Part I - I was always close to the Church
I was born on February 24th, 1924 in Patryczków, 28 km from Częstochowa. The nearest local council was in Pajęczno. My parents owned a sizeable farm – 35 ares1 of land. We were a happy family, all working together for our common good. There were four boys and four girls. I was the fourth eldest. The school was nearby but I only managed to complete the fifth grade before the war started.
I remember very clearly the day the war broke out. Because the nearby town of Wieluń lay close to German border, from day one of the war we could hear German air planes flying above. Polish troops were stationed not far from our home, in the forests along the Warta River, but they soon abandoned their posts. While retreating, they mined the bridge across Warta, to stop the German army from using it. However, the Germans swiftly built a pontoon bridge and crossed to our side. They killed all the soldiers who didn’t escape. Civilians were ordered to dig trenches. Some people hid in the trenches but they couldn’t elude the German troops.
My mother baked a few loaves of bread and packed them with some salt. We left everything behind and fled but soon the advancing German army overtook us. We slept in the fields because the Germans used the roads. Their transports passed us day and night while the soldiers marched on foot. Out family hadn’t gone far before it became obvious that there was no point in continuing. My youngest brother was only 2 years old. We decided to return home.
Times were hard because all our property was either damaged or stolen. Our neighbours started coming back as well. My two older sisters were conscripted to forced labour in Germany. The rest of the family was left in peace for the time being because we worked on the farm. German authorities ordered smaller farms to merge with ours and supply them with provisions. The occupiers confiscated our cows until we had only two left but even then we had to submit a levy in milk or grain.
In March 1942, I fell victim to mass round-ups for forced labour. It was actually my brother, Janek, who the Germans were after but my family begged that he be left alone and remain on the farm. The Germans arrived in trucks and carted away whomever they wanted to nearby Pajęczno, where the captives were crammed into a church hall. There were some 40 people in the church. I remember the chaos inside; even the painting of Our Lady was pulled down and thrown on the ground. I spent the entire night there. Luckily, I had some extra clothes with me and later my brother and mum brought me a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk.
It was very cold. At 7am, I said my farewells to my brother and mum. We climbed onto the open truck and everybody burst into tears. The ones who stayed behind and those going cried side by side because everybody knew we were being carried away to Germany. Once on the truck, we started singing a religious hymn ‘Pod Twoją Obronę’ (Into Your Care).
They took us to Wieluń, where many more people were brought in from other regions. There were many girls, and even those who were menstruating had to strip down and undergo check ups in front of jeering German soldiers. Our clothes were put aside and sprayed with some substance, perhaps to kill fleas.
I, along with two other girls from my village, Frania - seven years my senior and Marysia - two years my senior, were picked out by a man who came from Germany but could speak Polish.
I was 18 years old. I left Poland on March 10th. Only three days later I was set to work on a farm in Germany. The Polish-German man took us to the village of Badenstedt, Hildesheim Province, near Hanover. We worked at a manor of several thousands acres of farmland. There were 14 girls and seven boy workers and even two entire families; all of us in forced labour. The boys slept in the loft and the girls were lodged seven to a room. The two families looked after the cowherd.
In summer, I would work in the fields and in winter there was threshing and all sorts of odd jobs to do. Our working day started at 7am and went on until late evening. There was an airstrip nearby, where enemy aircrafts shot down would sometimes land. If the pilot survived, the locals finished him off with hayforks. We saw it with our own eyes.
I had one particularly traumatic experience, in October 1944; Germans killed my father. Polish guerilla, operating in the forest near my family’s farm, had killed a German man. In an act of retaliation, the German troops surrounded the entire village and ordered all men aged 20 to 60 to come out. My dad was 58. They wanted to shoot him next to our barn but my youngest brother cried and wouldn’t let go of his father, so they led him away to our neighbour’s barn and shot him there. My other brother, Janek, aged 22, was taken in for questioning, along with four of his friends. The Germans suspected them of having dealings with the guerilla. When I visited my family 30 years later, I was told the story of the five boys’ ordeal. The Germans wrapped them in barbed wire and gradually tightened the cords to force a confession out of them. After a few days they were brought near the local church, where our people were ordered to dig up some trenches. The boys were dumped into the fresh pits and buried. One neighbour told me that my brother was still alive when they buried him because he protected his eyes with his hand when they shoved sand on top of him.
In Germany, I had one loaf of bread for the whole week. We would get our provisions on Fridays – only a few potatoes and turnips, that was all. Fortunately, I met my future husband who had already been working for a bauer2 for some time. He used to give me his breakfast portion of bread or a little flour stolen from the mill. I shared it with others instead of eating everything by myself.
Our work was supervised by the Volksdeutche3 who had brought us from Poland but the Nazi police were the worst. Once, they caught a boy, spread-eagled him on a fence and beat him into unconsciousness.
On a different occasion, another Nazi policeman noticed one of us throwing out a rotten turnip. He ridiculed the poor; more of them arrived and beat him so badly that he died several months later.
Fortunately, every first Sunday of the month, we could attend a Catholic mass. It was beautifully celebrated, even though in the German language. The local village administrator was a deeply religious man and would gladly have helped us if he could. When we were told to sign the Volkslist, in order to get better food and clothes, he secretly advised us that we were better off remaining Polish because Hitler was fighting against God and would never win the war.
I still remember the last artillery bombardment on ‘our’ farm. Germans fled and the war was finally over.
On April 12th 1945, just after Easter, the American Army arrived. At first they marched with their guns aimed at us but when we started shouting: ‘Polish, Poland’, they dropped their guns and greeted us cordially. American soldiers smashed the pantry doors with their rifles and told us to help ourselves to bread and even bread-rolls. My husband and I were married on May 23rd that year. American soldiers took photos of the ceremony. Six other couples were married at the same time.
We were overjoyed at being liberated at last. Food became plentiful, courtesy of the American troops but they left after only two months and everything changed with the arrival of the British. It was like British occupation; we had to stay in camps again. Former German army barracks were adopted for transitional camps for former forced labourers. We spent two months in one such camp not far from ‘our’ village and then two years in similar camp in Sande.
At last in1949, after a prolonged wait, we were accepted by the qualifying panel to migrate to Australia, where we arrived in 1950.
Part II - How we built home away from home
I arrived in Melbourne on February 28th 1950, with my husband and our three and a half year old son, aboard a Norwegian vessel, ‘Goya’. The ship carried some 900 passengers most of them Poles. It was a month long sea voyage. We set off from Banioli in Italy.
My first impression on reaching Australia was rather positive, despite the country then being quite different to what it is today. We came to the camp in Bonegilla by bus. My husband and I spent only two weeks together. Due to our previous agreement to being separated for up to two years, I had to accept my husband’s transfer to work at a sugar plant in Melbourne, while I stayed behind with our child. After some time I requested the Australian authorities to place me closer to my husband and so I found myself in Rushworth, only 150 km from Melbourne. From that moment on my husband was able to see us every second week.
While on his contract, my husband met an elderly Polish couple, who had been living in Yarraville for 40 years. They offered to let us stay in their backyard bungalow. It was a dreadfully cramped lodging but we agreed gratefully nevertheless, overjoyed to be together at last. All three of us slept in one bed and of course we had to pay the rent. I paid the landlady for looking after my son, too, so coupled with the rent, it took up one whole salary but I was able to get a job. I worked at the abattoir, weighing and stuffing meat into tins.
After ten years of doing that, I became a bookkeeper for the same factory for another five years. I looked after the financial side of a 250-employee business. Later I took up a sales assistant position at a deli shop in Footscray where I stayed for the next 25 years.
In 1956, we purchased a block of land for our home, where I’ve lived ever since. Much of the construction work we’ve done by ourselves to reduce the costs. I helped my husband lay the floors, install doors and windows.
Our street then differed greatly to its modern look; there were few houses but plenty of trees and bushes. There were several other Polish families, of which only two now remain but I am still attached to the house where I’ve spent almost fifty years. My husband died in 1973, so for the last 32 years I’ve been on my own. Our son attended primary school here but later we sent him to a private high school in the city. He was a good student and never caused us any troubles. He got married in 1969, of course to a Polish girl, whom he met at school. Theirs was the first wedding reception to take place at the newly erected Polish House ‘Millennium’. My only granddaughter married an Italian and they have four boys – my great-grandsons. The eldest is now seven and the youngest is only nine months old. We all cherish the family bonds and traditions and enjoy spending time together and speaking Polish.
I’ve been active in the field of community work for the past fifty years. After only four years since my arrival in Australia, when I was thirty, I joined other young Polish immigrants and we started creating a home away from home for the Polish community. We felt a strong urge to stick together and help one another. We were determined that our children should be able not only to learn Polish but also spend time and play together after school. Father Morgan from the St Augustine Church near my house provided us with invaluable assistance by allowing us to hire a classroom where we held Polish dance parties. Despite the considerable organisational effort they required, those parties brought a considerable weekly income as they regularly attracted some 100-150 people. Our group repainted the classroom, the church and cleaned up the adjacent areas. We funded a magnificent stained glass window for the St Augustine Church, depicting a historical event from Polish history – ‘The Baptism of Poland’. Our work was greatly appreciated by Father Morgan who even claimed that it was the Poles who brought Catholicism to Australia because before neither the church nor the school had been looked after with such zeal.
I won’t deny that the beginnings were rather wearisome. I recall being the only woman among a group of twelve men who initiated the Polish dance parties. I was assigned the treasurer’s ‘portfolio’, which I’ve retained to this date. The ladies running the kitchen got together and formed the Ladies Auxiliary with a permanent committee of management consisting of some very dedicated Polish women activists. This was the foundation of the Polish Association of Kingsville and Ladies Auxiliary.
After some time, we’d put aside enough earnings from our dance parties to take out a loan and purchase a block of land for a Polish House. Our main goal was to have a school for our children to learn Polish but also a venue for Polish festivals, parties and social gatherings. We wanted to create our own little piece of Poland here.
The construction was carried out entirely as a collective community work. A group of Poles sacrificed every weekend and free time after work to build the Polish House. The dream eventually became reality in 1969, when Polish House ‘Millennium’ was completed.
A great personal effort by Mr Łakomski played significant part in organising Polish social life and obtaining building permits for the House. There were many others as well; too many to mention all their names here. The classrooms were our priority and they got finished first. We hired a mini-bus to pick up and drop off Polish kids before and after classes. The main hall became such a popular party venue that on occasions we had to put tents up outside to accommodate all the participants at our dance parties, sometimes as many as 300. Traditional home-made Polish dishes such as ‘gołąbki’ (rice and pork mince stuffed cabbage leaves), ‘kopytka’ (potato and flour dumplings) and cakes prepared by the Ladies Auxiliary always won us much applause and appreciation. All the preparations took a lot of hard work but nobody shrunk from those duties and we were generally very content with our weekly get-togethers. People within our group treated one another kindly, although now that we’re older it’s not always the case. We organized Polish celebrations with our children attired in traditional folk costumes, sewn by ourselves. All this was done through volunteer community work.
I’m personally exceptionally proud of our achievements and of the fact that ‘Millennium’ was the first Polish House in Melbourne.
Initially, Australians distanced themselves from us migrants and families with kids found it particularly difficult to rent a house or a flat. Still, everybody lived safely and there were no conflicts. In periods of extreme heat people would sleep outdoors without fear. We never experienced theft or assault and lived peacefully together. Besides, in the Smorgon factory where I worked, most of the employees were migrants. They all had similar problems and had to start their lives anew so the attitude amongst us was one of mutual help.
During my 64 years in Australia, I visited Poland four times and wouldn’t mind going there again as much of my family are still there. I didn’t return to Poland because our farm had been destroyed and we had nothing to go back to. After all these years here, I think I was right to have stayed in Australia. My wages here were enough to send some money to my family in Poland. And even though my husband passed away 32 years ago, I’ve managed well on my own; my children respect me and I feel satisfied with my life.
I’ve received numerous awards for my community work. They are very valuable to me; especially the Golden Cross for Services awarded to me in August 1993 by Polish President Lech Wałęsa, the award from the Victorian Government and the Victorian Multicultural Commission Award for outstanding efforts and commendable achievement in community and the state of Victoria, which I received in October 2004. I can proudly mention several appreciation certificates, e.g. from the Polish Women Association of Australia and New Zealand and from the management committee of my own organisation - Polish Association of Kingsville and Ladies Auxiliary. I’m very grateful for all of these honours and also very glad that over these past 50 years, I was able to contribute to my beloved Polish community of Victoria and that I am still able to do so now.
(1) are – Polish square measure: 10 m x 10 m
(2) bauer – German for ‘farmer’
(3) Volksdeutsche – in Poland during WWII, a Polish national who claimed German ethnicity and signed the Volkslist – a declaration of self-perception as a German. Volksdeutsche were despised by Poles and treated as second-category citizens by Germans.
