Mariola Serafin
One day, when I was sitting in a Bethlehem cafe with local friends and friends of friends, one of the boys asked a question: Do you know “compote”? It was an introduction to an adventure with the history of the Polish II Corps, Polish refugees in Palestine and the traces of “little Poland” they created there – longing for their homeland and fighting for its independence. It also gave rise to a friendship with the most Polish of all Palestinian families, and it contributed to preserving a poignant war story which had started in a town near Lviv and ended in Bethlehem.
All Bethlehem called her the Polish woman
The question about compote was asked by Samer Baboun. As it turned out, he is the grandson of Janina Kubacka, who had unfortunately passed away. Janka, as she was called by the household members, was proud of her Polish origin. The Polish flag fluttered on the front of her house, although after World War II she never had the opportunity to leave the Palestinian Authority and visit her homeland even for a short time. The whole of Bethlehem simply called her the “Polish woman”. There was a lot of talk about her because she was socially active and was known as a person very involved in the affairs of those in need.
Janina’s father, Jan Kubacki, was born in the village of Lany near Lviv and lived in nearby Bibrka. Later, he moved to Brzozdowice (also in the Lviv region), where he worked as a policeman. There, in 1925, Janina was born and later attended school. When Christmas was approaching, she used to bake cookies with her mother, and together they would go to wish neighbours Merry Christmas. This was one of the few good memories of her childhood that she shared. Her mother died before the war, and her father remarried. When the war broke out, Janina had already had two half-siblings.
And then the Soviets invaded…
The Soviets invaded Poland on 17 September 1939, and it was the beginning of an ordeal for the family. Jan Kubacki was a policeman, so he was arrested shortly after the occupiers arrived. Years later, one of Janina’s daughters recalled that, some time after his arrest, they were told that they could visit him in prison. But Jan’s wife was sick, so Jasia went in her place. There was a long line of people waiting outside the jail, but no one was allowed in and it was a frosty day. At some point, an NKVD officer came out to the waiting people and informed them that there would be no visits. Janina, being very small in stature, managed to climb through a side windows and to move to an inner corridor. There, an NKVD member quickly found her and punched her in the face so hard that she lost consciousness. She woke up in someone’s office, where another NKVD member asked her what she had been doing there. When she said that she had been looking for her father, he told her to wait. After more than an hour of waiting, uncertain of what would happened to her, the NKVD member brought her dad, whom she barely recognized. Although he was less than forty years old, during the forty days of detention he had turned completely gray and was terribly thin. As she used to say, her father could fit two men in his trousers. It was their last meeting.
Deportations in the shadow of crime
Responsibility for maintaining the house then fell to two women: Janina, who was growing up, and her adoptive mother. They had to support themselves and two small children. When the mass deportations of families of uniformed services to Siberia began, Janina’s family was warned of the danger that awaited them. It was most likely 13 April 1940, because that is when the deportations of the families of army officers and uniformed services officers began, including families of policemen, whom the Soviets murdered at the same time in Katyn, Kharkiv, Mednoye, Bykivnia and other places.
The women agreed that the stepmother would take the younger children and some belongings to a safe place, and Janina would look after the house in her absence. She had a large dog as a guardian and protector . At night, in the absence of other family members, the Soviets came. However, the dog successfully defended the entrance to the yard, so the Soviets shot it. This scene was indelibly imprinted in the memory of this young girl. It was one of the few stories from those times to which she often returned in her memory. The Soviets tried to ask her about the whereabouts of other family members, but she did not give them up. She supposedly replied that they were all dead.
A lonely wander to Siberia
And so her lonely wandering to Siberia began: first by train, and then by horse-drawn carts. At her deportation destination, she worked growing potatoes. There was a time when she got very sick. She was looked after by another deportee who, despite her young age, treated Janina like a daughter. Maybe because they were both lonely, they supported each other. In her memoirs, Janina called her “a magnificent lady”. Apparently, she was distinguished by high personal culture and manners, which she did not lose in the realities of the kolkhoz.
Janina never found out what happened to the other members of her family, although she repeatedly asked Poles visiting Bethlehem for help in finding them.
In April 2021, Samer called me unexpectedly and said that he had been crying all week. In the course of looking for traces of his own family in the wartime history of Poland, he found out about the Katyn Massacre. On the so-called Ukrainian list, he found the name of his great-grandfather, Jan Karol Kubacki, who had been murdered and buried in Bykivnia. Samer wanted to go to his great-grandfather’s grave and pray but first the pandemic and then the outbreak of war in Ukraine prevented this idea.
Evacuation from the Soviet hell
Another fragment of Janina’s fate in the Soviet Union can only be reconstructed on the basis of many similar stories. On 30 July 1941, the so-called Sikorski-Mayski Agreement was signed, under which Poles imprisoned in prisons, camps and places of deportation in the USSR were covered by an amnesty. Another consequence of the restoration of diplomatic relations between Poland and the USSR was the military agreement of August 14, under which General Władysław Anders began to form an army that was to consist of Polish citizens; it would be operationally subordinate to the Soviet command, and organizationally and personally subordinate to the Polish Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. Prisoners of war were first recruited, then volunteers. It is known that Janina joined a Junak Military School, which was run by Anders’ Army.
In February 1942, Stalin began to demand that the 5th Vilnius Infantry Division, which was the only one to be fully armed, be sent to the front. This made other units dependent on its equipment. General Anders strongly opposed this. The test of strength had begun. Although the number of volunteers for the army was still increasing, Stalin did not agree to its enlargement, nor to sending the surplus to the Polish Army in the East or to Great Britain, despite the fact that food rations came from American and British supplies. Meanwhile, apart from volunteers, women with children as well as old and sick men who were unable to undertake military service also came to the army. Food rations were shared among them all, so there was less and less food per person. The Poles also did not get uniforms or weapons. Stalin, refusing to enlarge the Polish Army, wanted to retain as much cheap labour as possible in the Soviet Union. The talks that started in the spring of 1942 led to two large evacuation operations of soldiers and civilians (at the beginning of April and September) through Pahlavi in Iran, with a short episode in Iraq. Together with Anders’ Army, Janina reached Palestine too.
Palestine was an asylum
For many Poles, Palestine was an asylum at that time: first of all, for those who managed to escape in 1939, immediately after the German and Soviet attack on Poland; then, in 1942, they were joined by the aforementioned soldiers of the II Corps of the Polish Armed Forces and the civilians who came with them. In Palestine, they found their “Little Poland”. The beginning of the 20th century was a favorable time for many Jews from Central and Eastern Europe to migrate. They went to the land of their ancestors as pioneers to lay the foundations of a dream homeland that they practically never had. Many of the Jewish pioneers spoke Yiddish, but also many spoke Polish. Freedmen from the Soviet Union, who under the leadership of General Anders went through exotic Persia and Iraq, felt “at home” in Palestine. The first wave of Polish refugees from 1939 and the Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade were already there. People exchanged war experiences, and in the streets one could often hear conversations conducted in Polish with a melodious Jewish accent. Jews approached Poles and asked about towns and villages they remembered from their stay in Poland. They asked about districts, streets and even specific people. Many shop windows and signboards invited their customers in Polish.
She did not want to be a driver
In 1943, Janina was already 18 years old and had crossed the threshold of adulthood. She joined the Women’s Auxiliary Service. She had a choice: learn to be a driver (Polish girls later became famous as drivers in Italy) or become a nurse. She chose the latter option. While in the army, she met her first husband, Łój. As spouses, they left for Italy to take part in the battles for Monte Cassino.
Unfortunately, Janina’s husband died in the fighting and she, as a pregnant widow, returned to Jerusalem. She gave birth to a daughter, Krysia. One day, when she was walking through the streets of Jerusalem, an Arabs from Bethlehem took a liking to her, after which he tried to approach and talk to her many times. Usually in such situations, Polish soldiers stood up for their compatriots and chased away trouble-makers. However, Ibrahim Baboun’s determination was so great that the Polish soldiers finally let them get to know each other. Janina and Ibrahim fell in love and got married. Ibrahim came from a respected family of Arab Christians in Bethlehem. He wanted the Bethlehem community to accept not only his Polish wife, but also her daughter. So he used a trick, and for the first few years of their marriage they lived not in Bethlehem but in a small village where Ibrahim worked as a car mechanic. They lived in a small apartment at the back of the workshop.
When Krysia had grown up a bit, they returned to Bethlehem and registered her as his child. This saved the family from social ostracism because adopting someone else’s children was not accepted in the Arab world, even among Christians. Yes, there were adoptions, but they mostly concerned orphaned family members. In Bethlehem, Ibrahim also ran a car repair shop with great success. They built a large house, which still serves the next generations.
Hanna, so Jan
The Babouns had five morechildren. They named their eldest son Hanna, which is the Arabic equivalent of the Polish name Jan. Janina wanted to honor her father’s memory in this way.
Janina was very active socially and in cultural and aid organizations, one result of which was the construction of a retirement home in Bethlehem. Such institutions are not common in the Arab environment, where the duty of taking care of the elderly rests with the eldest son, which unfortunately is not always possible. As a token of gratitude, a memorial plaque dedicated to her was placed in the nursing home.
Tangible proof of how a child of a mixed family found a place in the Bethlehem community may be the fact that Hanna Baboun’s wife, Vera, Samer’s mother, was elected the mayor of the city.
During meetings with family and friends, Janina’s children are able to remember only a few Polish words. “pieniążki” [small coins], “zdrówko” [cheers] , and the beginning of the children’s prayer: “Aniele Boży, Stróżu mój, ty zawsze przy mnie stój…” [Oh angel of God my guardian dear. To whom His love commits me here. Ever this day be at my side]. The grandchildren said that from their childhood spent with their grandmother, they remembered how she made a swing using her own legs: she put one leg over the other and then put the child on her foot and rocked it. This type of fun was not known in Palestine. Today, Samer rocks his three children like this.
Another memory connected with grandma Janka – as was mentioned previously – is compote. She bottled it in jars, which is also not known in Palestine. Samer said that he sneaked into the pantry, unscrewed the jars, and ate the syrup-drenched fruit.
To visit the great-grandfather’s grave
In February 1947, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin handed over the administration of Palestine to the United Nations. This was the first step in the creation of the state of Israel. One of the conditions for its creation was the removal of the British from Palestine, and with them the Polish Army and Polish schools that operated with the Army. Polish civilians also had to leave Palestine. As a result, the fate of many Poles hung in the balance. For many military men, it was impossible to return to Poland because they were threatened with arrest and repressions. Many military or civilians had nowhere to return to because their former homes were beyond the post-war borders of the country. Most people chose to emigrate. Janina was already married at that time, so she stayed with her new family. Her home, after the final division of the state into Israel and the Palestinian Authority, found itself in the latter. She never managed to obtain a Polish passport and – having only a Palestinian document – she never got a visa to Poland.
Her children and grandchildren know the history of Poland very well. You can discuss Polish matters with them for hours, and I must admit that these are in-depth conversations with a good sense of Polish matters. More than once, I was ashamed of my own ignorance and their insight. The generation of grandchildren dreams of going to both Poland and the Eastern Borderlands, and in particular to see Lviv and visit the grave of Jan’s great-grandfather in Bykivnia. I would love to accompany them on this journey as it would be a beautiful conclusion to a story that started with a seemingly simple question about compote.
Mariola Serafin (PhD) is a biblical scholar, traveller and tourist guide. She works at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw
Translated by Sylwia Szarejko