Holocaust Memorial Day

His village was on the banks of the River San which at the time was in Central Poland. My family were farmers. In September 1939 the Nazis invaded from the west, the Soviets came in 17 days later from the East. When they partitioned Poland between them the border was on the River San. My father’s village was on the Eastern bank – the Soviet side.

On a winter morning in 1940 three Soviet soldiers knocked on the door in the early hours. My family - grandparents and their 3 children - were charged with being ‘enemies of the people’ given thirty minutes to pack and along with the rest of the villagers, herded 20km through the snow to the nearest train station where they were stuffed into cattle waggons – a train carrying about 2,000, with around 70 in a wagon. This formed part of a convoy carrying 250,000 east to the Siberian gulag, a journey of about four weeks. In the three convoys of 1940-41 its estimated over a million were taken, although the true figure will never be known. They were Poles, Ukrainians and Jews - their only crime was being Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish.

My father was the only one to get away that morning and that was the last he saw of his family. Like many other 'enemies of the people' he lived in the forests, eating rats and grass and trying to steal bread although as he one said “you’d be shot for that.”

We're brought up to think about the war as 'good v evil.' My father knew only evil. He was trapped with no way out. As he once said. "You stay where you are, they kill you. You go somewhere else they kill you. You go with one side they kill you. You go with the other side, they kill you. What do you do?"

All that was only the beginning. In 1941 it got worse.

 

Agree.

 

Its a long time ago that I visited Krakow, but its still very fresh in the mind.

If you enjoyed Krakow I'd recommend the Baltic capitals and Gdansk is really quite lovely with its canals, grand buildings and history. Theres a postal museum there telling the story of the start of WW2 and you can get a boat out to the coast where the war started. As well as the WW2 museum and the Lech Walesa Museum on the site of the ship builders yard.

God I miss Europe.

 

Thank you so much for sharing that.

 

It definitely does Helen, i am 64 now and have only just been able to watch the Holocaust films thats been on (actual footage). I still can't bring myself to watch The boy in the striped pyjamas or Schindlers list.

 

All that was only the beginning. In 1941 it got worse.[/QUOTE]

Thanks from me as well

How did he end up surviving?

 

The saddest of things. My grandad said the sight of some of the survivors haunted him that he saw whilst on service just after the war. 40 years later he would wake up and have nightmares about it.

 

No problem mate.

We were taught as kids about heroes and battles and glory. As far as I can see there are only two kinds of people who come out of a war. The survivors and the dead.

 

Thanks from me as well

How did he end up surviving?[/QUOTE]
Well that is a long, long story....

 

A truly harrowing story, we really don't know we're born do we?

 

Well that is a long, long story....[/QUOTE]

I really would like to know but in your own time if you feel you can.

 

The Tykester nailed it. Non believers are living in cuckoo land. given the overwhelming evidence.

 

Completely agree. The images of war are horrific. But what happened at the hands of the Nazis and the Soviets wasn't war, it was much much worse and all this generation can do is pass the baton of knowledge, share the stories and keep that horror fresh enough so that populism doesn't evolve into something even more sinister.

 

I really would like to know but in your own time if you feel you can.[/QUOTE]

This.

Anything you can share and want to share, I'll gladly listen. And if you want to share so much that this post reaches 200+ pages, we'll even let you have the 4,000th post ;-)

 

Did anyone see the recent documentaries with Robert Rinder? I was close to tears on many occasions watching them.

 

No we don't. It's odd having a parent who is Polish from that generation. Half your past is lost in some unimaginable horror. I met a Scottish woman once whose father was Polish. She said she'd been to visit Warsaw to see where her grandfather died. She was very pleased to see they'd put up a plaque to commemorate where he's been lined up and executed along with others from the Polish resistance (Home Army)

 

There was a photographic exhibition we stumbled upon I think in Gdansk (though I'm not completely sure about that) and it was a photographic memorial of those who were murdered in forests and just left where they fell, and many of those were in Poland. The photographer had taken a cross to place at each site, from Estonia to Poland and everywhere in between. And of course, these places all looked similar. Trees, ground, sky, a cross.

There were over a hundred photos in the exhibition. And as you passed from one to the next, the numbness grew.

 

There were quite a few Poles round our way including the Dragowich (not sure of the spelling) brothers from Goldthorpe who went to Wath Grammar School. I've often wondered what their story was, they certainly never talked about it.

 

The stories from children of Siberian survivors are beyond belief. And to think they ended up in Barnsley darn t'pit.

Anyway I've got to go out and get summat for tea.

 

Must have felt like heaven.