 740 Polish children, seven hundred and forty orphans. 

They had survived Soviet labor camps, where cold and deprivation had claimed their parents. They had crossed Iran in the hope of finding refuge, only to be confronted with a truth even more cruel than captivity: no one wanted them. Ports were closing, borders were hardening, and every response sounded the same. 

The British Empire, then at the height of its power, denied them access to the entire Indian coastline. Decisions were made far from the sea, in offices where procedures were debated while the ship continued to drift.

The news eventually reached a small palace in Gujarat.

Maharaja Jam Saheb Digvijaysinhji of Nawanagar was but a minor prince in the scale of the Empire. The British controlled his ports, his economy, and his army. Everything urged him to remain silent and submit. Yet when he learned of these 740 children abandoned to the waves while diplomacy hesitated, something broke within him.

He immediately understood that imperial authority could govern his infrastructure, but it had no claim over his conscience. He ordered the ship to dock at Nawanagar and preparations to be made for a proper welcome, fully accepting the risk of opposing British will. The message was sent without ambiguity: the children would be received.

In August 1942, under crushing heat, the ship painfully entered the port of Nawanagar. The children descended the gangway like shadows, emaciated, ill, their eyes emptied of expectation. After so many refusals, they no longer dared believe in hospitality.

What followed transformed their fate.

The maharaja did not build a refugee camp. He created a home. A school was opened with Polish teachers who could understand their language and their nightmares. The kitchen revived the flavors of childhood. Polish songs rose in Indian gardens, and beneath tropical stars, Christmas trees were erected.

To children who had been told again and again that they belonged nowhere, he offered a place that finally felt like home.

The maharaja came often. He learned their names, celebrated their birthdays, comforted them when they cried for parents who would never return. He attended their school performances, summoned doctors at the slightest sign of illness. He spent his personal fortune, to give them what empires had denied them: dignity, childhood, and the possibility of a future.

For four years, while the world burned, 740 children lived like a family at the heart of an Indian prince's kingdom. They studied, healed, began to dream again. They rebuilt themselves.

When the war ended and the time for departure came, there were many tears. The palace in Gujarat had become more than a refuge, it had become a home.

The children later scattered across the world. They became doctors, teachers, engineers, artists, diplomats, parents. They lived full and fruitful lives. And none forgot.

Poland honored the maharaja by creating the Square of the Good Maharaja in Warsaw. Schools bear his name, and he was awarded the highest distinctions. Yet his greatest monument is neither stone nor bronze.

It lives on in the children themselves. Now in their eighties or nineties, they still gather to tell their grandchildren the story of this king from India who knew how to see beyond politics and power.

Seven hundred and forty lives were saved, not by empires or armies, but by one man who refused to let compassion become a calculation.

SWSP