THE funeral takes place today for a pillar of the Coventry Polish community who has died aged 87.
Feliks Chustecki, of Finham, was among the first Poles to settle in Coventry after the Second World War.
He was born in the south-east of Poland where he lived an idyllic childhood before he was driven out of his home by the Soviet Army.
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Feliks and his family were among the two million Poles living in that part of the country who were forced out of their homeland in 1940 for harsh work camps in Siberia.
His 83-year-old wife Stasia, who he met in Coventry, was deported on the same night as Feliks when she was 10 years old.
She ended up in South Africa and it was another two years before she was reunited with her family in Coventry.
Recalling the traumatic events of the February 1940 eviction, she said: “There was a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
“Two men barged in with their rifles and woke us up and they made my dad sit on his bed with a soldier holding his rifle towards him.