An Unexpected Find

It has been an exceptionally long time since I posted anything here.                 

In early 2023 my sister Charlotte and I lost our dear mum, Juliet. She was 93 years old and had been unwell for several months. It was a difficult time for all the family of course and difficult too to get down to concentrating on the diaries again – especially because as the year went on, there were more and more things that needed to be sorted out and dealt with.

Last year however, I eventually finished translating the final sections of Józef’s diaries and am currently checking over and editing everything I’ve done.

Until I translated the diaries, I knew nothing of the journey he undertook or the obstacles he encountered. In the coming months I would like to share with you some more excerpts about Józef’s remarkable journey as he endeavoured to travel west across Europe – like so many of his compatriots – to reach the Polish army in exile in France.

Before I do that however, I would like to share with you something interesting that I found amongst my mother’s belongings, especially interesting in view of the current commemorations for the 80^th anniversary of VE Day.

In a box of papers and photos I found the envelope you can see in the photo. It is addressed to Adam Gawlikowski who had been interned in Winterthur in Switzerland at the same time as my father. Clearly the letter never reached Adam Gawlikowski and somehow was returned and reached Józef via the PO box address he had written on the back of the envelope, and as was the norm at that time, it had been opened by censors at some point.

Initially because of the very thin airmail paper I thought the envelope was empty but was thrilled to find inside all 3 pages of a letter in my father’s handwriting – in Polish of course!

The date on his letter is 9.5.45 after which he wrote: “at 8 in the evening, that is V-Day”. While VE-Day is celebrated in Western Europe on 8^th May, due to the difference in time zones it was in the early hours of 9^th May that Russia declared the war to be over and they referred to it as V-Day.

At that time Józef was stationed in Scotland. Initially, I thought from the London PO box address at the top of the letter, that he must have been visiting London and had written the letter while there. Eventually however, with the help of my daughter Louise we managed to make out the very faded postmarks on the envelope as Inverurie, Aberdeen which is near to where he was stationed at the time.

Much of the letter is about his adjustment to life in Great Britain and into his role as doctor at the army camp. He also details his largely failed attempts to contact other Poles he had met and got to know on his long journey from the front line in eastern Poland to his new life here.  

His comments at the start of the letter though, are clearly about the atmosphere at the camp. Interestingly Radek Sikorski, the current Polish Foreign Minister, spoke on the radio today May 8^th, about the fact that in Poland this day is not celebrated as it is in this country, as in his words “it is the day when German Nazi occupation was exchanged for Soviet totalitarianism which remained for the next 45 years”. At the time when Józef wrote his letter he and his fellow Poles were very likely reflecting on the appalling events of the previous six years and the knowledge that Russia was now in control of their homeland.

Here is just a little of what he wrote:

My dears

At last I’m getting down to writing something to you, not knowing if the letter will find you in the face of such sudden changes. They are celebrating victory here but not amongst our compatriots and all in all it’s a little too quiet. Forgive me for not writing but time passes so quickly and I got so caught up in the work that I completely forgot about correspondence. At first I didn’t know where I would settle, but once I received my assignment the work was in full swing and I didn’t notice the end of the day approaching. It suits me well. All agree that the mood is improving here. I have the impression that everything will be completely fine. I wrote to Rojek and he gave me Tadeusz’s address but that was the end of it. I wouldn’t really expect anything different. I think they were all easier to find in Switzerland than here….

[…]

I seem to be forgetting about them too, because I am better off among my kind hearted patients, in the midst of this varied work where a fellow slowly regains his independence, his freedom, his sense of his own individuality and so on. […]

Greetings to everyone, Józek

I know this is jumping way ahead in terms of what I have put on the blog so far of Józef’s journey. But as his letter was written on the 9^th May exactly 80 years ago, it seems appropriate while so many people are commemorating this time in history and sharing their memories of WW2.

I will return very soon to pick up his journey from when his unit was disbanded on 20^th September 1939.