The Holes in the Walls

I realize more and more how differently I am changing as a person as I grow older and lose more and more pieces of my ancestry, my nation's and family's history. How little I know and understand. 

I'll probably never know because the chance to move back to Poland fades away further and further with each day and with each piece of this beautiful yet tragedy filled heritage that I am losing.



When I was pregnant the first time, I went to Poland to visit my family and attend the wedding of one of my dear cousins.

My cousins, their husbands, and I went out one night for a few beers together.  I only drank mineral water with fruit syrup in it but toasted with them just the same, since I was pregnant.

We went to the Rynek in Wroclaw and sat at a table in one of the very narrow outdoor corridors of the Cloth Hall.  We sat for a few hours, laughing about everything and just enjoying the company of young family. 

After a while, we had to leave because a resident above the corridor complained that we were being too loud.  We were truthfully not being very loud.  However, a group of loud drunk German tourists had just walked by singing German songs with all their might.

As we walked back to our place, I saw some holes in the walls of a few buildings right off of the Rynek.  I had never noticed them before.

It looked as though 1 inch circular chunks had been knocked out in an odd pattern at the height of a person's head.

They had been painted over many times in a green color.

It didn't dawn on me what they were.  I have not lived for a long time around history.  And with history, comes the death of those who passed before us.

I asked my oldest cousin why they had not been fixed, perhaps plastered over.

She gave me an odd look, not a look of disgust or irritation, perhaps more of confusion that it wasn't apparent to me what they were.  She said "Kasiu, that's where people were killed by the Nazis." 

I immediately apologized and realized what they were.

Bullet holes. 

Either they hit the target or passed through it.  The target, the victim, most likely a Pole.

In the near darkness, suddenly the holes became clearer to me and I saw many many more around us. 

It dawned on me that I had seen many many more in my travels through Poland and had just never realized what they were.  Because where I live now, where my parents brought me, the biggest reminder of war is on the news in lands far far away from me. 

We kept walking by the holes in the walls. 

Na razie...




Related Posts:

My Older Daughter's First Trip to Poland, Wordless Wednesday

A Love Letter to My Home Town, Wroclaw

A Cemetery in a Small Village in the Polish Countryside and WWII

My first experience seeing, feeling, and understanding the effects of WWII on Poland and myself was not while reading history books, or watching television, or talking to my Dziadek.  At those moments, WWII was an abstract idea, surreal, not tangible.  It just didn't seem real.  It was as distant as the Revolutionary War.

I was in a village visiting a Ciocia ("Aunt" in Polish) the first moment it really dawned on me what WWII meant.  What WWII was in terms of a human event, in terms of my family's history. 

This was my first trip back to Poland.  And it was life changing.



I stand in a small cemetery.

This is not a cemetery in America.  There are no artificial flowers, Styrofoam wreaths, and other such grave ornaments.  There aren't miles of meticulously manicured grass, limited plants and trees and bushes, tombstones flat on the ground so that from the highway running next to it, you are not reminded that it is a cemetery.  There is no mausoleum of hundreds of unrelated bodies.

This is a cemetery in a small village in Poland.  On a path travelled for centuries by villagers as they go about life.

This is the village's cemetery for centuries.  The local Catholic church towers over the village, as all Catholic churches in Poland tend to do.  The path to the cemetery had been lined with trees, tall grasses, and fields.  Not empty fields, but fields planted and growing food, some with cows and other livestock.  Farmer's fields growing what the village would be eating and making a living from. 

The walk had been beautiful, peaceful.  I knew we were going to visit a grave of some family member.  I don't know who.  Perhaps it is my other Dziadek's but I'm sorry to say I can't remember.

It is a warm sunny summer day.  There is a sign above the cemetery.  I don't remember what it says. 

The cemetery is surrounded by trees and cool shadows.  At first, the cemetery seems small.  All the graves have tall tombstones and stone covers.  Many have bushes and flowers planted around them.  Some have candles on the covers. 

Behind the cemetery is a once white stucco house with a red roof.  The yard is bursting with flowers.  Clothes hang on the line, gently moving with the warm summer breeze.  A cat, dark brown, peeks at me from under a bush.  Winks and crosses the yard toward the other side of the house.

Browning tall grass bends and bobs it's seedheads as the wind plays across them on one half of the cemetery, to my left.  All around, Nature is singing and celebrating Life.  Yet, I stand in a cemetery, with tombstones marking places where the dead rest, to my right.  To the left, tall grasses.

I look around, curious.  Begin reading tombstones.  Walking down each row.  So many names that never would sound "normal" in the USA but names which I grew up hearing around me.  And many with my first name.  "Katarzyna".

I always loved my first name.  I thought it was elegant, exotic and yet not strange, classic.  But until I visited Poland, I had never ever heard of anyone else having the same name, let alone met anyone.

I begin to pick small yellow flowers that were growing wild in a section of the cemetery.  They are small and beautiful.  They seemed so joyous while I walk around this final resting site.  I place a flower on one particular grave which has my same first name.  It feels right.  I begin to do the same for others.

The dates in this cemetery go back at least to the 1600's, with some faded, covered in moss.  The idea begins to hit me, as it does everyone at some point in their life, that one day I am going to be a marked tombstone somewhere.  The thought makes me uncomfortable.  And the more "Katarzyna"'s I read on tombstones, the more the idea hits me.

I place more flowers on graves.  This urge is primal.  It needs to be followed through.  It is the root for All Souls Day.  This is my Polish blood, whispering to me in a way I had never heard before.

The sun shines on my head.  On the flowers.  On grasshoppers and insects flying away from me with each step.

I step to the other half of the cemetery, grass as tall as I am in most places.  Wild flowers grow here, blue, yellow, red.  I start to pick more flowers.  My mother and Ciocia look at me and laugh.  They ask what I am doing and realize I have placed flowers on every grave that looks slightly neglected or has my first name.

They don't understand and I can't explain it.  Not to them.  They grew up around here.  Their names are normal to them and people around them, this cemetery is like all cemeteries to them, their history in the soil they tread is normal to them.  To me, this is so strange. 

I feel something that I had not understood before start to creep over me but I can't explain it.  I just can't.  I turn away from them and continue what I'm doing.  I don't care what they think.  It doesn't matter.  This is something spiritual I must wrestle with that they never had to.  I'm jealous of them.

In that area of the cemetery which I assume to be the empty section meant for future graves, I begin to pick flowers.  A few blades of grass move.  I find a tombstone.  My breathe stops.  I look around more carefully, moving wildflowers and grass out of the way and find many many more.  More than in the other, more cared for section of the cemetery.  And almost all their death dates are during WWII.  And there are many other Katarzynas.

I look at my mother and ask "Why hasn't the caretaker mowed around these graves?" 

My mother looks at me with a strange look in her eyes.  I think now it dawns on her, at least a bit, how much I just don't understand.  Not just in life.  I'm still a child, after all.  But about my family's history, Poland's history.  The culture.  Little subtle things that I could never really learn about living in the US.

She replies in a quiet voice, "Kasiu, there is no caretaker.  In Poland, the family cares for each grave."

I point to the graves, some knocked over or sitting crooked.  "But in this village, why don't they take care of these graves also?  The tombstones are broken, falling over.  The grasses are so tall.  The dead must be sad."

My Ciocia doesn't understand.  She waves a hand dismissively.  I don't like her.  "They are Jews.  Some Poles.  Their families left us here with their graves when they fled to America and never came back to care for their family (meaning their dead).  You don't understand how much work is to be done here.  People are too tired to care for more graves."

"But a lot of these are children.  And how can they be Jews?  I see a lot of Katarzyna's."

My mother looks at me, shakes her head, and says, "Kasiu, that's how it is."  She turns herself to end the conversation.  I wanted a hug from someone who understood what I was wrestling with.  My brother was there, he was walking around as well but he was quiet.  And he didn't touch any graves.  I don't know what he was thinking.  I should have reached out to him but didn't know what to say.

I continue walking around the graves.  I'm angry.  I see that there is a group of graves which all share the same death day.  Another grave has a Star of David.  So many are children.

I realize these people were killed by Nazis.  I don't know what the exact event was.  Perhaps I never will.  But first hand, for the first time ever, I see the effects of WWII.  In a village where some family member of mine is buried and therefor a part of my blood is from. 

It could have been over 100 graves, I'm not sure.  But there were so many.

I continue to walk and begin pulling up grass.  I leave the flowers.  But the grass I start to pull up and toss into a pile in the back of the cemetery that must have been from others tending graves before.

I keep pulling up the grave.  Graves which had not seen light in many years begin to bask in sunshine.  I know my Ciocia is upset.  Perhaps I'm making someone else look bad.  I don't care.

I would not want to have my final resting place forgotten.

But then, which is worse?  Paying a stranger to care for the cemetery and family not feeling the need to come visit and care over your final resting place?  Or being forgotten in a corner of a cemetery.

But not really forgotten.  I understand that this is an event which still rests freshly in the memories of the Babcias and Dziadeks of this village, they saw it first hand.  It can never be forgotten.  No matter how horrible.  But life must go on.  And if caring for those graves chokes people up all over again, remembering such a horrible event in human history, perpetrated right there, in their own backyards, in the backyards and fields which for centuries had been in their family, can you imagine the feeling?

Graves continue to be pulled free from the wildlife taking over them.  Light brings more names back to the present, reminders of others who passed away, who I don't know.  But I will always remember them.

I keep pulling grass and picking flowers...

Poland's Decision to Suspend Compensation Plans for WWII Victims

I should be writing a recipe about Polish Creamed Green Peas and another about raising a bi-lingual child in the USA, but...

Right now, there is a controversial decision by the Polish government being discussed around the world.  The decision to suspend compensation plans for real estate seized by Nazi Germany and then by the USSR Communists.

If you haven't heard about it, I asked Poland.gov.pl's facebook fan page administrator about it and she kindly gave me the following links:

http://www.ejpress.org/article/49652

http://thenews.pl/national/artykul151246_polands-chief-rabbi-rails-against-restitution-backdown.html

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-congress-condemns-poland-s-decision-to-halt-property-restitution-1.349366

First, I need to address something I am noticing in the first article, and has been a trend throughout some other articles, is the term "post-war Polish communists".  Whoever wrote this article must not know their history.  Otherwise, I can not fathom how the USSR, the Soviet Communists, can be mistaken for the Polish government, as the term "post-war Polish Communists" (as a side note, I always thought you capitalized the word Communist) implies. 

To me, it smacks of the same lack of understanding and perhaps even purposeful rewriting of history as the "Polish Concentration Camps" issue, which Mr. Alex Storozynski fought against recently with his effective petition.

I acknowledge there were some Poles who were Communists.  But let's get something clear.  There were also Jewish Communists, American Communists, Ukrainian Communists, British Communists, etc.  That doesn't mean that those countries were Communist.  And if I recall correctly, the USSR was in control of Poland, as well as other countries, and was a Communist government.

Back to the point, I wanted to share a conversation I had with a friend once.  He was originally from South Africa and his family were Polish Jews.  He has since moved back to South Africa but he, my husband and myself had the chance to spend some great afternoons together hiking and discussing Nature, History, Cultures, and all sorts of other interesting subjects.

One day, we were discussing his Polish roots.  His father was born in Poland and fled to South Africa from the German Nazis as he was Jewish.  I can't fault him for that, I would have done the same.  In fact, my non-Jewish Babcia on my father's side fled the Nazis as well, first to France, then to the US, then back to Poland once the Nazi madness was over.

The discussion continued to his father deciding to return to Poland for a time.  He wanted his property back.  This was about ten years ago.  Our friend went on to say that the villagers treated his father rudely and refused to give him back the estate.

Here is what I think on that subject.  Now, this is just my opinion.  Not the opinion of all Poles, Polish Americans, or Americans.  Only mine.

WWWII ended in 1945.  Ten years ago, this would have been 56 years ago.  I understand that some time passes before someone extremely traumatized by such events can return.

But I learned something from my father, which has guided me in a lot of my views in life.  Always look at the big picture before deciding which side you sit on.  And religion and fact are just part of that. Human emotion are also a part of that.

So, I listened to what he said, and visualized Poland as I knew her.  Only in 1989 did Poland finally gain her freedom from Communist Russia.  Ten years ago, this would have been 12 years of freedom. 

If you have not been to a former Communist country and not listened to it's people what it was like, you have no idea.  The way my Babcia sums it up is "There was no toilet paper.  No chocolate for the children.  You stood in line for hours only to find out the store had only one bag of potatoes to sell and they were rotten."  That's why my parents fled with me to Austria, and later to the US.  Can you imagine?

And no, this was not Poland's own doing.  This is what every country suffered through under the Communist regime which dictated from Moscow.

Also, when Poland's government fled in exile to Britain in order to keep fighting the Nazis, she placed her entire Treasury in the "trustworthy" care of Switzerland.  All of which was stolen (or handed over to, whichever way your history book states it) by the Nazis.  At the time when I had this conversation with our friend, I had read and heard that when Poland was reimbursed (a lot but not reimbursed all, as I recall) her stolen treasury, the Polish government then handed the money to fund the creation of the Israeli government.  At this time, I cannot find any proof of this anywhere.  But if this is true, that is an amazing gesture.

Now, let's imagine a village in Poland after WWII.  Homes destroyed, the population traumatized by the horrors which were dealt to the local residences at the hands of the German Nazis and the Soviet soldiers.  They are told that the treaty for the ending of this war included handing over Poland to the Soviets.  Life is hard.  Nazi concentration camps in Poland are for a while used by the Soviets.

People are freed from concentration camps and not given a direction or help by their "liberators" and simply wander the countryside, mentally still in the camps.  Slowly, painfully, life goes on.  Poland picks herself up as a people, though once again, no longer a country, removed off the map of Europe.  Again.

Time passes.  There are times when it's not so bad anymore.  When life is full of promise and hope.  Other times, there is oppression and people by the hundreds of thousands again die of starvation, or are sent to Siberia, or just never heard from again.

The little village lost half of it's residences during WWII.  Now, the question is this...

Should the houses have stayed empty all this time?  When people like my grandparents were on a waiting list for about 5 years, waiting to be given a small apartment because so much of Poland had been destroyed.  Buildings, homes, places to live.  When people were thankful to be given an apartment the size of my living room.

Should the houses of the WWII victims stayed empty, waiting in hope that someone, a relative of some kind would return to claim it?  5 years later.  15 years later.  55 years later.

Should the fields have not been worked in the meantime?  Cows, horses, pigs of the victims not eaten by a starving populace in the meantime?

I know what the Bible says.  And that is not stealing.  If you think the person is dead and your children are starving, do you let them starve?  Or tell the Soviet government no when they assign you that house?  Do you think that is what the Bible teaches us to do?

Later on, when the new owners decide to sell the property, as they 20, 30, 55 years later, might want to, do they not have that right?  Do the new owners not have claim to that property when they pay for it with money, as the old owners did?  They pay taxes to the government, care for the property, live and die in that property. Just as the victims of WWII did.

Alright.  Now, let's discuss the government of Poland.  Which is only about 23 years old.  After 6 years of WWII, 44 years of Soviet rule.  Prior to which, was only it's own country for 21 years after WWI, a victim of WWI for 4 years, and off the maps of Europe in the Great Partitions for about 123 years.  I'm not asking for a pity party.  I'm saying, know the facts.  All of them.  Grasp the full situation of a country before deciding who is right about what.

Poland right now is the least impacted country in the EU right now from the recession.  That does not mean they are the richest country in the EU right now.  If country X had 800 dollars and only lost 8 in the recession and country Y had 1,000 and lost 150, then country X is least effected but country Y has more money.  I am also not saying Poland is the poorest.  I am just saying, look at figure before slapping a fun and easy to swallow summary on a country's economy and making your decisions from there.

Also, in order for Poland to be a member of the EU, Poland must maintain a certain economic and budgetary balance.  With the economy being what it is and the recession, as well as the still in progress picking upand fixing of the damage caused by the Soviet government, it's not as simple as you might think.  I have been following the Polish economy and it's not so easy to fix all that.

Poland being a member of the EU also benefits Israeli citizens who can claim Polish citizenship, as they can also use their Polish passport to move freely between EU countries, whereas their Israeli passport does not allow that at this time.

In the end, I told our friend, "I understand how your father felt.  But I have to also see it from the villagers perspective and it wasn't fair to them either that your father expected them to simply hand over the house when he himself admits nobody for 56 years knew anything about what happened to the family except that they had died.  I'm so sorry what happened to your family.  Did your father speak to the local government to see what was able to be done with this?"

He stopped talking during that hike.  And after that day, did not speak to us.  I'm not sure what I did wrong, other than empathize with an entire victimized nation, rather than one particular people.

What would you have done?  How does Poland's decision make you feel?



For other's perspectives in the Polonia (Polish American Community), you can also read here at Jagahost's Polish Culture Forum...