Day 2: A Place to Call Home (BlogAlong with Effy)
I wanted to share with you a piece of writing that I have done that is based upon my Grandfather's life in Poland. I did this piece of writing for my Life Writing assignment in my Creative Writing course. I hope you enjoy reading it, and would love to get your feedback on it.
War touches people in different
ways. It leaves a scar upon us all. Some of us are grateful for the outcome,
for our loved ones who return home safe. Some become withdrawn from life, from
their family, even from themselves. The ugly scars that are left behind are not
always physical. Some of these scars are mentally damaging, so damaging that it
can leave you with a yearning for normality; a yearning to rewind time and
protect those who we truly care about.
Everyone has their own story
about war and its eternal effects. A war of love that can be likened to
Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’, or a raging war that brings disease to the
body and mind, or a war to survive each hour of life when born into a third
world country.
This is the story of a man
who was thrust into a war that was not his to own, but that became a part of
him, a part that he had no desire for as it replaced his family. This is the
story of my Polish Grandfather and his war to simply find a place to call home
once more.
My Grandfather was called Jerzy
which when translated into English is George. He lived with his parents and
siblings in Warsaw, Poland on a farm, before the war. They owned the large
piece of land with a few shire horses that he and his brothers used to help
their father plough the fields. He was only young when the Second World War
broke out. One can only imagine the fear that filled his young soul. To be
under 18 years old and know that life would allow such evil to rage within it
must have been terrifying. I’m unsure of the precise moment in which my
Grandfather knew what ‘war’ meant, perhaps it was later on in the timeline of
World War Two as we know if it today.
He lived in a very close
and religious family. He adored his youngest sister and instinctively would
protect her should danger ever arise. Perhaps the true war that raged through
him became guilt, through hopelessness as he remained powerless in this raging
war that was sweeping through his life like an uncontrollable tornado. This was
guilt that festered within him as he was forced into admission that he no
longer could protect her or his family anymore, not in the physical sense.
I assume life before the
war was pleasant for my Grandfather if its effects are anything to go by. There
always seemed a deep feeling of emptiness within him, a pining for something he
knew he could never have. The longing filled his once, pure heart with anger,
fear, despair and treacherous sadness.
The day the Germans invaded his
family home and ripped them from its heart, is a day he never forgot. He dulled
the images when he was asked about what happened all those years ago in Poland,
instead insisting “it’s all a blur now”. But those watered eyes told a
different version, these eyes said that in an instant he was there again, in
Poland, in Auschwitz reliving it all again.
The closest I came to
understanding what happened to my Grandfather was watching a film based on
Auschwitz. The film alone, knowing that it was only portraying a tiny particle
of what my Grandfather and his family experienced, left a scar upon my heart,
soul and mind. A scar that I will never heal from, even though I am simply his
Granddaughter that was born in the eighties. The contrast between his young
life and mine leaves me with unquestionable gratitude. Gratitude for having
such a brave Grandfather, although he’d never agree to be called ‘brace’ or a
‘hero’ – yet he is and always will be to me. I have gratitude to have had such
a loving and safe environment to grow up in. Something he and his beloved
youngest sister had stolen from them.
The Germans claimed the farm, the
land, the home as theirs and carted my Grandfather, his parents, and his
siblings off to the Auschwitz camp. A place that is filled to this day with the
energy of the chilling torment and torture, massacre and murder, that occurred
there. Auschwitz is claimed to be where many souls were destroyed and had their
dignity of death taken from them. Dignity was something my Grandfather claimed
those German soldiers never had and never would. The anger inexplicably clear
in his tone. The camp became the place my Grandfather witnessed the most
horrific acts against man. It was here that he watched helplessly as his
parents were led to the gas chambers to be put to a death that claimed not just
their lives but their innocence and a part of my Grandfather also. This only
occurred after they were chained like dangerous wild dogs to a rotating wheel
and tortured into continuous movement without ever taking a rest. The walking,
as if not torture enough was worsened by the fact that their circular pathway
was laid down hot coals. They were walking bare feet on such immense heat,
burning away their skin, down to raw muscle and bone that exuded a stench of
burnt skin. Walking to their exhaustion was not enough for these torturers. It
was then that they were led to the gas chambers when they no longer offered any
sort of entertainment like unwanted toys threw out. The lasting torment upon my
Grandfather did not end there. He never spoke of what he was made to do there
in terms of labour. One can only imagine that he felt it insignificant in
comparison to the punishment his parents and youngest sister took.
He once told me that I got my good
looks from him, perhaps an attempt to look on the bright side, and that I
looked very much like his sister, as if she had never left him never ageing. A
comfort to him or a torment that he felt inside? I’m not sure. But the love for
me that I felt from him was a comfort to me. Sometimes I’d feel deep guilt for
my genetic make-up that moulded my physical appearance. Guilt for bringing back
bad memories – yet – not once until now have I entertained the idea that my
physical appearance offered comfort as he reminisced about the pleasant
memories of childhood. The childhood before war scarred him.
His sister was victim to a death, a
murder that not only claimed her life but yet more of my Grandfather’s heart
and soul. Her torture and punishment was justified in the soldiers view because
she refused to be affectionate with them. Her dignity and pride, her self worth
that she had control over, was something she could be proud of. Still to this
day I am immensely proud of her self pride, honoured to call her family. My
grandfather was forced to watch as the moment his beloved sister would cease to
see him again. To be so young and to have witnessed his parents being put to
death only then to be forced to watch as his sisters beautiful hazel eyes were
gauged out with fiery hot red pokers, is more than enough to cause in the very
least a troubled mind. That moment, those collective moments were to forever
haunt him as the years rolled by painfully.
When exactly he made ‘The Great
Escape’ from Auschwitz is out of my range of knowledge. Understandably he never
had enthusiasm for talking about his past. We have a saying that ‘to talk about
something has the power to make it real’. I can presume compassionately that my
Grandfather had no desire to make it any more real than it already was.
Jerzy made his way to England,
finding solace in a community Polish Club. Why he chose England to escape to I
don’t know. When he arrived the war was still ongoing, he signed up to the
British Army and served a soldier. I’m not sure of ‘if’ or ‘where’ he served in
action. Conversations about war, his war in general were almost non-existent.
Memories and horrors that was perhaps better left in the past, if only the
reality could.
Eventually after the war
was over, my Grandfather silently vowed to himself that he would live his life
for his family. He would never let anything harm his family, protecting them
the best way that he could, with the knowledge and understanding he had, and to
the best of his ability. We may not have agreed with the way he did things, the
way he bottled up his emotions, only allowing his anger to express at moments
that perhaps, from a female perspective required compassion rather than anger,
but we understood. We understand, especially as how he had his family and home
ripped from him, leading him to England.
This is where he came to meet my
Grandmother, fall in love with her, marry her and have six children who would
give him six grandchildren, me being the youngest, just like his sister was in
his generation. This was his attempt to not forget his past, he never was able
to do that, the anger was too strong for that. But it was the place he
attempted to build a new life, a new place to call home.
This is the written work of Dawn Brierley© No written contents of this blog may be reproduced in any way (in part or in entirety) without the express written permission of the author, © Dawn Brierley
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