Obituary – Marek Powierza
The founder of what is now the Enterprise Motor Group has paid tribute to the “right-hand man” in his business.
Marek Powierza and Fred Lewis met as children, started working together in the early years of the used-imports industry and were lifelong friends.
Powierza arrived in New Zealand as a four-year-old from Poland in 1944. He and his family in a refugee camp at Pahiatua near Masterton. He lived there for five years before moving to Hamilton where he attended a primary school and Hamilton Boys’ High, where he met Lewis.
Powierza, who was 79 when he died, then enrolled in the education department before studying social science at Victoria University. He worked for two decades as a social-worker principal. For the latter 10 years, he was head of Weymouth Girls’ School before teaming up with Lewis in Gisborne.
Powierza worked in his former profession because he had always felt New Zealand had given him an opportunity. “Not only did it give me good health, but a good education and a nice-looking wife as well,” he once quipped.
Although Lewis and Powierza went their own ways after school, they always kept in touch and years later met up in Poverty Bay when Lewis was a panel-beater.
Lewis told Autofile Online: “After establishing the car yards, I started working in different places and needed someone to look after the guys. I said to Marek, ‘how about working for me as general manager’, and he replied, ‘Fred, when I think I’ve done my work for the country, I’ll join you. That’s the sort of person he was.
“A few years later, he called and said, ‘Fred, I’m ready to come now’. He was principal of Weymouth when it started. It was quite a big job in those days.
“Marek had a great personality. The boys called him ‘Mother’ because if there was a problem, they would go to see him. Marek didn’t have an enemy in the world. He’d tell you straight and wouldn’t pull any punches, but in a nice way. Marek was virtually my right-hand man. Any problem, or whatever, he would sort it out. He was sort of like everybody’s mentor.”
Powierza was general manager at Enterprise for about 20 years, and was later a director and adviser to the business.
During the early 1990s, he served on the Auckland committee of the Motor Vehicle Dealers’ Institute representing the used-vehicle sector and was also its communications manager.
Powierza died on November 27, 2019. He leaves his wife Sharon, children Nina and Stefan, and four grandchildren. A memorial party will be held mid-March 2020 on a date to be arranged.
REFUGEE CHILDHOOD – IN HIS OWN WORDS
Marek Powierza told the remarkable story of his early years and his family’s history to the Emigrants’ Archive in Poland.
It was in November 1944 when about 840 Polish refugees, of which 733 were children, arrived in New Zealand on-board a World War Two troop carrier to rebuild their lives. They settled in a camp near Pahiatua in northern Wairarapa. What follows are Powierza’s own words.
“In early 1940, the Russians took my father away, and returned after a few weeks to take our mum, grandma and two brothers. They took them across Russia to Kazakhstan, to a place called Karabash where I was born.
“Mum found father somewhere in Russia. He was with the Polish army and it was like a fairy tale. She went to get bread at a train station and there was an officer there. It turned out to be her husband – in the middle of Siberia.
“They spent a few weeks together [before] father rejoined the army. It wasn’t until years later we received information about his death. He contracted typhus, many soldiers died of it as they had no medicine.”
School and studies in New Zealand
“We arrived in New Zealand in 1944. I was four years and one month old. I don’t remember much, if at all. But I do know a lot. I think I do, because I’ve always listened and read a lot, and I went to school in Pahiatua.
“I lived with my mum and grandma. My big brother went to school in Palmerston North. And Witold, my middle brother, and I lived in the camp until 1949. That’s when we moved to Hamilton. There weren’t many Polish people there, but there were some. Perhaps half a dozen to 10. I went to a Catholic school there and then Hamilton Boys’ High.
“I graduated and then enrolled into the education department. At university, I got a degree in social science. Then I worked for 20 years as a social worker principal, looking after children, problem children and the like.”
‘This country had given me an opportunity’
“I wanted to work in that profession because I had always felt this country had given me an opportunity. Not only did it give me good health, but a good education and a nice-looking wife as well [laugh]. I don’t know, I’ve been to a couple of different countries, but New Zealand is a special country with special people.
“Sometimes, at the start, we kind of felt like foreigners. But not for long because the people here are very open. I’m pretty sure that a lot of us have told you about our coming here aboard that American ship and how we were received.
“It’s something that’s difficult to... I really can’t remember, but I feel things whenever I see photos of that. And I always feel that even though I am Polish at heart, that I am a New Zealander.
“It’s not a competition. It doesn’t mean that I am both one and the other. I don’t speak and understand Polish all that well because my brothers escaped to Australia, the sun here was too hot, too strong.
“But they come here a lot and we talk a lot. And mum and grandma at home would always speak Polish with us. It’s something you cannot lose. It’s sad that our children don’t speak Polish. My wife is a New Zealander and I think that without a mum... it’s always the mums who teach the language all across the world. Poland will never... it will always exist for as long as we live.”
You can find out more about the Polish children of Pahiatua here: www.archiwumemigranta.pl/en/collections/polish_children_of_pahiatua
