Babcia Wojtasiewicz

Apolonia Wojtasiewicz,

nee Lachiewicz

born Feb 6th 1888, Zagorz, Sanok, pow Sanocki, Podkarpacie, Poland, died in Melbourne Australia, June 20, 1980

Babcia was born to Antoni Lachiewicz and Katarzyna nee Golarz and was one of six children. Her younger brother Wladyslaw survived WWII and with his only daughter Alicja, moved to Argentina, where he lived out his life. Wladyslaw died in 1991 in Argentine and was buried in Zagorz, Sanok, in Poland, in the grave built for his wife, who died in 1942 in Kazachstan, as the result of Russian deportation of Poles to Siberia.

Babcia married Tadeusz Jozef Wojtasiewicz, born 17 Mar 1889 in Lwow, Poland, and lived in Lwow, until she and Wiesia, her only daughter, were forcefully deported to Kazachstan on 13 April 1942.

To hear Babcia's story, please click on her photo. The recording is her story, in Polish and in her own words, of how she was forcefully deported from Lwow, with her daughter Wiesia. She tells of how Tadzio was taken from her by the Russians (Moskale is her name for them), how she was picked up two days later and transported by cattle train into the depths of Kazachstan. Her story of how she survived, as a single woman with a young daughter, in Kazachstan, through Persia, India, Africa and finally arrived in Australia. Her story is similar to many others, but it is our story, and tells in her own words the hardships and the environment which she had to survive. Babcia did not live to see her great grandchildren but she was a woman of whom they would be proud, and she would be oh so proud of her great grandchildren just as she was so proud of her grandchildren.

Tadzio was a senior official of the Polish Railways in Lwow, who as a young man, had been involved in the Obrona Lwowa (Defence of Lwow) in 1920 when Stalin had decided to gain Lwow on his way to attack Warszawa. As a result once the Russians invaded Poland in 1939, he knew his days were numbered and went into hiding. He had initially considered skiing out of Poland to Rumania, but the doctors had advised against it due to his health. He was in hiding from December 1940 to 11 April 1941 and only came to see his wife and daughter during the day. Eventually he decided he could no longer continue and came home to stay. Babcia believes that he was betrayed by someone in the apartment block as the NKVD (Russian Military Police) arrived at his home that same evening after he had gone to bed. He was taken to Brygidki Prison in Lwow. Babcia was given permission to visit him on Easter Sunday (14 April). His name appeared on the list of Polish officials murdered at Brygidki, citing his date of death as 13th April 1941.

The Moskale, as she described, four burly specimens of “NKVD”, arrived in their home in the morning of 13th April (Easter Saturday) and deported Babcia along with Wiesia, packing them and their luggage into railway cattle trucks, with some 50 odd other people in each carriage, locked the doors and kept them in these cattle trucks, while they transported them via the railways to Kazachstan.

Her “adventures" in Kazachstan and then Teheran are well described and the story finishes at their arrival in Australia. Babcia and Wiesia arrived at Fremantle, via India and Africa, on February 14th, 1950, via the USS General Langfitt. After Wiesia had completed her contract in Perth, as a nurse, she and Babcia travelled to Melbourne, where Wiesia married Mirek Paszkiewicz, and settled in Melbourne.

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This is the transcript (and a translation) of a recording made of the wartime recollections of Mrs Apolonia Wojtasiewicz, mother of Wiesia Paszkiewicz and grandmother of Marysia and Olek. Mrs Wojtasiewicz was known within their community of friends in Melbourne as their adopted and beloved Babcia. These recollections relate to the period in which the Russians occupied Lwow in 1939 and carried out massive arrests of Poles and forced deportations of Poles to Siberia.

Note: This transcript is a translation of the recording of Babcia Apolonia Wojtasiewicz. Text in parentheses and italics has been added for clarification. Russians in Lwow were known by the term “Moskale” or Muscovites. This term was seen by all to be derogatory by all Poles and Russians. At the time of this recording Babcia would have been well into her late 80s and she died at the age of 92 in 1980.

Babcia:

My husband was arrested by the Moskale. They came in December, in December a friend told him “Tadek, you need to escape because they are coming to arrest you.” My husband came home without his fur coat, without his hat, I went by tram to the office, took his fur coat, his brief case, his hat and brought them home. My husband didn’t sleep at home, he already knew he was in danger. He stayed with his sister or with friends, sometimes he came during the day. He wanted to go over the border, on skis, because you could cross the border (to Romania), but he had lost a lot of weight and had stomach surgery, and his doctor advised against this as he was too underweight to stay on the skis. Maybe in Spring you will have gained strength and you can cross then. So my husband was in hiding all this time, until he came home on Easter Thursday (April 11, 1940) and said to Babcia “Poldzia, I don’t have the strength any more, let them arrest me, let them murder me, I just don’t have the strength, I am going to sleep at home tonight. I said : “Good then.” No one came to house, no one was at home, nobody asked about him, and we lived on the ground floor, there was no guard, there were doorbells and everyone had their own doorbells, so if someone rings, then I will go and answer and open the gate to admit whoever needs to come in and see us. So I said, “fine Tadzio”. He stayed, he had a bath and went to bed. I was sitting up and I heard the doorbell ringing. I woke my husband and said “Tadzio, you need leave because they are here for you.” By the time he got dressed and I opened the door, they were already at the door. Someone opened the gate and let them in.

So, someone must have betrayed him

Someone must have already known that he was at home. I don’t know. No one came looking for him in all the time he was in hiding. Someone must have been watching the house.

Was there a curfew?

No, no curfew. He came home in the evening. He always came home during the day. This time he decided to stay. He had a bath, went to bed and I said “Tadzio, if anyone comes, then disappear to the cellar”. In the meantime, they are at the door, banging on the door. He sat down on the bed, and as he sat he didn’t move. They were bashing at the door with their guns, I opened the door. Four Russians and one Jew entered the room. They started screaming, they started searching the house. So he said, “what are you arresting me for?” And they just screamed and said, “get up and get ready, you are going to the NKVD”. So, I collected his things, and in the meantime the Russians kept searching, I had a box in which I kept my jewellery with gold, earrings, wedding rings, this was hidden in my bedside drawer. No one saw this, only we knew it was there. And this bastard found it and emptied it out on the table. I yelled at him, “you have no right to touch this” and I grabbed a few of the items in my hand. They were carrying out a search, so they took all of the gold. Till recently I had a list of what he took, as he wrote a carbon copy of what was confiscated, how many bracelets, rings and what not. And when he took all of this, he then yelled “Well get up, we are going”. My husband took some clothes, took his ski suit, his suit and two shirts, he took his fur coat. The Russian told me to give him soap and a towel, so I gave him a piece of soap and a towel into his brief case and he started to say goodbye. He was resigned, and said, “well let’s say goodbye” and Wiesia started screaming hysterically, she threw herself on his neck and cried hysterically. She was only 10 years old. I said “Wiesia, don’t cry, don’t show your despair in front of this rabble.” He had tears running down his face and said “Poldzia, just watch the child”. After this I didn’t see him again.

They deported us on 13 April, I think. So, we just sat after they took him. The next day I walked from NKVD from office to office. Finally, I was meant to be able to see him on Sunday, he was in the Brygidki prison. I thought “Maybe I need to take something to him,some underwear or something. They gave me a card for a visit with him on Sunday, and then they came and took us on Saturday. I didn’t see him on Sunday. During the night they took me.

They came to take me, there was about six of these Moskali, that night they deported 25,000 people from Lwow in one night and they didn’t have enough of the cars to transport us to the railway station. So they came and said, “get ready.” I got dressed, dressed the child, packed two little cases and we are ready. They didn’t have a car, so they left one Moskal to watch us, while they went somewhere to organise transport. He was to watch us and they will come back to get us.

This Moskal was looking at us, and you could see that he felt sorry for the child, and he said to me, “How are you going to go to Russia like this, you and the girl will die.” He opened the cupboard, took out all of the underwear, my husband’s underwear, shirts, clothes, bedding and dumped it all into a bed-sheet. He tied this bed-sheet together. He then took all of the bedding and bed covers, I had a bed cover and a doona, four quilts, six pillows, so he tied all of that together in another sheet, crushed it with his leg to make it fit. And said, “now you are ready”. I had a cupboard in the kitchen with all of my food. He asked if there was a container, and I said I have a travel basket in the cellar, it was a basket that looked like a case, that we used when we went on holidays, almost a wicker box. It was the size of this dining table. We used it for our luggage when we travelled. So, he began to load everything I had into this travel basket. Everything from the pantry, flour, sugar, coffee, chocolate, strudel cakes, wodka. I still had a lot of provisions in the pantry. I had provisions before the war and also during the war. I had a friend who was a Jew, and she provided me with everything I needed at the beginning of the war. I often bought eggs there, everything I had in bags or in paper bags, he put it all into the basket. He packed all of this and that included 6 litre bottles of wodka, so that I could sell it, then he went into the dining room and picked up the large kilim from the floor and brought it back in. He put this into the basket, tied the basket down with rope and said, now you are ready. But just take the machine. I said, but where will I take the sewing machine, I wont take this, but I should just have take the heads out of the sewing machine and I would have been able to sell them. So he packed everything, the basket, the two bags of clothes and saw the Prymus stove. He packed the Prymus and the “prymusowki”.

So I waited until they came back. They came back and saw everything I had packed, and they said “what the hell have you packed there?” While we were waiting for them to come back, the Moskal also asked, “who do you know, give me their address”. So I gave him the address to my sister-in-law, and then they took us. He said to me, “if you want I will take the child to your sister-in-law, I will make it so that she can escape and I will get her to the Ciocia.”. Wiesia and I said no, we will stay together and they took us to the station. They took us from our home about 4 am and at 7 am Ciotka was already at the station. So he was an honest person. He kept his word. I said to him, take everything you want from the house, there was a clock, an alarm clock, and he took a lot for himself.

So, when I left Lwow, I had lots of provisions. I had means by which to live.

I said to my sister-in-law, run home. I had just done the washing the night before and all the nightgowns were hanging up to dry. The child had no warm nightgowns with her. So, I told my sister-in-law to go and bring the washing that was hanging in the attic. She ran home and came back and said there is not a piece of fabric in any attic. It was April so it was getting a bit warmer. The carriages were cattle trucks, with shelves, so people slept on the floor and on the shelves. There were 58 people packed into the cattle carriage. The basket was with me. Other people, some had luggage, others had nothing or very little.

In our carriage was a lady, Mrs Polakow, she was the wife of an officer and she had small twins. She lived in a village because he was a forester. They arrested him and took him prisoner and she came to Lwow to her sister for safety. And they captured her there, and she was with those twins and she had nothing apart from a travel fur blanket that they used when they travelled. And she had one child in one arm and the other child in the other arm. It was terrible, she had absolutely nothing. So when we joined them, I took the doona and spread it across the top shelf and she had somewhere to put the children, and we all slept there together so it was warmer.

And there was a hole (in the floor of the carriage) which was used for ablutions. And everyone used it, men, women, children, young girls, old men. So, we took a blanket and made a shade for some privacy. There was a lady who had two sons, students, then there was Mr Pawlik, there was a Professor, and Engineer, there were over 50 in the wagon. So, when the frosts came, the refuse froze and stuck to the underneath of the hole. It was cold, I was travelling in my fur coat,

If someone was ill or died, what happened?

They removed the dead. They threw them out the carriage door. The Moskale opened the door and threw out the dead. They closed the door at night. The doors were closed.

In the morning, they came quietly and knocked at the door to provide food. I had the Prymus ready, so I made some porridge for the twins and for Wiesia. If someone died, people called out and they came and threw the dead body out the door. And then they closed the door again. And once a day they gave us hot water and that was it. And sometimes we got a piece of bread. Sometimes they gave us bread, sometimes they didn’t give us bread. On 1st May we arrived in Russia and we left Lwow on 13th April. So we were in this cattle truck with over 50 people for 17 days. Fortunately, no one died in our carriage. The gratings in the carriage, the boys cut them into pieces, so when the train stopped, you could buy the gratings. Sometimes they were selling eggs, so we could buy eggs or other things through the grates.

How did you go from Lwow, through Kiev?

No, not through Kiev, we went through the Urals to Kazakhstan and they left us on a Steppe, there were a few huts there, and they left us there in a shed. We stayed in this shed. They gave us three rubles each. They were dropping us off at various points along the way. There were about 250 of us in this place. Maybe 300 people. All of us into the one barn. We went to the Cossacks to look for somewhere to stay. We rented a house, the Cossack woman rented this to a few families, so Wiesia and I, Mrs Polakow with her two children, there was a Jewish lady with us, and one other lady, so four families in this one house. She covered the floor with hay and we stayed there. Then they told us to go to work. So we started making “kiziak” which is cows dung or horse manure and straw. They stomped it down with the horses and then we used our hands to form small round shapes, similar to placki. If you made 60 which was the minimum, then you received a 1 kg of bread. If you didn’t make the 60, then you got nothing. Everyone was making these Kiziak, the Engineer, the Professor, the various ladies, everyone was making these placki from this manure. And then they took us from the Cossack village to a Russian village. The put us on trucks and transported us to this Russian Village (cant remember the name). We spent the whole summer there, and there they were allocating where you could live. There was a church there and we were in that church for three days, during which we could find where to live. I rented a house with Mrs Rusicka, she had a daughter the same age as Wiesia. I rented this place for 15 rubles per month for one room, so there was a stove and two beds in that room. It was very easy to buy a bed, we bought a metal bed for 70 rubles, but you needed wooden slats to put on top of the bed. And you couldn’t get wooden slats there, so finally some tourist travelling through brought some slates, and for 2 wooden slats we paid 250 rubles. I had this money because I had already begun to barter. I had started selling some of my provisions in the Cossack village and here in the Russian village, so I already had my own money. The payment for work was 1 kg of bread if you achieved the “norma” (minimum). So, we went and bought the beds. Now, we have no wood for burning in the stove. Over summer, you collected the cow patties, in 10 minutes it was dry and you could use it for burning. It generated enough heat, you put a pot on top of the stove and made soup. So then we were told to go into the fields and cut the hay. They cut the hay, we had to collect it and put it together and again you got 1 kg of bread, but sometimes they also gave us soup for lunch. They cooked plain oats, sometimes they threw a piece of meat in there and that was called soup. You could drink the soup, but the oats were unable to be digested. The bread was good, if they made it and brought it, the bread was good, but if they didn’t bring the bread then you only had this oats soup. If they missed the bread delivery, then you didn’t get the previous ration on the next day. You survived so you don’t need yesterday’s ration.

Winter was worse here, there was no wood but there was a plant like blackthorn, so they cut this into a cart, that cost 500 rubles. We used 3 of those for the winter, with the lady, but you keep adding this to the stove and the stove was large, so you barely had enough heat to cook something, The farmers wife was good, she had a lot of those cow patties allocated to her, and maintained a good fire in her stove so she boiled water in the mornings and brought it over to us.

Then we went sorting potatoes, and I had that fur coat, so when I put a belt around my fur coat, the I could fill my fur coat with potatoes, I could bring back about 50 potatoes in my coat. The farmer made a comment that I have put on weight, and I answered, “yes, by eating your bread”.

I used to do fortune telling for the Russians by reading cards. I would check out from the neighbours first about the lady I was reading cards for and then I needed to tell her something that would actually come true. They were so stupid and simple that they would believe anything you told them. They would pay with bread for this.

Mrs Polakow’s girls, Basia and Krysia, would also ask “Ciocia Pola, give us some bread”, so when I went to read the cards, I would take a jar with me, and they would give me barszcz into the jar, some bread and I would come back with food for the children. The little ones were always hungry and somehow, we lived and survived. They believed in those cards; they were fools. And then we also worked, slowly lived, slowly sold the things that I had brought with me. Later when we headed south, after the Amnesty (Sikorski/Majski treaty which allowed the formation of the Polish army in Russia and provided an amnesty to all Poles deported to Siberia). Before this we weren’t allowed to move around, we had to stay where we were, but after the Amnesty, we could leave and travel south to join the Anders Army. The Army began to form down south, and we sold what we could to get the money to buy the ticket to travel down south to join them. We hired out a sleigh, because we need to travel by sleigh to the railway station, because the station was a long way away, we travelled all day and all night. We arrived at dawn at the station. Then you had to stand in a queue to buy a ticket. We bought the tickets and travelled to Bogoje? and the army was not yet forming, they were just beginning. They said we can’t stay there, and sent us to Kosiolek in the south near Bogoje? We lived there in a Cossack hut and we went back to work again. There they didn’t give us bread, but they gave us flour or barley, 1kg for work. If they gave you some flour then you could back some unleavened bread, but if they gave you barley. The army was beginning to form, small children were beginning to be taken to the orphanage which was forming there. Where the older children and adults had a contact in the army, then that contact took them with them. I didn’t have anyone in the army. I didn’t know anything about what happened to my husband and only knew that my two brothers were arrested. One had travelled through Hungary and was in the Carpathian Brigade (who fought many battles and won the battle of Monte Cassino). The younger one was in Russia but I didn’t know where he was. So then we moved away from there to Ahwaz, we were in Ahwaz, from there to Tehran, from Tehran to India. The Displaced Persons camps were in India, there were schools. Anyone who had children of school age went to India. Others with children went straight to Africa. Wiesia went to school and matriculated in India. She then completed a nursing qualification and then she worked in the hospital. I also had my brother’s daughter with me. I met my younger brother in Tehran, his wife died in Russia, and the child was left, so I took the child while he went with the Army. It was better then, as my brother always sent us something. We only saw each other twice in Tehran and then he left. I found him by accident in Tehran.

When the war ended, he could go to England, my brother could take his daughter and my daughter, but as his sister, he was not allowed to take me with them. So he took his daughter to England and I remained with my daughter. They liquidated the camp (Valivade) in India and moved us to Africa. If you had family, you could have gone to England, but there were only the two of us so we had no one. We spent another 2 years in Africa. Wiesia was working in a hospital in Africa and then the choice was Canada and Canada was only accepting one working age person with no dependents. Australia accepted a worker with a dependent. So Wiesia could take me as her dependent.

We travelled to India in cargo ships, from Russia to Tehran we travelled on cargo with no cabins, they packed as many of us as they could on these ships to evacuate as many as they could. We were provided with cold provisions in each stop. From Russia we travelled for 2 days across the Caspian Sea. We were in India almost 7 years. I met my brother in Tehran just as the Army was about to depart for Italy for the Italian campaign.

When the war ended, we had notice from Poland that if we go back immediately, we have full powers, but if we delay and don’t return by 1948 then our citizenship was revoked. A few people returned but very few. The rest moved back to England if they had husbands or wives in the Army, and those who had no family there, went to Africa and from there to Canada or Australia for work. So, we came to Australia. I didn’t work in Africa, we had nice little huts, in India we had barracks wit no ceilings, so it was hard to deal with the heat. We had two rooms and a kitchenette. We cooked on coals in India, you baked buns, and cooked. We were given 35 rupee per person as well as accommodation so you could buy what you wanted. In Africa, most people also left as the camps were liquidated. If you had nowhere else to go for work then you also returned as a last resort to England. From Africa you went to countries on work contracts.

We arrived in Australia at Fremantle but then they moved us to Northam Camp. Not in Perth. Wiesia went to work straight away. We stayed in barracks with a central kitchen

(Notes from the Australian Archives: The ship ‘General Langfitt’ was chartered by the IRO to transport DPs to Australia. This voyage was the ship’s fourth DP voyage to Australia departing Mombasa Kenya on 3 February 1950 carrying 1179 DPs, the majority were mostly from Europe, Poland and the Baltic countries, in addition to Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia and were composed of single males, single females, married couples and family groups.

The passengers proceeded to the Department of Immigration Reception and Training Centre.)