by Anna Patrick
‘I am so sorry. It seems such a cruel blow after everything you suffered for love.’
‘I have no regrets. I still love him with all my heart, but I can’t go back to Poland now. He’s solved my problem for me. Would I have gone back if he had been well? I’m not sure, but as it is, I don’t have to make that decision any more. He is no longer there, not the Ludek I remember and fell in love with.
‘But I will say this: I will never marry or become involved with another man for as long as he lives. That is my pledge to him.’
‘Oh my God, that is so romantic.’
‘It’s the least I can do as a tribute to the love we shared, a love that meant more to me than life itself.’
‘And what about life? Your life? What will you do now?’
‘I’ve family members in England so it makes sense for me to go there and resume my education, complete my degree in psychology and then fulfil my ambition to work with problem children.’
‘Will we ever meet again?’
‘We must. Whatever happens in our lives we must promise to meet up one day.’
‘It’s a promise.’ And the two friends shook hands on it and hugged with all their might.
After Renata left for America, Marta had to wait several weeks before the authorities finalised her own transport to England. She lifted a small suitcase onto her bed. It was leather, scuffed on the corners and musty inside, but solid enough to sit on unlike Renata’s cardboard one. She filled it with clothes and a spare pair of shoes; everything donated by Wentorf’s welfare department.
Had some of it come from concentration camp stores? They must have amassed huge quantities of clothing. She was curious what had happened to the colourful skirt she had worn on the day of her arrest. Would she even recognise it now?
She put on a winter coat that was much too big for her and wandered across to the administration building. Dozens of people milled around the reception area waiting for the next transport to the docks. Marta ventured outside to have a smoke. She joined a group sheltering round the corner away from the biting wind. They were exchanging destinations: London, Scotland, Leeds, Cornwall.
A lanky man with intense brown eyes and long, slender fingers suggested they should all keep in touch, set up an association of survivors, a club of sorts. He looked directly at her as if challenging her to organise it then and there.
She lifted her chin and blew smoke into the air before looking away. Swapping tales of the crows over tea and biscuits? She didn’t think so somehow.
She stubbed out her cigarette and heard the rumble of wheels in the distance. Two buses turned into the road and rolled towards them.
This was it. There was no going back. It was time to start a new life.
Turmoil and excitement, fear and joyous anticipation tumbled around inside her. What would her life be like? Memories of the camp still came unbidden at odd times of the day or night and left her breathless with anxiety, tears smarting in her eyes; yet she knew she had been so lucky through all the disasters of the last year, surviving where so many had perished.
She tried to imagine a bright future, surrounded by family and new friends, working at her studies and undertaking her chosen career, helping others lead useful, pain-free lives. If she could no longer have the love of her own life, she would devote herself to filling other lives with love instead.
And one of the first things she would do, she decided on a whim, was lie about her age. Well, why not? They’d stolen six years of her life why shouldn’t she make up for some of that time?
She imagined Renata’s outraged reaction to her plan. She could be very – what? – innocent, straight-laced, honest perhaps? God, she would miss her friend so much.
Marta picked up her suitcase and stepped onto the bus. She found a seat by a window and looked out. As the bus moved off, she took out a piece of paper from her pocket and held on tight to Our Lady’s Dream
The following article was written by Marta Paciorkowska and published in ‘The Last Stage’ issued on the 25th December 1945. It was the last newsletter she worked on in Wentorf DP Camp and the final lines of the article refer to a future with her fiancé, a future she knew would never happen, even as she wrote the words.
The festival of Christmas Eve, or Wigilia, is of special importance to Polish people who value its traditions and customs as well as its religious significance.
The main celebration of Wigilia is a solemn, family supper which starts as soon as the first star, symbolic of the Bethlehem Star, appears in the sky. This is the moment when family members share the Christmas wafer or oplatek, wishing each other health, joy and good fortune for the coming year. The oplatek, made of flour and water, symbolises the bread Christians share during the celebration of Mass.
After a day of fasting, the meal which follows the sharing of the oplatek is a feast of vegetarian and fish dishes, usually twelve in number to symbolise the twelve apostles. An extra place is laid at the table for the unexpected guest in accordance with the Polish tradition of hospitality.
After the singing of carols and the exchange of presents, the festival ends with attendance at Midnight Mass.
Two Christmas Eves
Tiny, glittering sequins on a navy blue background: millions of stars above us. The moon, cut from silver paper, hangs so low that you could surely reach out to it just by standing on tiptoes. The earth and trees are covered by fluffy blue cotton wool snow. A beautiful night. A night which forms the backdrop of a fantastical theatrical scene.
The main actors are not on stage yet – only the non-speaking parts are there. Motionless, silent, long lines of ghostlike women. In identical simple striped costumes, they wait for the start of the performance. Each one knows her role. Though what is the role of an extra?
‘Tonight will be a short roll call and there’s sure to be extra rations’ Mika whispers to me as we stand in our rows of ten in front of the block, just as we do every night.
‘Why?’ I ask, brought back to reality.
‘You don’t know?! Because it’s Christmas Eve.’
‘Ah yes…that’s right…I forgot.’
Christmas Eve…So, in Poland now they are sharing the oplatek…they’re lighting the Christmas tree candles…sitting down to the meal…I know: there is one extra place laid at the table; there is, after all, a constant, unceasing hope that I shall return. Oh but what an immense pain, beyond one’s strength, and how hard it is to hold back the tears when you’re missing a loved one at the Christmas Eve table.
As for me? No – I don’t cry. I find within myself neither grief nor homesickness. Nothing. With blank hatred I observe bellowing, drunken Ruth take the roll call and I think only of when I’ll be able to lie down. But waiting for us inside the barracks is a completely unfestive surprise. They haven’t brought any bread, or maybe simply our merrymaking overseer didn’t fancy distributing it today.
‘So much for your bigger rations’ I tell Mika my sardonic laugh disappearing into the uproar of other voices. All of them are talking simultaneously, impotent rage and hunger reduces some to tears – others swear loudly. After a time peace descends. Somebody tries to strike up a carol – a few others join in. ‘Silent night, holy night.’ But these words in the cold barracks seem too painfully ironic. Voices break…they stop mid verse and don’t try again. Huddled with my knees under my chin, I cover my head with a blanket and try to warm myself with my own breath. I don’t think and I don’t reminisce. I am in the depths of degradation where I feel nothing beyond the physical pain of hunger and cold. On my palate I keep a crust of bread, already softening, and I try to sleep. Sleep is often a remedy for life. Maybe I’ll dream of a real Christmas Eve.
* * *
A year has passed and Christmas is approaching. It won’t be a happy one. A full stomach allows one the luxury of yearning for other, past Christmases spent with those closest to us. The
words of a carol bring Poland to heart – the warm interior of our home with the Christmas tree lit up, white linen on the table. And as the Star of Bethlehem reveals itself in the sky, I will more than ever, feel your absence, your warm words when you shared the oplatek with me. Do you remember? We felt so strangely awkward – tears swam in our eyes but of course we were embarrassed to admit to them. And we covered up our emotion by an assumed ease of manner. Tonight it’s Christmas Eve without you and I’m crying. It’s nothing. It’s good. Through these tears I’m returning to humanity. I am able now to reminisce, I am able to think about you. And today we will find one another again in our thoughts as we once again send Christmas greetings from afar.
And next Christmas, we will spend it together. For certain, I believe it. And then together we will sing, maybe a little out of tune, but with great joy ‘GLORIA, GLORIA IN EXELSIS DEO!
Background Notes
At the end of the First World War, Poland re-emerged as a sovereign state following 123 years of subjugation to foreign powers. In 1795 the country was divided between Austria, Prussia and Russia and ceased to exist on the map of Europe. Five generations lived under three different conditions of political oppression, but their desire for freedom was never extinguished. Civil disobedience, uprisings, military conflicts and various political developments such as the creation of a small, semi-independent Polish state, the Duchy of Warsaw, by Napoleon Bonaparte following his defeat of Prussia, all helped to foster the belief that independence was possible.
The period between the two world wars was an exhilarating time to be alive: there was an explosion of brilliance in the sciences as well as the arts, with Poles at the forefront of European developments in philosophy, mathematics, economics, linguistics and anthropology. Polish writers, poets, dramatists and artists of seemingly infinite talent and variety found enthusiastic audiences in their homeland and further afield. Intellectual and cultural life thrived and Marta’s family, affluent and well connected, were active participants.
Politically, too, these were interesting times as the new Polish republic sought to find its feet after the devastation of the First World War – most of the fighting on the Eastern front took place on Polish fields – and with the lack of an integrated infrastructure inherited from the separate partitions. Parliamentary democracy, albeit with frequent government changes, lasted until 1926 when the popular military leader Jozef Pilsudski staged a coup; his authoritarian regime continued until his death in 1935 and was upheld by his allies and subordinates until the outbreak of the Second World War.
Hitler invaded Poland on the 1st of September 1939. Shortly afterwards Britain and France both declared war on Germany but left Poland’s forces fighting the Nazis on their own. This they did with typical heroism and not a little military skill, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy and keeping it in check for longer than anyone expected. Then on the 17th of September Russia invaded Poland and soon all was lost: the country was partitioned once more and effectively ceased to exist.
This much is well known; what is perhaps less well known is the ferocity with which both sides sought to destroy the Polish people. This was no ordinary war, no ordinary occupation: both sides carried out atrocities designed to reduce the Poles to a leaderless nation of slaves who would serve their new masters’ purposes or be obliterated at will.
Nearly one in five of the pre-war population of Poland, over six million people, died in the conflict. Under Russian occupation an estimated two million Polish citizens were arrested and deported to the Gulag Archipelago; within a year, at least half were dead from the extreme cold and starvation. The Nazis, meanwhile, designated Poles as sub-humans or Untermenschen who occupied land they required for their living space or Lebensraum. Poland’s elite – the term was broadly interpreted – was to be extinguished either through large scale executions, such as those that took place regularly in Pawiak Prison or the Palmiry Forest, or through hard labour and starvation in the network of concentration camps.
Mass deportations of civilians to make way for German colonists were accomplished with typical brutality and disregard for life. Blond, blue-eyed children who met Nazi racial criteria were sent to the Reich for Germanisation. In addition, there were regular street round-ups where truckloads of men, women and children were sent to Germany as slave labourers.
Those who managed to evade death or deportation found daily life a struggle. There were no jobs for the intelligentsia and they had to turn their hand to anything that became available. All Poles were expected to manage on greatly reduced rations, more so than any other occupied people. So, for example, in 1941 the citizens of Warsaw were allowed 669 calories a day while Jews were allocated a mere 184 calories a day. Since both were racially inferior, the Nazis reasoned, they required less food.
Clothes, which could only be purchased using coupons, were also in short supply and very expensive while the German monopoly on leather and rubber meant that shoes were impossible to repair and could only be replaced with wooden clogs.
In their bid to destroy Polish history and culture, the Nazis closed all scientific, artistic and literary institutions as well as all secondary schools and universities. Some elementary schools remained open for the purpose of giving pupils a very basic education and teaching them enough German to obey orders. The teaching of history was specifically forbidden and history books were confiscated while any monuments to Polish heroes were torn down.
The Catholic Church, almost synonymous with Polish nationalism, was persecuted throughout the country. Churches, seminaries, convents and monasteries were closed down in large numbers and thousands of priests and nuns were sent to concentration camps, into forced labour or killed outright. Krakow, which formed the capital of the General Government area, was treated more leniently with churches being controlled rather than obliterated.
Needless to say, the Poles did not take this new oppression lying down. Resistance was almost universal and ranged from acts of sabotage in the workplace to the active maintenance of an underground cultural life. Education for secondary pupils and university students was provided in secret; actors gave readings and performances in private homes; newspapers and pamphlets were issued by an underground press; welfare organisations were set up to help the Poles and, uniquely in occupied Europe, to help the Jews; smugglers brought in regular supplies of food from the countryside into the towns to prevent widespread starvation.
Many examples of resistance were ordinary actions by ordinary people united in their hatred of what the Nazis were doing to their country. There were also various resistance organisations whose foundations were laid before the end of the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939; the most important of these was the Home Army which eventually subsumed most of the other organisations to form one of the largest, if not the largest, resistance movements in occupied Europe.
Ask almost any Polish family about their history and they will tell you amazing tales of heroism, of survival against the odds, of colourful characters in their past. So why single out my mother’s story?
Firstly, because her family history seems uniquely dramatic, even outrageous, and it feels a shame to see it lost for want of writing it down. Truly, it belongs in the category of ‘you couldn’t make it up’ stories.
Secondly, because she was one of the survivors of a Nazi concentration camp and it remains vitally important to continue to bear witness to their experiences, to ensure that the horror they underwent is never forgotten. People say that her generation didn’t want to talk about the war, but she wanted to tell her story and was initially rebuffed: the war was over, everybody had suffered, nobody wanted to know. By the time people were interested enough to ask, she had learnt to be silent.
I used the format of a historical fictional memoir to tell her story because it enabled me to flesh out the bones; I knew the outline of her arrest and imprisonment and many individual details but not the complete picture. I knew, f
or example, that she had learnt German in the six weeks that she was first imprisoned on suspicion of being Jewish and that she did so with the help of fellow prisoners. Creating the character of Pola enabled the narrative to flow and to bring in other details, such as the Polish Catholic prayer entitled ‘Our Lady’s Dream,’ which my mother learnt in prison and turned to throughout her life.
The brutality of life in Ravensbrück concentration camp, a camp specifically designed for women, has been documented in various places, most recently and comprehensively by Sarah Helm in her book, ‘If This Is A Woman’. While the incidents described in this book are true to that life the conversations and reactions of other prisoners have inevitably been imagined. Although my mother wasn’t a saint, she did, remarkably, share her bread ration with a fellow prisoner and refused to fight over food.
The fictional character of Inspector Bauer – I simplified organisational titles – and his family enabled me to explore questions I continue to be interested in: was it possible to live in Nazi Germany and not know what was going on? What does it mean to lead a moral life in any totalitarian regime? How would I have behaved in similar circumstances? And in our own times, can any of us claim to be virtuous living in a free and democratic country yet knowing that torture is practised further afield and doing nothing about it?
True to her vow Marta remained faithful to her fiancé, Ludek Golab, until news of his death reached her. In 1952 she met and married my father, Tadeusz Wielogorski, a handsome, courageous army officer, recipient of Poland’s highest military decoration for heroism on the battlefield, the Virtuti Militari. At long last she was able to fulfil her dream of having children and in due course gave birth to a son and a daughter.