Homeland (19 page)

Middlezoy,

Somerset,

30 October 1946

My dearest Helenka,

At last I have the chance to finish this letter. For the past two weeks I have been on the move from what seemed like one end of England to the other, only to end up not so very far from
where I first started. Such are the ways of the military – or, to be more accurate, the Polish Resettlement Corps. If you have written to me in the meantime, dear sister, your letter will
be pursuing me from pillar to post, and will doubtless catch up with me in the next few days. My new home is a camp (again), a temporary residence (one can but hope). It is in the middle of the
wetlands of Somerset, many kilometres from the nearest town and convenient for little but long walks. Sometimes I wonder if I’m destined to live in camps for ever, but really I
can’t complain. Compared to the accommodation in the Soviet Paradise, this is a veritable Grand Hotel.

What follows just below I began in a camp in the north of England, continued a little further south, and now finish in the west of the country. Whatever else, it seems I am destined to be a
well-travelled man.

Yorkshire

16 October 1946

Dear Helenka,

Well, I’ve been sent here to the north of England. Not at all where I want to be, but I’m hoping to be transferred back to the south-west again soon.

Now, to the rest of what happened to our family. While I was convalescing I did in fact write a detailed account of the whole story, partly to create a proper record for you, and partly with
the idea of writing a book one day – a novel, I thought, though I haven’t yet found a form or style that would do it justice. But since the account runs to well over two hundred
pages and includes many descriptive and impressionistic passages it’s obviously not suitable to send through the post. So here’s a short version, which will, I hope, cover
everything you want to know.

At the start of the war, as you probably heard, we were briefly overrun by the Germans. Father was away from home at the time, searching for his old regiment. He marched down to the
Recruitment Board, rattled his medals at them, and demanded the necessary mobilisation papers (you can picture the scene). He got as far as Ostroleka when the German assault began. I, meantime,
had joined the local Volunteer Corps, but when no arms or ammunition appeared I realised that the idea of local defence was a waste of time and went back to Podjaworka to help Mother, Janina,
Krysia and Enzio. Father having already sent the best paintings to a safe place (they may still be there), we went about burying the most precious valuables, leaving a few lesser valuables in
place so that, if the Germans came looting, they wouldn’t be frustrated by the lack of booty. How naive we were! It seems incredible now.

Having done all I could at home, I then set off to join the first Polish forces I could find, but just two hours down the road I met German tanks. It was a terrible shock to realise how far
they had advanced in such a short time, and I hurried straight back to Podjaworka to do all I could to protect house and home. The next day a German officer came and requisitioned stores from
the farm, and later that night two of his troopers returned to demand silver and jewellery. At the time we branded them thugs, but compared with what was to come they were almost civil.

When we heard the news of the Russian invasion, we realised that any hope of rescue by our allies was gone. Worse, when the Germans withdrew to the far side of Lomza, we realised that we
were to be thrown to the Bolsheviks. While bracing ourselves for their arrival, we were attacked by bands of Byelorussian and Jewish militia (for which read brigands) who came in the night,
threatened us at gunpoint, and helped themselves to livestock and whatever else took their fancy.

But they were as nothing to the Russians. Wild, filthy, drunken, they systematically stripped the house and farm of everything – furniture, clocks, curtains, machinery, tools –
which they piled onto trucks and sent back in well-organised convoys to Russia (it was all planned, you see). What they couldn’t take they wrecked just for the sake of it. They burnt all
our books, papers, photograph albums. In a final act of savagery they slaughtered my noble Ishtar because she refused to let them saddle her. She knew barbarians when she saw them. She was
worth a hundred of those brutes any day.

I am telling you all this, Helenka, not to add to your pain, but to leave you in no doubt as to the deliberate and systematic nature of this destruction. The intention was to destroy our
culture, to crush our spirit, to remove all traces of Polish civilisation from the ancient soil of eastern Poland.

In the following weeks we made the best of what we had left – a horse and some chickens, and of course the sweat of our brow. I may add that our Byelorussian neighbours remained loyal
to us throughout. Indeed they vouched for us as fair employers and good neighbours, but as soon as the NKVD began to bully us we advised them to keep their distance. Only two of them
subsequently turned against us – that young couple who begged Father for work the previous summer and seemed so grateful. Nothing, it seems, is so deeply resented as kindness.

In hindsight, we should have thought of escaping to the German-occupied sector much earlier, while we still had the chance. But nothing was simple then, Helenka, and by the time Father
returned, the NKVD had gained a firm grip on the whole neighbourhood. We weren’t blind: we saw the way things were going. But how could we be sure we’d be better off under the
Germans? We were caught between hell and a fiery place. Even Father, with his deep distrust of the Bolsheviks, failed to appreciate the extent of their ambitions, that it wasn’t simply
annexation and domination they were after, but the very annihilation of the Polish people.

The serious bullying began soon after the nationality referendum (so-called). Sometimes the NKVD came to Podjaworka in person, sometimes they sent their tame militias. Father was convinced
they were targeting him for his service in the Bolshevik War. He thought that if he could escape to the German sector they would leave the rest of the family alone until he could arrange for us
to join him. It was on the day before he planned to leave that he went into town and failed to return. Suspecting the worst, I went to the local NKVD headquarters. At first they denied all
knowledge of what had happened to him, then over the next few days they gave me a succession of stories – that he’d been sent to Moscow or executed by a military tribunal in
Bialystok or sent to Siberia. I knew better than to believe a word. It was risky going into town (once, I was badly beaten by a gang led by an old schoolmate, a Byelorussian whom I’d
regarded, clearly with some misjudgement, as a friend – such were the ruptures in our once-harmonious society), but I refused to stop asking questions. Finally, a local man told me
he’d seen a group of militiamen dragging Father into the forest. I went to the spot he described and after much searching found the shallow grave where Father lay. He had been shot in the
head and would have died instantly. With the help of loyal neighbours I carried Father’s body back to Podjaworka and buried it in the orchard under the apple trees. The priest came after
nightfall to read the burial service. The perpetrators of Father’s cold-blooded murder undoubtedly came from one of the Byelorussian militias, but be in no doubt that it was the NKVD who
authorised the deed. Even at that stage, nothing happened without their knowledge or approval.

We continued into the winter under difficult but not impossible conditions. My first instinct after Father’s death had been to grab what we could and flee to the German sector, but
Mother fell ill with fever (the result of shock, I think), and Janina was of the strong opinion that, after Father’s murder, nothing worse could happen to us. I have often blamed myself
for not insisting on escape, but there is no point in self-recrimination. Everything was clouded in confusion and uncertainty. It was impossible to know what was right. Even with daily murders
and lootings, it seemed safest to hang on for another day and hope for the best. Also, as you will remember, the winter was very harsh that year, deep frosts and the snow very thick.

In early February we heard a rumour that all young men from Polish families were to be deported to labour camps. Immediately, Mother and Janina insisted that I escape. I felt strongly that
we should all go together or not at all, but they were adamant, so I left late one night and got as far as Aunt Zofia’s in Lomza before I heard that Mother, Janina, Krysia and Enzio had
been seized in the night, along with thousands of other families, and sent to Bialystok for immediate deportation. I rushed back to find Podjaworka inhabited by a militiaman and his family who
promptly tried to kill me. (I escaped by the skin of my teeth – a bullet grazed my head as I ran away.)

Furious, I went to the NKVD chief and demanded to know where our family had been taken. For once he didn’t prevaricate but told me straight away to go to the sidings at Bialystok
Station, and there I found a train of cattle wagons within minutes of leaving. I ran alongside the wagons shouting Janina’s name. The situation was made all the more astonishing and
heart-rending when Nero bounded up to me from among the hundreds of dogs seeking their owners. Eventually I heard Janina calling back. I ordered the guard to open the wagon and thankfully he
did so. There was a crowd inside, I couldn’t at first see Janina anywhere, but when they hauled me up I quickly found our family together in a corner. What a reunion it was! We embraced
and laughed and wept, to the mournful sound of the barking outside the wagon. Krysia was distraught at leaving Nero, but I lied to her, I told her it wasn’t Nero, that I had looked for
him and he wasn’t there. In fact he followed us for five days! Running beside the train and sleeping under our wagon at the stops. Krysia nearly went mad with worry. Then one day Nero
wasn’t there. God only knows what became of him. Hopefully he was shot.

It took three weeks to reach our destination. The conditions were grim. There were fifty of us in a single wagon and the temperature twenty or thirty below. Once, Krysia’s hair froze
to the side of the wagon and had to be cut free. There was one small stove for everyone, no water except what we could melt from snow collected at the occasional stops, and a hole in the floor
for sanitation. The old and infirm who died had to be left unburied at the side of the track. When we reached the Russian border and changed trains, everyone sang, ‘Our free country give
us back, O Lord’, and wept and wailed, except for me. I was too angry, too bent on vengeance to concede that I might not return.

Eventually we reached Kotlas in the province of Archangel, where we left the train and started northwards along the Dvina. For two days we were provided with sledges, but for the most part
we had to walk, until after seven days we reached a narrow-gauge railway that took us deep into the forest. From the end of the line we travelled for another three days on foot and sledge until
we arrived at the work camp.

Thankfully, the regime allowed Krysia and Enzio to attend the local school, though for the privilege of hearing that God didn’t exist and Stalin was all-bountiful they received reduced
rations. But this, we decided, was less detrimental than heavy labour on so-called full rations, which were laughably small. With the rest of the men, I was set to work felling and logging,
while Mother and Janina were given branch-stripping and loading. The temperature was thirty or forty below. A month after we arrived, a log fell and crushed Mother’s foot, causing her
great pain. The bones never healed properly and thereafter she walked with a limp. However, it did result in her being transferred to the sawmill, which being sheltered from the snow and wind
was a little easier to survive. In general the work was hard in the extreme, the living conditions vile – the huts crawling with lice, rats and bedbugs – but our real enemy was
hunger. Have no doubt, Helenka, that starvation was the weapon chosen to conquer us, the means by which we were to be subdued and ultimately destroyed. On leaving Podjaworka, Mother, Janina,
Krysia and Enzio had been given half an hour to bundle clothes, bedding and food onto the sledge. (Poor Enzio never forgave himself for grabbing what he thought was a sack of corn only to
discover it was poppy seeds.) At the last minute Mother had thrown in some of her finest lace and linen, and it was this she traded for food. It made the difference between quick and slow
starvation; we were never less than ravenously hungry. That first Easter, we said prayers over one small egg divided between the five of us. Soon after this, Krysia fell ill with a fever. By
selling a gold chain Mother managed to buy extra food and nurse her out of immediate danger, but Krysia remained terribly thin and weak. She could barely drag herself around. Two weeks later
she developed another fever and was taken to a hospital many kilometres away. Mother and I managed to get leave to go and see her, only to find she had died half an hour before we arrived.
Mother’s anguish was terrible. She was inconsolable at the thought of Krysia dying alone and uncomforted. We brought her body back to the
posiolek
and buried her as best we could
in the frozen ground, marking her grave with birch twigs and a simple wooden cross. Thus we lost an angel, graced with a serenity and wisdom far beyond her years, imbued with a purity of spirit
that shone like a golden beam of morning light.

When summer came, we picked berries and mushrooms from the forest, and, thanks to seeds sent by Aunt Zofia, were able to grow some vegetables. Touchingly, we also began to receive parcels
from some of our neighbours from home. Thus for a time our health improved. The mosquitoes and blackflies were terrible, the bedbugs flourished, but for a few weeks we were mercifully free from
disease.

In September, however, we were moved to a larger
posiolek
further north where the commandant was much harsher, fining us for the slightest infringement of the rules, stealing our
parcels from home, and, most cruelly, insisting that children go to work in the forest. Thus Enzio went to work alongside Mother and Janina. It was useless to object; any complaints were met by
a reduction in our already derisory rations.