Aleksandra Frenkel-Czarniecka, born in 1925

My Father Decided

September 1939
Even before September 1 my father decided that we would go to Warsaw. He remembered that in the first days after the outbreak of World War I, the Germans entered Kalisz and the city was completely destroyed, so he thought that we would be safer in Warsaw. He was a wise and farsighted man, but no one could have foreseen what was to come. It was then that we left our home for the first time. As it turned out later, this wasn’t the final parting yet, not yet.

September in Warsaw even seemed attractive in the beginning, at least for me. We moved into the apartment of my mother’s cousin, whom I didn’t know, in the house at 5 Jasna Street, opposite the Philharmonic on the sixth, top, floor. The owner of the apartment, the husband of that cousin (his surname was Szereszewski), used to be a senator and a very wealthy man. Cautiously, just before the war, he had gone abroad with his family, leaving behind a very opulent home.

I had never seen such a large and beautiful apartment, so richly equipped with all kinds of furniture, carpets, paintings, ornaments, porcelain, bedding, etc. I most remember the room, which apparently belonged to  the  son  of  the  family,  in  which  the  whole  drawer  of a beautiful, stylish chest  was  full  of  wonderful  ties.  Unfortunately, the supply of the pantry was less impressive. Decent pots, a few jars of marmalade and that was it. No flour, no groats, no fat, nothing, and the stores’ shelves were already empty.

On the morning of September 1 bombs woke us up—it had started! So far, I wasn’t aware of the horror of the situation. My thoughts were busy with something entirely different. I can’t remember at all how I met Stefan Starzyński (despite the similarity of names, he had nothing to do with the heroic president of Warsaw), but I will never forget those first days of September that we spent on walks together. He, a Warsaw native, decided to show me the city. He was only a little older than me, but he considered himself a true guardian. We had many topics for endless conversations; we went for walks holding hands. The weather was beautiful, sunny, the sky was clear. We took these walks, although the war was already gathering momentum and the cloudless sky was very conducive to the German air raids.

One day we went across the Poniatowski Bridge to Praga to Skaryszewski Park. It was beautiful, warm, I was wearing a blue silk dress with tiny white stripes. Swans were swimming in the pond in the park—pure bliss! All hell broke loose as we walked back over the bridge. It was a raid on the bridges. We were already on the Warsaw side, we managed to run down the stairs to the Vistula River. We ran along various boat houses along the riverbank. Finally, we took refuge in one of them. We crouched, along with a dozen other people, at the bottom of a training boat, one with perforated oars, and we listened with fear to the storm raging around us. The ominous rumble of planes and bomb blasts surrounded us on all sides.

Finally—after minutes? hours?—I don’t know, it felt like forever—the alarm was cancelled, we went outside and what did we see? The bridge hadn’t suffered any damage, while the boathouses in front of and behind the one in which we found shelter had disappeared from the surface. Apparently, it wasn’t our time! The first, but not the last, time that a miraculous coincidence, a twist of fate, or the hand of Providence saved my life.

Before I got home there were two more raids, we were hiding in entrances to buildings. It was the first time I saw people pee on handkerchiefs and stick them to their noses. In the absence of a gas mask, this supposedly protected them against the effects of poisonous combat gases. There was a general fear of gases, people remembered the terrible effects of this weapon from the previous war. In the end, during the Second World War combat gases weren’t used.

After that day, it was difficult for me to convince my mother to agree to my further meetings with Stefan, and I understood that in such dangerous times the family should stick together. Meanwhile, terror was growing! Now, when I try to recreate those times and experiences, it’s hard for me to remember which news from the course of this blitz warfare comes from my own memories and which from the numerous publications on this subject that I read later. Some overlap with the others. Certainly, it was only years later that I learned about the astonishing German provocation in the form of an attack on a German radio station in Gliwice, carried out by a unit composed of several criminals, who were given the ironic code name Konserwy (“Preserves”). It happened at 8 p.m. on August 31, 1939. The next morning, the world heard the news that the Polish army had attacked the Third Reich, which was to justify an attack on Poland.

A few hours later, on September 1 at 4:45 a.m. shots from the battleship Schleswig-Holstein were fired at Westerplatte and that was the real beginning of the war. For me, the beginning was the bombs falling on Warsaw that day. One of my memories is the joy and euphoria at the announcement that our allies, France and England, had entered the war on September 3 or 4.

However, this was the last piece of good news; we waited in vain for the expected help. A lot had happened before the “second front” was established in the West. Meanwhile, Hitler carried out his plans with dizzying speed. The Polish army fought bravely, but chaos reigned and the enemy’s advantage was overwhelming.

And Warsaw defended itself against all odds. It was abandoned by the President and the government on September 5, and a day later by the Commander-in-Chief and his staff. They all hurriedly fled through Zaleszczyki to Romania and Hungary. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians also managed to escape.

On September 6, Colonel Umiastowski issued the famous radio order that “all men capable of carrying weapons should leave the capital and head east.” And many young people listened to him, set off on a pointless wandering, increasing commotion on the roads, in search of Polish troops that were nowhere to be found.

There was one steadfast man, he didn’t run anywhere, didn’t leave his city. Instead, he commanded its defense to the end—the heroic President of Warsaw, Stefan Starzyński, described in many a historical source. No one who survived it will ever forget his tormented, hoarse voice when he spoke to the residents of Warsaw, trying to cheer them up, passing on the latest news, encouraging them to hang on. As long as the Radio Broadcasting Station operated, we were waiting with bated breath for the words of this extraordinary man.

The radio kept broadcasting bizarre announcements, such as, “Attention, attention, A-5 incoming, it has passed,” and the like. Most often, with fear, we listened to, “I announce the air alert for the city of Warsaw!” and with some relief, “The air alert for the city of Warsaw has been canceled.” And these raids, whether announced or not, were getting more frequent and dangerous. The terror grew and the people’s resistance decreased.

In our building at Jasna Street there was no bomb shelter or basement and during the air raids, you descended to the very bottom of the staircase. You didn’t take the elevator for fear of getting stuck. One day, my dad rebelled, “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, and calmly lay down on his bed in the bedroom. This bedroom was a spacious corner room with large French windows on two sides. I started crying and begged my father to come downstairs with us. Finally he relented.

When we returned to the apartment after the raid was over, all the windows were broken, and on the pillow on which my father’s head had rested not too long before, there was a large piece of a missile.

We tried to get involved in some campaign, but there was no way. Dad and other men were on duty on the roof, and I, with my medical inclinations, tried to report to the health service but nothing was organized. Fear and hunger intensified.

Once I saw a dead horse in the street. I ran home to get a knife and cut a large chunk of the meat. It was so tough and stringy that my mother and I had a hard time cooking anything out of it. But at least we had a meal.

The day came when we lost the roof over our heads. A bomb hit our building. It wasn’t completely demolished, some part of it was still standing, but not our top, sixth floor.

Each of us had a small suitcase with bare necessities ready. And with these suitcases we walked through a Warsaw on fire, over people’s corpses, we climbed the piles of debris. Right now, as I describe it, I can physically sense the smell of things burning, smoke stinging my eyes, fear clutching my throat.

This is how we got to 63 Wspólna Street, where my  mother’s other cousin lived. I can’t say that we were welcomed with open arms. Admittedly, the building was full of people like us—raid victims—but it was standing. The lady of the house even organized some meals.

At that point, the water supply didn’t work anymore. My brother Roman and I were assigned to fetch water. We had a tin tub, which we held on both sides by the handles, and in the other hand each of us carried a bucket. The tap was located in front of the Main Post Office building at Nowogrodzka Street. The water trickled in a thin stream and there was always a long line, dispersed from time to time by falling bombs. Roman was only ten years old at the time. We were afraid, but somehow we always managed to get water.

I found it deeply unfair that  I  was  allowed  to  use  only  one glass of “my” water for washing. There was the daughter of the hosts, a 20-year-old girl, in my eyes an old woman. She easily became hysterical, screaming with each new raid, “I can’t stand it anymore!” It was her who was impossible to stand! But the worst was yet to come. So far, the bombing had only been during the day, and that exceptionally sunny September favored our enemies and made their task easier. At night, however, it was possible to rest a bit.

In the second half of the month, Warsaw was surrounded and the firing of cannons began. Direct fire lasted day and night without interruption until the surrender. I’m not even going to try, I cannot describe this constant overwhelming fear. We didn’t go to any shelter anymore, we only tried to be close to each other, to be together, come what may. At that point, it seemed to us that Warsaw ceased to exist. There were only ruins all around. Later it turned out that the damage wasn’t that great. The real destruction of the city took place after the Uprising, but that’s another story. On September 28 the Germans entered Warsaw, there was no point staying there any longer. We returned to Kalisz.

A stop in Kalisz
After the capitulation of Warsaw, Polish troops desperately tried to resist here and there, but after a few days, the actual warfare ended and the time of occupation began. After the hell we experienced in besieged Warsaw, Kalisz in October 1939 seemed to us to be a refuge of peace and, at least apparently, security. We returned to our own apartment, to beloved Stasia, to our relatives and friends.

Stasia was our dear and loving housekeeper, a friend of the family until her death.

Together with Zosia, we went for walks around the city, no one bothered us, there weren’t any armbands or yellow patches with the Star of David yet. Until one day, when a German stopped us. He somehow was facing me and stood with his back to Zosia, and growled, “Jude!” Zosia escaped and he led me to a gateway, where several girls of my age were already standing. Soon a car came and we were driven outside the city, terrified. And what was the upshot?

The army was stationed in the local school, tables were set up in the gymnasium, Jewish girls were standing there and… they were shredding cabbage. The others were released to go home and we took their place. Soldiers were hovering around waiting for the cabbage cores left over from shredding. They munched on them and joked with us. After a few hours they told us to go home. Nobody hurt us.

But what did my parents experience when Zosia, crying, told them I had been taken away! They had already tried to seek help from friends of German origin who probably signed the Volksliste. Fortunately, I returned home before the search for me had begun. I was put to bed, served tea and treated, I don’t know, like a heroine or a victim? I felt terrible about all these undeserved considerations. That was the first warning, the next came soon.

My father, who belonged to the elite of the Jewish intelligentsia in Kalisz, was summoned to the magistrate along with several other men. There they were subjected to humiliating activities. They had to do squats and other gymnastic exercises, clean the floor with toothbrushes. There was no beating or purely physical violence, just screaming orders and threats. It was enough of a warning, though. Dad came back pale, with a fierce expression on his face, and determined; he had made up his mind, “We’re leaving, we’re finished here!”

“You shouldn’t trust them either,” he tried to convince Władek Freund, unfortunately, in vain! Before the war Władek, the husband of Aunt Irka and the father of Zosia and Janeczka, had run a spirit distillery in Kalisz, and before the outbreak of the war, he had been ordered by the Polish authorities to load the machines onto carriages and evacuate them, which he did. Now the Germans ordered him to find these machines, reassemble them, and resume the production of spirit. He was assigned a German commissioner—a Treuhaender—who seemed to him a very decent man with a warm attitude towards my uncle. Władek also received a very good Ausweiss. Spirit, clearly, was a high-demand liquid, and the naive man believed that he and his family would be able to survive thanks to it. He even suggested to my father that he could hire him in his factory and somehow it would turn out fine.

My dad, however, wasn’t going to change his decision. He was wise and knew how to draw conclusions from various, so far not too dangerous but already ominous, signals that appeared in the first weeks of the German occupation. “Don’t trust your Treuhaender too much,” he said to Władek Freund. “He may be decent, but he isn’t the only decision maker and the life of every Jew is in great danger in a country occupied by the Nazis.” How prophetic were these bitter words!

Władek, like many other people, forgot, or maybe didn’t even believe in, the known facts about the persecution of German Jews after Hitler came to power. After all, the flower of the German intelligentsia was destroyed there. German Jews felt that they  belonged  to  the Jewish nation even less than people from my parents’ milieu. They just felt German. There were no Orthodox towns there like in the Polish borderlands. And yet, people who had a Jew among their ancestors even in the third generation were murdered, imprisoned in camps, or at best, forced to leave the country.

I remember many conversations about the transit camp in Zbąszyń for the Jews expelled from the German Reich in 1935, I think? Or ’36? Help was organized for these people, my parents took part in it, and Stasio Pinczewski, Aunt Ela’s husband, was very involved in organizing the whole initiative. Władek Freund stood by his opinion: he was deeply convinced that the Germans needed him very much and that he would manage to survive with his family.

Unfortunately, a few months after our departure, all the Jews of Kalisz were transported to the Łódź ghetto. Irena Freund died in Łódź, orphaning her two daughters, Zosia and Janeczka. After some time, they were separated from their father, whom they never saw again. Both girls were transported to a concentration camp in 1943. I can’t even attempt to describe the ordeal they endured. They were chased from one camp to another several times and only miraculously managed to stay together all that time. As the older one, Zosia tried to somewhat protect her younger sister. Eventually, when the Allies liberated Gross-Rosen, both girls were extremely emaciated and seriously ill, but alive. Unfortunately, Zosia died after the liberation, and Janeczka, who was in critical condition, was placed in a hospital in Sweden, where after a year of intensive treatment, she fortunately regained her health. She currently lives in Israel, has two sons and five grandsons.

My father shared the opinion of others in our position that we would be safer in our eastern lands. Although they had been seized by the Soviet Union, and therefore were also under occupation—not fascist, but communist, which offered hope that no one would come after us there.

At the end of November, we permanently left Kalisz, leaving our family home with all our belongings and, what was worse, close and loved people. The decision of Stasia, who decided to accompany us and share our fate for good and bad, was a great consolation for us.

The beginning of wanderings
We first went to Warsaw to find out about the possibilities of getting across the border. The usual, most popular route led to Małkinia, and then a crossing over the Bug, which was a border river. This journey posed many dangers. In the first stage, the Germans often pulled Jews out of the train, and when they managed to get to Małkinia, the crossing over the Bug was under fire from both the Germans and the Soviets.

My father’s brother, Janek, had arrived in Warsaw earlier and it was he who found out about another possibility. A group of guides transported volunteers along an unconventional route, more to the north, where the Bug wasn’t a border, but flowed on the German side and you simply rode a cart across the bridge. The offer seemed reasonable and Dad decided to take it. The beginning of the route was in Praga, where carts were waiting for us at the agreed place, on the agreed day, or actually at night, long before dawn. You had to get there by horse-drawn carriage.

At the last moment, when we were getting into the carriage, Hanka, the sister of Maniusia, Janek’s wife, came to inform us that Janek’s daughter, Sylwunia, had fallen ill and they would come the next day and they didn’t want to hold us up. Unfortunately, as it turned out later, they had changed their minds, decided to stay, someone promised them something, some protection. Another disastrous decision—this whole family died in the Warsaw ghetto.

Across the green border
We, along with Stasia, set off on a journey into the unknown. At the bottom of the cart, we placed four sacks with our things and sat on them as low as possible, naturally keeping our small suitcases with the necessary personal belongings. We tried to be invisible; “Oh, how good it would be to have an invisibility cap!” Stasia perched on the coach box next to the coachman. She had a carefree smile on her lips and wore a cheeky hat on her head. Stasia came from Ostrów Wielkopolski, formerly under Prussian rule, and she spoke German. It was quite a primitive, coarse German, but good enough for bantering with German soldiers if they tried to stop our cart.

In this way, we rode unhurriedly in a village cart, pulled by one horse, taking roundabout side roads on a frosty, clear winter day. Without obstacles, we crossed the bridge over the Bug River, which in this place was on the German side and wasn’t a border, and we happily reached the Laskowizna forester’s lodge. A plump, ruddy, smiling wife of the forester welcomed us very kindly.

I remember well that it was December 3, 1939, it was my father’s birthday, he was thirty-nine years old. We had to cook dinner and it turned out that there was a chance for a real birthday dinner. The forester’s wife took us to a huge barn, where large pieces of meat hung under the ceiling (apparently they had slaughtered a hog). Stasia chose a beautiful piece of pork and prepared a royal feast—naturally everyone’s favorite pork loin with szagówki—potato dumplings, and cabbage, which was also appreciated by the invited household members. The host even pulled out a bottle of moonshine and there was a very friendly atmosphere.

We went to sleep in a perfectly good, optimistic mood, waiting for the arrival of the second cart the next day, which was supposed to bring Janek’s family. Unfortunately! We were in for a disappointment: the cart arrived empty. As I mentioned, they had decided to stay, and we were immediately overwhelmed by an ominous feeling, which would prove right. There was nothing we could do—it was time to move on. I don’t know how much our crossing cost, but I must admit that both the forester and his wife, as well as the guides who escorted us to the border, behaved very honestly.

We were walking through the forest, we, the children, with our little suitcases. (I just had a thought: why not backpacks? There were no backpacks then.) We were led by four guides, each of them carrying a sack with our baggage.

We had one adventure in this forest: we stumbled upon a lone German soldier who was intrigued by the neck of a bottle sticking out of my father’s pocket. He was bitterly disappointed to see that there was milk in that bottle, and out of anger, he took my father’s gloves. It was a painful loss because of the heavy frost, but it would be wrong to complain—it could have ended tragically.

The crossing of the German border looked rather farcical: the bribed guards let us pass while saluting us. We found ourselves in “no man’s land” and from that moment, we were on our own. Our guides left us with our baggage, they were as afraid of any contacts with the Soviets as the devil is of holy water. Their only advice was to wait until dusk and then cross the road.

These were very dangerous moments. We were on the very border, under threat from both sides. It was December 4, 1939, it was getting dark and the frost was increasingly biting. We sat at the very edge of the forest, waiting for it to get completely dark, listening to the sounds of the nearby road. We had to get to the other side of this road, the Soviets were already there. We were warned not to seek help in the buildings just beyond the road, where no one would dare to take us in. We had four sacks of baggage and these little personal suitcases.

We started figuring out the rhythm of the horse patrols passing by and we had to take advantage of the gap. Fortunately, the night was dark, moonless. There were five of us, Roman was only ten, but he was quite a strong boy. We moved silently as close to the road as possible and in pairs; at the right moment, holding the suitcase in one hand and the end of the bag in the other, we managed to get across the road. We continued to move through a sparse forest to some small hill, a little more densely overgrown. From a distance, you could hear dogs barking, it meant there must be a village there. Father left us on that hill, ordered us to wait, and went to look for the village himself.

We sat on our bags, covering their whiteness, which we believed could be seen in the dark. We were afraid to move, so as not to make noise and draw attention to ourselves. We knew that if the soldiers patrolling the border saw such obvious fugitives, they could turn us back and even hand us over to the Germans. We kept hearing patrols on the road, loud conversations in a foreign language, some laughter.

The hours dragged on mercilessly, it was very cold, we huddled together, trying to stay warm somehow. Fear and worry for my dad started creeping in: why was he gone for so long? Did they catch him? We were helpless, there was nothing we could do, no way to find out anything or help. But no, fortunately—there he was, he succeeded, he had found the village and people who promised to help us. We dragged ourselves with our bulky baggage through some plowed field or potato field, sinking into furrows with each step. The hike seemed to be endless. Finally, we could see the lights in the window of the cottage our father was leading us to. I admire how he managed to do it and how he found it, and especially, how he was able to come back and track us down in the dark.

We entered a  delightfully  warm  room,  they  were  waiting  for us there. We got hot milk and a slice of bread, it seemed that the most difficult part was behind us. I remember best a ruddy, stout young girl. She was sitting on a low stool with a basin of warm water in front of her. She was soaking her feet. She played the main role here, she often crossed the border, smuggling. She had just gotten back from one trip. The whole village lived off smuggling goods and people. We could spend the night there, that is, sit on the bench or lie down on the floor. In our psyche, we’d already developed a complex of homeless runaways. That warm room allowed us to relax and gave us a sense of security.

The further journey led to Białystok by train. There was a train station nearby, but the local people, familiar with the situation, advised against using it. So close to the border there was still fear that we might be detained as “bieżeńcy” (runaways) and arrested or returned to the Germans. This was the first time we heard the word bieżeńcy, but from then on, it would often accompany us. We listened to the reasonable advice, waited again until dusk, and, for an additional fee, we were taken by wagon eight miles away. It may seem bizarre—after all, we were still close to the border—but indeed, when the train arrived, we boarded it without major problems and went to Białystok. Another stage of the journey was completed.

In Białystok, at the train station, there was traffic, clamor, noise, lots of people. The frost eased—the thaw came. I never happened to visit Białystok after the war, which is, after all, a large and supposedly nice city. It remains in my memory as a provincial town, ugly, dirty, full of mud; a city crowded with refugees like us, with not enough room to swing a cat.

However, money turns all keys, some lady took us in and let us rest on folded chairs. It was good enough as a temporary shelter, and what was important—there was a telephone in the apartment.

Satisfied that we had managed to get situated there, Dad immediately went to look for a place, not so crowded, where we could settle down, at least for a while.

We were sitting in Białystok and waiting for a call while different people were passing by.

Małoryta
So we were in Białystok, crammed on the chairs reserved for us, awaiting further instructions, while my dad took a train, thinking about how to reorganize his and his family’s life. He happened to chat with a young woman he met and told her about our situation. She was pleased, “It’ll be best,” she said, “if you put your family in the living room of my parents’ house, in Małoryta, and then you’ll figure out the rest.” “Great,” said Dad. “So we’ll get off in Małoryta.” “Oh no, not so fast, I just got on in Małoryta and I’m going to Łuck for business, we’ll go together and then we’ll come back.” So they did.

In Białystok, after two days of waiting, they called my mother to the phone. “Get on the next train going south and get off in Małoryta, I will be waiting for you at the station.” It was the firm, familiar voice of my dad. “Małoryta? What a strange idea.” Mom was surprised, but we obediently went to the station. Easier said than done. The train was impossibly overcrowded, everyone was pushing forward and we felt helpless with our sacks. Mom took over, remembered that she learned Russian when Kalisz was under partition. She picked up Roman—hardly a light load—and walked over to a soldier guarding the traffic, crying, “Pomogitie, ja s rebionkom!” [Russian: Help me, I’m with a child]. And he put her on the train, while Stasia and I stuffed our baggage through the window and somehow squeezed inside. Phew, the train moved, the ride wasn’t too far, after about two hours we were at a tiny station—Małoryta. On the platform, we were greeted by Daddy—we were together again, but not for long.

Małoryta was a small borderland Jewish town, a real shtetl as described in I.B. Singer’s novels. It was exotic for us. In the middle, there was a run-down, muddy country road, and on both sides of it there were small, poor houses, a little further on a small market square with a bakery, a butcher (kosher, naturally), and a few stalls, and that was the whole town. I felt strange there, but at the same time, the place was cozy and friendly. The streets were empty, no one was loitering unnecessarily, because it was both cold and people weren’t sure how the new authorities would behave. But you couldn’t see the authorities, you could see men in tunics and skullcaps, and women wrapped in headscarves.

Our hosts’ house was small but tidy and  clean.  The  outhouse was naturally in the backyard. The “salon” praised by Dora, my father’s acquaintance from the train, didn’t have a very salon look. There were two wooden country beds against the wall, a table in the center, chairs next to it, a wardrobe and, a real treat—a large tiled stove. What more did we need? That was a real luxury.

In one bed I slept with Stasia, in the other my mother and Romek. There was no place for my dad, but that was fine, because he set off on the next journey into the unknown, looking for a job, an apartment, in a word, a way to settle down. He was very pleased: traveling alone without dragging his family along gave him more freedom of movement. We could safely wait in perfectly decent conditions while he figured out the new situation.

The month spent in Małoryta wasn’t time wasted. We got to know a bit about the customs of the Orthodox Jewish community that we hadn’t known before. Stasia was very useful as a shabbos goy. After all, during the Sabbath, from Friday evening to Saturday evening, it was forbidden for Jews to do any work, such as turning on a light, even if it was only to flip a switch. Traveling was also forbidden, so when the young daughter of the house, Dora, who traveled a lot on her secret business, returned home, it was possible to talk to her in Polish. Her old parents spoke Yiddish to each other, and when talking to us, they used sketchy Polish interwoven with Russianisms.

On Friday morning, there was a great baking of bread for the whole week. A bread oven was lit, into which beautifully formed loaves of rye bread were inserted on a special shovel. After baking all the loaves of bread, the oven retained heat for a long time, which was used to cook cholent.

Cholent was a special delicacy, I’d never eaten anything like this before or since. Grease and pieces of meat were put into a cast iron pot. Next, chopped onions, other vegetables and potatoes were added, then beans and a little water. The pot was slid into the oven after baking the bread, and the dish slow-cooked until the next day. On Saturday, when cooking wasn’t allowed, it was enough to take the pot of cholent out of the oven and it was a great, very nutritious, dish. In addition, it had a very appetizing crispy brown crust baked on top. We were also invited for that meal. However, we didn’t take part in the Friday Sabbath candlelight dinner, because as people with a secular worldview, we weren’t fit to participate in a religious meal accompanied by appropriate prayers. Every day Stasia was allowed into the kitchen. However, when cooking for us, she had to be very careful not to confuse the pots used for meat with those for dairy meals. Besides, the housewife discreetly watched over it.

I don’t know how my mother got a Russian alphabet book, but she started teaching us to read and write. We had to start by learning the letters, but both Roman and I quickly mastered the Cyrillic alphabet and galloped through the infantile texts. There was a poem about a kitten that got its paws on the preserves and pushed a jar off the shelf. The poem ended with a moral, “a stydiśsia, prosto sram” (shame, just shame). We kept laughing and shouting, “krzywo sram”.

We kept laughing—a pun on words: the Russian phrase “prosto sram” means in Polish “my shit is straight”, and the children’s response “krzywo sram” means in Polish “my shit is crooked”.

After mastering the alphabet book, I started War and Peace, it was the only Russian book in that house. I can’t say that I read all the volumes, but by the time my dad came back, I’d read a lot of it. I got engrossed in the book, besides, there was nothing else to do, and I’d always liked to read.

It was a very useful form of education and it helped me and Roman a lot when we started school.

Rivne—Kostopol
Another year of war, 1940, began. We settled in Rivne, my father found a job there, we started going to school. Winter, exceptionally severe that year, was about to end. It seemed we had found some kind of stability. The contents of the infamous sacks, dragged so painstakingly across the “green border”, met our needs only to a small extent; some of the items we had taken turned out to be completely useless. We had to start from scratch, not the first time, but also not the last.

In a small house, we lived in a room with a veranda and a kitchen on the street side, while the hosts lived on the side of the yard. It was in the suburbs of Rivne, one side of the street belonged to the city, the other, ours, to the district. One night we heard strange noises, screams, crying, the revving of cars. Without turning on the light, we glued our noses to the windows and with a heavy heart, we watched what was happening. And tragic things were happening—a deportation of people —bieżeńcy, refugees like us. Bieżeńcy were taken from Rivne, from the city, while we lived “in the countryside”.

Another miracle, a twist of fate, an unimaginable accident! We survived. In the morning we went about our day as if nothing had happened. We couldn’t stop thinking about those strangers, what would happen to them, would they survive? What fate awaited them? A fate, which we escaped by a hair’s breadth, by the width of the street. What made us move in on the “right” side of the street?

Shortly after these  dramatic  events,  the  “passporting”  order was issued. All citizens of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were required to accept Soviet passports. A terrible problem, because what would happen after the war? Would we be able to return home as Soviet citizens? People were going back and forth, not knowing what to do.

My father’s judgment was a decisive factor. We simply had no choice. If we had refused to accept the passports, we would have inevitably been at risk of deportation. And after the war? “Well, whatever Poland will be,” said my dad, “regardless of the political system, it’s unfathomable that it wouldn’t claim its citizens, millions of whom are in these areas.”

The future showed that it wasn’t that simple, but no one could predict it. We applied for these passports, the whole struggle was to put “Poliak” in the nationality column, and not “Jewrej”, and we succeeded. In the happy Land of Soviets, citizens weren’t all equal. They had different categories, marked with appropriate paragraphs, entered in the passports.

We got §37, which stated that its owners weren’t allowed to live in provincial cities nor closer than 100 kilometers from the border. The section concerned the following population groups: thieves, prostitutes, bieżeńcy, and printers. Printers definitely saved our honor. We couldn’t stay in Rivne any longer, we moved to nearby Kostopol, hoping that we would moor there for a longer time, and Stasia, naturally, came along. Kostopol was a small town, but much larger than Małoryta and with a distinctly different character. The indigenous Ukrainian population and Poles were predominant, there were some Jews who had settled there a long time ago, and a lot of bieżeńcy like us, mainly from the Polish intelligentsia of Jewish origin. It was these people who brought intellectual revival to the sleepy town.

My father became the chief accountant; he quickly mastered the rules of Russian accounting, using his pre-war experience, when he had run his own factory. Both Roman and I went to a Ukrainian school.

I ended up in the tenth and last grade of the local ten-grade school. At that time, I was quite good at Russian, but I had no idea about Ukrainian, which was the language of instruction. These Slavic languages seem to be similar, but are quite different, after all. Fortunately, the teachers were overwhelmingly Poles, who didn’t speak Ukrainian all that well either, so somehow we were getting by.

I passed my high school diploma, which was called Atestat there. I don’t have this valuable document (I only have a copy). I submitted the original to the Dean’s Office of the Medical Institute in Stalino, where I was supposed to start my medical studies, but I didn’t get to, because the Germans were on our heels. But more of that later.

Life in Kostopol, although modest, was pleasant. School, despite these linguistic challenges, didn’t cause any major difficulties, everyday life was peaceful. An anecdote comes from this period. Once my father sent a colleague for weights that were at home for some reason, and the man said to Stasia, “Mr. Frenkel wants giry.” “What giry?” wondered Stasia, “he used his giry to go to work.” Giry, in Ukrainian, means weights, while in the Polish-Poznan dialect they mean legs.

We had a lot of friends. I was seventeen years old and already had two admirers, a few years older than me. At the beginning of the war, they both, independently of each other, had left Warsaw to go to the east at the appeal of Colonel Umiastowski, who called on young men capable of carrying weapons. They were supposed to report to the Polish Army, but there was no army and they both ended up in Kostopol and found some work there. We became close friends, my mother invited them to Sunday dinners. Alone and far away from their loved ones, they felt good and welcome in our home. Our parents were able to create a warm atmosphere, and Stasia’s cooking was delicious—she was able to conjure up a good dinner, even with insufficient supplies.

Jurek Serwetnik came from a family of doctors in Kielce and intended to become a doctor himself. He was very eloquent, liked to imitate the speech given before the war by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Beck. Jurek would stand in a heroic pose and quote with pathos, “We should first of all ask the question, what is the real object of all this? Is it the freedom of Gdańsk, which is not threatened? Or is it a matter of barring us from the Baltic, from which Poland will not allow herself to be barred!”

Unfortunately, the truth turned out to be different and the minister’s haughtiness was groundless, just like the Commander-in-Chief’s, who had announced that they wouldn’t take as much as a uniform button from us. Generally speaking, Jurek was shrewd and resourceful and knew how to take care of his interests. When another war, the German-Russian one, broke out, he quickly separated from us. He made a reasonable decision that as a single young man, he would cope more easily unburdened by a family, especially one that wasn’t even his own.

He survived  the  war  in  the  Soviet  Union,  where  he  married a beautiful, blue-eyed, blonde Russian woman. After the war they returned to Poland, he finished medical studies in Wrocław, which he had started in Soyuz, and had a son—Stasio. However, they soon emigrated to Israel. It was his Russian wife, Lidia, without any Jewish roots, who insisted on leaving. Brought up under communism, she knew well what was going to happen in Poland and preferred to be as far away as possible, especially as she had no ties to Poland.

Their son Stasio was given a new name in Israel—Joram. Their second son, born in Tel Aviv, was named Alan, and their last name is no longer Serwetnik, but Sivroni. They adapted brilliantly.

None of my relatives or friends considered it necessary to change their surname or first name, even if it sounded Polish and was difficult for foreigners to pronounce; for example, my Uncle Stanisław Pinczewski or Witek Sierpiński, whose actual surname before the war was Margules.

He didn’t go back to his family name when he emigrated to Israel, and he kept the surname Sierpiński, which he had assumed during the occupation to save his life.

Jurek Serwetnik aka Georg Sivroni eventually became a psychiatrist, and in this specialty, his eloquence gives him invaluable advantage. Even now, having retired and being in his eighties, he hasn’t completely stopped working. Sometimes he calls me and we have long chats.

Another frequent visitor to our Sunday dinners, Zbyszek Breiter, was completely different. Serious, focused, and at the same time, warm and cordial, he was nice to talk to about everyday matters, but also general and cultural matters. He genuinely became attached to our family and perhaps even developed a deeper affection for me. He tried to be helpful in times of need.

A new war—a new escape
June 22, 1941—Hitler’s sudden attack and his expansion eastward found everyone unprepared, both the Red Army and ordinary citizens. From the very first moment, I wanted to feel useful, so I went to the local hospital to help (my undying medical inclinations).

And what was a seventeen-year-old told to do? Well, whatever was necessary at the moment. No, I didn’t treat the wounded, there weren’t any yet. It was about women. Pregnant women, feeling the threat of war, decided that the times weren’t favorable for giving birth to children and, whenever possible, they had abortions. The doctors understood the situation and tried to help. It turned out that these women kept coming and there were several procedures a day. What was my role? I assisted with these procedures, I had to hold the curettes. After the first day of this work, shocked by what I was seeing, I hadn’t given up yet, but after the second day, when my mother realized what was going on, she strictly forbade me from continuing to work in the hospital.

Anyway, the German offensive was advancing rapidly. We hadn’t run away from our family home only to get caught in a foreign Ukraine. Our evacuation became necessary and very urgent. We shed great tears at the parting with Stasia. She had decided to return to Ostrów, where she had a family, and survive the war there. She had decided that for her, it was pointless to push deep into the Soviet Union, and she was absolutely right. Meanwhile, the war was approaching by leaps and bounds, enormous confusion was building up, the search for transport began. My father somehow got a horse with a cart—again we left behind our possessions, accumulated with such difficulty. We loaded our personal suitcases and some bundles and headed east. Our family consisted of five people again. Stasia was gone, but Zbyszek joined in, which of course was very comforting. The turn of fate which made us happy owners of a horse, unfortunately didn’t give us driving skills. None of us townspeople had any clue about handling this stubborn animal. It just wouldn’t listen to us, and that was it. Requests and threats didn’t help, neither did using a whip nor pulling on the bridle. Meanwhile, the road was becoming more and more crowded with cars, horse-drawn carts, and crowds of pedestrians. What’s more, planes began to appear ominously overhead.

A repetition of the very recent past.

A truck passing us by with a rumble gave our mare a fright, just as I was sitting on the coach box trying to get the animal to cooperate. Asmilingofficerpoppedhisheadoutofthecabandexclaimed,“Ej, diewuszka, broś etu łoszadź, sadiś k nam!” (Ditch that horse, girl, sit with us) “Ja nie mogu, u mienia siemja.” (I can’t, I’m with my family) I replied. “Niczewo, pożałujstia s siemioj.” (That’s all right, your family’s welcome to join us too.)

A peasant came out of nowhere and offered to look after the horse and the cart. He just clucked and the horse followed him obediently—it sensed a master. With great relief, we moved our packages to a truck covered with a tarp and we sat down among the load of mysterious boxes. I was invited to the cab, I couldn’t refuse.

Two young lieutenants told me their story. They were brothers, they studied at two different military colleges. One was to be a tank driver, the other an aviator. Each of them was given a military assignment in connection with the sudden outbreak of war, and they met by chance. They were very happy about being reunited and they told me this chaotically while bravely making their way down the difficult crowded road and passing towns.

In every city there was a stop in front of a drugstore. My rescuers were coming out of these stores more and more cheerful, with their breaths smelling strange. They drank cologne—based on spirit, it was a substitute for hard-to-find vodka.

I understood that they had to celebrate their miraculous meeting somehow, but the air in the cab grew unbearable and the boys became a little pushy. Meanwhile, night fell and we stopped somewhere on the side of the road. The tired and, frankly, drunk lieutenants happily fell asleep, and I slipped out to the truck bed. We all huddled together, warming each other on this June, yet cold, night, and stayed like this until the morning. In the morning, in great harmony, we ate breakfast together. Our companions opened a can of “swinaja tuszonka”  [Russian: pork luncheon meat], my mother took out the bread, we washed it down with water and continued our journey. Soon we had to part, the officers had their tasks to do, and we headed further east. Still, thanks to their help, we covered a long distance, the most dangerous, and the closest to the front.

The details of the further journey have faded away, but I know that in the end, we somehow got on a train, a real passenger train with compartments. It wasn’t a transport carrying crowds of refugees. My father always avoided crowds; he was resourceful, but only when he was alone. He got lost in large groups and was unable to elbow his way through—none of us could do it, even Zbyszek, who was a young man.

This train took us to Stalino; that was the name of the capital of Donbas then. Formerly, it was Donetsk and this name has now been restored to the city. Almost all major cities were named after the “great leaders of the Revolution,” first and foremost, Lenin and Stalin. Even our Katowice was renamed Stalinogród after the war—fortunately, for only a short time.

Donbas
Compared to other Soviet Republics, the Donetsk Coal Basin, surrounded by fertile Ukrainian lands, was a prosperous region. The front line was far behind us. We began hoping that we could find a place on earth there. Everything seemed to indicate that this would be the case. There were only nice surprises on the platform, a world like from a fairy tale—the place was clean, there were flowers in boxes, railroad service, or maybe it was the police in neat uniforms, and—is my memory playing a trick on me?—no, I remember, they were wearing white gloves. What’s more, we bumped into my parents’ friends— the Zajffe family from Kalisz, who had traveled on the same train.

Officers greeted us like long-awaited guests; of course, they guessed who we were. They were polite, took us to the station’s waiting room, used benches to set up a corner for us and told us to wait while they figured out where to put us. So we waited, my family with Zbyszek, and the Zajffes. We felt hope, interspersed with fear, because we didn’t know what they would do with us—they could give us shelter, or just as well put us in prison.

This is how we found ourselves at a new turn in our lives. It seemed that everything now depended on the kindness of the local authorities and our resourcefulness. We were generally optimistic. We were waiting in the station waiting room for further decisions and nothing foreshadowed an unexpected, dangerous complication.

My father couldn’t stand this waiting, he liked to take matters into his own hands. “Come on, Ceśka,” he said, “give me my documents, I’ll go to town to look around. Wait for me here, and you, Zbyszek, take care of them and don’t let them go anywhere until I come back.”

Throughout our journey, my mother had kept all our documents and money in a pouch over her chest. Now, very reluctantly, she took out Daddy’s passport and military book, which he carelessly slipped into his back pants pocket. It was summer, he wore no jacket. He checked with the authorities, they allowed him to leave. He got on a bus and rode to the center.

He returned unexpectedly, pale as a sheet—his pocket had been picked! On the bus, someone pulled out his wallet with the documents. There was very little money there. It was a real misfortune. In that police country, amidst the war, a foreigner whose appearance at first glance differed from the locals was nothing—even worse, he was an extremely suspect figure. Each child could point at him and call out “szpion” (spy). At that moment, I thought to myself that a real spy would surely have excellent documents. Well, that’s a side note, at that time a lack of documents was a real disaster.

For now, we let things run their course. Our temporary guardians offered us accommodation in a nearby “sovkhoz” for the time needed to look for a job and search for an apartment. Their concern was touching; we were the first refugees in this area, and those who came later were no longer welcomed with such sympathy. They took us all to the collective farm, the name of which has faded from my memory, and there we were also met with a kind reception.

sovkhoz—a Soviet state-owned farm.

In the sovkhoz barracks we were given a large, empty room at our disposal. We could fetch ourselves fresh straw and arrange bedding covered with blankets. Zbyszek and we took one longer wall, the Zaiffes were against the shorter one, and there was one more family opposite us. The head of the state farm came to us and announced that we could use the sovkhoz’s canteen, where we would get three meals a day free of charge. We weren’t required to work, but if we wanted to help out with the harvest it would be appreciated.

We wanted to repay the kindness with work, but it was possible to only a limited extent, because we had to sort out our future. First and foremost were Dad’s papers. Early in the morning he went to the city, visited various offices, and I followed him inconspicuously—in case of his arrest we would know where to look for him. I was hoping that I, equipped with my papers, could be useful for something. While in Stalino, I found the local Medical Institute and submitted my high school diploma to the Dean’s Office. The academic year was supposed to start in October, meanwhile, all students and student candidates were directed to the countryside to help out with the harvest. Fortunately, I was able to join the group dedicated to our sovkhoz and live with my family.

All the men left for the city in the morning. Mr. Zajffe and Zbyszek went to look for a job while my father made efforts to recover the lost documents. We spent the evenings together. The presence of Zbyszek cheered me up greatly and at night, it happened that my place on our makeshift bed was next to his. We lay, cuddling. We talked in whispers and he told me about Paris, where he had studied architecture, about the operas he had watched, he even hummed some arias quietly. Zbyszek had an artist’s soul. It was so distant from the reality that we lived, so cute, and completely innocent. A real, cordial bond was born between us, perhaps even an inexpressible, deeper feeling. Neither of my parents thought our closeness was inappropriate, it was the Zajffes who noticed it and made a fuss. I hated them for it and didn’t allow for any intervention, but the mood was spoiled.

The day came when my father, after wandering around offices, reached the highest party authorities and returned with a sealed envelope in his hand, with which he was to report to the local police station. Nobody slept that night. What was in this envelope? An order for arrest? Deportation? It was impossible to chase away the worst thoughts, but we didn’t dare open it.

In the morning, we all waited in front of the police station with our hearts in our mouths. After a dozen or so minutes, we saw our beloved daddy with a smile from ear to ear. That high party dignitary simply believed him and arranged for new documents to be issued. What a relief! We became convinced that fate was on our side again and we could be optimistic about the future. We didn’t know yet that because of Hitler, the near future had in store new dangers for us and that any stability was very distant.

Meanwhile, we still lived and, to the best of our ability, worked on the state farm. I was associated with a group of female students, my future friends, supervised by a nice assistant from the Medical Institute. Work started early in the morning and ended at dusk. The summer day was long and the work was hard. Armed with large rakes, we collected the mowed grain, tied the sheaves, and set the stacks. We moved in rows across the large sovkhoz field. Completely unfamiliar with such work, I was dropping with exhaustion, had calluses on my hands, but I tried, I tried very hard. Some bizarre ambition compelled me to make an effort to keep up, to not let our group lag behind others. They, my friends, were more resistant, such work wasn’t news for them. I couldn’t, I didn’t want to be worse. The awaited lunch break came, the field kitchen arrived. They served up a thick, nutritious soup with a large ladle. We ate enthusiastically, with gusto, but quickly, to have more time to rest. We crashed into the nearest stack and fell asleep immediately. Oh, if only we could sleep like that for an hour, but no, our supervisor’s voice could already be heard, “Ej, wy, orły z kurinym poliotom, podymajties!” [Russian: Hey, you, eagles, fly like hens]. Days went by.

Mom and Roman also worked, they did lighter work on the state farm. Mom learned many activities that she had never known, which much later, in Turkmenistan, she found very useful when she had to take care of our own small backyard farm.

Albert Zajffe was an electrical engineer, he was the first one to be referred to work somewhere in the provinces. I said goodbye to them without regret. Years later we met in Israel.

Zbyszek deliberately delayed making a decision about settling down. He wanted to see the problem with Dad’s documents get solved. He didn’t want to lose contact with us, and above all, he was still thinking about the army, considering participation in the fighting to be his duty as a young man. It wasn’t so obvious, there was no information about the Polish Army, and the Red Army wasn’t eager to accept a foreigner into its ranks. Eventually, however, he found a job and was forced to leave, and in such a hurry that he couldn’t wait for my return from work to say goodbye. A car was waiting for him. He left a sad note, promised to keep in touch, and gave his likely address.

The pace of the war was dizzying. Barely had we made ourselves at home in the new place of work and residence assigned to my father, when it soon became clear that further evacuation was imminent. However, I managed to establish a correspondence with Zbyszek and, although it’s hard to believe, and today I can’t explain it, our letters were delivered, despite our travels and his various changes in residence. When we were in Turkmenistan, I found out that he had finally joined the Polish Kościuszko Army, formed by General Berling in Sielce on the Oka River, and took part in campaigns on the Eastern Front. Although very rarely, the letters did arrive. They were written on sheets of notebook paper, intricately folded in a triangle, which effectively replaced an envelope.

The last letter was joyful: “I’m already in our old lands, I breathe in the Polish air, I believe that the day when it all will end isn’t far off, then we will meet for sure. Tomorrow’s a great battle.” It was really the last letter, there was no response to my numerous inquiries made at the known field mail address. Although I didn’t get an official confirmation, I couldn’t hope that Zbyszek was alive. If he had managed to survive, he would have certainly tried to find us in Kalisz after the war.

I don’t know why, but I didn’t even have the address of his parents with whom I could mourn him. Perhaps they didn’t survive the war either.

Direction—Asia
The Red Army kept retreating, the German offensive progressed relentlessly, Hitler was on our heels again. Time was pressing, I didn’t even have time to collect my high school diploma from the Dean’s Office of the Medical Institute in Stalino. It was already fall 1941, late autumn, almost winter, frosty, unfavorable to all journeys of exiles like us. However, we had no choice.

This time, without a sliver of regret, we left our recent place of residence, to which we hadn’t had time to become attached, although we’d already managed to acquire basic life essentials. It’s amazing how quickly a person can create a substitute for home around them, even in the most difficult conditions.

Taught by experience, we no longer lugged bags, only really important, necessary things, warm clothes, basic provisions, and not much else. We wanted to go as far as possible, to somehow stabilize ourselves, wait for the end of the war, stop feeling like hunted animals. Fortunately, we didn’t know how many obstacles lay ahead, how much courage and fortitude we would need to overcome them.

I don’t remember how we got to that train. It was a freight train, and machines were loaded onto the open flatcars, some large factory was being evacuated. We weren’t allowed to be there at all, but we hid among the metal, huddled up, wrapped ourselves in blankets, and were glad to go east. Where? It wasn’t clear, but it didn’t matter, as long as it was farther east. It must have been some sort of priority cargo, because the train was going fast and didn’t stop too often. The penetrating cold was additionally amplified by the iron around us. It was impossible to touch anything without exposing yourself to the sharp pain of your skin freezing to the icy surface. We suffered more and more hunger, but we kept moving forward. And, importantly, we managed to break away from the mass of refugees that was moving along the roads. My father’s guiding principle was to avoid the crowds. This reluctance, this fear of throngs of people, is still with me today. Even if it’s a peaceful crowd, as it was during the demonstrations of Solidarity, or during meetings with the Pope, it always scares me.

We traveled from Stalino to Stalingrad and it was a long distance, though roughly half the distance from Kostopol to Stalino. I can’t remember how we did it. We found ourselves in Stalingrad, which at the time, at the end of 1941, was a peaceful city. Many more months passed until July 1942, when the greatest battle began, which would reverse the entire course of this war.

Meanwhile, we were resting. On the tram, my mother had a chat with the conductor and she offered us a room in her apartment. It was a real haven, the landlady was nice, the house was clean and warm, they had great fish, freshly picked out of the Volga: salmon, beluga, and others of a wonderful taste.

“Stay with me,” said the nice conductor, “my husband’s at war, there’ll be enough room for everyone. We’ll do better together.” But we didn’t give in, we knew better, this was just a stop on our journey. We got warm, washed up, and considered the plan of the further route, using the map, consultations with local people, and research in the field.

The decision was made: we’d sail along the Volga to Astrakhan, and from there, we’d try to cross the Caspian Sea to Krasnovodsk.

Ships sailed on the Volga, but purchasing tickets for the voyage turned out to be completely impossible. We could only take advantage of a barge that was pulled by the ship, which was intended for castaways like us. That was better than nothing. It was the first, and not the last, time when we got acquainted with the “pleasures” of traveling below deck.

On long double-decker bunks, people lay side by side amid the stuffiness of sweaty bodies and arguing over every bit of space. We ended up amidst a throng of people, which we somehow had managed to avoid up until then. Fortunately, this journey didn’t take too long, maybe two or three days. Once a day, we were given a bowl of soup and it was bearable. Although it was cold outside, I preferred it to the stuffiness downstairs, and spent a lot of time on deck, admiring the vast size of this great river, the hazy banks of which were usually impossible to see.

Once, in the evening, I managed to slip onto the ship that was pulling us, and I thought I was dreaming: I saw nicely dressed people sitting at tables and being served by elegant waiters. Ladies in evening dresses, an orchestra playing, a few couples dancing. Where did these people come from in the times of war and hardship? I had no idea. In any case, I definitely didn’t fit in with this crowd in my dirty clothes and disheveled appearance. As quietly as I got there, I returned to where my place was, with my family.

We ended up in Astrakhan—we’d covered a long distance, the next stage was ahead of us. We knew it was going to be difficult, but we didn’t realize how difficult.

It was necessary to rest and clean up a bit, so my mother, using her experience in Stalingrad, chatted up the conductor on the tram and she agreed to give us shelter for several days. Fortunately, we were able to take advantage of this refuge, because a new blow was awaiting: my father, who already had felt terrible on the barge, but wouldn’t admit it, now was sick and had a high fever. Today I think it was a psychosomatic illness. He was affected by being in a loathed crowd, in addition, one made up of uncouth and aggressive people.

On top of this, time was pressing, winter was coming, and it was unclear how long the sailing in the Caspian Sea would take. We wanted to get on a ship heading south to Krasnovodsk (now Turkmenbash) and settle somewhere in Turkmenistan.

But… Man proposes, God disposes. The situation in the port was very bleak: there were no ships in any direction at all, but there was a large ever-growing crowd of passengers with baggage. There was no information, no one knew anything, you had to wait.

There was no way out, we had to leave the cozy shelter at our tram conductor’s and join the people camping out on the beach. If any ship docked, it would most definitely be the last one. It was already really cold, we waited huddled with our bundles, trying to be as close as possible to the awaited “post”.

I really can’t figure how long we had waited, a few hours, a dozen? Or maybe a few days? Finally, in the middle of the night, there was a commotion, someone noticed something—it was coming. Naturally, everyone rushed in, scrambling. My Dad was sick, Mom completely lost her head, I grew up in an instant, took over the command, and they listened to me. Actually, I was already an adult, eighteen years old and with the matura diploma, but I had never made any independent decisions before.

The first success was that we managed to get on at all, no one even asked where they were taking us. The whole crowd rushed below deck, there were, of course, no cabins, and it was chilly on the deck. However, after a few days on the Volga, I was afraid for my father and, guided by some intuition, I left my family in a somewhat more secluded place, told them to wait, and decided to look for an alternative. I felt the stairs in the darkness and slowly, quietly climbed upstairs, felt the door on the landing, pressed the handle, entered, and sensed that I was in some room. I felt for the switch, turned on the light, and understood where I was—it was “krasnyj ugołok”—something like a common room, probably intended for the crew. It was a small room with sofas against three walls, a table between them, the portraits of Lenin and Stalin on the walls, and a bulletin board. There were no windows. I quickly turned off the light and went to get my family. We settled down on these sofas, our baggage wasn’t big now, we stuffed it under the seats, and turned off the light. We sat silently, like church mice, waiting for what would happen next. We heard the clatter of machinery, a slight rocking, our ship embarked on its voyage.

It wasn’t long before the door opened, a light flashed, and we saw a young officer who was greatly surprised to discover us. However, there was something in our appearance that made us stand apart from the Soviet people; we had encountered such a reaction many times before. He thought that someone put us there, that we were being shown special favor. He was very polite, and we were very polite and evasive. He left, but after a few minutes, he came back and again very politely asked if we would agree for him to bring a woman with two children there. We welcomed new travel companions.

Of course, it didn’t end there, soon the entire room was filled with women and children, beyond all measure. It’s hard to believe that so many people could fit in such a small space, all cramped, children on the table and under the table. We were sailing, people started talking, for now, in a friendly fashion. Everyone had some bread, some canned food, we comforted ourselves that we would manage—that the voyage wouldn’t last long.

The day passed, another night, and in the morning I went out on the deck to stretch my legs, and there was an amazing view before my eyes. As far as the eye could see, there was the icy water; the undulating surface shone in the rays of the bright sun, only a small strip of water was flowing around our small ship thanks to the engines running. Some fishing boats had gotten stuck not far from us, and fishermen approached our ship on the ice, expecting help.

I stood there as if I were enchanted, it looked beautiful and threatening; more and more people came out and started panicking. The captain’s voice was heard from the loudspeakers. He asked us to remain calm, reassuring us that we would soon be able to make contact with the land and bring in an icebreaker to free us.

The atmosphere thickened, our fate was very uncertain, and conversations were becoming less and less friendly. The women looked with hostility at my father—their husbands were fighting at the front, and that man was taking up a place, they didn’t care if he was sick. I tried to defuse the situation, I asked them if they thought that as a woman I had the right to be there. Yes, they granted me that right. So I went out and asked, “Leave my father alone. I will try to find out something and keep you posted.” And I did. Somehow I appeased them, but the days passed, and the icebreaker was nowhere in sight.

With no way to wash up, there was dirt and lice—as if they were falling from the ceiling. The clean krasnyj ugołok was gone, everything was sticky with filth. Considering the lice and such a huge concentration of people—in our room, and above all, below deck, it was a real miracle there was no typhus epidemic. It would surely have taken numerous lives. Many people were staying on deck, I don’t know if they preferred to freeze there or if there wasn’t enough space for them below.

My popularity unexpectedly surged when it turned out that the most aggressive, fat, woman got ill with pneumonia and needed to be cupped. I had never done it, but I had seen it on a number of occasions, and I knew that the cups needed to be heated with burning spirit and quickly placed on a person’s back. Someone whipped up three cups, there was no spirit, but there was a little kerosene in a portable stove. Using a smoky kerosene-soaked tobacco pouch, I placed three cups on my patient’s massive back and repeated the operation over and over. It was all done amidst the crowd, the stuffiness, and the dirt. All the women present followed my every move, but I managed to do it. Both the patient and the nurse survived, there was no fire or even burns, and the strangest thing—it helped—she recovered.

Hunger was the worst part, nobody had any bread anymore, we’d run out of siemieczki—pumpkin seeds. We had some groats, but how to cook them? We didn’t even have a pot, all we had was a tall, very narrow metal milk canister.

I’d given up my seat, so I kept roaming the ship and I knew exactly where the kitchen was where the crew’s food was cooked. There, if you were lucky, you could put your little pot on the side. The trick was to gradually move your pot to the center, where there was a chance that your dish would cook, and make sure that someone didn’t take your hard- earned place. Taking into account the additional difficulty of the shape of my canister, I could easily say that my groats cooked for two days.

I got to know all the nooks and crannies of our little ship and discovered a great place for me. It was a corridor with a wall adjacent to the engine room on one side and it was warm, even hot, it was perfect to warm yourself up, regardless of the drafts.

On the other side of the corridor was a door to the sailors’ staterooms, and there was also a tiny medical-aid room. There was one doctor there, and it was she who gave me a chance to shine, recommending the cups to our travel companion. What else could she do if she had hardly any medication? In any case, thanks to the cups, I struck up an acquaintance with the doctor and she allowed me to stay for a while in her tiny infirmary under the pretext of assistance. Sometimes she did entrust me with applying a dressing.

However, these were only brief moments of relief in a clean and warm room, most of the time I spent pressed against the warm wall in this corridor. Passengers weren’t allowed to be there, but the passing sailors got used to seeing me there and didn’t chase me away, and sometimes they joked around with me.

This is how I met Volodya. A young blonde sailor with a typical, eminently Slavic, appearance, he quickly realized that I was different, I was no russkaja diewoczka [Russian: a Russian girl.], I came from some other, inaccessible, world, which attracted and interested him. He wanted to learn something from me, and above all, he wanted to learn… the German language. He offered me a very generous renumeration for the tutoring. I could stay in his cabin when his roommate was on watch, and sometimes, I was even able to take a nap on his bunk.

It was indeed an offer I couldn’t refuse, the only snag was that I didn’t know German at all, except for a few basic words. Unfortunately, I didn’t behave very honestly towards Volodya. The knowledge of Goethe’s language acquired from me wouldn’t be of much use to him, but the lessons didn’t last long, because the longed-for liedokoł  [Russian: icebreaker]. finally arrived. There was joy, everyone went out on deck to watch as they liberated us. It didn’t take long, we were free, and we were now sailing on our own in the waters of the Caspian Sea.

The loudspeakers crackled and we heard the familiar loud voice of the captain. He thanked our rescuers, as well as the passengers for their patience and cooperation over the very hard days spent together. He also conveyed the good news that in just two days, we would be at the port… in Guriev. Well, it wasn’t good news for us, we didn’t want to go there, it was no dream of ours to be in the cold north, we wanted a more friendly southern climate. However, we had no influence on anything, fate would decide, and—it did. After two days, as announced, we were getting closer to our destination, when surprise! The roadstead in Guriev was frozen, the port couldn’t take us. Our joy was premature, because the captain decided to return to Astrakhan. Horror, after two weeks of anguish, we’d be going back to square one! Luck, however, was with us, the radio announced that the roadstead in Astrakhan was also under ice. So we were going to Krasnovodsk, as we had wanted and planned from the beginning. Bingo!

Suddenly everything became easier to bear, as if all this hunger, dirt, stench, unimaginable crowdedness ceased to concern us, only two more days, it was a piece of cake. Even Dad started to get better, as if he were coming out of a deep well. If we survived that, we would definitely be able to handle the rest.

My memory plays tricks on me. Sometimes I see everything as clearly as if it were yesterday, as if a movie from my life were playing before my eyes. Other fragments, however, have been completely obliterated. And no effort to recall past facts, no eye closing, no tapping on  the  forehead  with  a  “refresh  memory”  hammer  does  anything. I can’t remember, period. This is what happened when we finally went ashore in Krasnovodsk. I remember neither the port nor the city, nor how we managed to break away from all those people who came with us. In particular, I don’t remember how we got rid, and who helped us get rid, of all the dirt and lice that had haunted us all that hellish sea journey, nor how we got on a clean passenger train headed for Ashgabat.

All I know is that we stopped looking like homeless tramps on this train; we became ordinary, if a little emaciated, people. My father completely regained his vigor and made plans for the future; my mother made efforts to feed us somehow and raise our spirits. Roman, who was still a child, was very brave, no one heard a word of complaint from him in all that time. And I, well, I was hopeful and glad that in difficult times, I was able to handle the situation and support my parents in the moments of breakdown. Now I handed the responsibility back to my dearest, wisest, and resourceful father. It was in these moods that we approached Ashgabat to start a new chapter in our lives there.

Turkmenistan—Ashgabat
After the nightmarish wandering in the ever-freezing Caspian Sea and, finally, after a civilized journey by train from Krasnovodsk, we got off at the station in Ashgabat. We found ourselves in a completely different world and a different time. Was it really just a few days earlier that frost set on everything all around, even the sea? Or were those warm sun rays flooding the wide streets and normal houses of a modern city fake?

We walked around as if in a dream, watching ordinary life and people who weren’t in a hurry. We came across bazaars where exotic- looking merchants calling loudly traded exotic fruits: watermelons, melons, and other produce unknown to us. And there we were amidst all of this, like visitors from another planet, not knowing how to start organizing our lives anew from the beginning.

Suddenly, surrounded by all this hustle, we heard Polish speech and saw Poles. Not some single people, but whole groups of Poles. They were mostly young men, but also older ones, women and children. We tried to make contact with them, but we were met with reluctance. We learned that Anders was taking his army to Iran, and from there they were planning to reach Europe. An unexpected hope sparked, maybe they would take us – after all, we were Poles, Polish patriots, my parents were still young, I was already an adult, Roman was no longer a small child, and we were all seasoned with hardship. Surely we could be useful, somehow take part in the fight, and not just keep running away. We reached the command, but it wasn’t going to happen; we Jews didn’t match this group. Now I think  that  in  my  judgment  of  that  situation  I  was  a  bit unfair, a little obsessed with sensitivity to antisemitism, which is hardly surprising in general, and in those times in particular. Later on, I learned from books that it was all much more complicated than I had thought. Soldiers or potential soldiers had to share their meager rations of food, the so-called “pajki”, with the handful of civilians they towed with them, and it necessitated formal procedures for which there was no time. And we, random newcomers, would have been an extra burden.

But my bitterness also stemmed from the fact that there were so few of us, these extra people, just a small family of four, lost in a big strange country. It seemed to us that if such an extraordinary accident had happened,  that  we  found  ourselves  in  this  special  place  and  at a special time, it was a miracle, it was fate, simply God’s finger, and they should have embraced us, given us a chance.

Well, what could you do? We had to manage on our own, as always. My father reported to some office asking for a referral to work. At that point, he was a highly qualified, experienced accountant, and such specialists were needed, but not to such an extent as to keep us bieżeńcy, in or near Ashgabat. We were referred to Tashauskoy Oblast.

We set out on another long journey. It was necessary to cross from the very south of the Turkmen Republic, from Ashgabat to its very north, through the Karakum Desert. Much later, when I was flying over this desert by plane, I understood where it got its name from: kara-black, and kum-sand. Black Sands. Indeed, from a bird’s eye view, great black patches could be seen very clearly among the endless yellow desert stretches. The addition of salt and other minerals in the soil produced that special color that no other desert in the world has.

For now, however, there was no option to travel by plane, we weren’t entitled to such a privilege. I obtained permission for it when I was already an outstanding medical student and I was flying to my family for a vacation, but more of that later.

So how do you cross this great desert? We didn’t take a camel caravan, I don’t even know if it was possible. We were sent by water, along the great Amu Daria River. A great expanse of water again, and again, naturally, a barge, not some comfortable, cute little boat, oh no! Not a very happy prospect, but we were given no choice.

The journey down the Amu Darya lasted two weeks, but it wasn’t too bad. This barge was obviously very primitive, but it was adapted for the transport of people. We had bunks with pallets, there were other people around, but it wasn’t as cramped as on our previous cruises. We were given our share of assigned bread and even a bowl of soup from a cauldron once a day. Most importantly, we were completely legal passengers, provided with the appropriate documents and a referral to work. We didn’t have to be afraid of anything or anyone, just be patient. Probably the worst thing was the monotony and the vastness of this huge river; even if the shore was visible, it was completely devoid of vegetation, after all—it was a desert.

Everything has its end, and so we finally went ashore in the provincial city of Tashauz. Dad reported with his referral to the appropriate office.

There it turned out that the unfortunate paragraph 37, which marked our passports in Rivne, worked even in this distant land in Central Asia. We couldn’t live in a provincial city, our journey wasn’t over yet. We had to get to Kalininsk, where Dad would be the head accountant of the local MTS—maszino-traktornoj stancji [Russian: State Machinery Center].

The final leg of the journey was quite exotic. It was via an “arba”—a very popular vehicle throughout Central Asia. It’s a small wagon, with the appearance of a wooden, slightly deeper body, to which two large wooden wheels are attached, protruding well above the upper edge of the wagon. Usually a donkey is harnessed to it. Later we found out that such a carriage is an everyday element of the landscape. However, we had the honor of our arba being pulled by a real camel and it was our first contact with this incredibly dignified and majestic animal.

In that way we covered the short distance of about twelve miles tediously but effectively, and we were already “at home”.

If I wanted to summarize the means of transport we took in our peregrinations, I couldn’t complain about a lack of diversity: peasant carts with a horse, hiking at some stages, a train crowded beyond all measure, a military truck with two nice lieutenants, open platforms of a freight train carrying machinery, a barge on the Volga roped to a passenger ship, a ghost ship in the freezing Caspian Sea, an autonomous barge on the Amu Daria, and, finally a camel harnessed to an arba. Phew!

All that time, we were encouraged by the hope that one day, in an undefined future, we would take this road in the opposite direction and that we would return to our homeland. We were very lucky that this dream would come true, and in that case we traveled in another way, namely, in an echelon formation made of cattle cars, the so-called “tieplushka”.

Kalininsk
We got to the place that would become our asylum for the immediate future—no one knew for how long. We looked around with great curiosity at this bizarre, strange, exotic land, unlike anything we’d ever known, but a peaceful one. There was no sense of threat or hostility; it gave us hope that finally, so far from the theater of war, we had a chance to survive.

Kalininsk was a small settlement, situated among desert planes, covered in places with dry bushes with prickly branches. The plant was called koliuczka and was used for fuel. The daily sight was donkeys laden with neatly tied bunches of koliuczka hanging on either side of the backs of these inconspicuous but strong and hardworking animals.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that we were only surrounded by fallow land. Thanks to age-old human ingenuity, there was a wonderful irrigation system there, created centuries earlier, maintained and used according to the old rules. It was a network of canals called aryks which supplied water from the Amu Daria to the farmland, like a bloodstream, from the largest canals through ever smaller and quite tiny outlets. I was amazed when two years ago, during my vacation in Tunisia, I went on a trip to the Sahara Desert, and there we were taken to the great oasis of Tozeur with a multi-hectare botanical and zoological garden. The enormously lush vegetation of this oasis owed its existence to the supply of water from 200 springs through the ancient irrigation system of canals. Our guide was surprised when I asked him if these channels were called aryks. “Yes,” he said, “exactly.” Nihil novi sub sole. [Latin: Nothing new under the sun].

So large tracts of land had been turned into farmland. And what did they grow there? Mainly cotton, as far as the eye could see, huge kolkhoz cotton fields; when ripe, low shrubs boasted white cotton fluff and looked from a distance as if they were covered with snow caps, like mountain pines in the Tatra Mountains.

There were also grains, and sorghum was king among them. The tall and thick stems were topped with a clump somewhat resembling corn tassles and containing a cluster of small, round, completely white grains. The flour obtained from this grain was as unpleasantly white as gypsum and was more  suitable for  animal feed.  However, in  those wartime, hungry years, it was the basis of food for the local population. Besides, I suspect that it had been similar also before the war. The “mash” was a bit more upmarket, forming green grains eaten in the form of cooked, very tasty, groats. However, in our neighborhood, it was rare.

Vegetables played a significant role. We were continuously amazed at how the soil so saturated with salt (white salt was visible on the surface) could produce such sweet carrots and onions. To cultivate the land you needed machines, especially on large kolkhoz fields. And this brings us to the heart of the matter, that is, why we were there.

On the outskirts of the town there was a MTS maszino-traktornaja station with its dilapidated but still functioning machine park and all facilities. (In the post-war Polish state-owned farms there were similar institutions called POM—State Machinery Center).

The complex of facilities making up the MTS was a separate entity: a kind of small town within a town. An administrative building was located in the center, and it was there that my father assumed the important position of chief accountant, the Gławnyj buchgałter [Russian: head accountant]. By the nature of his duties and powers, he was indeed a person of great importance in the entire enterprise, which also entailed some privileges.

The most important matter was the apartment. There were oblong barracks divided into four or five independent apartments; today they would be called segments, but perhaps the old term “quadruplets” fits better. Our apartment, like the others, was entered by a few steps into the porch, and from there to a small kitchen, then there was a room with four beds, a table, and a few stools.

Water was brought from the well; we placed a basin and washing accessories in the corner of the kitchen. There was no major issue with female intimate hygiene, because both my mother and I had stopped menstruating since we left Kostopol. For me, these matters settled only after returning to Poland, but not for my mother. No palace could have been more magnificent than this home of ours—after what we had experienced, before we miraculously managed to reach this peaceful haven. At the back, parallel to the residential barracks, there was a row of sheds intended for keeping livestock. Each family was entitled to one, and sometimes even two, such utility spaces.

The farm
Once more, we began settling down from scratch. We had nothing but a small amount of personal clothing—as the saying goes, “ani stołka, ani kołka [Polish: neither a stool nor a stake]” Unexpected help came from the MTS warehouse. From there, we managed to obtain some bare necessities, e.g. comforters. These comforters were intended for tractor drivers. They were heavy as hell, stuffed with cotton wool and covered with black fabric and huge red flowers. Aside from the exceptional ugliness, they did the job; they kept us warm and served us well to such an extent that we took them back with us when we returned to Poland. They were very useful during the journey, but then, after returning, under the cover of night, we shamefully threw them in the garbage bin along with other goods that we had brought back, believing that we were lugging much needed treasures.

As in all the previous places we stayed, we found that also here, in such a truly poor country, you quickly accumulated objects. The Russians have a great saying for this: “czełowiek żiwiot, da i nażiwajetsja” [Russian: man lives and fills up on life].

We quickly joined the mainstream and faced the demands of local life, the first principle of which was to run a farm, if you could apply this big word to our inept efforts in this field.

First, there were a few hens, one of them especially had beautiful plumage and was strolling about in a very dignified way in the yard. We called it “Her Ladyship” and the Russian women were laughing and saying, “Wot Poliaczki, smotritie, u nich daże kurica i to Pani” [Russian: Look at those Polaks, even a hen is a Lady ther]. Over time, our farm expanded by the goat, Basia, and two kids, Kajtek and Bartek. This naming of our animals made us feel like one big family, but made our neighbors laugh.

But the funniest thing was when you had to milk the goat. None of us had had a clue how to go about it, so we watched our neighbors. To milk a cow, you sit on the side and a cow stands patiently. It’s different with a goat, you have to sit behind it and grab its two udders, while the goat, sensing untrained hands, kicks its legs and sometimes, puts its hoof in a pot of milk, which then isn’t suitable for drinking. Only a pig, once we had one, could enjoy it. So Roman and I did the milking. He’d hold the goat by the horns in front while I attacked it from behind. It looked funny, but for us it wasn’t funny at all. I hated this job.

I’d rather take care of the food for the pig, which Mom decided to keep, using the second shed as a pigsty. Our pig’s name was Kasia and when it was still young, it didn’t need nutritious feed. In the morning, before leaving for work, I’d go to the meadows with a sack and pick a plant, whose name I don’t know, but which had firm, juicy stems and leaves, which Kasia ate with great gusto. In the afternoon I went with two buckets to a fruit processing plant, over a mile away. Watermelons and juicy, fragrant melons were processed there, while the remaining peels and seeds could be taken free of charge. This fermented, mean-smelling mass wobbled dangerously in the buckets, which I was carrying carefully on a shoulder pole, cautious not to spill it on myself or, worse, not to lose the precious cargo. But I did enjoy seeing Kasia plunge her snout into the trough while grunting joyfully. A whole separate chapter was cleaning the pigsty. Mom did it and it was always clean and the pig was clean too. Of course, our farm developed gradually and the pig appeared once we’d already settled down and gotten comfortable.

“Celina Mojsiejewna,” this is how our Russian neighbors in Kalininsk referred to my mother. That was because my maternal grandfather, whom I never knew, had the proud name Mojżesz (Mojsiej in Russian) and this “imia otczestwo” [Russian: patronymic surname] appeared in my mother’s documents. It was only when we returned to the country after all this wandering that suddenly this name turned out to be a bit embarrassing, and my mother’s new ID card, under “father’s name”, read: Michał.

“Celina Mojsiejewna,” said our nice neighbor Liuba, “u was bieło nie bieło, lisz by wodu widieło.” [Russian: white or not, it saw water]. It happened when my mother hung up her laundry on the clothesline. Because how on earth could underwear be white if there was no soap and the laundry was done with “zoł”, that is, wood ash, scooped from the stove and placed in a linen bag?

And yet, these brave, resourceful Russian women were able to make their underwear truly white with these extremely primitive means. It was similar with all household activities. They, familiar with harsh life since childhood, had it in their blood, while my mother, a lady, was used to the comforts of the city and had to learn everything with great effort. But she managed to do it gracefully, and in fact, she was not only liked but also respected.

Each MTS employee had the right to cultivate a piece of land, it was called siem sotych, seven hundredths of a hectare. The sorghum was the easiest to cultivate and this is what we grew in our field. It didn’t require much effort, the only, but very vital, problem was water. The ancient irrigation system worked, supplying water via ever smaller aryks, but you never knew when they would run water into the canals leading to our plots. The kolkhoz fields always had priority.

Most often it happened at night. Suddenly we were awakened by the buzz—water! Everyone was running with shovels, you had to grab a shovel as quickly as possible and rush into battle, cover someone else’s inflow to their field and open the mouth to yours. There was no set order, no one watched over it. It was a real problem, in which we usually lost. None of us, least of all my father, was fit for a shovel fight. So our plot usually got water at the very end, of course, as long as it didn’t suddenly run out. Well, the sorghum somehow grew there and provided us with its grain. It was later ground using real millstones.

It was hard and extremely stupefying work. In a small room accessible to all residents of the estate, on a stand at the appropriate height, two large round stones were placed on top of each other. In the middle of the upper one there was an opening into which grain was gradually poured by the handful. A pole hung from the ceiling, the lower end of which had to be inserted into a hollow located on the perimeter of this upper millstone. Now you just grabbed the pole, rotated the upper stone and, by the force of friction, crushed the grain into flour that spilled out between the stones and was carefully swept into a bowl with a special brush.

It was my job, but luckily, it was done only for urgent, immediate needs, because basically ready-made flour could be bought at the bazaar. Thus, living in the countryside had its undeniable advantages, it simply protected us from hunger.

The staple was bread. It was sold from a cart which arrived at an unspecified time and you had to keep your eyes peeled for it. The daily allotment was fourteen ounces per day per person, that is, three and a half pounds for our family, and you might think: an awful lot—who would eat so much bread? This bread was black, clay-like, heavy with water content, disgusting to taste, and yet, how much desired! It took a lot of self-control not to nibble on a piece of it on the way from the cart to the house. Wicked as I was, I often scooped out the middle, thinking slyly that my mother wouldn’t notice it. She naturally did, but never said anything. Local Turkmen women supplemented the shortage of bread with “lepioszki” pancakes, most often made of sorghum. A special oven was used for baking them, placed in front of the entrance to the house. It looked like a truncated cone, was made of  clay  and  was  about  two and a half feet high. The fire was lit inside, and the lady of the house, squatting, prepared round lepioszki. When the furnace was well heated, she spread the embers left over from the burned wood, and with a deft movement of a gloved hand, she tossed the pancakes, sticking them to the inner walls of the furnace. It was quite tricky to take out the ready-made pancakes so that they were sufficiently baked, and they didn’t end up falling into the embers.

We also had such an oven in front of our barracks and sometimes we tried to use it to bake lepioszki.

Most of the time, however, we boiled sorghum groats, not tasty, sticky in the mouth, and yet filling. The mash groat was much tastier, its green grains burst during cooking, similarly to popcorn, and the whole dish was appetizing and delicious, especially if there was something to add to it. Today, what we look at with aversion and even disgust, for instance, fat and sugar, was the object of desire as an unsurpassed flavor enhancer and supplier of calories and energy.

Today, when we carefully trim each piece of fat on a slice of ham; when I cook broth in advance so that the next day, after it’s cooled off, it’s easier to remove the fat; when almost no one sweetens their tea, and sugar is used only occasionally in the kitchen, I fondly think back, and I drool at the memory of the day when my dad had managed to get some oil. The first-class delicacy was a piece of bread dipped in a plate containing some raw oil, with finely chopped onion.

Our farm fed us a little, but not too much. Goat’s milk, naturally, was very useful, although there wasn’t much of it. We had very few eggs, because Her Ladyship, much like an heiress, was lazy and laid few of them, and she’d sometimes do it in all the wrong places. The remaining three hens were still too young and weren’t laying eggs yet. For now, the piglet needed tending to, and when it was slaughter time, I was gone, I was already studying in Ashgabat. I was lucky because everyone was very sorry—we had gotten attached to our Kasia.

Dry steppe grass was enough to graze sheep and goats. Every morning a shepherd with the kolkhoz herd passed by and, for a small fee he took private goats, including our Basia with the kids, on the way. In the evening, the bells announced the return of the animals and it was milking time. To keep the babies from the milk, Basia wore a special bra, cleverly tied on the back. Sheep were grazed, so mutton was within the range of possibilities, and “kurdiuk” was everyone’s dream come true. I had never seen in Poland in our rams such a pouch, hanging under the tail and containing easily melting soft fat, completely devoid of any unpleasant smell.

These were rare occasions when we managed to get a piece of ram, and then, once in a blue moon, my mother prepared “plow”. In other parts of Asia it was called “pilaf”, and I sometimes see this name in recipes today. But we cooked plow.

A cast iron pot in the shape of an inverted cone was placed into a well-heated oven for baking lepioszki. At the bottom you put chopped fat, preferably from kurdiuk—lots and lots of it, then pieces of meat; at this stage, you could stir it with a wooden spoon. Then you laid alternately several layers of sliced onions and carrots, and finally, after some braising, you poured in rice and added very little water and salt to taste. The whole dish was cooked for quite a long time, giving off delicious aromas. The rice, drenched with mutton and vegetables, didn’t get sticky and was aromatic. All this was poured into a large bowl, then the meat was on top, and it was easy to share it fairly. Armed with spoons, we sat around the bowl for this heavenly feast. Not only meat, but also rice was hard to come by in our area, so we were able to taste this delicious regional dish very few times. Sometimes I happened to be invited to such a feast in a Turkmen house and then I had to adapt to the local etiquette.

Only men squatted around the bowl, and I, a woman, was admitted to this group only as an important guest. Local women waited aside, served, and I suspect, only ate the leftovers. A girl holding a bowl approached each of the diners. She poured water over their hands from a jug, which she held in her other hand. After such hygienic preparation, you moved on to eating. With two fingers of the right hand, they skillfully formed balls of the dish and ate it with great appetite, it wasn’t possible to miss even a grain of rice. Experts claimed that the use of any utensils impairs the taste of a dish, but I was offered a spoon, which I accepted with relief.

If the house was prosperous, a pipe with a long stem filled with tobacco was smoked after eating; the way to the mouthpiece was through a water container. The pipe was passed from hand to hand, or rather from mouth to mouth; fortunately for me, as a young woman I was relieved from smoking this peace pipe.

When, on account of my work, I visited auls, I often saw an old woman dressed in traditional clothes squatting in front of a hut and puffing a water pipe.

auls—a village in the Caucasus mountains and Central Asia.

Sheep provided not only meat, but also wool, but in order to benefit from it, it was necessary to acquire a completely new skill—spinning. You took a lump of raw wool, you had to tear it with your hands to make it fluffier and get rid of impurities, and in such a state, it was suitable for spinning. I didn’t have such a luxurious device as a reel, I used a spindle. I held a piece of wool in my left hand and set the spindle in motion with my right hand. The spindle was spinning, and with my thumbs and index fingers, I tried to pull out the thread, which twisted and wound around the spindle. My threads weren’t very even, sometimes they got looped, but still they could be used to make a shawl or even a sweater on thick knitting needles.

Recently, when it was cold in the apartment, I took out a wonderful, large, beautiful scarf made of natural sheep wool, brought from Turkmenistan. Unfortunately, I can’t boast that I made it myself, it was purchased from a master of this art and it holds up perfectly and warms me wonderfully as no other fabric currently in fashion.

There wasn’t much to buy at the local bazaar: some very valuable rice, a different kind of mash groat, and the plebeian sorghum.

During the fruit season, on the other hand, there was a lot to see. Peasants from the surrounding kishlaks came and brought whole arbas loaded with different kinds of watermelons and melons. They were all arranged in beautiful pyramids, next to which the owners would squat and patiently wait for customers. When a buyer arrived, the whole theater began. It took a real expert to judge the quality of the fruit hidden behind a thick green or yellow peel. It involved a lot of tapping, sniffing, squeezing along with listening if it crackled the way it should. And finally—haggling. Whoever skipped this whole ceremony would be completely disregarded as a dilettante.

kishlaks—Villages

When at last the great ball was brought home and cut open, it was a joy to the eyes, nose, and tongue. Especially the watermelons, which were called pumpkins there, were characterized by a wonderful aroma and taste; the juice of their white or, more often, pink flesh dripped down the hands, and the sweetness filled the palate with delight, more than making up for the scarcity of sugar.

Watermelons could also be dried. After removing the peel and the seed core, they were cut into thick slices and placed on paper on the roof of the shed, where they had the best exposure to the sun. After drying, they were narrow, sticky brownish strips that could be stored. In winter, they successfully replaced sweets and were a great treat.

Work
Already in Kostopol my father had mastered the Russian bookkeeping system and was doing well as an MTS gławbuch, where he was surrounded by respect and admiration and enjoyed great authority. With a kind smile, they watched him do poorly in other practical areas of life, such as struggling with a donkey when it was time to transport something, such as koliuczka for fuel. Everyone knows that a donkey is a stubborn animal that won’t listen to anyone. You can spur it with a peculiar grunting, making “yhmm, yhmm” sounds and putting pressure on one of the cervical vertebrae with a short, but thick stick. It was even funnier when Dad was forced to ride a donkey because he had to do some errands in the field, and there was no other transport. He was sitting on this low mount while his long legs were dragging on the ground. He bore all these inconveniences with humor, and he was liked for that, too.

Due to his function, my father made business trips not only on a donkey on kolkhoz matters, but also to oblasts, that is, to the provincial authorities in Tashauz. For that, he drove a car, which was quite a big event. Sometimes he brought a guest and there was always a place in our modest, tiny apartment; we just huddled together in one bed, remembering the old days when in our four-room apartment in Kalisz, it had been impossible to accommodate a guest, because there was no guest room and it was obvious that the guest would stay the night in a hotel.

At the very beginning, Dad decided to hire me in his office. My function was graciously called szczetowod, which means  the  lowest rank of an accountant. However, I wasn’t very successful at this job; to be honest, I rather disliked it. I had to count long columns of numbers with the help of wooden abacuses (szczoty) several times, because I could never get it right. I wasn’t fit for this profession, I had to come up with something else. The thought of medicine never left me. For now, I decided to enroll in a six-month nursing course led by the adorable old doctor Ivan Ivanovich at the local hospital. It was a course organized by the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and included, in addition to purely medical subjects, such classes as organization of the sanitary service of the Red Army and gas defense.

I have the completion certificate of this course in front of me. Out of all eleven subjects, I obtained an excellent grade (otliczno) and earned the title of a medicinskoj siestra zapasa [Russian: reserve nurse]. with the right to work in military and medical facilities during the war. I was an outstanding student there, especially due to my knowledge of Latin, which I’d studied in junior high school in Kalisz. Schools throughout the Soviet Union didn’t teach Latin, considering it one of the many bourgeois relics. Honestly, there was nothing to brag about, because the Latin requirements of future nurses were really minimal. Also later, when I was already a medical student, I had the opportunity to show off my Latin erudition.

At the same time, while taking this course, I changed my job; I parted ways with the disliked bookkeeping and I joined an anti-malaria station as a quinine administrator. Malaria was an endemic disease in that area and the whole population was taken care of by our station. It was supervised by a very nice and cultured middle-aged doctor, Maria Pavlovna, assisted by a rather rude nurse, who treated the rest of the staff in an overbearing manner. The staff consisted of quinine administrators and insecticide sprayers. The insecticide sprayers, three Turkmens, equipped with appropriate, though very primitive, equipment, sprayed anti-mosquito repellants around the areas where mosquitos—the spreaders of malaria—bred. Quinine administrators, on the other hand, provided treatment and prophylaxis of registered patients.

Quinine or arechine was used. These drugs were administered at the prescribed intervals, for instance, three days in a row followed by five days off. You couldn’t trust the patients, who were mostly very primitive people, to conscientiously take the prescribed medications, so a quinine administrator visited them on the appropriate days and administered the drug orally, making sure that it was swallowed.

My territory covered a wide area and included several “kishlaks”, sometimes also called auls. So I had the opportunity to see life in the provinces. And it was a life of great poverty. People usually lived in mud huts with a dirt floor instead of an actual floor, and sometimes in tents laid out with saddlecloths. There was a hearth in the center with a roof opening above it for smoke to escape. Inside, it was dark and smelly. Children swarmed, old people huddled in the corners. The correct person had to be identified according to the register.

At first, I was  met  with  reluctance,  but  over  time,  as  a  result of periodically repeated visits, I managed to gain people’s trust, and sometimes they even offered me refreshments. It happened when the housewife was baking lepioszki in her bread oven. Among the poorest, they were a staple of the family’s diet. Hardly anyone could afford a more refined flour, they were mostly the sorghum pancakes. Freshly baked, while still hot, they were even quite tasty. In order to improve the taste and appearance, onions or grated carrots were sometimes added to the dough, which gave the lepioszka some color, breaking the unappetizing gypsum whiteness characteristic of the sorghum. Despite all these efforts, when they were cold the pancakes tasted quite nasty. And so I wandered to these kishlaks day after day and distributed quinine or arechine. I mostly walked, sometimes I was given a lift on an arba pulled by a donkey.

People in such a remote province had kept their identity and true traditional clothes. Throughout the year, men wore huge black ram caps to protect them from the cold in winter, and from the scorching rays of the sun in the summer. At times, men wore a tubeteika—a small cap with a round strip, over which a pointed cone, cut from triangles, was formed. The whole cap was black, covered with colorful embroidery, which used to be hand-made, but in my time it was already machine-made. I have such a tubeteika, I brought it as a souvenir. A similar headdress is also found in other Asian countries, as well as in Africa. The kippas (skullcaps) worn by religious Jews are completely different, they fit flat on top of the head.

Women dressed in wide salwars and loose blouses. They wore high, stiffened caps with colorful scarves thrown over them, from which numerous beaded strings or small coins punched in the center, fell onto their foreheads. The conversations were difficult, especially with my modest vocabulary, but also people weren’t very talkative, but we got along somehow. As a quinine administrator, I tried to carry out my work diligently, knowing that it was beneficial and contributed to the fight against malaria. It was only later that I found out that, like many other undertakings in the Land of Soviets, the premise itself was wise and well-meaning, but the execution failed. Various colleagues of mine at the time didn’t take this work seriously, often limiting their job to writing out reports.

The activity of the anti-malaria station wasn’t the only preventive action in this area. Some mysterious bacteriophage was also distributed, which was supposed to prevent infectious diseases. I don’t know if it did anything, but my mother thought so and she gave each of us a spoonful of the medicine. And indeed, we didn’t get sick.

I wasn’t a quinine administrator for too long. After completing the nursing course, I was promoted and became a nurse in an orphanage. It was a poor Soviet dietdom, and I, a fledgling—and frankly, not too skilled—nurse was the only medical care for these children and staff. Fortunately, during my term of office, no one was seriously ill, and besides, I had support in Ivan Ivanovich, the old doctor from the hospital who was always happy to advise and help me.

Soviet dietdom—a Soviet children’s home.

I did my best, I tried to take care of hygiene, I looked into the pots in the kitchen, but I realized that I was being cheated; well, not me, but those poor children, who got only a part of the already meager rations of food. I found out about it very quickly. One day, the Home Director called me and suggested that, apart from my duties, I should also do accounting, because the accountant, although handicapped, had been drafted into the army. “U was otiec buchgałtier—pomożet” [Russian: your father is an accountant, he’ll help you.] said the director.

After discussing it at home, I agreed. Dad said that accounting was very simple there and that we would manage together, and any additional earnings would be useful. Soon, the inventory of the warehouse began. I came home and my mother said to me, puzzled, “There was a man from your dietdom who brought this pouch.” It was an oblong linen pouch containing misshapen pieces of dark sugar, chopped off a sugar lump. We hadn’t seen sugar for years, and neither had the children of the dietdom. It was a bribe! And that’s how my work as an accountant ended. I couldn’t hide their thievery, or worse, participate in it.

The children were nice but very unhappy. It was very difficult to help them, and it was only because of them that I didn’t give up my nursing job, but it was very hard for me to endure. I was fed up there, surrounded by hostility from the management. It never occurred to me to denounce them, but they still didn’t trust me. Anyway, a new stage in my life was approaching—medicine studies in Ashgabat.

My younger brother Roman also had challenges. He went to school dressed in the remnants of his old Polish clothes and wore shorts during the hot summer. This wasn’t accepted by his peers. They shouted after him, “Romaszka, Romaszka, korotkije sztany [Russian: short pants]”! There was no other way, my mother had to get him a pair of some loose, long pants, fitting the local customs. The slight taunting of each of our family members, resulting from our otherness, didn’t stem from any malice or aversion. Our neighbors, colleagues, and even random acquaintances welcomed us into their environment, accepted us, showed us no hostility. Simply put, we found ourselves there, we endured the same hardships and inconveniences of life as well as war shortages; we observed and tried to imitate their ways of fighting for survival. We weren’t discriminated against, neither as Poles nor as Jews. Perhaps it was due to the multi- nationality of that society.

In their country, Turkmens were pushed to the margins, didn’t occupy important positions, were poorly educated, mostly lived in their kishlaks, preserving ancient traditions. Very often they spoke little or no Russian, which was the official language.

Most of the people we were among were Russians. I don’t know what fate had brought them, or perhaps, their ancestors, to this distant land, but they constituted the local elite. There were also citizens of other Asian republics: the Tatars, Uzbeks, Azeris, and others; people mixed in one big melting pot. They were all curious about our former lives in a Western country inaccessible to them. Sometimes their naivety was touching. Once, one of our young neighbors saw at my place an old newspaper with a photo of a movie star and she asked me to give her this newspaper. When I asked what for, she replied embarrassed, “Eto iz za priczoski [Russian: for the hairdo]”. She liked the celebrity’s hairstyle and wanted to copy it.

I owed a great popularity to my manicure accessories, which I’d incidentally packed with me. Whenever I had time, I took care of the nails of local posh ladies. Soon it would turn out how superficial and fragile that provincial peace was.

Adding fuel to the fire
Fuel was a basic necessity, you had to cook on the stove and heat the house in the colder season. Koliuczka was used most often and on a daily basis. In order to obtain it, my father borrowed a donkey and, armed with a sickle, he set out for the koliuczka harvest. He cut prickly branches, tied them with string into bundles, and placed them on the sides of the donkey. It wasn’t easy for a city-dweller like my father, but the hardest thing was to get this stubborn animal to move and transport the valuable cargo to the storage space at home.

These twigs were used mainly for kindling because they burned extremely quickly. Kiziaki were different—they were substitutes for coal because they burned slowly and provided a lot of heat. And making kiziaki was a woman’s job. Manure was collected, preferably bovine, but there were scarcely any cows. So if you managed to get some, you added a little water in a bucket, worked it into a thick mass, and then you formed it in your hands, yes, yes, into round lepioszki. Next, with a vigorous movement, you threw them in rows against the wall of the shed, so that they would stick and dry nicely in the sun. Completely dry, they easily fell off the wall, creating something like briquettes. They could be stored and didn’t give off any unpleasant odors when burned.

Dry cotton bushes were an excellent fuel, but this requires a more extensive comment. The kolkhoz cotton fields took up huge spaces. Cotton grows on low bushes sprinkled with round fruits, a bit like chestnuts in shell. When ripe, these cocoons burst, and white cotton fluff peeks out from inside them. Whole expanses then looked very picturesque, as if covered with snow caps.

During the harvest, the women, girded with aprons, pull the cotton bolls by hand, load them into their cavernous apron pockets and move along the field in rows. By the way, I’m curious if it still happens this way or if some machines were invented. In any case, in “my day” it was like this, and after this arduous harvest was over, there were still quite a number of unripe cocoons that hadn’t opened. They were called kuraki. There was also cotton inside which could be obtained with machines. It was second-rate quality—wtoroj sort.

It was allowed to tear out these dry cotton stalks and take them for fuel, but after first collecting the kuraki and stacking them on the pallet. Children took care of the kuraki, in our case, it was Roman and I. Later, my father pulled out the bushes, tied them in bunches, and carried them home. I’m describing this procedure so thoroughly because it’s linked to an event that almost ended dramatically.

One day, my dad didn’t come home from work. Nobody knew what had happened, only some boy said that he had seen Stiepan Rafaiłowicz being taken away by two people. The three of us ran to the local authorities, but we achieved nothing. Nobody saw anything, nobody knew anything, no tears or pleas for any information helped. He was gone—like a stone in the water.

We were crazy with anxiety and despair. Fortunately, not for too long—four days, but each day was unbearable. Finally he came back, pale, distraught, he wouldn’t talk to anyone, even Mother. We couldn’t find out what had actually occurred. As if nothing had happened, he returned to work, where no one asked any questions and he was welcomed with reserve. Gradually, the dust settled. Only then did he tell us.

He was arrested on charges of sabotage. Someone noticed that the fuel he was carrying wasn’t thoroughly cleaned of the kuraki—a few remained on the twigs. It may sound funny now, but it was really dangerous. I must admit that once again Providence watched over our family. An officer came from the oblast to check the local police station and asked, “Who do you have there?” They told him, he looked at the “saboteur,” laughed at their overzealousness, and ordered him to be sent home, after having him sign a declaration that he wouldn’t tell anything to anyone.

The whole story reminded us of what country we were living in and what a great threat hung over us. After all, there were no innocent people in this Stalinist police country; everyone was potentially exposed to harassment, deportation to a labor camp in Siberia under any pretext, or simply for no reason. Fortunately, even among the representatives of the authorities you could meet decent people who weren’t devoid of common sense. My father encountered this type of man for the second time, previously he had gotten lucky in Donbas. What happened to us was only trouble and not an irreversible disaster.

Until the end of our stay in Kalininsk, none of us spilled the beans about the whole thing, and no one asked us about anything. People knew very well that silence was mandatory in such cases. With time, conjectures died down and life got back on the old tracks.

Compatriots
Life sometimes also gives us nice surprises. It turned out that we weren’t the only Poles in that backwater. One day, a flesh and blood Pole knocked on our door. Simple, uneducated, delightful, and affectionate, Michał was a stoker in the local bathhouse. I can’t remember what had brought that solitary forty-year-old man to that distant place. I guess it had something to do with fleeing, but little was said about it—caution was the way to go. He was a frequent guest in our home, enjoying the family atmosphere, and my parents made sure he didn’t miss the opportunity to return to Poland.

The real sensation, however, was the appearance of two young men; Szymon Szwarc was Sara’s husband, and Felek was her younger brother. They had lost Sara somewhere along the way during their rough escape. And how can you not believe in miracles? They found her! After a few months, Sara reached the tiny Kalininsk.

I made friends with Felek Barabasz; he was my age and had also graduated from high school. He’d lost his hand at the very beginning of the war, but learned how to get by very efficiently with only his right hand. He could even pull a bucket of water on a chain from a deep well. We had many common interests; most of all, we both wanted to become doctors. Felek claimed that there were specialties in medicine where his disability wouldn’t be a problem.

In distant Central Asia, far from the front lines, the situation was stable enough that it was possible to try to enter a university. And then suddenly an unexpected obstacle appeared. Across the Soviet Union, every university demanded the original high school diploma, ignoring all obstacles related to the ongoing war. My high school diploma was stuck at the Medical Institute in Stalino, from which we had to evacuate in a hurry. It didn’t matter that I had a certified copy or that it wasn’t possible to retrieve the original from the area currently under German occupation. They only accepted a high school diploma in the original, period. It turned out that Felek was in a similar situation, his high school diploma was lost in the turmoil of the war. What could we do? We had to take the exam again.

There was, surprisingly, a ten-grade school in Kalininsk, and we both took our high school exams as externs. Naturally, the level of this school wasn’t very high, but nevertheless, you had to study hard to earn good grades. Otliczniks, that is, students with only excellent grades, were admitted to studies without an examination. We studied together in our house in the evenings after work, and we were doing pretty well, except for one snag. An important subject was Marxist-Leninist philosophy and the history of the AUCP (b); as a reminder, if anyone doesn’t remember those ancient times, the name of this communist bible was the history of the Wsiechsojuznoj Komunisticzeskoj Partii (Bolsheviks). These subjects were terribly difficult and completely foreign to us; that convoluted philosophy didn’t appeal to us in any way. This knowledge was put into the heads of the unfortunate students of Soviet schools throughout the years, and we just had to memorize it. It was good that the knowledge of the Turkmen language wasn’t required, Russian was sufficient.

AUCP (b)—All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

Felek and I both passed, got very good grades, made copies, and sent the diplomas to various medical institutes in different cities, assuring them that we were in possession of the original of this valuable document and it would be delivered on request.

I was the first to get an answer from Ashgabat, and shortly afterwards we were both invited to Kharkiv. Felek was attracted to Kharkiv because it was in Europe; I decided to go to Ashgabat, I didn’t want to be so far away from my family. And so we went our separate ways, I lost another friend, even correspondence somehow quickly broke off. I hope that his life turned out to be successful. He must have become a good doctor, he had a calling to this profession. I also hope he came back to Poland, but maybe he got married there and got stuck in Ukraine, who knows?

It was hard for me to leave my parents, dumping numerous farm chores on my mother’s shoulders. But they supported my aspirations, and in the meantime, Romek had grown, become more manly, and he could be counted on. This is how a new stage began—my student life.

Ashgabat Medical Institute
On the basis of a certificate from the Medical Institute, I was able to buy a plane ticket. It was my first flight ever. I had no idea what a passenger plane should look like. The “kukurużnik” that flew that route had the appearance of a tram with two hard benches on the sides. It swung from side to side, but the whole journey over the Karakum Desert probably took only two hours. In addition, it flew low enough that I could see from above that strange desert with its great black stretches. I found myself in Ashgabat again, but not as a lost refugee, but as a full-fledged student, in addition, a person familiar with the realities of life in the Turkmen provinces. I got a referral to the dormitory, which was called “obszczeżitie” there.

kukurużnik—a nickname for the Polikarpov Po-2 biplane.

There, in one room, representatives of four different nationalities lived in peace and harmony. On this small scale, the ethnic blending in Turkmenistan was displayed, certainly somewhat related to the war, but I think that it was also largely the result of population migration, various Stalinist exiles. Who knows? My roommates welcomed me very kindly and the relations between us were very good. They weren’t bothered by my otherness; on the contrary, they were interested and maybe even a little impressed. I don’t know what that otherness stemmed from—after all, not much of my old Polish clothes had remained, but I still looked different. Maybe it was about the little accessories, the way you carry yourself, your behavior, the style in general, and the Polish accent. I was immediately noticed in every company and regarded rather positively, I was considered a “worldly” person.

I was slowly organizing my life for the first time, far from my family. Contact, even by mail, was difficult and rare, I had to deal with everything by myself. I couldn’t count on financial help from my parents, my father’s earnings barely covered their own needs. Sometimes, however, I would get care packages from home, some rice, the mash groats—and once after the pig slaughter—what can I say, some melted lard, sausage, unimaginable luxuries. Then I was able to pay back my roommates, because they constantly received packages from home and sometimes they treated me to something. I had a small scholarship that was enough to pay for the dormitory and travel expenses. The tuition was completely free. The scripts that we used due to the lack of textbooks were borrowed free of charge from the library for a longer period.

There was a canteen in our dormitory: in the morning a runny soup and a large piece of bread were served. It was extra bread, so to speak, in addition to the usual fourteen-ounce ration. The second soup was served in the evening, often cooked with the “head meat”, it was greasy and tasteless. I was almost never at home then, but my friends took my portion for me to the room and then I heated it up in the backyard in a little pot set on two bricks over some burning sticks. Our dorm was located quite far from the city center, so it wasn’t worth returning home during the day. I attended lectures and all classes very conscientiously. I liked it, I liked it a lot, to be honest, I was happy to be able to learn. Despite the somewhat provincial nature of my university, the level of education wasn’t low at all. Many professors came from central Russia or Ukraine, evacuated because of the war, and they tried with great commitment to pass their knowledge on to students.

One subject was always difficult for me, it was chemistry. I hadn’t been lucky with chemistry teachers. At the school in Kostopol, the teacher was a hopeless man, and it only continued that way. It dogged me for the rest of my life, I couldn’t learn chemistry, and it was always required in medical studies. As for the students, it was a peculiar blend. Boys, in general, were nonexistent there, they were fighting at the front. However, in our year there were several male Turkmen students. Apparently, out of concern for the national medical staff, they were ejected from the army. Aside from them, there were only girls who came from different parts of the Soviet Union, and there were hardly any Turkmen women among them; the customs were still strong: the place of women was at home.

Due to the great national diversity of the students, there was no certainty regarding their fluency in the Russian language, which was, of course, obligatory. Therefore, a six-month Russian course was introduced in the first year, preceded by a test.

And surprise—I, the only foreigner in our group, was exempted from the Russian language classes. I wrote the spelling test without any mistakes, and passed a test in literature with flying colors, because I happened to be asked about Dostoyevsky, whom I’d read in Polish in Kalisz. There were some concerns about my foreign accent, but the committee reasonably concluded that I couldn’t correct it. My accent was so visible, or hearable, that as soon as I opened my mouth, everyone I talked to invariably repeated the words, “wy nawiernoje Poliaczka [Russian: you must be a Pole]”.

I was also exempted from Latin classes; my school knowledge of Latin far exceeded the requirements for medical students, who had to use it as part of anatomical and general medical terminology. Poor girls, they had to start with the alphabet, the way I had had to learn the Cyrillic letters in Maloryta. As I’ve already mentioned, Latin wasn’t taught in Soviet schools, and foreign languages were also despised. This is how linguistic successes allowed me to shine right at the beginning of my studies. I became popular, and I had a little more free time than others.

And time is what I needed for financial and social reasons. My basic but documented nursing qualifications turned out to be useful and I was hired as an on-duty nurse in the hospital. Most often I did night shifts in the internal ward. They weren’t too taxing, the nights were generally quiet, I could study a bit, and sometimes even take a nap. My colleagues, real nurses, helped me, and at the same time, this work familiarized me with hospital life.

However, a completely different job—one could say, pedagogical—was the most attractive to me. I was tutoring a boy from elementary school. The boy was nice and polite, but unfortunately he wasn’t very quick-witted and did badly in literally all subjects. I did my best to help him improve, and even had some success, and the pay was unusual. My student’s mother was the head of a bakery shop. I gave her my bread ration ticket, and when I came to the lesson, instead of the black “lump” intended for ordinary mortals, I got a wonderful, fluffy, slightly sweet white bread or a roll; an amazing, unforgettable taste, I can still feel it on my tongue when I write about it. In addition, she gave me a glass of sweetened tea. I ate my entire fourteen-ounce ration of bread on the spot, drank my tea, and was delighted to drive my various pieces of wisdom into the knowledge-resistant head of Aliosha. Everybody was happy.

So it’s hard to say that you went hungry, but the fact was that you were never really full. Amidst all the shortages in the supply of food, there was an amazing phenomenon: ice cream was sold on the street; it was real, great, cream-based, chocolate-coated ice cream on a stick. Throughout the year, summer and winter, with a bit of luck, you could meet a vendor with a large wooden box from which, for a small fee, he would take out this sweet, cold delicacy, which was a great supplier of calories.

At the same time, neither milk nor butter, let alone cream or cheese, could be bought not only in the store, but even on the black market. At the time when I was in Ashgabat, the ZPP—the Union of Polish Patriots —was already in existence. It was established in 1943 and was headed by Wanda Wasilewska, a very controversial figure because of her demonstrative pro-Soviet engagement and close relations with Stalin, even very close and supposedly personal. Wasilewska was spoken of very badly after the war, but I can’t approach this figure objectively and historically. I’ll always be grateful to her for creating the ZPP, which helped Poles stay in touch and made it possible for them to return to their homeland after the war.

In Ashgabat, as in other large cities, there was a branch of the ZPP and the social life of Poles (not only of the local Polish community, but also of people living in neighboring cities) was concentrated there. There you could read Polish magazines: Nowe Widnokręgi weekly and the Wolna Polska daily newspaper. Of course, these were regime papers, but they promoted the emergence of the future Poland as a democratic state without any racial, national, or religious discrimination. It appealed to my mentality, even if it was naive. I was far from any political games, but I was very pleased to see Polish words in print.

An important figure, met at the ZPP club, was the Krakow lawyer Benjamin Meyer. This gentleman lived permanently in the nearby city of Mary, but often visited Ashgabat and always sought my company. He was a man of indeterminate age, medium height, slightly balding, with a small, neatly trimmed mustache, always immaculately dressed and distinguished by the refined demeanor of a genuine Krakauer. He always brought attractive food gifts, such as real dairy butter, not some nasty oil. To protect butter from losing its freshness, it was melted and transported in a bottle.

Mr. Meyer had great respect for me and even intended to come with me to Kalininsk to ask my parents for my hand in marriage. He was sure he could get a plane ticket. Somehow, I managed to talk him out of this idea, and in order to ease the pain of refusal, I suggested he visit me at the dormitory. The announcement of this visit made my roommates very excited. They had seen my admirer through the window, how he gallantly walked me home after a meeting at the club.

“What will you serve him?” They were worried. “What do you mean? I got some mash from home, I’ll cook the groats, add the butter he’s brought, and dinner’s served!” They weren’t convinced—such an elegant man, and I wanted to feed him groats.

The big day came, Mr. Meyer came with a gift, he kissed the hands of all the ladies, winning their hearts instantly and irreversibly. Dinner was excellent, the conversation was lively, and when he went, the comments were endless. It was inconceivable that I could reject someone so wonderful.

The days and months in “sunny Turkmenistan” were full of work and passed quickly. I graduated from the first year of studies with high marks and spent holidays with my family in Kalininsk. The long-awaited, joyful day arrived—the end of the war. And practically nothing in our life changed; my parents still lived and worked in Kalininsk, I continued my second year of studies, my everyday life didn’t change. We had no idea how our future would turn out, but we were hopeful and awaited good news.

And there it was! The “option and repatriation” act was issued. I’m deeply convinced that we owe this act to the efforts of the Union of Polish Patriots and Wanda Wasilewska personally. Option—that is, you had to make a choice whether you wanted to return to Poland or stay in the “happy Land of Soviets”. Apparently, there were those who preferred to stay, but I didn’t know anyone like that.

Our Soviet passports with Kalisz—Poland as the place of birth were our pass to leave. You had to prove that you’d lived in Poland before 1939. My father’s wisdom, when he’d decided that we should accept Soviet passports, proved right. This saved us from forced deportation and gave us a chance for survival. He was right in saying that after the war Poland would claim its citizens.

Today, however, when I know how many Poles have remained in Kazakhstan, where their next generations live, I understand that what my father proclaimed wasn’t entirely true. Among the numerous Poles who lived in Kazakhstan, only some families managed to return and find their place in their homeland. I always try, even with a small financial contribution, to support the visits of Poles from Kazakhstan for Christmas, organized by the Polish Humanitarian Action led by the irreplaceable Janina Ochojska. I’m ashamed that, using the excuse that my apartment is small, I haven’t invited anyone to my home. I should fix this mistake.

Sometime in early 1946 preparations for repatriation began, and various formalities had to be completed. The whole issue was quite high- profile, many people envied us the possibility to leave. I had an older friend, a Russian Jew named Aron, I don’t remember his surname, although we were quite close friends. Aron approached me with a concrete marriage proposal. He thought that, as my lawful spouse, he would be able to leave with us. “After all, a young man will always be useful when traveling,” he argued. “And the rest will depend on you. If you want, we’ll become a real marriage, and if not— we’ll get a divorce.”

I’m not an assertive person, as it’s now fashionable to say, it’s difficult for me to deny a favor to my friends, but I couldn’t do that. I was afraid that they wouldn’t let him go and that they would keep me as the wife of a Soviet citizen. By the way, Aron managed to get out, his overwhelming desire to leave the Soviet “paradise” prevailed. I met him in Lvov, where our echelon was standing along with other similar trains on a sidetrack. Aron was going to Bessarabia—at least it was Europe! And how he did it, I have no idea; there was no time for a long chat. The world is a small place, indeed.

It was important to me that after returning to Poland I could prove that I had completed my second year of studies. My professors at the Medical Institute showed a lot of understanding and goodwill. I managed to pass most of my subjects well ahead of schedule. Some lecturers treated me very leniently, for example, the physics instructor. I was invited to the professor’s house and the whole exam came down to a chat about relations at Polish universities. I had no personal memories in this regard; after all, before the war I had only been a junior high school pupil, but the conversation was nice anyway. I met the professor’s family and I left with a very good grade in my student book.

Feverish preparations were underway, my parents and Roman settled all the matters in Kalininsk, they came to Ashgabat, and there we waited together for the longed-for “zero” hour.

Throughout all the years of the war, we had longed for this great day to return home. We left the Soviet Union without regret, but we were fond of “sunny Turkmenia”, which gave us shelter, and of the people, with whom we managed to make friends. I liked Ashgabat, which was a nice city with elements of Central and Eastern Asian architecture, and I was very saddened by the news of a massive earthquake that hit the city two years after we left, in 1948.

We lived  in  Turkmenistan  during  the  difficult  war  years,  in a country with a cruel Stalinist regime. Russia was dominant, the Russian language was obligatory, all positions were occupied by Russians, and the few Turkmen officials were completely Russified. But Stalin and Moscow were far away, the war was far away, too, and it was felt mainly only because of increasing shortages. Nevertheless, there was no feeling of tension or particular fear. I had the opportunity to observe life both in the capital of the Republic—Ashgabat—and in a very remote province on the edge of the Karakum Desert. True, we had bad days there, in Kalininsk, when my father was arrested on the idiotic charge of sabotage in connection with the “kuraki scandal”, but it was the only instance known to me, and miraculously, it had a happy ending. All these considerations came to mind in connection with the shocking text by Wojciech Jagielski, published in Gazeta Wyborcza on January 4, 2003. I had no idea that this remote provincial country of Central Asia, which I knew so well, was ruled by the most totalitarian regime imaginable.

Return—we’re going home
It was the end of April 1946. The moment so long awaited finally came. It was hard to believe that what we’d dreamed about all these years, what we had been waiting for, keeping our hopes up for, was becoming a fact. Until the last moment before boarding the train, we didn’t feel completely sure. What if something unforeseen happened? After all, they could suddenly turn us back on any pretext or without any justification! But no, nothing like that happened, here we come!

Long echelons for the repatriates had been arranged. Each train consisted of numerous freight cars adapted to transport people. They were called “tieplushki” (“warmers”, from Russian tieplo, “warm”) because they were fitted with little stoves known as “kozy” (goats). There were also long rows of bunks and a hole in the floor for your physical needs. Fortunately, this system was used only in extremely urgent cases, because the train stopped often enough for us to take care of these matters outside.

There were about thirty strangers in each car. They were naturally Poles or Polish Jews; I don’t remember anyone from this group, I just recall that the atmosphere wasn’t very friendly. As the old adage goes, crowds are the worst; constant disputes about who should sit by the stove, or who should sit by the window, or about a baby crying, or something else. But that was nothing! All these inconveniences were mitigated by knowing that we were going “home”.

The journey was long, we were transported in detours. Oftentimes the train stopped suddenly in a field and you never knew when it would start again. Then everyone would get out with their pots and portable stoves, and cooking began, sometimes on a kerosene-powered stove, sometimes on two bricks, if there were any sticks nearby. Sometimes the train would start suddenly and you had to get on in a hurry with undercooked groats. These stops were always in the middle of nowhere, we hardly ever stopped at train stations; we sped through them.

Once, I had an unpleasant adventure. It was probably after two weeks of travel when food supplies were running out. We were standing, as usual, in a field, but we could see a village at a distance. A great temptation arose: maybe we could buy potatoes? I went up to the train driver to get some information. He had no idea how long the delay would be, but assured me it would be at least an hour or two. I grabbed a bag from my mother and some money and ran towards the village. It was farther than I’d thought, then I suddenly heard a whistle and saw my echelon move. I had no chance of catching up with it, so I went to the village anyway and managed to actually buy some potatoes. I returned with my spoils to the railroad tracks to wait for the next echelon. Two passed and neither stopped, the night was approaching, I was distraught and desperate, so when I heard a train coming, I stood in the middle of the tracks waving my arms. It worked—he stopped and yelled at me, “Szto ty dieuszka s uma zijszła? [Russian: Have you lost your mind, girl?]”

Oh, I thought, thank God, he picked me up and he also spoke Ukrainian, so we were already in Ukraine! I rode this locomotive for two days, but I didn’t worry too much. I knew that all the numerous transports with repatriates were going in one direction and along the same route, and that I had to find my family in the end. Finally, we stopped on the sidetracks of some large station among a few, maybe a dozen or so, other echelons identical to ours. I was running like crazy from carriage to carriage, I looked around carefully, until suddenly my heart leapt up—I saw Roman. He, too, was hovering around, hoping to bump into me. I bravely delivered the potatoes, but I promised my mother never to repeat such feats. We weren’t far now.

Next stop was in Lvov, and again numerous trains were standing in rows. People poured onto the platforms, there was a mood of unprecedented liveliness, ecstasy, complete strangers threw themselves into each other’s arms, we almost felt at home. We learned that all transports were directed to the so-called Regained Territories, in our case to Wrocław. We were promised all kinds of post-German goods there: well-kept farms or fully furnished apartments in the city as well as great job opportunities. But my father and all of us didn’t want such donations, we wanted, in the old custom, to break away from our fellow travelers as soon as possible, and our goal was not Wrocław, but Kalisz.

Now, in Poland, our train no longer stopped in fields, but at railway stations. That’s how we got to Łódź, from where we were supposed to go to Kalisz on our own. It was with great relief that we left the train that was headed for Wrocław and the car which, after all, had become our temporary home during this journey.