Channeling my Polish Grandmother

~ kasia1965
My grandmother, my “Babcia”—Ludwika Kondra Bielawa—was born in Jaroslaw in 1900, a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was a blond beauty known for her outspokenness and openness. I carry her smile–the one my dad inherited from her. I hope I also carry her courage and sense of advocacy. The language of instruction for pupils was German when Babcia attended grammar school. Despite an “official policy” of language tolerance, she was chastised as a teenager by an Austrian soldier for using Polish, her mother tongue, in a shop. She spoke her Polish, but kept German in her back pocket for another time.

World War I ended on November 11, 1918. Poland was reborn as an independent nation following 100+ years of partitioning by the Russian, Prussian and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Babcia married Wladyslaw from Przemysl and they moved to Turka, a market town in Poland’s frontier region which, at that time, encompassed parts of western Ukraine. My grandfather, a carpenter, built a beautiful family home overlooking the Bieszczady Mountains. My grandmother tended her gardens and fruit trees. She birthed a succession of babies–Helena, Mieczyslaw (my dad), Marysia, Stanislaw, Jancia, Genia, Wanda, Czeslaw and Bronia. Poles were a minority in a multi-ethnic town of Ukrainians, Jews, and smatterings of Russians, Belarusians and Czechs as self-identified in Lwow (Lviv) Regional Census data collected in 1931.

My grandparents’ lives were forever changed in September 1939, when Germany and the Soviet Union unleashed their Molotov-Ribbentrop Plan to invade, divide and conquer Poland, coordinating attacks from the West and East. Russian soldiers carrying propagandistic “promises of socialism” perplexed Turka’s residents as they cleaned out stores and sent enormous amounts of food and wristwatches to their families in Mother Russia. Were folks thriving under socialism as the propaganda trumpeted? We now know people in the USSR suffered enormously under Stalin. (When visiting Russia in 2018, I noted museum and monument references to WWII as “The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945.” They neglected to mention Stalin’s alliance with Hitler that, actually, started WWII. Tyrants count on people not knowing or caring about the deeper history.

German occupation proved far more brutal. Germans rounded up and shot Turka’s Jews in a series of Aktions. Residents were terrorized; desperate hunger ensued as the Germans took what they wanted and forcibly quartered themselves. Hunger was rampant as food was rationed. Jews, hiding in the forest, emerged at night and knocked on my grandparents’ door for food. Somehow, they knew my grandparents could be trusted to share what they could and not turn them in, despite German-issued proclamations (see below), specifically for Poles, that promised death for helping, hiding or not reporting Jews.* This was not the case, for example, in Denmark, where the German occupiers viewed Danes as “fellow Aryans.”

At some point, during the German occupation, Babcia’s children desperately needed new clothes and there was no fabric to be had in stores. Babcia, dusted off her back-pocket German and mustered the courage to approach the German commandant overseeing Turka to seek a fabric coupon. She did this over the protestations of friends who feared for her safety. She explained her plight, a mother advocating for her children, in Polish-accented German, and was handed the coupon. History tells us the outcome could have been different.

By war’s end, my grandparents would lose three of their teenaged children to Germany as Forced Laborers and their infant son, Janek, to starvation. Two returned, one with a small child and no husband. My Dad, would never return to the family fold. My grandparents were forced to leave their beloved home overlooking the mountains when decisions made at Yalta—by Churchill, Stalin and FDR—annexed Turka to the USSR. Babcia packed up her remaining children and the 50 kg of household goods displaced families were allowed to take. They travelled west, by train, for weeks, three families to a cattle car, to Silesia. The Yalta Conference annexed this former German territory, heavily bombed by the Allies, to Poland. Marshall Plan dollars did not make their way to this corner of Europe to help with rebuilding. Stalin, likely, reveled in his expanded sphere of influence as Poland became caught behind the descending Iron Curtain of communism. That curtain would not lift until 1989.

I’m taking a bit of a career break to channel my Babcia as I dust off my back pocket Polish language skills to try to do some good. I start volunteering this week with Ukrainian refugee children living in Krakow to help them grow their speaking skills in Polish and English. My other task is to interview Poles, Ukrainians, and others from my perch in Krakow, to gather historical and contemporary stories—sharing happy, hopeful and sometimes sad observations from this beautiful, complex and deeply felt place. I’m also working with my favorite professor from undegrad to write a book that my heart tells me needs to be written.

Thank you for reading. Please be in touch as I invite you to follow my blog (https://presenttime.blog/).  I invite your questions, too!

*Resource from U.S. Holocaust Museum:

NAZI POLICY FOR POLES (aka “Untermenschen” = “Subhumans”) AIDING JEWS: https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1942-1945/german-poster-announces-death-penalty-for-aiding-jews

PC: Elizabeth Mayer

3 thoughts on “Channeling my Polish Grandmother”

Leave a comment