The Polish Diaspora, 1939-55

NAZI OPPRESSION	Halina Bartold Poœlinska’s German identification card I wanted to go to summer camp in the Krynica area for two weeks and my mom let me go. It was 1942. On the journey home, the train detoured and took us to an unfamiliar town. That’s where the Germans divided us, meaning that they picked out the children they wanted to re-educate, and those they didn’t want. I don’t know what happened to the ones they did not want; I doubt they were returned to their parents. I was still ten years old, (I didn’t turn 11 until December), and was one of the oldest children. Some of the younger ones were crying and I tried to calm them on the train because we could see they weren’t taking us home. Halina Bartold Poœlinska b. 1932, Grodzisko 1944-51, Germany 1951-present, USA
Bo¿enna Urbanowicz Gilbride (second row, center), Labor Camp nr. Chemnitz, Germany, 1944 My Permanent Recurring Nightmare "I am ten years old and alone, running away from the Nazis. They are gaining on me, but there is no place for me to hide. I try to dig a deep hole and hide in it. I dig with my fingers. I can almost feel the dirt under my fingernails. I dig faster and faster, but they are getting closer and closer. I finally bury myself, head first. I hear them above, looking for me by sticking their bayonets into the ground. Swoosh. Swoosh. I can hear them coming closer and closer. I then realize that my feet are sticking out above the ground and they will find me. And then I wake up. In a month or so, the dream will be back.” Bo¿enna Urbanowicz Gilbride b. 1933, Leonówka 1943-46, Germany 1946-present, USA	We were without hope in this Bergen-Belsen death camp. One of the first things that I noticed was a mound, a small hill in the middle if the yard that was surrounded by prisoners’ blocks; it was snowing. All the male prisoners were walking around that mound. Once in a while they would sit down to rest. When a thaw came and the snow started to melt, it turned out that the hill was made of human corpses. That was the most horrible sight. They had a crematorium in Bergen-Belsen but I think it was so crowded, they ran out of room to burn the bodies, so they left them piled up, and they froze, and the snow covered them. Lilka Trzcinska Croydon b. 1925, Warszawa 1943-46, Germany 1946-48, England 1948-present, Canada
15 December 1996 For Jerzy’s 75th Birthday Kampinos Forest Heather meadow Cricket’s song Cobalt-blue skies of autumn Our world pervaded by fear The enemy waited in the streets Lightless nights full of phantoms The murderers’ song entering our dreams Its sharp edge slashing our hopes We escaped into this forest That held secrets of buried guns We escaped into the shade of ancient trees We escaped with our newborn love And held it firmly in our hearts Your face your hands A quickened heartbeat In my sixteen-year-old breast Enclosed in a love circle forever For love like eternity is one We’ve guarded it through those years By the banks of the Acheron Through war and fear and hunger I brought it to the other shore of an ocean Where I’ve pitied the sun the moon the stars That shone on the world without you And I mourned the tiny buds of heather Since then turned into ash I unpetal stars for you They know your mystery Where and when it was And under what skies You felt your last heartbeat As you whispered I love you I love you I love you These words breathed life into me Soon we shall wander together Among the stars that glow in the sky Like those tiny white daises On the meadows in our country Years tumble around me All the Nativities and all the Resurrections Always you always our love Always the heather meadow Always the cobalt-blue skies of autumn © Lilka Trzcinska Croydon, 1996	I remember the photograph being taken; you see that they kept us naked during the day during the quarantine period of two or three weeks, and we only received blankets at night. We slept on a concrete floor covered with straw. This was September and, in the Austrian mountains, it was already cold. We were known by numbers and not names; mine was 95822. Józef Poœlinski b. 1927, nr. Kraków 1944-45, Austria 1945-49, Germany 1949-present, USA
This was the morning of August 1. Skirmishes started at 3 PM though, officially, the Uprising started at 5 PM. My mother and sister walked out onto the street. They were returning home when they were shot by the Germans. My mother was hit in the legs; my sister was running home and was shot in the arm. She managed to get home; my aunt could see her running towards the house, and saw her get shot through the heart. After a few hours, when the shooting stopped, she brought in her body and, then, went out and found my mom and buried both of them. After the Uprising she found someone to help her dig up the bodies and gave her and my sister a burial in the cemetery in Brudno. So, by the time I got home, they were already buried. When I found out that they were dead, my world collapsed. I was 15 years old and never imagined that I would lose my family. I spent one night at home with my aunt and then returned to my comrades. I don’t remember what happened to me during the next few days as I was grieving so much. Danuta Banaszek Szlachetko b. 1929, Warszawa 1944-45, Germany 1945-46, Italy 1946-present, England	On October 5, I went for water with which to wash my nephew. Next door to our home was a garden with a shelter, which is where my family was hiding. When the bombing started there wasn’t time for me to return to it so I hid in another shelter and was taken away by the Germans to a fort in the area of Sadyba. Of course, we had nothing; just what we stood in. The Polish Army defending this area consisted of young Polish boys who were inexperienced, so they were killed. Some Polish soldiers asked civilians for their clothing, while others hid in rose bushes. The Germans shot the retreating boys one by one. Some jumped into the water to escape but they drowned. I don’t know how many survived. When they collected the corpses and put them on wagons we, the young girls, threw flowers on their remains. One young captain had been shot in the kidney and asked for his wife to be informed. Another asked us to tell his sister that he had been shot, both of which we did. I don’t know what they did with the wounded. Celina Kabala Wojciechowska b. 1924, Warszawa 1944-45, Germany, Austria 1945-46, Italy 1946-present, England