What will be will be

I was born in Kalisz, in March 1926. My parents had met in Germany but they moved to Poland after their first child was born. Work was hard to come by so my Dad returned to Germany and later moved even further, to France. When he left, my Mum brought my sister and I to stay with her family in a village called Oraczew near Sieradz. Life wasn’t too bad - I never lacked bread or sugar. Mum took to commerce - she’d buy local butter and eggs and sell them in the city of Łódź. We had no experience of poverty.

When the war broke out, I was 13. I remember the Polish army marching west to offer resistance to the advancing German troops. Mum left for Łódź on Wednesday and didn’t return until Saturday morning. She had difficulty reaching us because people and wagons weren’t allowed through to our side anymore. Poles wouldn’t believe that war was upon us and even the aircrafts flying low over our heads were interpreted as manoeuvres.

That Saturday morning Sieradz went up in flames and we fled. The next village on our way - Rowy- was already in German hands. In Rowy German soldiers killed 11 Polish villagers on the spot just because one of them had been in possession of a fireman’s uniform.

My sister, her husband, daughter, my mother and I planned to cross the Warta River. A neighbour and a boy from our village joined us. This boy, who followed us on a pushbike, wanted to enlist with the army but there was no Polish army to speak of anymore: the Germans had crushed and scattered them completely. I saw Polish soldiers lying dead or running for their lives, one even ran bare-foot. Those boys were lying on the ground because no one had yet buried them. There were many of them.

We’d walk at night and spend days in abandoned houses in the wake of the German advance.

What did we eat? We had taken a supply of bread baked by my aunt for the road. We milked wandering cows and chased chickens roaming the empty houses. That was our provisions. People fled their villages in wagons but horses and carriages proved hard to hide when an air raid approached.

Our party only had this one bike but somehow we pushed forward. We had no goal other than just to cross Warta River. On a hill along the road to Warsaw there was this shack where we stayed to sleep the day away. When we woke up at night we realized there was no point going further: the German army overtook us as we slept and was marching on Warsaw. Mum decided to return home. She left me with her sister in Łódź and went to the country to buy some eggs and butter. Later I too assisted Mum in her little trade.

It went on for the first months of the war. In January or early February 1940 the Germans compiled lists of people who were to supply them with flour. Unexpectedly, in the small hours of the morning on May 5^th, horsed carriages arrived at every house. We were exceptionally lucky to know one boy from the shire office who had overheard what was in store for us. He jumped on his bike and came to warn us. Thanks to him we knew to take some food when the Germans came for us. They took us to the shire office where three trucks already awaited us. We were transported to Konstantynów in Łódź and placed in a factory building. There I saw entire village populations displaced along with their children and the elderly. We lay on bare cement without even straw for insulation. In the morning the Germans sorted us into groups. Every tenth person received some bread and was in charge of splitting it up amongst the others. We couldn’t wash ourselves, as water was scarce, even for drinking. We remained there for around ten days.

Later we were transported by train to Bochnia and scattered amongst farmhouses. Mum went out looking for any kind of job, leaving me behind. She came across a miner who needed someone to look after his cow. She placed me in his charge and returned to Bochnia.

Soon my mother picked me up again and we went to Częstochowa, from where we managed to take a train to Łódź. My mum and I resumed our little trading business. We’d bring goods for sale from Sieradz. I had to ask other people to buy my ticket because I had no permits required by Germans for train travel.

On May 13^th 1941, German soldiers caught me at Łódź Kaliska railway station. I was among a group of other youths they picked out at the station and forced onto trucks. At first we didn’t go far but on May 25^th we were put on a train and transported to labour camps in Germany. I was taken to a camp where there were no beds and we slept on the floor. Our food rations consisted of some bread and artificial honey. After we went through a disinfectant bath we were assigned numbers. I preserve my camp ID card with my photo and number to this day. We were placed in the work bureau for the German bauers to ‘shop’ for workers of their liking.

I had been picked out by one Henryk Bering and came to live and work on his farm in Swartzemunde. He treated me fairly. There were already two other Poles working for him; one of them later became my husband. I had a separate room furnished with bed, mattress, sheets and a quilt. My duties were the usual farm chores. In summertime, I’d get up at 5am to milk our cows because milk had to be delivered early and at 7am we ate breakfast. The first two years we’d all eat in the one kitchen, although at separate tables. After that, Germans were ordered not to eat with their labourers and we had our meals in another room.

I didn’t fall ill during the war, except once when I had an upset stomach. I wasn’t scared though, because I knew that what will be, will be.

The first year with the bauer wasn’t too bad but later I had to work as hard as the men and help in the kitchen as well. Sundays after dinner we’d go 4 km to the next village to meet with other Poles. Germans hanged one Polish boy for having an affair with a German woman and we were all ordered to come and watch. We were excused from going, though, because ‘our’ bauer had said it would have been too far for us to walk. In the end I didn’t see the hanging. It was acceptable for a German to have an affair with Polish girl but not the other way round.

On Easter Sunday 1945, we received news that the war had ended. On April 1^st we saw the first American soldiers arrive. They turned some Germans out of their houses and lodged themselves there; they stayed with us for a week.

As soon as the Americans established the first camps, we packed up and moved to the military base camp in Herford. We didn’t want to toil for the Germans any more. I still keep a basin from that camp, a really good army one. I’ve had it for over 50 years, since 1945 - how old it had been then, I wouldn’t know. I became really attached to this piece of metal; it was my sole possession then.

The camp provided rather modest facilities: six people to a room but at least we had beds and there was a canteen nearby. I spent six weeks there.

The next camp we were transferred to was even more poorly equipped; ten people slept in one tent. Soon came another move, this time to Lada near Munden. It was a huge camp, spread out over eleven villages. One was populated entirely by Ukrainians. Later we were moved twice more: one of the new places was an interim camp in Paderborn where the migration intake took place. After going through the immigration intake process we lingered for three months in wait of transport. Eventually, three vessels arrived to take us to Australia. The passage took 67 days due to a breakout of disease.

We reached Australia on January 23^rd 1951. From our landing point at the Melbourne Port we travelled by train to Bonegilla. Luckily, a three-month-long strike at the railways had just ended the day before. We were allocated two rooms in one of the steel sheet barracks. Each of those barracks comprised five rooms on either side of the central corridor. One of our two children and I stayed in one room and my husband with the second child in another one at the end of the corridor. For six months this was our home.

Soon men started to work in Mildura on a grape-picking farm. After only three weeks they took up new jobs for the railways in Sunshine. Meantime, our kids and I were moved first to Rushworth and then to Somers. From there, it wasn’t all that far to my husband. When he broke his arm, he was offered permanent employment with the railways and living quarters for all of us in a company facility in Traralgon. We celebrated the second anniversary of our arrival there.

A few months later we moved to my daughter’s godfather’s house in Newport. My husband had already purchased a block of land in Sunshine but we didn’t have enough money to start building. I went to work, first in a factory in Yarraville, and then in a thread factory in Footscray so that we could put some money aside. I also worked in a textile factory, making blankets, and as a cleaner at the airport. As soon as we had a little savings we wanted to get started on our house’s construction. It wasn’t easy those days; we had to wait six months for roof tiles, as building materials were hard to come by. All the newly arrived migrants started building their houses at once and this created a general shortage. Eventually, we managed to complete the construction and became the happy owners of our own home in Ardeer. Sometime later we moved to another house in Newport where transport was more convenient. I have lived in this house to this day.

Following my husband’s death in 1986, I became active with the Polish House ‘Millennium’. I’ve been a Committee member for the last 15 years.

I’m glad I came to Australia. Both my daughters, who gained their education here, speak fluent Polish. I have visited Poland three times but now there’s hardly anyone left for me to see there.