Remembering the past in silence
In my great-grandmother’s house, the echoes of the war and my great-grandfather’s experiences were not verbalized. His lips, tight as a thread, seemed to contain a pain that did not want to be shared. The memory of his deportation to a gold mine in the Urals was a mystery that remained closed for too long. My mother managed, with great difficulty, to extract from him only two narratives which illustrate his bravery.
Stories of courage and fear
One of the anecdotes my great-grandmother related was about her desperate search for fabric to make trousers for my grandfather, an eight-year-old boy. The news that the Germans were eliminating the ghetto spread like wildfire, and her fear that little Boguś would run out of clothes for the winter pushed her into action. Despite the danger, she managed to retrieve the fabric, but not without nearly getting caught in the process.
The power of language
With a bag full of bottles of homemade vodka, his bravery was tested again when he ran into a German patrol. In a moment of anguish, she turned to her academic training to save herself, claiming to be a teacher with exams in her bag. His ability to speak German proved crucial in avoiding a terrifying fate.
Regime change and the shadows of the past
With the arrival of Russian forces in 1944, my great-grandmother was plunged into a climate of fear and uncertainty. The rumors circulating about the violence the soldiers inflicted on the civilian population pushed her to remain silent. It was a time when women sought refuge in forests and stables, away from the threats that surrounded them.
The mystery of the great-grandfather
The figure of my great-grandfather, a Polish army officer deported in 1939, became a shadow. Years passed and the men began to return, but he was still missing. His status as a counter-revolutionary made him invisible in the new Poland, a country that sought to leave behind the injustices of the past.
The weight of silence
My great-grandmother, fearing for her own safety and that of her children, chose not to investigate her husband’s fate. Her survival strategy included destroying the only two letters she received from him, signed with a fake name. The fear of possible secret services pushed her into a silence that became heavy.
A stranger at the door
One day, an unknown man appeared at the door, claiming that he had been with my great-grandfather and that he had died of typhus. This news hit my great-grandmother like a hard blow. In a world full of distrust, she was caught between the possibility of a provocation and the harsh reality. With a sinking heart, she continued to smoke next to the ceramic stove, immersed in a silence that said more than a thousand words.
