At the time of Thanksgiving we think of things we are thankful for. Let's start from a positive lesson and some advice...
A Starchild’s Lesson
I found the Philosopher’s Stone.Transmogrification.Fear into Love. The lead of sorrowinto the pure gold of childlike laughter.There is no other alchemy, but this.
“Shine”— said the Voice.“Be fruitful”—Someone wrotein the Great Book for all ages.Even if half true, it is true enough.
Listen. Do not stray from your path.You know what lies ahead —past a frozen meadow of snowdrops and sasanki,white and violet, glowing with innocencein a forest clearing —
past peach orchards, misty with blizzardsof falling petals —past lakes of blooming lotus,patiently stretching from mud to the Sun —past golden fields of rye, ready for harvest,to make bread for the journey—
Open the parasol of ancient wisdom above you —for shelter, as you walk into the embrace of your destinyand shine — shine — shine —
NOTE: Sasanka, plural sasanki is a Polish name of a spring wildflower called Pulsatilla or Pasqueflower from genus Anemone.
Polish survivors of WWII and their families have lots of reasons for gratitude. Many of these reasons were suppressed in the media in the 50 years after the war ended, when Polish People's Republic was a Soviet satellite state and actively concealed proof of Soviet crimes against Poles and Poland. So... let me recall some family facts....
Poland first fought with the Soviet Union in 1920 when Soviets invaded the newly reborn Second Polish Republic after 123 years of partitions (when the country was split between Russia, Prussia and Austria, the latter the most tolerant). Poland was recreated in WWI Peace Treaty of 1918, signed on 11 November, Poland's Independence Day - the patriot, pianist and composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski was the signatory. He later became Poland's Prime Minister. In 1920, the Soviet troops went all the way to Warsaw on their way to conquer Europe, but "A Miracle on the Vistula" took place, while all citizens fought back and the Red Army was defeated and sent back. I talked about Paderewski and Poland's Independence here:
https://chopinwithcherries.blogspot.com/2018/10/paderewski-100-years-of-polands.html
My grandfather Stanislaw Wajszczuk fought in WWI. During the revolution in Russia, he was a conscript to the White Army and participated in battles in St. Petersburg; he saw blood flowing down the streets, unspeakable atrocities. Then, his brigade was sent to the Western front to fight against German troops. He was caught by Germans and imprisoned in Dachau, until he escaped with help from a prison commander's daughter. Two decades later, his brother, Feliks Wajszczuk, a Catholic priest, was imprisoned also by Germans and also in Dachau (1940-1945); subject to medical experiments on lung capacity, he barely survived.
In 1917, Marshal Jozef Pilsudski started forming his Legions to liberate Poland. No longer a German Prisoner of War, my Grandpa joined the Legions and fought with them to liberate Poland. Thus, I can say that mine is a "Pilsudczyk" family. I did not know about this for decades, just that my Mom taught me to sing the Legionnaires' songs, and that she had a portrait of Marshal Pilsudski on her living room wall. Knowing these facts as a student in the Polish People's Republic was dangerous for the family; I could have disclosed it accidentally at school...
Fast forward to 1939, my Grandpa was in Baranowicze (now in Belarus), working for the Polish railroads and the radio station. By that time, he was already married, with two children. When Soviets struck a secret deal with Nazi Germany and invaded Poland on 17 September 1939 he went into hiding. Another former Polish soldier, Uncle Glinski was shot in the street by NKVD, his widow, Ciocia Tonia (Antonina) was arrested the next day with two sons and deported to Siberia, where one son died. I talked about some of these stories here:
https://chopinwithcherries.blogspot.com/2021/01/portraits-of-survivors-babcia-prababcia.html
In total, over 1 million Poles were deported by Soviets to Siberia or Kazakhstan. While parents often perished, orphaned children survived. Deportations of Poles from then-Polish lands of modern Ukraine and Belarus (it was all part of Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth since 1364) started already in 1937. These were not random acts of terror, but a full scale pre-planned campaign of ethnic cleansing removing Polish residents from formerly Polish lands, some incorporated into the Russia in 1918, the rest taken over by Soviet Union after 1945. (In the Ukraine about 200,000 Poles were murdered by UPA Ukrainian Nationalists during WWII; I know children of survivors, living here in California). My mother's aunt and uncle were among the Polish deportee orphans in Siberia, their parents perished of hunger and disease.
https://chopinwithcherries.blogspot.com/2022/09/remembering-polish-war-anniversaries.html
After the British and Americans struck a deal with Stalin to take over Eastern Europe after WWII, a secret deal made in Teheran in 1943 and sealed in Yalta in 1945 (a deal that nobody knew about until the takeovers started), Gen. Wladyslaw Anders was allowed to take out imprisoned soldiers from the Soviet camps, in order to form the Polish Second Corps. The soldiers were allowed to take their families with them, while orphaned children were allowed to leave as well, cared for by the Red Cross. Orphaned Irena (my mom's Aunt) went with the troops to Iran, where the refugees were divided and sent to other camps. Irena went with the Red Cross through Switzerland to Chicago, where she later married and had a family. About 220,000 people were saved by Gen. Anders. They dispersed around the world.
≡ SHAMBHALA ≡
Do children who die on the way
carry bejeweled parasols in a Tibetan heaven?
Is Siberia too far from Shambhala
for the bedraggled orphans to enter through
its golden doorways, glistening with ten thousand
ornaments, treasures from a galaxy with ten billion suns?
Are they too sick and dirty to walk on a shining path
made for the birth of the Buddha — scented
with sandalwood, adorned with an unsurpassed
multitude of rarest gems.
When the Buddha was born, the Earth
moved six ways, the wise man said.
Did it move at least once to mark your passage?
When you rolled in pain and moaned
until the blessed moment of relief?
Gave up your last breath like a crystal question mark
in a frozen Siberian air? Convulsed
in a sudden burst of gunfire, a bullet straight
through your heart? Froze to death in a convoy?
Fainted on the floor of a railroad car?
There was no hooting of owls, they say,
when the great Shakyamuni Buddha
was born. Sweet sounding music floated
through a myriad of flowering orchards,
filled with a rainbow of gemstone trees.
Did you hear an owl hoot when you died?
Oh, hungry child of gulags, the lost child
of Siberia — Did the Earth move?
Were there parasols, or owls?
(C) 2021 by Maja Trochimczyk, published in The Rainy Bread: New Poems from Exile (2021)
https://culture.pl/en/article/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
The 1000 children who went to India and were saved by the Maharajah, had an interesting teacher with them. Poland's most famous pop singer and movie star Hanka Ordonowna, who went to India as their teacher and counselor, and wrote a great book of horror stories told to her by the children survivors, starving, ill, and covered with lice when she met them. It was such a blessing for her and for the children to encounter a real saint, the Indian Maharajah, with such generosity and love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYkFiUsEQ8U - Ordonka sings "Love will forgive you everything..."
Ordonka's greatest hit "Love will forgive you everything" was named Poland's no. 1 song 50 years after the war. Its composer Henryk Warszawski, known in California as Henry Vars, was a soldier in Anders' army, a Polish-Jewish musician who after surviving the war, established a film-composer career here. Its poet, Julian Tuwim, was also Polish-Jewish and survived the war in South America, he wrote some of the greatest poems of Polish language and was enticed to return to post-war Poland, but died in 1953 without publishing much except of Poland's most famous and beloved children's verse, I still know two of these poems by heart. I wrote a poem for Ordonka, in my "Rainy Bread" book, second expanded version:
https://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2021/04/new-e-book-edition-of-rainy-bread-poems.html
More poems from the second edition of the book are here:
https://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2021/10/trochimczyks-rainy-bread-more-poems.html
Poles in California had among them some survivors from Anders's Army orphans and soldiers, poet Kazimierz Cybulski among them. He went through Iran, though, and then was sent to Uganda where he was in a refugee camp for several years. After the war, over 120,000 soldiers went to England, where they lived in refugee camps closed only in the 1960s. Britain did not want them to live there, just to fight for them. They were gradually sent out to all parts of the British Empire. Many went to Canada and Australia, some were allowed to immigrate to the U.S. I found Cybulski's obituary online, albeit in Polish, he was a Polish-language poet: https://www.zppno.org/aktualnosci/kazimierz-cybulski-nie-zyje/
I did not write about him, but I commemorated the deportations with a poem published in the expanded version of The Rainy Bread: New Poems from Exile (2021).
≡ OF TRAINS AND TEA ≡
I remember trains and horse-drawn wagons –
being all cooped up in a pile of blankets.
Was it so far? Were we going in circles?
Давайте, пойдем — Xорошо, хорошо
Yes, I remember the hypnotic noise
of train wheels on the railroad tracks.
Piercing, repetitive, permeating your body
and echoing in your brain. To the border,
two days waiting, then a different patter
of Russian, broader tracks.
It was dark and cold and I was afraid.
Yes, I was, too. I did not know where
we were going, what dark hut was destined
to be our home for who knows how many years.
The road there was so long.
Stopping and starting.
As if to never end.
The sad train whistle, the calls
of the guards, that’s what’s real now —
as they sit, sipping tea out of fine bone china
on the patio scented with orange blossoms
of the glorious California spring.
Мы готовы — давайте —
xорошо, хорошо —
(c) by Maja Trochimczyk, published in "The Rainy Bread: New Poems from Exile" 2021
After the war ended, Poland was denied the right to participate in the Victory Parade in 1945. All stories of refugees and survivors were suppressed - like the stories during the war of trains of refugees and orphans going through the U.S. to Mexico, where in Santa Rosa camp over 3000 survivors lived. (trains had blacked out windows, and moved at night to not be seen by Americans, Stalin was the good guy for them then, on covers of magazines!). They continued write about what they remembered: here are some poems by Alexander Janta Polczynski, published in England:
https://chopinwithcherries.blogspot.com/2018/08/from-13-polish-psalms-by-alexander.html
Polish government in exile in London continued to be active, though not recognized by Allies until 1989 when it dissolved; these same Allies betrayed their agreements to defend Poland in 1939. Survivors had no home to return to. After 1944, when Polish People's Republic was formed by Soviets, a puppet government was installed. Polish People's Republic in its first ten years during the Stalinist regime of Boleslaw Bierut murdered and imprisoned thousands of survivors of the Home Army, and especially soldiers and leaders of the Second Polish Republic.
Meanwhile, deportations from former Polish lands took the rest of 3-4.5 million of Polish inhabitants from what is now Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine to former German lands of Silesia and Pomerania that were given to Poland in the Stalin-Churchill-Roosevelt deal. These lands were emptied of German residents. I know a German music historian Martina Homma who was kicked out of Gdansk, her family had 24 hours to leave, and settled in Cologne. This "you have 24 hours to pack" was a mantra of new rulers everywhere...A California poet Dorothy Skiles was just 2 when Soviets went through Berlin and raped every woman, while men in her family died in Wehrmacht on the Eastern front. She gave copies of my poems about war experiences of my extended family to her sons and grandsons, offspring of German Wehrmacht soldiers. We should all know and learn from the past.
The Polish refugee camps everywhere were clean, tidy, well organized and taken care of. Poles immediately formed Polish schools, each little barrack had a veggie garden and a flower garden, there were social groups, dance groups, theater groups, choirs, and such. Churches as well, they were mostly Catholics in these camps. I want to publish Hanka Ordonowna memoirs in English translation, amazing stories. Alas, she died in Beirut, was too sick after the gulag camps in Siberia and never fully recovered.
Another famous actor Eugeniusz Bodo died in the Soviet gulag. But an amazing painter Julian Stanczak survived, though lost the use of his right hand, paralyzed after beating in the camp. He became a painter instead of a cellist that he wanted to be. He learned to draw with left hand in a camp in Uganda, then came to the U.S. He was a very well known Op-Art painter in the mid-West. Died in 2017.
War is a beast, so we should be all against all wars, and favor peace, and help others. In recent wars, Poles took in refugees from the Ukraine, I sent money to a friend who took in a mother with daughter to his small apartment, where he lived with his wife and baby. His grandfather was also kicked out of the Ukraine, maybe that woman was an offspring of the perpetrators? Who knows, she or her child were not guilty, and the best way to stop wars is by forgiveness and generosity.
If everyone did as they should, and followed the example of the "Good Maharajah" the world would have been so much better. But then, the survivors and refugees should have behaved like Poles did in those camps, work, be grateful, and build a new, peaceful world. Stanczak, Cybulski, Vars, and other immigrants to America have done it in the New World. They successfully created new identities for themselves and contributed to the culture of their new country.
Now, that so many global agencies and corporations seek to destroy "nation-states" and erase or cancel the multitude of distinct identities - linguistic and cultural - of nations around the world, it is even more important to remember and support cultural diversity of these nations. In my case, it means remembering the achievements, resilience, and honor of the Polish nation.
Polish Americans have two Independence Days to celebrate, two languages to learn, two national anthems to sing. Not 195 Independence Days of all the world's countries. Not all 160+ languages, cultures, and traditions of all the world's residents. It is impossible to open borders and accept as equal all the different nationalities without creating for them a standard and a model to accept. Here, the language is English, the Independence Day is on 4 July, the Pledge of Allegiance defines "one nation" - that all the newcomers belong to. All the Displaced Persons of Stanczak's generation or Solidarity-era emigres of my generation, are free in the U.S. to learn Polish and study Polish history and culture. All are free in our "land of the free" where we do not forget our roots, while becoming Americans of double identities.
LIKE GRAPES ON A VINE
Nourished by gold light
and sapphire water,
we become sweeter as we age.
Last traces of bitterness
and resentment dissolve
into forgiveness.
Yes, it was a long road.
Yes, it was
hard.
But we are here.
Grapes on the vine.
I’m kind to myself, kind to others,
kind to the world. I listen.
All grains of sand on the beach,
all dancing droplets in the ocean,
the salty mist on my lips – sing
the song of creation. Such a joy to be.
Present. Attentive—
to the sparkling pathway
of sunlight leading beyond the horizon—
to the relentless rhythm of the waves
crushing all worry into smithereens.
Out flows my pain.
Out goes my sorrow.
In flows my peace.
In comes my gladness.
Like the ripening grapes on the vine
we become sweeter as we age.
(c) Maja Trochimczyk, published in "Crystal Fire: Poems of Joy and Wisdom" anthology in 2022
