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Gulag Teenager (10)

    Summer was coming to a close. One morning my worries have ended - I got my period. I was happy that things were the way they should be. Now I could also tell my friends that I was a girl just like they were.

    On the day the new school year begun I looked very proud. That´s what my friends said.

    My shoes were falling apart because of the walking I had to do to and from school. We didn´t have money to buy new ones. I also had holes on my elbows in the coat from Mrs Lempicka. But to learn at school gave me a great joy. One day a Polish man came to the school with a violin. He played so beautifully The fire is burning and the forest is soughing. Then he gave us chocolate. I didn´t eat my portion. On my way back from school I went to the market and sold it. Then I used the money to buy a newspaper to make note books.

    The 11th of November, the Armistice Day we celebrated at school with an assembly, during which I said a poem about Warsaw: Time will came when out of the Belveder the November glory will emanate.

    Winter came again, the sixth in this Siberian land. But it was different from those previous. It was the winter of hope that we will return to our homeland. Even the weather was nicer. It was milder and kinder to us. Poles were informed that they should organise documents for the evacuation. What will happen to Zosia? This thought wouldn´t let us rest.

    For Christmas we were invited to Mr and Mrs Goldowski´s. We sung carols.

    1946 came. New Year - the day of my birthday. I am seventeen. My class was invited to a dance at the philharmonic hall. It was to be my first ball. I will dance the whole night. Zosia taught me to dance. Maybe Zbyszek, a boy from my class, will ask me to a dance. He is tall and handsome. Once when we had a sports lesson we were running and he couldn´t catch up with me and everyone was shouting "The scythe hit the stone."3

    I wished to dance the Kazakh tango. Then I realised I didn´t have proper dress or shoes. How could one dance in ripped gaiters and a dress made from a sack? I asked mum to help me. She did. She borrowed a black, velvet dress from Mrs Goldowska. I was so happy. To decorate the dress I made a red collar with a crochet hook. But what about the shoes? I decided to use the black wool threads which mum spins and I knitted pumps or rather slippers. I had to invent the way they were to look as I didn´t have a pair to copy from. But they come out well. I was making them for the whole night.

    And so I went to the philharmonic hall which was at the former mosque. There was a band playing on a big dance floor. The instruments were the accordions and balalaikas. The place was packed with people. My girl friends were dancing with each other. Some were dancing with boys. But nobody was asking me to dance. At first I had hope that the night will be fun, that the boy I dreamed about will appear. I had bows in my hair. But time passed and I was still standing among the crowd of strangers, as there were no seats. And so I spent the whole night.

    Despite the mild winter that night was very cold. I was walking home and the tears were freezing on my cheeks. My first ball didn´t go well.

    Mum put in all the documents necessary for our return. Zosia, with a trembling heart had to stand face to face with the chief of police. In her shaking hands she was holding an application for a new passport, as the one she had she has lost. Like it was before with mums case, the chief wrote with big red letters - DONE.

    There was joy in our family. We will all go home together - mum, Zosia and I.

    The documents are ready and the day set: 19th February 1946 at 2pm. Together with our luggage we are to report at the train station in Pavlodar.

    As far as the material things are concerned, nothing changed in our life. We still slept under covers without the bedclothes and got bitten by the bedbugs and there was a constant lack of fire fuel. But luckily thanks to Zosia we had food. In our hearts however we were at peace and happy as if we had wings growing at our backs. In two weeks the day we dreamed of will come, the day we will leave.

    At school there was a craze for the memoirs books. Everyone wrote something in everyone´s book, to remember the days spent together at the school in Pavlodar. Even the teachers and pupils wrote in each other´s books. In my memoirs book which was in the shape of a heart there was:

    Everything in the world
    passes slowly.
    Joy and happiness
    and what hurts too.
    Everything passes, this is the way fate wants things to be,
    And only one thing remains - the memory.

    To remember time we´ve spent together in Siberia, from Hanka Tomczyszyn, 10 II 1946, Pavlodar.

    And then there was: Remember your elder teacher who liked you very much. Maria Domańska. This is what my beloved teacher wrote.

    And this is what I wrote her:

    I will remember every word.
    Every lesson which I liked most of all.
    And perhaps I will learn again and anew,
    I shall miss my beloved teacher.
    I wish to give a warm thanks
    From the depth of my humble heart.
    And I wish my teacher a sound return.

    I wrote many other poems for the occasion of returning home and everyone tried to get one. But I only remember the one which begun these recollections. The title is: Return to Homeland. I wish to end with the second part of this poem.

    Finally it was the 19th of February. It thawed. I went to the river Irtysh to fetch water and to say goodbye. It was the river of my youth. In the afternoon with much joy we went to the station with our luggage on the hand sledges. The journey which was to last for weeks didn´t frighten us. When the train was moving everyone felt like a child being rocked to fall to sleep. And finally:

    Something shines in the distance,
    As if a town street at night,
    Among the wind and snowstorm.
    What is it? - it is the Polish - Russian border.
    The joy is far beyond description,
    And it keeps growing inside our hearts.
    Our beloved homeland welcomes us.
    Polish villages, Polish towns all welcome us.
    Oh, God we thank you for this miracle,
    It is the Polish people that thank you.

    We reached our homeland. We were staying in Siedlce for a few days and Zosia and I went to the main square. It was very crowded. Everyone tried to sell anything one had and everyone spoke Polish. On the chair a war veteran without a leg was sitting and playing the accordion. He sung along:

    The weeping willows soughed,
    A girl cried out loud.
    She raised her eyes, shiny with tears
    Over the hardship of the soldiers´ life.

    I listened to the song and couldn´t believe I was really in Poland.

    To our village Wšsosz we were taken by a cart that was ordered by the head of the hamlet. The driver told us in secret that the Polish Peoples´ Republic is not the Poland people were fighting for. The government forced by Stalin was to be only temporary and short lived.

    We were to make use the humiliating gifts of UNRA4 for much longer.

    Shortly after my return I had severe malaria. There was danger I would die as the illness is not known in Poland and thus has muddled the diagnosis.

    In my hospital bed I was being prepared for death. It was the consultation of doctors that decided it was malaria. I was given quinine and slowly got better.

    For some time I studied at a secondary school. Unfortunately I did not finish it. Things just went that way. I still have a very vivid picture of the time I was in Kazakhstan. It is a stain on my life that can not be erased.





    1 Polska Organizacja Wojskowa (Polish Military Organisation) a clandestine structure active up to the early Twenties. It provided trained soldiers, intelligence and subversive services behind the front lines for the Polish Armed Forces organised in 1918.

    2 It is a Polish Easter custom.

    2 someone stole.

    3 "Diamond cut diamond"

    4 United Nationa Relief Agency

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