She was five years old. When she came home, she hid bread in her clothes. “What am I going to eat tomorrow?”
Photo: Private archive of Dagmara Dworak
– This little girl couldn't smile. What could you dream of? For your mother to be healthy and to return someday. To where your mother said there were glass houses – Janina Rutkowska tells me almost 70 years after her return. – We would then go up to the fattening house, to the roof, and your mother would say: “Look to the West. That's Poland.”
He knows that his mother packed a suitcase with bedding, a pillow, and a sewing machine. A few photos as a keepsake. His parents' past is also his past. When Dariusz has a free moment, he goes on Google Maps and looks for the camps where his grandfather was imprisoned.
Although her father did not hide his history, Dagmara knew that she should not “brag” about it in the Polish People's Republic. Her father's dream and her trauma forced them to return to Siberia.
Grandma wanted to teach Jakub patriotism. Poland was her home, bread and father.
Dariusz, Dagmara and Jakub do not know each other. They are of different ages, live in different parts of the world. What unites them is that they kiss the bread when it falls.
“He who does not work, does not tempt”
Often in her dreams she sees those beautiful viburnums that were red against the snow. And birches that climbed to the sky. She remembers the delicious currants that grew by the streams. And when she wakes up, she sings Russian songs from those years. Because Siberia is still with her and in her, although for years others did not want to hear what she went through as a girl not yet 8 years old. In her CV, when she applied for a job at the school, she mentioned that she had been exiled. The headmistress advised her to remove it, because “why make life difficult for yourself”. She listened. Now, as an 84-year-old woman, Janina Rutkowska is no longer afraid to tell her story.
Less than a week had passed since the first Holy Communion when the NKVD soldiers with rifles burst into the Jasudowicz home at night. Little Janka and her older brother were terrified, crying in each other's arms. The younger siblings did not understand what was happening. The soldiers ordered them to pack up. Quick, quick! Quick, quick! It was May 22, 1948. They were transported by truck to Kiejdany (the area of present-day Lithuania) and loaded into cattle wagons.
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