Ryszard Wolny will never forget the bitterly cold February night when Soviet soldiers stormed into his family home.

“It was 3am. We were woken by knocking then they burst in. My mother was shaking and screaming. We were all crying,” he recalls. “The soldiers said we were being sent to another area.”

The family – eight-year-old Ryszard, his two brothers and their parents – were forced onto cattletrucks and endured a terrifying three-week journey to north west Russia. “We were packed in like animals, with little food and only snow to drink. The bodies of those who died were thrown off,” recalls Ryszard, 80. “We were petrified. We had no idea where we were going, or what would happen to us.”

Exhausted, they arrived at a labour camp near Archangielsk, where the temperature was -40C.

Hundreds of thousands perished in brutal camps in Siberia. “We were very fortunate to survive,” says Ryszard.

He and his family later settled in the UK, where Ryszard met his wife, Danuta, who had also survived deportation. The couple have lived in their Eccleshill home for 51 years.

Last week they were among those awarded Sybiraka Cross medals by the President of Poland at a ceremony organised by the Bradford Polish Ex-Combatants Association at Bradford’s Polish Centre to commemorate the 72nd anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of 1.7 million Poles to Siberia.

After the Russian invasion of Poland in 1939 – following the corresponding German invasion that started the Second World War – the Soviets annexed an eastern region of the country and, on February 10,1940, began transportating men, women and children to Siberia. Their destinations were remote areas where they were forced to fell trees, build roads and railways and work in coal mines.

Ryszard’s family lived in a communal wooden barrack. “My father was gone for days at a time, chopping wood in a forest. We were told ‘if you don’t work, you don’t eat’,” says Ryszard. “When we left home, the soldiers told us to pack what we could. We lived on a farmstead so my father brought things like pigs’ fat. My mother bundled clothes into a sheet and later exchanged them for potatoes and onions. Bedding and clothing saved our skins.”

A photograph album lying on the couple’s dining-table contains black-and-white images of a little girl riding a bike in the African sunshine. Danuta, 73, has little memory of the terror her family suffered before those photos of her were taken.

She was three when they were sent to Siberia. “I was the youngest of five. I don’t remember much, just the black bread we ate,” she says. “It is the journey afterwards I remember.”

When Germany attacked Russia in 1941, Poles were liberated from Stalin’s camps and many joined allied forces. Danuta’s family travelled to Africa, via Persia, as it was, and India. “We were packed onto trains. I got lice and pulled all my hair out. Aged five, I was so exhausted I stopped walking,” says Danuta. “My father died in Iran. He never recovered from illness and overwork in the camp.”

The family lived in a Polish settlement in Uganda, where Danuta finally felt safe. “We had sunshine and fruit. The Americans sent parcels of clothes,” she says.

Ryszard’s family travelled initially to Kazakhstan. “It took weeks. Often we waited days for trains. We had no food – my father had to steal it. When the train stopped at a station, the men ran off and grabbed chickens and goats,” he recalls. “The worst hunger was in Uzbekistan. Many families died there.

“We ate berries and bulb plants. We begged for food, but the people were poor and had nothing to give. My father killed three dogs and we ate those. Once he produced a bag of onions, we ate them even when they were rotting. It was down to my father that we survived.

“Once we got to Tehran we felt safe. We had British protection and had food, clothes and shoes from UNICEF.”

The family went on to Uganda, where Ryszard attended grammar school. He was in the same camp as Danuta, but they didn’t meet until the 1950s.

Both families came to Britain in 1948, initially to refugee camps in the South. “We were displaced people – they called us DPs,” says Danuta. “We had only the clothes we stood up in.”

Adds Ryszard: “We were treated as second-class citizens. If they laid people off at work, we were first to go. But I didn’t mind – I was a guest in this country.”

The couple came to Bradford in 1961 and later ran a fish and chip shop in Laisterdyke for 25 years. Now grandparents, they say their experiences have made them appreciate what they have.

“It never leaves you,” says Danuta. “For a long time all we knew was hunger. We became used to travelling and temporary settlements, we just adapted. Not knowing what was going to happen was the worst thing.”

Many Polish people settling in Bradford after the war, seeking work in mills and factories, had been victims of Stalin’s forced exile. Yet this dark chapter of history is often overlooked.

“For a long time Polish people didn’t talk about it. They weren’t allowed to, and didn’t have the opportunity to, especially behind the Iron Curtain,” says Ryszard.

In recent years, Bradford’s Polish community has been highlighting what happened, and each Feburary they hold a commemorative mass at the city’s Polish church.

In 2005, Poles from around the UK attended a ceremony in Bradford marking the 65th anniversary of the deportation, and an exhibition in the Polish Centre featured objects such as pieces of wood, representing forced labour, and bread and water, symbolising meagre food rations.

Now, more than 70 years after enduring brutal slave labour, survivors have received medals from the Bradford Polish Ex-Combatants Association.

At last week’s ceremony, Kris Miloszewski saw his wife Christina presented with a medal. Her father’s body was thrown from a cattletruck during the journey to Siberia, and her grandparents and sister died there.

“There were 120 people in the cattle wagon and only 60 arrived. People died like flies in the camp. They were forced to work with primitive tools for 400 grammes of bread a day,” said Kris, whose family escaped Poland on the day of the Soviet invasion.

At the ceremony, poems by survivor Marian Jonkajtys, sent to a camp aged six, were read out.

“We felt it was important to honour those who survived such terrible hardships,” said Romana Pizon, chairman of Bradford’s Polish Ex-Combatants Association. “People should never forget.”