Opening of the Exhibit “Portraits of the Prisoners of War”
70th anniversary of the
outbreak of WW-II
On the 1st of September
2009, Poland was commemorating the 70th anniversary of the
German invasion and of the official out-brake of the World War II. On the
17th of September was observed the anniversary of the
unexpected and traitorous entry from the east, without declaring the war,
of the Red Army of the Soviet Union. A large portion of the Polish Army
was regrouping at that time in that area, called “Kresy” or Eastern
borderlands, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kresy)
to continue further fighting against the Germans. The military situation
was unclear – were these visitors friends or foes? The definitive orders
were missing – should the “liberators” be cooperated with or defensive
action should be taken? Ultimately, about 650,000 of polish soldiers were
taken prisoners and a quarter of a million of them became Soviet
prisoners. As it is well known, over twenty five thousands of officers and
state functionaries were killed on Stalin orders a few months later in
Katyñ and in other location (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre).
One of the prisoners in the east
of Poland was Zbigniew Wajszczuk from Siedlce. He served in September of
1939 in a tabor (supply) unit. He was captured in Tarnopol and later was
placed in a prisoner-of-war camp of the Równe complex, which was run by
the NKVD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_prisoners_of_war_in_the_Soviet_Union_(after_1939).
The POW’s were put to work on the construction of a road and subsequently
in a stone quarry. After German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941,
following the Sikorski-Majski agreement, he was released and traveled to
the site of formation by Gen. Anders of the Polish Army on the Soviet
territory and with this Army crossed later to Persia (Iran) and then Iraq
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Armed_Forces_in_the_East).
He then underwent a special commando training in Italy as a “cichociemny”
(The Dark and Silent -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cichociemni), took part in the Italian
campaign and, after graduating from the Artillery School, received a rank
of a second lieutenant. After the end of the war he was transferred to
England, got married and not wanting to return to Poland, again under the
Soviet rule, emigrated in 1951with his family to Argentina.
We were contacted at the beginning
of June of this year by the employees of the Central Museum of the
Prisoners of War in £ambinowice-Opole. They requested our permission to
use the previously published information regarding Zbigniew (//www.wajszczuk.pl/english/drzewo/tekst/0062zbigniew.htm)
and asked for copies of the documents and photographs to be used in the
planned temporary exhibit entitled “Portraits of the Prisoners of War” to
be opened at the museum on the anniversary of the Soviet invasion on
September 17. The requested materials were gathered with the help of
Zbigniew’s family in Argentyna and cousins in Poland – Teresa Jaroszynska
in Lublin (0097)
and Alina Filipkowska in Warsaw (0072)
as well as of Pawel Stefaniuk, the webmaster of our Family Tree (www.wajszczuk.pl),
Zbigniew’s son Adan (0063)
and his eldest daughter Ana (0064)
arrived from Argentina for the opening of the exhibit accompanied by his
niece, Alina Filipkowska and her husband from Warsaw (//www.wajszczuk.pl/english/drzewo/059piotr.htm#0062).
Pawel Stefaniuk came from the far away Drelów to document on photographs
and tape this important event.
We wish to express our thanks to
the administration and to all employees of the Museum, and in particular
to our contact persons – Przemys³aw Jagie³a, M.S. and Renata Kobylarz,
Ph.D. for their hard work and commitment to the preparing of this Exhibit
and to the cause of preserving memories of the persons, who are dear to us
as well as for the hospitality extended to the members of our family, who
participated in this ceremony.
Central Museum of the Prisoners of War
in £ambinowice-Opole
Temporary exhibit: “Portraits of the Prisoners”
http://www.cmjw.pl/www/index_gb.php?id=wstep
(held at the Museum of the Opolian Silesia, Sept.17. – Oct. 13, 2009)
http://www.muzeum.opole.pl/index.php?setlng=en&PHPSESSID=2ee49d564a6080394866dc7ac40b00f2
click to enlarge
See also
Ana Wajszczuk from Buenos Aires has
submitted the text below on 01/25/2010:
Nadie viene solo al mundo: nos rodea la familia que, tengamos o no al
lado, nos rodea con su historia como el vientre en el que estuvimos
nueve meses. Padres, abuelos, bisabuelos, tatarabuelos: sus historias,
su vida, su origen nos hace ser quien somos, está en nosotros como está
la misma sangre: su retrato es también nuestro retrato. El sendero que
recorren desemboca en lo que somos. Sus historias son también
la Historia.
Todas estas cosas pensé un mediodía de otoño polaco en el Museo de
la Ciudad de Opole, mientras
con mi papá y su prima Alina recorríamos una y otra vez la exhibición de
fotos que estaba a punto de inaugurarse. No era simplemente la
incredulidad y la alegría de volver a visitar Polonia, volver a caminar
los lugares donde mi familia dejó sus pisadas, conocer a los parientes
lejanos que en un punto –esa historia, ese origen- se vuelven cercanos
con una cercanía inexplicable. Era que esa huella se volvía nítida: mi
abuelo, Zbigniew Ireneusz Wajszczuk, y la vida que lo llevó de Varsovia
a Quilmes, eran protagonistas, junto a otras cinco historias, de la
muestra Retratos de Prisioneros de Guerra que inauguró ese mediodía en
el moderno museo de piedra caliza y ventanales de vidrio.
Invitados por los curadores a la muestra, mi papá y yo emprendimos
durante una semana un viaje juntos por Polonia que vamos a recordar
toda nuestra vida. Primero, una soleada Varsovia, ciudad que me parece
mía cuando apenas la visité dos veces: será, otra vez, ese origen
inexplicable de donde venimos y los sitios que forman parte de un pasado
que no conocimos pero que de alguna manera misteriosa sigue latiendo en
algún lugar recóndito dentro de uno. Luego Siedlce, el pueblo donde
están enterrados mis tatarabuelos, y sus hijos, y los hijos de sus
hijos, y el recuerdo de las flores rojas y las velas blancas que les
ofrecimos como homenaje a quienes hicieron con sus huellas el camino que
hoy piso.
Y el destino del viaje –además de un viaje al centro de la propia
historia- nos llevó a Opole, donde el Museo de
la Ciudad organizó junto al
Museo Central de Prisioneros de Guerra en Lambinowice- Opole la muestra
de fotos que rescató la historia de mi abuelo de muchos años de
silencios heredados y aprendidos.
La historia de mi abuelo Ireneo, como le decíamos sus nietos,
había sido seleccionada como ejemplo de las miles de historias de los
anónimos protagonistas polacos de
la II Guerra. Como una manera
de contar la Historia desde las mínimas historias personales, encarnadas
en las fotos que sobrevivieron a esas mismas historias para sesenta años
después estar en el Museo de la Ciudad de Opole, cada una la pieza
irreemplazable sin la cual el rompecabezas de la Historia, parecían
decirnos a los que las mirábamos, no puede armarse. Allí estaba historia
de mi abuelo: sus fotos de juventud, los ojos azules de su hermana que
nunca conocí, los bigotes imponentes de mi bisabuelo, las fotos de su
casamiento y de mi padre bebé, el dibujo de la larga marcha a Siberia,
la pipa que talló mientras estaba prisionero y los documentos que lo
reconocían segundo teniente, las fotografías con el uniforme que lo
llevó del desierto de Egipto a las prácticas militares en Italia, de su
pueblito de Siedlce a Quilmes, del exilio en Inglaterra a la Argentina,
de su alias “Mís 2” al castellanizado “abuelo Ireneo”.
Vida entre las cientos de miles de vidas sin grandes condecoraciones ni
homenajes, vidas como las cientos de miles de vidas anónimas que
pelearon y sufrieron y también murieron por Polonia, apenas el retrato
de seis vidas entre los seiscientos cincuenta mil que fueron prisioneros
polacos de guerra en esos años.
Mirando las fotos de mi abuelo, y también las de Zofia y Jósef, Henryk,
Stanislaw y otro Josef, como si todas se vieran a través de una lupa de
aumento, y de repente cobraran vida por sí mismas – cada foto queriendo
contar una y mil historias que mi abuelo nunca contó en vida- , entendí
que las fotos que quedaron ERAN, todas ellas, la
Historia con mayúsculas. Y mientras a mi alrededor hablaban en ese
idioma tan extraño como cercano, sentí que era absolutamente imposible
contar la historia de esa época y la historia de Polonia sin la
historia de mi abuelo Zbigniew Ireneusz Wajszczuk.
Ana Wajszczuk
Buenos Aires, diciembre de 2009.
Ana – letter, English (Dec., 2009)
Nobody comes alone into this world: we are surrounded by the family,
whether or not we have them at our side, it surrounds us with their
history, like a womb in which we were for nine months. Parents,
grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents: their
histories, their lives, their origin make us what we are, it is in us -
just as we have the same blood; their picture is also our picture. The
path they travel flows into what we are. Their history is also The
History.
I thought about all this at noon time of the polish autumn day at the
Museum of the city of Opole, while with my dad and his cousin Alina
visiting the exhibit of photos that was about to be opened. It was not
simply the disbelief and the joy to be able to visit Poland once again, to
visit again the places, where my family left their footprints, meet the
distant relatives, but that also at one point – that history, that origin
– became close with an inexplicable nearness. It was that these footprints
became clear: my grandfather Zbigniew Ireneusz Wajszczuk, and the life
which took him from Warsaw to Quilmes, together with five other
representative histories, were the protagonists to the exhibit of the
Portraits of the Prisoners of War that was inaugurated that mid-afternoon
in a modern museum constructed of limestone with large glass windows.
Invited by the curators of the exhibit, my father and I embarked on a
one-week trip to Poland, which we will remember all our lives. At first, a
sunny Warsaw, a city that feels like home although I visited it only
twice: it will be again that inexplicable origin, from where we come and
the places which form a part of our past that we do not know, but which
for some mysterious way continuous beating in some deep location inside
us. And then Siedlce, the town where were buried my
great-great-grandparents, and their children, and children of their
children, and the recollection of red flowers and of white candles that we
offered in memory of the ones, who with their footsteps made possible the
path, which I stay on today.
And the main destination of this trip – beside the trip to the “heart of
history” – took us to Opole, where the City Museum organized together with
the Central Museum of the Prisoners of War in £ambinowice-Opole an exhibit
of photographs which recaptured the history of my grandfather from many
years of silences, inherited and learned.
The history of my grandfather – Ireneo, as the grandchildren called him,
was selected as an example of thousands of histories of anonymous Polish
participants of the World War II. As a means of telling the History from
the small personal histories embodied in the photos, which survived these
histories, to be shown 60 years later in the Museum of Opole, each piece
being irreplaceable, without which the puzzle of the History seems to tell
us, who are looking, cannot be put together.
There was the history of my grandfather: pictures from his youth, the blue
eyes of his sister whom I never knew, the mustache of my
great-grandfather, the picture of his wedding and of my father as a baby,
the drawing of the long march to Siberia, the pipe that he carried when he
was a prisoner and the documents that recognized him as a second
lieutenant, photo in the uniform, which took him from the Egyptian desert
to the military action in Italy, from his small town of Siedlce to
Quilmes, from the exile in England to Argentina, from his (secret
military) pseudonym “Miœ-2” to the Spanish “abuelo Ireneo” – grandfather
Ireneo.
Life among the thousands of lives without grand decorations or
testimonials, lives like hundreds of anonymous lives who fought, suffered
and died for Poland, just the portraits of six lives from among the
650,000, who were Polish prisoners of war in those years.
Looking at the photos of my grandfather and also of Zofia and Józef,
Henryk, Stanis³aw and the other Józef, as if all were seen through a
magnifying glass, and suddenly they become alive on their own – each photo
wanting to tell one thousand and one stories that my grandfather never
told all his life, I understood that the photos that remained WERE
all of them, THE HISTORY, written with capital letters. And when around me
a language, so strange yet close, was spoken, I felt that it was
absolutely impossible to tell the history of that time and the history of
Poland without the story of my grandfather Zbigniew Ireneusz Wajszczuk.
Ana Wajszczuk
Buenos Aires, December 2009
|
23-05-2024
03-10-2009
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