In memory of my grandfather.

Yesterday, after a strange feeling of dread I sat down an wrote the following. I was going to post it last night but didn’t feel like it. Anyway, here it is.

My grandfather was born around 1900 in a small village in ‘Galacia’ part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was Polish, a farmer with a small-holding. The village was made up of Poles, Ukrainians and Jews. The church was Greek Orthodox.

That village had been in a country called Poland, but 120 years previously Poland was wiped off the map when the Russians, Prussians and Austrians partitioned it between them.

In 1921 the village was once again in Poland as the country was recreated and its borders internationally agreed at the Treaty of Riga.

In September 1939, the Soviets and their Nazi allies invaded Poland and partitioned it between them. My father’s village lay in the Soviet half. After just eighteen years of being in Poland, the village was now in Western Ukraine. After elections in November 1939, 95% of people living in the new Western Ukraine ‘voted’ to join the Soviet Union. My grandfather’s family were now Soviet citizens living in Western Ukraine.

In February 1940 my grandfather answered a knock at the door in the early hours. Three Soviet soldiers accused the family of being ‘enemies of the people.’ They were given 30 minutes to pack and marched 20 km in sub-zero temperatures, herded in cattle wagons of a train that joined a convoy of others crawling east to Siberia. Some died on the five -week journey, corpses thrown from the train, others were worked or starved to death in the gulag. This was the fate of around one million Poles, Ukrainians and Jews who were deported - or as the Soviets called it ‘recycled’ - from Western Ukraine 1940-41.

My grandfather and his family were never heard of again. But one of my grandfather’s young sons got away the morning the soldiers came, escaped to live in the forests eating grass and rats and survived five years of hell. He became my father.

If he hadn’t survived, I wouldn’t be here of course. But for many families in Central and Eastern Europe there we no survivors. Millions of innocent civilians of all nationalities and faiths died appalling deaths - unmarked, unburied, in places unknown, remembered by no one, no crosses, no memorials, no tended graves Nothing at all.

And so, I watch the new war unfold and listen to the experts, politicians, armchair generals and internet warriors. Add together what all of them know about what’s going on and it wouldn’t amount to a fraction of what my father knew.

He told us next to nothing about his parents, sister and brother. But when I was a child, he was very clear about where he came from when I asked him.

“I come from a place that doesn’t exist. Where everyone is dead.”

 

That's a beautiful but chilling post. And you're absolutely right, we know nothing when it comes to the evil that exists and the depths that mankind can stoop to, nor the full extent of what Europe endured for decades under multiple dictators. I really hope we don't get reminded and we can retain some of our ignorance.

 

That is an amazing post. Totally tragic & yet shows the fighting spirit of your father to escape & survive.

I have a friend whose father came over from Hungary after the war & made a life here & there are similar stories of ethnic cleansing.

The last decade has been the most depressing politically in my lifetime, seeing the rise of nationalism & division that has been engineered largely by technology via social media & "fake news" outlets generally. The Russians & Chinese have had a big part in this, but so have the far right in the USA, UK & Europe, that have used them to their own ends.

It seems like we have forgotten what was learned in the times that you recount.

Thanks for sharing the post.

 

It seems wrong to press like, your Dad must have been so strong to survive that and to raise such a thoughtful and compassionate child as you present on the BBS. If the world spent the equivalent of what they spend on the military and arms on health, water supplies, education it could be a very different place.

 

An extremely sobering post. As others have said it feels wrong to press like, wish there was a respect button. The human race has a lot to love and respect, and a lot to despise and abhor. We also seem to fail to learn anything from history.

 

I know its sounds dark and somewhat fatalistic, but I just don't think mankind has a chance.

We're faced with huge challenges, many largely because of mankind. Climate change, scarcity of resources, destruction of biodiversity, pollution on epic levels to air, water and soil, rampant consumerism in the name of profit at all costs and on top of that we're surrounded and governed by greedy psychopaths that lie unencumbered.

Dictators the world over, and a West that's greatly influenced by right leaning media.

How does sanity prevail in the face of such things? Particularly when this lunatic fringe is supported and becoming much more mainstream?

 

Something I wrote for Holocaust Remembrance Day ----

---
Every day for the past few years I've been reading an "On this day 80 years ago" on a history blog.

Every day or so there is something like this entry from 6th July 1941
" In Żółkiew, eastern Poland, SS troops arrive to find the town’s rabbi and Jewish congregation formed up in a welcoming committee. The SS officer shoots the rabbi, then has his troops force the Jews who haven’t fled into the Synagogue and set it on fire."

But it wasn't just the SS doing this, it was regular German army units too. And it wasn't just Germans, when Latvia was occupied there is this entry on the 26th of June 1941
"Numerous pogroms are occurring in the Baltic States of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, in places encouraged by the Germans. Kaunas is the site of the most notorious in which Lithuanian civilians and militia kill up to 3,800 Jews and Poles, including a Rabbi who had is forced to lay his head on a copy of the Talmud and have it sawed off."

And it's occurring in countries where the Germans aren't in control, in Romania, this from 28th June 1941
"Iași (also known as Jassy), Romania, has a large Jewish population. Shortly before Barbarossa, Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu issued an order that "all the Judeo-Communist coffee shops in Moldavia be closed down, all kikes, Communist agents and sympathizers be identified by region...". Yesterday, Antonescu ordered Colonel Constantin Lupu to "cleanse Iași of its Jewish population". 8,000 will be murdered in the initial pogrom with thousands more deported by train to a concentration camp at Târgu Jiu. Many will not survive the train trips, in which they are densely packed in freight cars."

And it wasn't just Jews - in Yugoslavia the collaborationist Croats murdered Muslims, Jews and Roma. In Germany they killed the disabled, the Communists and as many Jews as they could find and the civilian population assisted them in this.

And don't think for one second that if the Germans had crossed the channel that there wouldn't have been those in these islands who would not have joined in, who would not have turned in their fellow English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish men, women and children.

And don't think this is all in the past, there are people out there now who think this is fine, this is acceptable.

We must forever fight against fascism in all it's forms. Be it BNP, National Front, America First, whatever ugly head it shows.
---

And don't think for one second that Putin isn't a fascist because he's Russian and ex KGB.

Putin is a fascist and he will do what all fascists have always done.

 

Apart from his accent you couldn’t tell my old man from any other bloke in Barnsley. Same sense of humour, man of few words, took everything in his stride. But behind all that I could always sense something terrible and dark. He kept it all from us and you can’t blame him. Who’d burden their kids with that kind of horror? (And what I posted is only the beginning). How he brought up three kids in a happy family is beyond me. He had terrible nightmares though.

In terms of education that’s an interesting one. To tell my father’s story in full, casts a shadow over the ‘good vs evil’ story of the Second World War. On arrival in this country in 1946 he was ordered never to speak about what happened to him. Even that event - the arrival of 150,000 Poles and Ukrainians on hundreds of ships from across the Middle East, India and Italy - has been erased from history. The western allies had told too many lies – especially concerning the Russians – and all that could never come out. Don’t know why they bothered. He couldn’t speak English anyway.

 

Your father must be from near to Przemysl, where my very good friend is from. I can't even imagine the horror and have no words to offer, other than thank you for sharing.

 

A chilling heartbreaking story. Never forget.

 

It wasn't just the SS and regular army units, the local police were also involved. Read this if you can find a copy -

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.

 

He certainly was! From a village near Sieniawa near Jarolsaw. Not far away at all. In 39 the border between Soviet and Nazi territory ran along the River San. At Sieniawa it left the river and went north, passing directly through my father’s village. There was a Soviet checkpoint there.

In the words of my father, "If you stay where you are they kill you. If you go somewhere else they kill you. If you go with one side they kill you. If you go with the other side they kill you. What do you do?"

 

I think I've said this before but I'll say it again, it is rapidly looking like the Human race is a plague on this planet and will eventually destroy itself.
Intelligence is an accident of nature which gave our species a massive advantage and has so far ensured it's survival and dominance. Unfortunately that intelligence is looking more and more like it will bring an end to it. How it ends isn't clear, whether it's a massive nuclear war or a slow withering due to dwindling resources, a poisoned environment or a new pandemic, remains to be seen.

Jees, I think I need a beer.

 

I don't disagree with that at all. At the top of the food chain and a complete inability to act how we are needed to act to keep our planet and its non human inhabitants safe.

My missus has suggested being a bit braver and that we try one of our favoured local watering holes that we've not visited for 2 years, Stormbird, at 4pm. So i think i'll accept your beer suggestion!

 

My friend's family all moved to Britain in the late 00s but kept their apartment on in Przemysl, which is in what used to be the ghetto. As it is so close to the Ukraine border we planned to visit Lviv for the day, but Milosz only had an ID card at the time and would have needed a passport to go over the border (by train). We passed through Jarolsaw on the train back to Krakow (via Rzeszów) before flying home. A beautiful part of the world but with an unimaginable past for those who haven't lived it. I can only imagine what your father went through, he must have had incredible strength to get through it and build a new life, and I can't imagine what he carried inside himself. Full respect to him.

 

Stalin was just as bad as Hitler, I always found it tragic and wrong that he never had to pay the price for his horrible crimes. Instead, the Ukrainians are paying that price now, as Putin is daydreaming of some great Russian empire again and trying to follow the example of his idol Stalin.

I wouldn't mind if someone spiced Vlad's afternoon tea with some polonium.

 

I don’t know how he did it either. Makes you think about how we talk about war as well - glorious battles, medals, heroes. My father wasn’t a hero, he was a survivor. Because there are only two kinds of people left at the end of a war. The survivors. And the dead.

 

Indeed. Britain and America ignored Stalin's atrocities. You could argue at the time that had to be done, yet the British refused to acknowledge Soviet responsibility for the Katyn Massacre until the Russians owned up in 1990. As for the Nuremberg Trials, the unspeakable atrocities committed in Warsaw in 1944 during the Uprising were simply ignored as the Soviets didn't want their actions looked into. That those involved in the Wola Massacre could walk way scot free beggars belief.(If there's anyone who doesn't know about Wola I wouldn't advise you to read up on it unless you've a very strong stomach.)

 

Have you seen Louis Theroux's Meet America's new far right? Could only stomach the first few minutes


https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episo...PS_IPLAYER~N~~P_LouisTherouxForbiddenAmerica]

 

And people want to stop refugees coming here.