As the wing tips accross the horizon and the flat ground appears through the window, a blanket of forest green emerges into view. Tall firs tightly packed together providing a carpet of sea urchin greens….in the clearing appear tiny red, monopoly block houses, sweet, minute.
Each one a perfect cube or oblong with red tile shiny roofs glistening in the early autumn sunshine.
A closer look as we come into landing, descending above the green carpet suddenly the closer view reveals gardens, long ones, packed full of produce, the fruit of a long seasons work.
Apple’s, plums, cherries abound weighing branches to the ground.
A fruitful, productive land of acres of orchards, deep wide river valleys, willow trees kissing the glistening gentle flow.
As we land, I absorb the beautiful landscape, it’s flatness in the North Warsaw Modlin plane.
Poland – in all its beauty and all its previous pain, richness of flatlands, cathedrals, monuments, crucifixes and saints, Maryology, cemeteries and out in the sticks…… death camps.
Honouring the dead, candles both wax and digital, photos of loved ones passed on to a higher place.
The contrast of 21st Century living parallels with quaint folk traditions.
They straddle and jostle for position alongside, drive in Mc Donald’s and Tyskie on tap, new motors, new roads and retail malls.
A new world of change, European delight…the old world of walls, ghettos, food lines and death camps, synagogues, shtel’s and Hassidic people gone….wiped out, obliterated…a few memories remain.
A few scars of of preserved history. A new Jewish history museum, a new Solidarity museum.
Records and timelines, photos and memoirs of time goneby, of borders moved, displaced, lost and found, invasions, strife, war, struggles, strikes, starvation, death !
A world turned upside down, inside out, obliterated, an invasion of darkness producing evil, to target, destroy and annhialate a people.
Now one Shtel remains…and a dome of twisted metal, once a synagogue splendour..a mezzuzah on a door jarm, a few death camps…preserved but the smell of caustic disinfectant remains, pungent, a trick to choke, blind and suffocate – not a shower to clean, cleanse and restore.
My home..a place I’ve never dwelled in but part of me belongs, has roots …Nurzec Stajca, Bychow, Hanowjka, Tokary, Bialystok, Warsaw….all these place Babca was, all these place my Father was..have been, leaving their essence, its present in the gentle breeze, the fluttering trees as the north wind brings a new season of autumnal change.
The imprint of others who have gone before us leave an imprint on my soul, they’ve made me who I am, genes, influences, values, …forever grateful for their love…for her vision and insight, for her protection of him, her boy who became a man, she had to let him go to protect him.
How her face held the pain, how her heart never allowed herself to indulge in her feelings.
Her path was not straight, it was not ordered or set out. Many decisions were not hers to make, many actions were not what she would have expected of herself.
Survival was the driving force of any decisions, actions and situations she faced.
How I wished I could have know you Marysha how I could have asked you questions, learnt your cooking skills.
How those stories are long buried now never to be revealed.
I thank you because you gave us him, your blonde boy, and now he’s home with you, no more roaming, a final destination, a safe haven a harbour an eternal resting place.
Mizpah
May the Lord watch over us while we are apart.
From one pearl to another …
Mags Lewis
22nd July 2020
Victoria Park
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