A Polish Woman's Experience in World War II

Conflict, Deportation and Exile

Irena Protassewicz, Hubert Zawadzki, Meg Knott, Hubert Zawadzki

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781350178090
• eBook ISBN: 9781350079946
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

This hitherto unpublished first-hand witness account, written in 1968-9, tells the story of a privileged Polish woman whose life was torn apart by the outbreak of the Second World War and Soviet occupation. The account has been translated into English from the original Polish and interwoven with letters and depositions, and is supplemented with commentary and notes for invaluable historical context. Irena Protassewicz's vivid account begins with the Russian Revolution, followed by a rare insight into the life and mores of the landed gentry of northeastern Poland between the wars, a rural idyll which was to be shattered forever by the coming of the Second World War. Deported in a cattle truck to Siberia and sentenced to a future of forced labour, Irena's fortunes were to change dramatically after Hitler's attack on Russia. She charts the adventure and horror of life as a military nurse with the Polish Army, on a journey that would take her from the wastes of Soviet Central Asia, through the Middle East, to an unlikely ending in the highlands of Scotland. The story concludes with Irena's search to discover the wartime and post-war fate of her family and friends on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and the challenges of life as a refugee in Britain. A Polish Woman's Experience in World War II provides a compelling, personal route into understanding how the greatest conflict of the 20th century transformed the lives of the individuals who lived through it.

Part One

(1910 to 1939)

1

Wars and reconstruction (1914 to 1925)

Evacuation to Russia – Taganrog – Revolution in Russia – Return to Borki – Wężowszczyzna and my Żórawski aunts – Starting from scratch – Bolshevik War 1920 – Bandits – Cousin Kazio, two swapped letters and the ensuing tragedy – The bizarre story of Klemens Minasowicz – Hunting wolves and wild boar – Borki back on its feet – Pan Wincenty the estate administrator

25 January 1968

Dear Wacio!

Your letters urge me to start writing. Yesterday, while listening to the record ‘The Magic of Polesie’ (Polesia czar) at the Zielińskis, I happened to glance at a large portrait of Józef Piłsudski hanging on their wall.¹ What an impact it made on me! It was as if his deeply thoughtful face spoke to me and tugged at some long-forgotten heartstrings. No, just as a tree cannot forget its roots, so one cannot forget the Kresy which have produced people of such calibre.

I once experienced two calamities within the course of one year. The death of my father, Wacław Protassewicz of Borki, brought the world of my childhood to an end. The destruction of Poland removed the ground from under my feet, not only in a literal sense through the loss of Borki, but also because Poland had totally disappeared into a bottomless pit.

My parents, Wacław Protassewicz of Borki and Zofia Żórawska of Wężowszczyzna, were married on 9 September 1909. I was born in Wilno on 4 August 1910 according to the Julian calendar (17 August 1910 according to the Gregorian calendar). Mamusia breastfed me, but because she did not have enough milk I cried all the time. Apparently, she was not able to breastfeed her babies well; those were not our modern times. Perhaps this early undernutrition affected my health in later life, as I turned out to be weak and anaemic. When my sister Jula was born in 1912, my mother employed a healthy strong peasant wet nurse for her. As a result, Jula was always healthier than I was. My youngest sister Hania was also not strong as a child. For example, once when Hania and I had a bad case of dysentery, Jula was unaffected, and she hardly ever caught colds after running around barefoot. Perhaps a reason for falling ill was the existence of numerous ponds for breeding carp which my father established near our house, as well as the natural lake. The surrounding air was damp and the house stood in the shadow of ancient lime trees. We always went to bed to the distant accompaniment of croaking frogs. Through the open windows of the drawing room came the scent of the lime trees, to be met by the beautiful tones of Chopin’s Preludes played by my mother who ended her working day in such a way.

Figure 1.Borki manor before 1914.

In 1914, war broke out between Russia and Germany. We left for Russia in September 1915. I remember how, before our departure, Tatuś shot an apparently mad dog outside the windows of our ‘blue room’, at the back of the house. It turned out that the dog’s body was to mislead thieves. In a deep hole in the garden Tatuś buried the family porcelain, some of Mamusia’s trousseau and her memoirs, sealed in an iron box. These items were covered with a layer of soil on top of which he placed the dead dog to deflect any unwelcome attention, and covered it with soil. After we left, local peasants looking for signs of disturbed earth found the dog and then stopped looking any further. Tatuś had the moving parts of the two steam engines thrown into the pond; this saved the machines because later the Germans could not take them. In addition to this, my mother removed the family portraits from their frames. Adam Skorochod, our groom, geared up four horses into the beautiful Cracovian harness (a wedding gift from Uncle Wiluś Protassewicz) and placed the rest of the harness with the silver fittings along with our luggage. Then off we set into the unknown to escape the advancing German front line.

We spent the first night with a hospitable Orthodox priest. I remember, as if it were yesterday, the tasty fruit preserves we children were offered and the picture books we were given to look at. I think it was in Minsk that Tatuś decided to sell our fine horses; we then boarded a train bound for Taganrog, a seaport on the northern shore of the Sea of Azov. We took up residence in a house on Petrovskaya Street (no. 97) in an ugly part of town, but it was chosen for its proximity to the railway station. In addition to our coachman Adam, our servant Helenka came to nurse my newborn sister Hania. Helenka later married Adam and they both moved out of our house since Adam had found a job as a cabby. By 1918 Adam and Helenka had a son Staś whom my father held at the christening. Staś Skorochod was to become quite Polonized during his service in the Polish Army in the interwar period, and was to opt for Poland after the great reshuffling of borders in 1945. He now lives in Sopot in Poland, and makes a good living as a mechanic, having learnt smithing on the Borki estate. The rest of his family continues to vegetate in poverty in Kresy (Soviet Belarus).

I have very pleasant memories of Taganrog. It was a beautiful seaside town with a lovely climate. Mamusia would take us to the beach where we swam, holding on to her arms, in the section reserved for women, and collected shells. There were also many delicious tropical fruits. We gorged ourselves on peaches, heavenly aromatic melons, not to mention watermelons which we ate as the third course for lunch. Mamusia would buy delicious fosfatynka drinks for Hania, the sight of which made my mouth water.² Our neighbours in Taganrog, the Kufszyniec family, lived in the courtyard with their four charming daughters who performed gypsy dances while playing their castanets. The poor things were later forced to marry some primitive Bolsheviks and life did not turn out well for them. Pani Kufszyńcowa was very wealthy and gave me her portrait which I took back to Borki.

Mamusia always attached great importance to education and so we were immediately sent to Madame Mamol’s nursery school. We learnt to read and write there, as well as to dance, and we played the piano during school performances. I remember how Jula and I once appeared as angels wearing beautiful dresses covered with silver stars, and how we performed some folk dances with flowery sarafans (folk dresses) over our shoulders. The Polish evacuees in Taganrog also formed a landowners’ association which held various meetings. Tatuś went there to play vint, a Russian card game, while Mamusia was twice invited to give Chopin recitals. Incidentally, it was between these performances that Mamusia gave birth to my future singer sister Hania.

Then, out of the blue, revolution broke out.³ Dreadful things began to happen. It was rumoured that the Bolsheviks were throwing young officer cadets into roaring furnaces. Some cadets barricaded themselves in the railway station: the end of the line there was perpendicular to the station and the Bolsheviks directed a train straight at them. Terror prevailed. Men hid. We soon felt hunger, and it was dangerous to appear on the streets. Once Mamusia sent me to run across the courtyard to get some potatoes from a neighbour. Running, I tripped over something in the middle of the road and fell on the ground. At that very moment I heard the whizz of a rifle bullet passing over my head. This was my first miraculous escape. There were to be many during the Second World War.

It was hardly surprising that in 1918 the inhabitants of Taganrog greeted the Germans with flowers. Two friendly moustached soldiers were billeted with us. They occasionally gave us sugar cubes which had become a rarity by then. Sugar jokes appeared: for example, sugar was to be eaten ‘v prygladku’, that is looking at a sugar cube which lay on a table, or ‘v prylizku’, where a sugar cube was suspended on a string over a table so that everybody could touch it with his or her tongue before pushing it to the person seated next to them. Of revolutionary songs I remember ‘O rise, working people … to the factory let’s go, let’s go’ (Russian: Vstavay podnimaysya rabochyi narod … idyom, idyom v zavod). Another song, a rhyme for older children, went ‘A giant crocodile was moving along the street, it, it …’ (Russian: Po ulitsy khodila bolshaya krokodila, ona, ona …). The rest I can’t remember. Those were my memories from when I was seven years old.

In 1918 the Germans allowed us to leave Taganrog by train. We had received news that the house in Borki had survived the war; Adam, Helenka and baby Staś travelled back with us. What was now of great importance was to avoid the quarantine post near Baranowicze where the Germans, fearing the spread of Spanish influenza, dispatched trains with ‘evacuees’, but where the sick infected the healthy. In fact, that is how the mother of Aunt Kama Protassewicz of Rohotenka died. Tatuś approached a German officer in charge of the station with a request to be exempt from the quarantine. However, out of meanness, the officer summoned a railway worker and instructed him to make a special note of our carriage number and to make sure that it should be immediately moved onto the track leading to the quarantine. For a bribe the railway man revealed all this to us and advised us to move to another carriage. That is how we finally reached Nowojelnia, the nearest railway station of significance to Borki. From there Tatuś sent a runner to our neighbours, the Sidorowiczes of Ladzinki, who then sent horses for us.

The house in Borki was completely denuded of furniture and was inhabited by a German who later sold Tatuś various kinds of nails and some barbed wire. There was also nothing left of the family library. As for Mamusia’s memoirs, the damp soil had dissolved all her handwriting: we could only stare at the blank pages. On the other hand, the Sidorowiczes had looked after Mamusia’s grand piano, which had been part of her trousseau, as well as a beautiful glass chandelier from the drawing room. While the family stayed with the Sidorowiczes, Tatuś made repeated trips across the ponds to Borki and restored some order to the house. New window panes were fitted and temporary beds were made from planks. Fortunately, the beautiful large round table from the dining room had survived in somebody’s care. It was several years later that we inherited a whole suite of red furniture pieces from my great-aunt Ewarysta Żórawska in Wilno. Later some inlaid tables and other fine furniture were made for us by the Salesian Fathers who ran a carpentry school in the former Zawisza mansion in Dworzec (9 km north of Borki). On a subsequent visit there, my heart bled at the sight of what had been done to this palatial building by the philistine administration of the monks. There was no trace of any of the mansion’s original beautiful furniture which had gone no one knew where; nor was there any trace of old mementoes. The area around the house was neglected and the interior was a ramshackle carpentry shop.

It is interesting to note that many landowners in the district of Słonim who had stayed behind during the war of 1914 to 1918 managed to save their possessions because the front line did not run across the whole region. When we eventually returned to our empty house and had to start from scratch, we discovered that the residence of our distant neighbour, Jan Strawiński of Mirowszczyzna, had survived with all its mementoes and furniture. It was with a touch of envy that we once saw all the treasures that had been accumulated in his house over the centuries.

Indeed, even my mother’s family home in Wężowszczyzna, with its furniture and portraits, survived when the area was occupied by the Kaiser’s army.⁴ This was because while in 1915 the Russians forced us, at Borki, to leave for the Russian interior, my maternal grandmother Antonina Żórawska stayed in Wężowszczyzna with her remaining daughters. Indeed, one might say they spent this time ‘pleasantly’, since a group of German staff officers was billeted in the house. The officers treated the Polish ladies with courtesy, and one of them, von Brück, a wealthy industrialist from near Berlin, fell in love with my aunt Janka, a beautiful and slim brunette with a nightingale voice, and proposed marriage. Not keen on marrying a German, Aunt Janka diplomatically played for time. After the war she sent her Polish fiancé to see von Brück to settle some financial accounts. Von Brück took the hint, and so the prospect of that Polish-German marriage came to nothing.⁵ The house even survived the Bolshevik war of 1920, although the estate was largely devastated. During that time my grandmother and her younger daughters found shelter somewhere in Warsaw. After the end of hostilities they returned to face the difficult task of reconstruction.

It was the unmarried Aunt Mania who then took over the running of Wężowszczyzna, which she did with great charm and in great style. She played the piano beautifully, and the house remained a centre of music during her residence there, as it had been in my grandfather’s time. Her guests included the pianists Wojtkiewicz and Heintze;⁶ the latter, poor soul, died prematurely from multiple sclerosis. At a time when many landowners in the region had lowered their standards, Wężowszczyzna was able to maintain its high artistic, cultural and culinary level. One unexpected guest of Aunt Mania’s was none other than Marshal Piłsudski whose car once broke down in the neighbourhood and who spent a night at the house.

Living for a time in Wężowszczyzna was also Mania’s younger sister, my aunt Irena Żórawska. She was continually involved in a long line of affairs and once revealed to me a whole chest of love letters from her admirers. I remember one of the letters starting with the phrase: ‘My dearest piggy!’ (Najdroższa świneczko!). Never in my life have I come across such a beautiful deep voice, with such a wide range and tone, the only exception being the silken voice of my sister Hania.⁷ Aunt Irena started her career as an opera singer in Warsaw, performing first in Moniuszko’s Halka. Other operas followed. However, owing to her laziness, she later opted for an independent life on the family estate and only gave solo performances. She once performed in Druskienniki⁸ and was honoured there by the presence of Marshal Piłsudski, with whom she claims to have drunk whisky!

Aunt Irena was not suited to being a reliable wife and mother and only married late in life. With her husband Stefan Gołębiowski, a military officer, she led a rather hedonistic existence in great comfort. Stefan was a divorcee, which greatly distressed my very devout grandmother, although she did all she could to conceal her feelings from them. Aunt Irena impressed me with her vitality and good health. She was nineteen years old at my parents’ wedding, but she passed herself off as someone much younger. Even before the war she and her equally long-lived sister Mania (who remained socially in Aunt Irena’s shadow and hence never married) demanded that I, their niece, call them by their first names in order to rejuvenate themselves by a generation.

When my sister Jula and I were teenagers, our mother took us on a tour of the district where she had spent her youth. The high point of our trip was of course to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Dedication
• Also available from Bloomsbury
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Polish Terminology, Names and Pronunciation
• List of Illustrations
• Protassewicz Family Tree
• Maps
• Prologue
• Part One (1910 to 1939)
• Part Two (1939 to 1945)
• Part Three (1945 to 2016)
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright Page