Edited by Eugeniusz Niebelski
“The Golgotha of the East began for my family (mom, dad, grandma, brother Andrzej and me) on the night of 25.03.1949 in Vilnius…”, recalls a 55-year-old former exile to Eastern Siberia in 2002 who was deported with her entire family when she was just a few years old. This is an excerpt from a letter she wrote to someone close to her in Warsaw, about whom we know nothing. This letter came to me recently from the collection of the late Roland Młynik from Warsaw.
The letter-memoir is about Usol Siberysky (Russian name: Usolie Sibirskoye) on the Angara (the only river flowing out of Baikal and into the Yenisei, which, heading north, joins the Arctic Ocean). Usol is a place known to Siberians since the end of the 18th century because salt was produced there, extracted from brine flowing from several underground springs to the surface of the earth.
Today, salt is still produced there, and one abundant spring still flows freely on the bank of the Angara, where the salty-bitter brine flows directly into the river. Roland Młynik discovered this place many years ago, and I also wandered into Usol much later. We were both interested in this place because of the Polish exiles sentenced there by the tsars in the 19th century – Polish patriots, participants in conspiracies and national uprisings. After 1863, there were several hundred Polish exiles in Usol, important figures in the uprising in the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, among whom there was a large group of doctors, priests, landowners and others. The central figure of the Usol exile circles was then an extraordinary man, Józef Kalinowski from Vilnius, later the Barefoot Carmelite Father Rafał, who nowadays is a saint of the Catholic Church and the patron of Catholic Siberia. For some time now, there have also been Barefoot Carmelites in Usol as they have a monastery on the outskirts of this large (unfortunately ugly) city, where they pray for the world and the Church in Siberia.
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Below we publish a letter from Mrs. Maria from Lidzbark Warmiński, written in March 2002 to her friend, Mrs. Regina from Warsaw.
Lidzbark Warm., 17.03.02
Mrs. Regina
I will describe to you some of my memories from my stay in Siberia; these are the events that have stuck in my mind the most.
The Golgotha of the East began for my family (mom, dad, grandma, brother Andrzej and me) on the night of 25.03.1949, in Vilnius, from where we were taken in a cattle wagon to the East. I don’t remember anything from that journey; I was 3 years old and my brother Andrzej was about 5 months old. We were dropped off at some kolkhoz, where we were dying of hunger and cold. After a year, we were moved to the “Zhyhgorodok” barracks in Usolye-Sibirskoye. It was also cold and there was famine, but all kinds of vermin made life so pleasant – this, I remember well.
My parents had a slightly easier time in the city: dad worked in a pharmacy as a manual labourer (he was a pharmacist by profession), and mum worked in a salt factory. It was hard for them to work in the kolkhoz because they knew nothing about agricultural work.
We were often hungry. In order to have something to eat, my parents managed to bring home a piglet (from where, I don’t remember), which stayed with us in one small room. There were already seven of us as my brother Leon had just been born. The piglet was called “Wasia”; it had its own corner in the room, kept in by a low fence. It was very nice and clean; it would ask for a potty, knocking on the fence with its hooves when it wanted to relieve itself.
The time came when the piglet had grown enough to say goodbye to life. It was killed secretly and quietly. My brother and I cried for Waśka as for someone close (our parents were also sad). It got to the point where no one wanted to eat the meat. Our parents had to lie to us that the meat was not from our piglet. Our parents never again came up with the idea of raising pigs.
I have fond memories of Christmas, especially Christmas Eve, which we always celebrated late in the evening when the adults had returned from work. Before the holidays, we made various toys for the Christmas tree from birchen bark, paper and straw; in the evenings, my mother taught us to sing carols in Polish. The carol “Lulajże Jezuniu” was hardest for us because we couldn’t write it in Russian – we had trouble with the letter “j”. We couldn’t write in Polish. We only spoke Polish at home. We wrote carols on birchen bark.
For Christmas Eve I always invited a classmate whose parents didn’t celebrate this holiday. Christmas Eve was always joyful and nice. We all sang carols and danced by the Christmas tree. My parents tried to make something tasty for supper.
One summer, a beautiful small dog wandered in. We named him “Murzilka”. He ran around the yard with us in the summer and played with us, but one day he disappeared. We looked for him everywhere in vain until we overheard a conversation between adults that our dog had been cooked and was being eaten by a 16-year-old girl with tuberculosis. Again, this was a shock for us. We searched for our dog on the porches of the girl’s house – in vain. However, our dog’s fat did not help – the girl died.
I remember March 1953 – Stalin died. The whole of Usolye-Sibirskoye cried over the great loss; only my mother smiled, and she was right, because life was a little better after that. After a short time we received the first letter from Poland. My mother’s family, who lived in Poland, did not know where we were or what had happened to us.
There was better food. I still remember the taste of fried bacon. We wolfed down those pork scratchings with bread. Later, when I was back in Poland, I asked my mother to fry some bacon, but it was not that particularly tasty bacon anymore. I remember the Siberian winters, which lasted from the end of September to May – frost around -50°C. Walking on the roads in winter was liking walking through a tunnel – there was so much snow piled up on either side. We wore felt boots on our feet and fufajki (my mother sewed them herself), a large, warm scarf tied at the back on our heads. In winter, there was always ice under our beds in our room. In winter, we bought frozen milk. On the other hand, the summer, although very short, was hot and sunny. Many beautiful flowers bloomed wild on Angara Island (some of them grow in our gardens in Poland). In summer, we ran barefoot. On summer evenings, adults gathered in large groups by the barracks, sang songs, played the accordion, brought whatever food they had, drank brashka – something like beer – and had fun. We were in Siberia for over 7 years. We returned to our homeland in July 1956.
Kind reagrds,
Marysia
[…]
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There are probably many letters from exiles from that period. This one may not be a revelation, but it reveals two interesting threads of life in exile there as it is written by an adult, but she sees that world through the eyes of a child who often recorded things that were different than adults: descriptions of pets, children’s favourites, but also the reaction of an adult – the girl’s mother – to the news of Stalin’s death. The letter is also worth noticing because of the place itself, Usol, which is so important in the history of Polish exiles.
Translated by Katarzyna Remża