How The West Was Won

(5 of 5)

Adam Wasilewski
ENTREPRENEUR
Many of those who left Poland over the past few years did so because they couldn't find a job. Adam Wasilewski, 38, left because he couldn't create enough of them. Owner of a stoneware company in Warsaw, he found that increasingly his clients were not paying their bills. "I couldn't plan an expansion," Wasilewski recalls. "I had the money, but only on paper." Around the same time, a contract came up to apply interior cladding to a high-rise at London's Canary Wharf. He took it. Wasilewski then moved his family to Britain and, in 2004, invested in two small stoneware companies. He has not looked back. Turnover has doubled in the past three years. Instead of struggling to make his business thrive, Wasilewski now employs about 50 workers, most of them, like him, from Poland. Wasilewski hopes to return to his homeland some day. In fact, he'd like to move some of his own companies' production processes back there later this year. Meanwhile, his two young children, ages 5 and 8, are attending a special Polish school each Saturday. They are already bilingual.

Bozena Ukalska
SHOP ASSISTANT
A former religion teacher from southeastern Poland, Bozena Ukalska, 47, had already spent fruitless months job hunting when her husband was laid off from the local automobile plant. So in 2005, she says, "we decided to leave. That's better than sitting and crying and begging for help." They went to Spain where at first she worked illicitly, earning cash in hand as a cleaning lady. A year later, Spain opened its labor markets to new E.U. citizens and she took legal employment near Madrid in a shop selling Polish products. Today, Ukalska earns €1,000 a month, supplementing her shop hours with cleaning, and working weekends and holidays. She sends most of her earnings home to her two daughters. "The next generation will have it easier," she says. "I'm very happy that things are changing a bit in Poland and that my daughters will have a better future than I do. They should not have to face the decision that we did."

Bozena Wozna
UNIVERSITY LECTURER
With a PhD in computer science and a specialization in computer-program troubleshooting, Bozena Wozna, 33, is the kind of person her country can ill afford to lose. She chose a teaching career in part because she believes the young science can play a vital role in stimulating Poland's new economy. But like many talented Poles, she decided three years ago that the opportunities elsewhere were too hard to pass up. She found a research job at King's College London and later taught at University College London. It was, she says, "a great adventure and a totally new experience." But she missed Poland and her family and last year she returned to a job at the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science in the southern city of Czestochowa. Her experience abroad will help develop the institute and "teach our students better," she says. As for other Poles, they too will return, Wozna believes, but only "in 10-15 years" when they have accumulated money and experience. "If everybody leaves, what will happen to this country? Somebody has to stay. I think it's worthwhile to invest in Poland."