A MOTHER who survived a Soviet labour camp and later founded the Greenmount Wild Bird Hospital has died at the age of 92.

Irena Zalasiewicz, who lived in Brandlesholme, died following an illness last week.

The mother-of-three was born in the town of Mir in Poland, which is now part of Belarus.

In 1940, at the start of World War Two, Mrs Zalasiewicz and her family were transported to a labour camp in Siberia.

She was aged just 16 at the time, and worked as a lumberjack alongside her brother and her sister.

But after a pact was made by the governments of Great Britain and the Soviet Union against Germany, those in the camp were told they could stay, where they would be fed and housed, or they could leave.

The family decided to make the arduous journey to freedom through wartime Russia and Asia, eventually arriving in the Middle East where she served in the 2nd Polish Corps of the British Army.

Sadly her mother and father did not survive the relentless journey, but her two siblings did.

Mrs Zalasiewicz wrote a book about her experiences, named 'Hands across the precipice: Encounters in Siberia and Asia 1940–1942'.

Her son Jan, who is a lecturer in geology at the University of Leicester, said that her time there had a significant impact on her.

He said: "She had to learn to look after herself in Siberia. After that, she was fiercely independent. A lot of what she did after that was to give her some focus, because it was a very traumatic and harrowing experience for her."

Mrs Zalasiewicz met her future husband Feliks in Palestine, and they tied the knot in Italy, near Lake Como.

They decided they did not want to return to Poland, because of the devastation caused by the war, and emigrated to England in 1946, settling in Bury.

Her husband worked as an industrial chemist, and in the 1960s Mrs Zalasiewicz's love of birds started to take hold, and the foundations of the wild bird hospital began.

Jan, who attended Holly Mount Primary School and Bury Grammar School, said: "My mother always had a love of animals, and she started the hospital by chance. My sister had brought back a bird which she helped and fed, and released back into the wild.

"Someone remembered that and brought some more birds to the house, and it just snowballed from there."

Her house became a menagerie of all manner of species of birds, which used as a base during the 1960s.

With the help of Hilda Crook, Kathleen Common and Kate Maden, the hospital was established as a registered charity in 1979 at the Kirklees Valley, in Garside Hey Road, where it still stands today.

It cares for injured and orphan wild birds, and continues to grow.

Natalie Stewart-Kerr, current manager of the hospital, said: "Irena retired about 20 years ago, but her legacy continues to live on. We are continuing to get bigger and bigger, we had 200 or 300 birds when I started in 1984, but now we care for more than 1,600."

Mrs Zalasiewicz's husband died in 1993, and her other child, Anna Hiley, still lives in Bury.

Her funeral will be held in Bury later this month.