A Survivor’s Story January 3, 2009

Zygmund today.

This is a feature I wrote about a survivor of a gulag camp in Siberia during the second world war. 

 

       Zygmund Kawczynski holds his pale, veiny hand about six inches off the table face.

       “If I tell you my whole story, you gonna need a book like this.”

            “I’ll start with this,” he says. “In Russia, before the war, you talk, you open you mouth same like here, in America- as much as you want. Now in Russia you can open your mouth…but only, only when you go to dentist.”

            Kawczynski is now 78 years old. At the age of 10 he was arrested and taken from his home in Mlynow, Poland in the district of Wolyn during World War II, and placed in a slave labor camp in Siberia, becoming a part Stalin’s statistic. Those arrested, relocated and murdered during his reign. A man of small stature, just about five feet tall, he sits calmly facing me, focusing. He is wearing dress loafers and ironically enough, short ankle socks which read U.S.A. in lime green thread.

       “These is girls socks,” he says laughing and pointing to his feet. “Silly. I love America. No one here calls you a bloody foreigner, not like in Russia or England or Poland. Here everyone is foreign. The only real one is Indian, Native American. Not Indian, they own the gas stations.”

       Before the war, he says he lived peacefully with his father, mother and sister on their farm in Poland, where they grew apples and raised horses, cows and pigs. His family had an orchard of about 350 apple trees where city men would travel to buy their fruit.

       “That was before the war,” he says. “I will never forget the night they arrested us. They knock at the door; I was sleeping at 5 in the morning. I was a little boy, they tell me and my family ‘20 minutes to pack up.’ They tell you that, what you gonna bring with you?”

       Kawczynski said his father had heard of the Russian army arresting people nearby that winter in 1939, and he was prepared. He brought clothes, flour, blankets and some food for his family. Then the Russians put the Kawczynski family along with other “criminals” on horse drawn sleds and brought them to a train station in Poland.

       From here, he says they were forced onto a train and taken far away to what was called Kotwuz, but is known by many today as Siberia. The journey lasted more than two weeks, with frequent and long stops, which sometimes lasted for days at a time. Conditions on the train were unsanitary and food was not given to the prisoners, many of whom died from starvation or disease. The Russian Army locked the doors to the train cars and did not allow the Polish prisoners to stand up or go outside to go to the bathroom.

“This was no passenger train,” he says pointing a long wrinkled finger. “This was cattle train, cow train. They stack these people up on planks. You die, they don’t care on this train, they throw you out the window into the snow.”

Once the tracks ran out passengers were allowed off the train he says, stuttering, his speech a confused jumble of Polish and English, which he consciously corrects. Prisoners were taken into a large, abandoned church in Siberia, snow covered from the winter. Here the prisoners were given a piece of bread each and some water. They were again relocated and brought to barracks the army had built for their imprisonment in the Siberian forest. In the forest there were many Polish and Russian prisoners forced to live and work their lives away.

“There is no prison in Russia” he says. “No. Instead of prison they sent you to slave camp, you work your way but you can’t ever escape from there. Where you gonna go? It’s wintertime. There’s wolves and bears out there that will eat you. In summer there’s big mosquitoes like a finger, they bite you and that’s it. Its here or you dead.”

Each day the children prisoners were sent to schools run by the Russian Army. The adults of the camp were sent to work and cut timber in the forest for houses and fire. After school each day, Kawczynski says he and his younger sister Susan cut wood together with a large saw. In school the teachers preached propaganda to the students and instilled in them that all Russians “were the best.”

They were taught the inventor of the locomotive was a Russian, he says.

“The teachers were criminals too,” he says. “They’re not bad though, not even criminals. They just teach what Russians say. The only criminals is Stalin himself and his police, but they have an order to do it. You do it or else you finished.”

 The children and adults had to go to school and work daily, or else they were punished. The barracks were freezing and had tick-like red bugs that would bite the prisoners while they slept. At night, they were given a slice of bread for each person in the family. On occasion the families were given soup made of only fish heads and tails. The rest of the fish were given to the army, he says.

One day Kawczynski remembers that he and his father were so hungry they both skipped school and work to go fishing nearby. Prisoners were permitted to fish, but only after their duties for the day were completed. They caught a big fish and brought it home to the family. That night, he says, the Russian guards came yelling and looking for his father.

“They knew he was not at work and I was not in the school,” he says. “They take my father and put him in a huge cage and lock it. He can’t sleep, eat, nothing- for five days straight. They take him out and make him work right away after that. No food,” he says, banging a palm down on his knee. His eyes are angry, although is face is worn and tired.

Kawczynski says he and his family were contained in the Siberian barracks for nearly two years. Then, in 1941 when Hitler invaded Russia, all prisoners were given amnesty. The prisoners hardly knew what to do with their newfound liberty, he says. His father and another family made a raft from some wood tied together and traveled down a shallow nearby river. They arrived at a big warehouse where the Russians provided them with shelter for a few days and some grains and food. Although they were freed, the Russian army still controlled their movement. It was unsafe for a family to remain in one place for too long.

The food was guarded at all times. The police locked it up with a key, which they mistakenly left in the lock one evening. Kawczynski said his father had him go fetch the key at night when the guards slept, and they made a copy of it with homemade soap. The next night when everyone was sleeping, they snuck back into the warehouse and stole food for their family. They stayed in the warehouse for four days until they were again forced to move.

They traveled further down the river with five other families, who all tied their rafts together and fought to survive. Many Jews were who fleeing the war died from lack of food, their bodies left floating in the river, he says showing little emotion. He says he has seen many die from the war, one body no different than the next.

The families arrived at a train station after weeks of traveling together at Kratnuvortz, where they all boarded a train. He says it was very similar to the train in which they were previously transported to Siberia on, with all the passengers crowded together and starved. However this time, morale was high to join the war effort and fight, to escape their situation. His father planned to meet up and join the Polish army.

With many passengers, the train made frequent stops. The conductor never alerted passengers of his plans to take off again. One day, Kawczynksi says his father got off the train at a stop to get water for his family and possibly some food.

“My father, he was in the store,” he says. “The bloody train left. It just leaves, never tells nobody to get on, nothing. He chased us for about two weeks; we thought we would never see him again. He never got back on.”

Making a map on the table with his hands, he says his mother always made him and his sister travel with her at stops after that. She too missed the train at a stop on their journey. He says the three of them got off at a stop to try to find food once again. It was getting late, and she told the children to get back on board the train, and that she would be right there. Then he says the train took off soon after.

“We go to get food or drink, because there is nothing,” he says. “Then my mother miss the train too, just like my father. She runs to get on and some Russian, he kick her in the head. He doesn’t want her in there, saying ‘there’s no room.’ But she fights back and gets on the last car. We thought she wasn’t going to make it, she was running and running to catch up.”

He says his mother barely showed emotion at the separation of her husband from the family.

“How can she be upset?” he says. “You can’t feel no more you just survive. That’s all you did then. Try to live.”

The train took the three Kawczynskis to Kazakhstan and then Uzbekistan, where a new Polish army was forming. At a train station there, he says his mother stopped off to get water. At this particular stop, the family got one of the biggest surprises of their journey.

“There were two trains. One going this way, one going that way,” he says, crossing his arms and pointing left and right. “My father, he was on this train. He see my mother through the glass, hops off and he found us. We couldn’t believe it.”

They lived together in Uzbekistan for a short while, the minority among the Islamic community. He says the Muslims did not want the Polish prisoners living on their land. Here, they still suffered with little to eat or drink. One day, Kawczynski said he witnessed his Muslim neighbors burying a donkey in the fields. He told his father about it, and that night they dug it up to eat for dinner.

“There was already maggots in there,” he says. “But my father, he clean it up and we eat this donkey. We hadn’t eaten meat in three years already, we didn’t care.”

He said the Muslims found out that his family had dug up and ate the donkey and came looking to fight them, for touching their property.

“This Islam guy, he come looking for me with a big sword,” he says. “He want to cut me up. But I hid, he didn’t find me or my family.”

The family reunion did not last long, he says. His father joined the Polish army and left for Iran to fight. Kawczynski, his mother, and sister traveled on their own next to the Amodaria River. One month later, they too left for Iran on a ship with the other prisoners. The Russians were constantly relocating them, he says.

At the time, it was 1942 and they were living in Teheran for a few months when he learned his father had died in Iran from dysentery. Soon after his mother became ill with the same bacterial disease. He says he believes it was from all of the bad food they were eating during the war. A friend Kawczynski says he found in Teheran, who was working in an army hospital there, nursed her back to health. She stole food and medicine for his mother to save her life.

Kawczynski says he began to work at the hospital in Teheran as well, in order to support his family.

“The sick people, the soldiers. They want vodka and cigarettes,” he says. “I was a little boy, so I run around and get it for them and bring it back, and they pay me. It was my first job.”

He says this was one of the most important times in his life. At the age of twelve, he fell in love for the first time he says, smiling.

“I met my first girlfriend, this I never forget,” he says scratching his baldhead, which reflects the light overhead. “If you kick me in the night, I still can wake up and remember her name- Irena Bodszynska. But we were moving to India and she was going someplace else. Mamma mia, what could I do? I left her there.”

He says he and his family lived in Bombay, India for about two months before being relocated to Africa. From there they then lived in North Rhodesia, where he says he was the happiest he remembers being during the war. He attended school with his sister and was given proper clothes and food for the first time in years.

When he was about fourteen years old, he says he decided he wanted to become a pilot after hearing requests for young people to join the forces. Much to his dismay, Kawczynski says he failed the piloting test due to his bad knees. Instead, he began to attend a college in Livingston, North Rhodesia. He moved away from his family for the first time.

“I don’t know why I failed the test, still to this day, they say it was my knees, but I don’t know,” he says. “I was so sad, but instead I go to college to learn.”

After a few years in Livingston, he decided to join the Navy. They accepted him and shipped the new sailors to Cape Town, South Africa. From here they set sail for the first time as a part of the British Royal Navy.

“We got the uniforms and everything,” Kawczynski says. “Then they say ok we gonna ship you to England, and we go again. I’ve been everywhere I tell you.”

Once in England, he attended an academy for the Merchant Marines. After being shipped out once again to Sierra Leone, he and his fellow seamen got word that the war had ended. He sailed back to England, where he attended another college, this time for mechanics.

“After the war, they change the rules,” he says. “They say this is no good, that’s no good, they closed down my college. So instead of Merchant Marines, I learn to be a mechanic.”

Although Kawczynski found himself learning yet another trade, his mother and sister were stuck in Africa. The war was over, however, there was no way to reunite the family.

After two years of work as a mechanic, he says he had to do something to get his family back together. He heard about men joining the Polish army to have their family brought back over. Since the war had ended, he decided it was safe to join the forces.

“I join up, and I get the papers to bring my family back over here,” he says pointing to the imaginary map he has made on the table. “I work in Liverpool and translate at a college for the Russian and Polish people. My mother and sister, they so happy. They come live with me here, my mother remarry and my sister gets married too.”

His mother and sister were not the only ones to find love in England. At the age of 23, Kawczynski says he fell in love with an Italian woman and married her after only seven days together.

“She speak no English and no Polish and I speak no Italian,” he says. “But after one whole year, she learn to speak two languages from us.”

The two began to start a family of their own, and Kawczynski says he worked many different trades to support his family after the war. The newly expanded Kawczynski family set their sights on moving out of England to look for a better life. With six children, this was no easy task.

He says he first looked to move to New Zealand. His plans were stopped in their tracks, however, because you could only take four children with you if you planned on moving there.

Next, the family planned to move to America together. Although they knew it would be a better life for the family, Kawczynski says he was fearful of relocating.

“Moving to America with six kids and no job?” he asks. “Oh it was looking a bloody bad. Very scary. But I move there on the twenty second of December 1969, and what do you know, I get a job on the twenty third!” he says laughing. “ I knew many different things and many trades. I knew we would be okay. We have to be.”

He says he worked many different jobs in America and learned plenty of new trades. Kawczynski says he worked as a welder, watchmaker, photographer, shoemaker, plumber and electrician, chuckling as he rattles off all his former jobs.

“Everything. I was everything I tell you.”

In his lifetime, Kawczynski has traveled to twenty-three different countries and has resided in ten. He says he feels this has impacted who he is today and changed him greatly as a person.

“You look at the life a different way than how I look at the life,” he says honestly.  “I see the poor countries, I see the rich people. I’ve been the poor people and I tell you this is what happens. If you go hungry in your life, you see things differently, not like in America. Here you are lucky, you are born with corn in the mouth.”