I am Australian. Of Polish Descent.

Part VIII: FAMILY UNCOVERED! After 62 years...

(Continued, Part VII)

Many years ago, when I was four years old and living in Poland, I remember it was bitterly cold that winter when my mother took me to a house in Starachowice. I recall feeling that I just wanted to sleep and nothing else.

When the woman opened the front door she looked shocked and said (referring to me) “DON’T LET HIM SLEEP!! ……. HE’S HALF FROZEN!!”.  She immediately grabbed handfuls of snow and started vigorously rubbing my face, ears, hands and feet.  After this, she said to my mother “from now on, Tad stayed here with us!  Obviously, you don’t look after him properly.”

So from then on I lived in this house but I didn‘t know why I was there ………..

About a year later, a group of workers came to the house to replace bricks inside our coal-burning stove.  One of the men said to me “why do you call him (referring to the man of the house) mister,……. HENRYK IS YOUR FATHER!  I was shocked and confused, I didn’t say a word and just walked away in silence. It had such an impact on me that it has remained with me up to this very day.

Apart from the worker’s comments, NO-ONE had told me anything about Henryk being my father.  Maybe it wasn’t true, just a rumour. I even thought my father may have died.  Life went on and I continued to call Henryk “Sir“ and my aunty “Pani“.

There were other people living in the house and I subsequently learnt that they were my relatives - Helena was my paternal aunty, Jan my half-brother, and Wiktorja and Walerja were my half-sisters.

My mother was Italian and I presumed that she was a widow because I overheard the workmen saying that her husband was crushed to death in a rockfall at the Starachowice stone quarry.

Many years later, I wrote a letter to my mother from Germany to tell her that I intended marrying a German girl and I didn’t want any future child of mine going through what I experienced when I was young.

You see, I was an illegitimate child.

I suppose in those days, because of the scandal and stigma of having an illegitimate child in the family it was simply “swept under the carpet.”  As a child, because no-one spoke about those things, I didn’t understand what was going on - it was all a complete mystery to me.

As my mother couldn’t read or write Polish, she organised a woman to write a letter on her behalf. My mother replied in the letter  “yes, your father is Henryk but I didn’t have an opportunity to tell you this before.”  It came as a revelation to me because I thought the worker’s comments may have been just a rumour.

As it turned out, I didn’t end up marrying the German girl but I did keep the letter from my mother as it was the only evidence I had that Henryk was my father.

I certainly have the knack of spotting “characters” wherever I go. This probably goes back to the time spent with my father because he was a “real character.” I recall one day, Henryk decided to do a carpentry job in our backyard. I stood there watching him work and asked him what he was making.  He said “ I’m building a gateway to the forest!!”  So I walked away with my mind full of thoughts and ideas about how he was going to do it.  How heavy would the gates be?  How high?  What type of material would he use?  He was obviously pulling my leg, but never let on!

On another occasion I was given a new pair of Bata school shoes.  I put them on and stood there admiring them.  Aunt Helena said  “Henryk, have a look at Tadek’s new shoes”.  My father wore glasses and had a habit of leaning his head down against his chin, and would look up over the rim of his glasses to see what was going on.  So he sat there in his usual way recording some written calculations into a book.  Without even raising his head, he continued with what he was doing, and said “don‘t miss any pot holes!”  He must have snatched a glimpse of me admiring my new shoes and wanted to have a bit of fun.

One day, Henryk arrived home from work carrying a large rock under his arm.  Aunt Helena looked at him and said “What’s that for?”  He replied “I found this rock on the side of the road and it’s the ideal size and weight to weigh down our sauerkraut in the barrels.  Aunt Helena just shook her head and said “unbelievable!”. He could have just used the bricks we had lying around or something else, but oh no, it had to be THIS rock.

But the rock brought a bit of misfortune.  While my father was carrying the rock home it had rubbed up against the side of his much-loved, brown leather jacket.  The surface of the jacket was damaged and my half-sister Wiktorja said to him “that jacket looks awful, it’s old and scaley and has lost all of its gloss.  You better buy yourself a new one.”  Henryk replied “ahh, I’ll fix it up.  When I’m finished, it will look as good as new.”

So off he went and what do you think he did next?  He took out a tin of brown boot polish and started polishing his jacket.  The family could smell his jacket for weeks later.

Henryk loved to go to the local Club after work or dinner to play bridge and chess.  I used to sleep in his bedroom and I recall waking up in bed.  The bedroom light was shining in my face and I was trying to work out what was going on.  I noticed Henryk sitting at a small table with his chess board on it.  He was playing chess.  Sleepily, I asked him what time it was and he told me it was four o’clock in the morning.

I then asked him “what are you doing?”  He said “I lost a game in the Club and I’m trying to find out where I went wrong”.  Well okay ………. but at four o’clock in the morning?  

I still occasionally laugh about his eccentricity and yet, he was such a down-to-earth person and very witty.     

After arriving in Australia I began thinking about my father and the rest of my family in Poland.  During quiet times, I wondered whatever happened to them.  Were they still alive?  Would I ever see them again?
 
In 1957, the long and frustrating search for my family began.  I became an Australian citizen around that time and decided to make an effort to find my lost family. I approached the National Tracing Bureau of the Australian Red Cross Society.  I completed an application form, returned it and about two years later finally received a reply.  But it wasn’t the answer I was seeking.

The letter from the Red Cross provided contact details for my mother who was still living in Pakoslaw, but I already knew this…….  Disappointingly, there was nothing mentioned in the letter about my father and the rest of my family.  The letter simply told me what I already knew.

So I abandoned the search and thought that my efforts to find my family in Communist Poland would be futile.  It was a feeling of hopelessness.

The years passed by and life continued.  With Linda’s persuasion, we decided to contact the Polish Consulate in Sydney.  They provided us with some contacts including a Polish Government agency called “Piast” Genealogical Services, located in Warsaw.

We sent a letter to the Director of the service requesting assistance.  Time passed, and despite regular correspondence and research carried out on my behalf, I was still no closer to finding out anything about my family.

At this stage, it seemed as if my family had disappeared off the face of the earth and I couldn‘t get any answers.

So once again, the search for my family came to a grinding halt.  I thought it was too late and just a fruitless exercise.

The years passed and in 2005, Linda and I were sitting together searching the internet.  Without realising it at the time, my luck was about to change!

While on-line, we stumbled onto the Polish Culture website and one particular topic caught Linda’s eye.  The title read “The Gift of Family” written by Nancy Maciolek Blake.  Linda read Nancy’s story to me and in Part 4 “A passion for Poland”, Nancy wrote about a young Polish man called Zenon Znamirowski.  She detailed her own search for family and mentioned how Zenon helped her during her visit to Poland.  Nancy’s comments about Zenon were very favourable and she provided a link to his website.

We looked at Zenon’s website and Linda said to me “maybe we should contact Zenon to find out if he can help us locate your family?”  At first, I was very reluctant because I had “been down this road before” and didn’t think it would amount to anything.  But again, with Linda’s persuasion, we contacted Zenon by email.  And that was the turning point in my search for family.

Linda and I knew that we were presenting Zenon with a major challenge.  As a displaced person, I had very few records and some old letters including those from my mother.  Many years had passed and we had little to go on.  It didn’t look good.

Surprisingly, Zenon offered his help.  He started making various lines of enquiry about different members of my family.  He travelled to Starachowice to conduct a virtual tour on our behalf and to look for any information about my family.

When Zenon was organising his second trip to Starachowice, I asked if he would try to find the building where my father had worked as an architectural engineer.  In that building there was a draftsman’s office where my father used to supervise five draftsmen.  Zenon, always obliging, agreed to my request.

In July 2007 Linda opened our email and have a guess?  There was an email from Zenon with the subject line “I FOUND JAN AND WALERIA!”  When I read this I almost “fell off my perch”. It was a surreal experience.

We opened the email and Zenon told us that he tracked down the records of my father’s old factory.  He ended up finding two folders, one concerning my half-brother Jan, and the other about my half-sister Waleria.  This came as a complete surprise to me because I didn’t know they had been working there.

Zenon also advised that in Jan’s folder, there was a letter written by Jan in May 1992. Because of his pension, he had written the letter to the factory requesting confirmation of his employment there.  The letter provided quite a lot of detail including my father’s name, occupation and his date of death in 1962.  There was information about Jan’s army service, the family’s address and another address in Starachowice-Wierzbnik, where they had been “resettled” by the Nazis during the war.

Zenon also found an old damaged photo of Jan.  He arranged to have it scanned and put in a request to have photocopies of the documents in both folders sent to me.

I received the scanned photo of Jan - it was a face that I hadn’t seen in decades.

Jan, Tad's half-brother

And most importantly, Jan had written his address at the top of the letter.  In May 1992, Jan lived in Olsztyn, Poland.

We fully understood the significance of this find, and thanks to Zenon, it was the very first clue I had about my family in almost sixty years.

Zenon put his detective cap on again and started looking for telephone numbers in the Olsztyn area in the hope that he would uncover relatives living there.  He managed to find five numbers with the family surname.  Two of them had the identical phone number - one had the first name, Jan, and the other belonged to someone with the first name, Cecylia.

What a tantalizing clue, the two telephone numbers had the same Olsztyn address and it was the same as the address on Jan’s letter written in 1992!

Zenon made numerous attempts to contact anyone on this number, but it proved unsuccessful.  He did some checking and found out that it was a valid number, but no-one was answering the phone.

Linda and I asked Zenon if he would go to Olsztyn to check things out for us.  Zenon agreed and his plan included visiting the address mentioned in Jan’s letter.

In September 2007, we opened an email from Zenon with the subject title “YOUR FAMILY UNCOVERED!”  I couldn’t believe it!  Zenon had achieved the impossible! 

Zenon had gone to the address in Olsztyn but no-one was home.  He then spoke to a couple of neighbours and they told him about the family who lived in the house. They revealed that the house belonged to a lady called Cecylia.  As it turned out, she is the wife of my half-brother Jan.

Zenon had more news about my family.  He wrote that Jan had died in February 2000 and my half-sister Wiktorya died in 1999. Jan’s wife Cecylia was living in Chicago, USA, with her daughter, son-in-law and their three children.

He also took a lot of photographs - Cecylia’s house, the neighbours, the local area and most importantly, Henryk and Jan’s graves at Olsztyn cemetary.

He advised us that he had spoken by phone to Cecylia in Chicago and that she was expecting my call.  After Linda and I worked out the time difference between Chicago and Canberra, I decided to call my newly-found relative the following morning.

About an hour before my planned call, our home phone rang and Linda answered it.  She turned to me with a surprised look on her face and said “there’s a lady speaking Polish and I think it’s Cecylia”…… And it was.

As I look back over past events, I believe that without Zenon’s efforts I would not have reached this point in my life.
It was his hard work, persistence and problem-solving skills that reunited me with my family.

(To be continued... in several months when life will write the sequel...)

 

Author: Tadeusz Strójwąs

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