“We lived a primitive life…”

My Babcia (grandma) briefly retells her story, not in great detail, but enough to realize their strength. My Dziadzia (grandpa), however, doesn’t like to talk about his story.

My Babcia, Helena, was born in Poland and lived on a farm. She lived with her father, who was in the army reserve, her sister and two brothers. They felt happy. But in 1939 WWII started, and half of Poland was taken over by Germany, and the other half by Russia.My Babcia was on the Russian occupant side of Poland. Planes would fly over the house shooting without thought at the ground below. My Babcia and her sister made a hay bed and slept in the barn because my Babcia was scared and her sister wanted to comfort her. She told her not to be afraid that it will all be alright. Later that same night my Babcia’s sister woke her up crying that she has a vision that there was a train and dead bodies were being taken out and she was one of them — My Babcia’s sister died that same way later on. One day at 6 am, Russian soldiers came into their house, put her father against the wall with a gun to his head and told them that they had two hours to get whatever they can carry. They were told that they were leaving for four months and then returning back to Poland — that was  the last time my Babcia would see her house.

They were put in a wagon and taken to a train station. My Babcia remembers being terrified being around all the soldiers with their guns. There was already a train waiting for them, one that was used to transport animals.  A few hours later they began to move and travelled to Siberia, Russia, everyone was crying. They were taken to a barracks, with one room, 150 wooden planks as beds and freezing cold temperatures. The 16-year-old boys would go to the woods to cut trees for fire. Sometimes at 12 am or 2 am they would come into the room just to punish them for no reason. In the evening they were given “vegetable soup,” which was just water and a couple of vegetables, and a piece of bread. They would sometimes go to pick mushrooms in the woods for food. Luckily in the spring there were blueberries. They had no heat, no hot water, and no soap. They went once a week to a place where they only sprayed a mist on them to clean themselves. Bed bugs and lice were eating them alive.

She spent 1 1/2 years in Siberia and then they were sent to Uzbekistan, which was hell. There was no wood for fires, they would go to the fields and use dry cow manuer to light fires. There were no doctors or medicine, and my Babcia’s father passed away. America and England made an agreement to create a Polish Army to fight Germany. My Babcia’s brother was in the army which brought them to the Middle East. They were taken care of, given clothes (whatever clothes they could get), given showers and haircuts. Mostly to get rid of all the bugs/ Then they were taken to India. Then three/ four months they were on a boat to East Africa, where they had huts prepared for them.

She was there for six years. She said the jungle there was so interesting. She got malaria multiple times there. They were given clothes and milk, meat, vegetables (when tomatoes were in season that’s all they ate, might be why I love my Babcia’s home-made tomato soup) from Red Cross. There was no radio or anything. No paper to write, so because they didn’t use socks that much in Africa, they would use them to erase their paper so they can re-use them and write more stories. She went to a catholic “school” where teachers taught from their own experience.

When the war ended my Babcia was able to move to England with her brother, because he was in the army. There she went to boarding school. She lived with my Dziadzia’s mother in a hut in Africa, not having even met him yet. My babcia’s school was allowed to see one movie a week. But my babcia and her friend said there were two nice movies out that week, so she told her friend to go and in 20 minutes she would meet her there. A teacher approached my Babcia and asked her to take my Dzaidzia, who was in the merchant navy, to the volley ball net because he wanted to play. She wanted to meet her friend so she took him there and quickly ran off when he said he saw his friends from cadet school. They started dating and married a year and a half later.