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A Domino Affect
By:
Ewa Krason
College Now Course - BSS 1
The Thanksgiving
table is where the family gathers once a year to not only enjoy a delicious
meal, but to retell the stories of their ancestors, the people who have shaped
their lives. My Thanksgiving table, though always small and quiet because
of our lack of relatives in the United States, was especially quiet this year
because of the passing of my grandmother (my mother's mother, named Wladyslawa
Kida) the Monday prior to Thanksgiving. She is the first grandparent of mine
to die and her death occurred only 3 months after my great uncle's (my father's
uncle) death, thus there was reason for both my parents to be sad; their parents'
generation was vanishing, the only question was, who would be next.
My grandmother, Wladyslawa, did not live in the United States and had never
visited because she never had an opportunity. My mother was the only one of
her children who made it to America, but my mother's extraordinary fate had
its side effects. These side effects came when my grandmother died, when my
mother could not make it to her funeral in Poland. My mother was heart broken
and devastated because she could not attend the funeral. Snow had fallen in
Poland and the airports were snowed in, not to mention the roads icy, no conditions
for driving. My mother also had an expired passport because she had never
received a new one from the Polish government.
Though my grandmother's sudden death attributed to the awkwardness of our
Thanksgiving dinner, my mother still managed to bring some joy to it by sharing
some stories her mother told her about our family. One particular story, one
I've heard over and over from my mother, is the one about my great uncle Jan
(my mother's youngest uncle, my grandmother Wladyslawa's youngest brother).
His story is sad, but its sadness parallels well with the sad history of Poland.
His story captures the soul of all Poles, because it is a story about the
fight for Poland's independence from Russian Communism.
Great uncle Jan was not a soldier. He was a laborer at the local forced labor
factory, instituted by the communist-dominated Polish government, which was
installed in 1945 after the reluctant approval of the Allies. During the next
seven years, Poland became a socialist state modeled after the Soviet Union.
During this seven year period of protests and rebellions, Poland's First Six-Year
Plan, which began in 1950 and called for the accelerated development of heavy
industry, was instituted, Jan being part of its workforce.
As a government employee, Jan had to follow the rules of the Polish government,
which were to come in to work everyday, regardless. In these labor factories
the men worked hard, from dawn to dusk in terrible conditions, under the strict
supervision of government guards. There, no talking was allowed, because efficiency
was the goal of the factory. If men broke the rules, they were shot on the
spot in front of the whole work force, which was a tactic used to scare the
Polish men into obeying the guards because their life was at jeopardy if they
did not.
Jan, barely 19 years old, was a new member of the factory, who was taken out
of school to work, along with many other young boys. These boys had not worked
in the factory long enough to know the consequences of not obeying the rules,
for no one talked about the consequences for fear they were speaking out against
the government, a crime punishable with death, because it was viewed as treason.
When these boys found out they could not have a day off in observance of a
big Polish/Catholic holiday, Boze Czialo, in early June, they were furious
because as a part of Polish tradition, no one is allowed to work on this day,
even non-Catholics. This holiday is a national holiday, a holiday observed
by all, and a day when no one works, but the new Communist government was
atheist. This clash of cultures and morals infuriated my great uncle and his
friends to the point that they decided to skip work to attend church in observance
of the holiday.
In order to understand why my great uncle was so angry one has to understand
that Poland is an extremely religious country. Everyone attends church. Everything
revolves around the Church, especially if you live in the country, as Jan
did, and most of my family still does. Religion is the center of everyone's
life, because that is all they had at that time of war and death. People believed
in God, and prayed to him everyday so he can save them and bring them to Heaven,
away from all the trouble on earth. Their prayers were their hope. If their
religion was taken away from them, so was their hope. For Jan, the Communists
had taken so much and caused so much pain, that he could not let them take
his religion and faith too. He wanted to make a stand, and show the Communists
that he would not give up his religion so easily, as he had his freedom. He
made his stand along with four friends, by skipping work to attend mass.
Late that night, government officials (essentially, soldiers in the secret
police, who worked to ward off rebellions when they started so they would
not escalate, becoming greater threats) came to each of the boy's houses and
arrested them, but instead of taking them to the local jail, they were taken
to the woods nearby. Their hands were tied behind their backs and they were
forced to stand with their backs to the officials. These officials, armed
with guns, shot each of the boys in the back of their head, including my great
uncle Jan, who was barely 18 years old at that time.
The bodies of these five boys was discovered early the next morning, after
reports of gunfire in the woods. Each family of the five young men went to
claim their flesh and blood from the woods in order to give him a proper funeral
and burial. These five young men were buried next to each other, and their
deaths never spoken of, once again for fear of speaking out against the government.
My mother was not even born when my great uncle Jan died, but she head this
story over and over from her mother when she was growing up and now she has
told it to my sister and me many times over. The story is a sad tale and is
one of the many reasons why my mother left Poland in the early 1980s thus
contributing to a domino affect. For my mother, America was a long awaited
dream, a heaven on Earth, the land of opportunity and freedom she never had
before. This was the place where she wanted to raise her children and she
now is.