Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century (13 page)

Jozef’s mother came from a neighboring farming community two miles away from Rozlopy and further away from the city. Her town, called Deszkowice, had about 2,000 people. Although twice the size of Rozlopy, Deszkowice was entirely agricultural. It was encircled by open fields.

Both farming towns, Rozlopy and Deszkowice, sat along the same paved road that led to Szczebrzeszyn. Horse-drawn, flatbed wooden trailers traveled the narrow road heavily, carrying agricultural products from the farms to the city. The road was one of many roads, some paved and some dirt, that sliced across the flat Polish plains.

Those plains had been the scene of turmoil for nearly a century and a half. Poland suffered the geographical misfortune of lying in the crossfire between the Prussians (or Germans) from the west, the Russians from the east, and the Austrians (or Austro-Hungarians) from the south. The three big powers used the open Polish plains as their sparring ground and divvied up the spoils. From 1772 to 1795, the three invaders partitioned Poland three times, carving up more and more of its land for themselves until there was literally nothing left of Poland. The republic was entirely erased from the map of Europe from 1795 to 1918. During those 123 years of utter dispossession, the southeastern corner of Poland where Jozef was born had been occupied first by Russia, then by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and then by Russia once again.

In 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proposed Polish independence as one of his Fourteen Points for a negotiated settlement to end World War I. On November 11, 1918, just five years and ten weeks before Jozef was born, Poland became Poland once again.

Jozef came from solid peasant stock, but some peasants had more than others.

His father, Michal, had grown up in Rozlopy on a small farm of two acres. When Michal was 11 years old in 1906, his stepfather ordered him to quit school and to work the farm. Unfortunately for Michal, the farm wasn’t big enough for him and his brother, sister, and half-sister each to inherit enough of it to live off the land. No stepchild like Michal was likely to be the first in line, either. Farming was all Michal knew, but there would be no farm bequeathed to him. When he became a young man, he was free to leave his stepfather’s farm, but he could take only a horse and two cows.

In contrast, Jozef’s mother came from one of the richest peasant farming families in Deszkowice. Born in 1903, her name was Marja Traczykiewicz. Her family owned two horses, several cows, chickens, ducks, geese, and almost 20 acres of flat land with black soil that grew wheat, rye, barley, oats, cabbage, butter lettuce, onions, tomatoes, apples, pears, cherries, and black plums. Marja couldn’t read or write, but she and her four siblings were each entitled to a few choice acres of land along the Wieprz River that ran through Deszkowice.

In 1925, Michal moved from Rozlopy to Deszkowice with his wife, two sons, horse, and two cows to take advantage of the Traczykiewicz land. He built a house and barn on Marja’s inherited portion of the property. The 500-square-foot house had one room, which served as the bedroom, dining room, and kitchen for Michal, Marja, Jozef, and his older brother, Wladislaw. For heat, everyone relied on the stove that Marja used for cooking. For a toilet, everyone used a hole in the ground behind the barn.

As Michal turned 30 years old on September 4, 1925, he became restless in the home he had built. His older brother was already assembling Buicks at a General Motors plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The older brother and some Polish farmers near Grand Rapids agreed to sponsor Michal’s immigration to the United States on the premise that he would work their farms. Once there, he could find other work. He just needed to raise the money for the trip.

Michal came up with an enterprising plan. His stepfather’s property in Rozlopy was small, but it abutted the paved road used by the merchants on their way to Szczebrzeszyn. With his stepfather’s approval, Michal planted a small fruit orchard at the very edge of the property along the roadside to entice the merchants to buy the fruit for resale to the dealers and distributors in town. The plan worked. In two years, Michal earned enough money to buy his passage to America.

“
I could make even more money in America than here in Poland,” he assured Marja. “I’ll bring the money home so we can buy a bigger house and farm for our sons,” he knew how to sell her on the idea. “In the meantime, I’ll send whatever money I can.”

It saddened Marja to watch as Michal prepared to leave, but she believed that the best legacy that she and Michal could bequeath to their children would be ample and abundant land upon which they could raise their own families, just as her parents had provided ample and abundant land for her and her brothers and their families. She consoled herself in the confidence that Michal was willing to go to the ends of the earth to fulfill his obligation to his children.

“
Go with God,” Marja bid Michal farewell, hugging him with her two young sons, all eight arms interwoven in a single family embrace, upon his departure.

Michal sailed aboard the SS.
Republic,
first to England and then from Southampton to America. He arrived in New York in February 1928 at the age of 32 and quickly found a job with his older brother at the General Motors plant in Grand Rapids. Michal then heard about even better jobs in Detroit and took off.

Beholding the world of opportunities in America, Michal abruptly discarded the notion of moving back to Deszkowice. “I’ll bring my family here instead,” he decided.

When Michal left for America in 1928, Jozef was barely four years old, still with baby blond hair and sleepy sky-blue eyes. Seven-year-old Wladislaw became the man of the house.

Marja relied on her extended family for help, and she rarely needed to look far. Her two younger brothers worked the farm. Her parents lived on the adjoining property. Many neighbors were distant relatives.

“
Mama sang from sunrise to sundown,” Jozef recalled. She put him to sleep with Polish lullabies in the evenings and awakened him with playful melodies in the mornings.

Her singing mingled with the aromas of her buttery baking bread, savory stuffed cabbage rolls, and homemade
kielbasa
sausage cooking on the stove. Marja stuffed her cabbage rolls, called
golabkis
, with hamburger, rice, and onions fresh from the garden.

“
It was a happy place,” Jozef reminisced. “She was truly a loving mother.”

Four years later, Marja was holding court on the dance floor at a going-away party for her younger brother who had been drafted into the Polish army. The entire family and many neighbors had gathered to honor him at the home of his parents.

Marja was the lady in demand, whether the dance was the polka, the Viennese waltz, or a faster waltz known as the
oberek
, which was a cross between the polka and the Viennese waltz. Known as the best dancer in Deszkowice, the 29-year-old Marja she carried herself with a dancer’s balance of delicacy and intensity. Thin strands of black curls dangled upon her chiseled cheekbones, while her eyes flashed like those of a kitten.

Wladislaw was 11 years old and bored with the party. He asked another boy to go fishing with him in the Wieprz River. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. There’s still enough daylight to catch a few fish.”

“
Can I go, too?” begged the eight-year-old Jozef.

“
Okay, kiddo,” Wladislaw allowed Jozef to tag along.

When the three boys reached the riverbank, Wladislaw issued Jozef a warning: “Stay right here while we fish. Don’t come any closer.”

The river was only about 15 feet wide, but it was deep enough for swimming, and it had a strong current. Wladislaw and the other boy walked toward a wooden footbridge that had no handrails.

Jozef stayed put, reclining on the grassy meadow along the riverbank.

Several minutes later, the other boy came running to Jozef. “Wladislaw slipped! He fell in! I couldn’t reach him!”

“
He’s just scaring you,” Jozef giggled. “He’s always doing things like that.”

“
Then where is he?” the older boy shook Jozef by the shoulders.

Jozef stood up on his tiptoes in the meadow, scanning the flat landscape all around him. But nobody could be seen.

Jozef and the older boy paced up and down the river, hoping to see Wladislaw rise to the surface and swim to shore. “Wladislaw!” they kept calling. “Wladislaw!”

The afternoon turned into evening. Fear turned into dread. Dejected and sobbing, the two boys returned to the party to tell Marja the devastating news.

She tossed aside her dance shoes and ran barefoot to the riverbank, screaming her son’s name against the quickening darkness. She trod the muddy, unstable terrain along the river’s edge and nearly fell in herself, trembling and shrieking in horror at the forces that had snatched away her son. Her brothers and other guests from the party joined her in the search, mounting their horses and patrolling the lower reaches of the river for any sign of the boy. But the river revealed no trace.

Marja agonized for days. She kept walking around in a state of shock, searching for Wladislaw and screaming out his name. In the house. “Wladislaw!” In the barn. “Wladislaw!” On the riverbank. “Wladislaw!” But his body was never found.

Jozef wrote a letter from Marja to Michal in America to tell him the tragic news. “Mail the letter quickly,” Marja wiped her eyes, “so your father can come home soon.”

Weeks later, Jozef read aloud to Marja the letter sent from Michal in response. “I cannot return to Poland until 1933,” a full year later. “I need to remain in America continuously for five years to qualify for U.S. citizenship, which will allow me to bring the rest of you to America.”

If Marja had ever considered going to America, she began to lose interest right then.

In 1932, Michal was a spot welder at the Plymouth auto plant in Detroit, welding parts of cars together on the assembly line. Jozef admired his father’s resourcefulness in finding work at a big automobile plant in America and his reliability in sending money back to Poland. Every month, Michal sent about $5, which was more than a day’s wages.

“
He was a responsible father,” said Jozef. He looked forward to the day when he and his mother could join his father in America.

In 1933, Michal sent a letter announcing that he could finally sponsor their immigration. Jozef read the letter enthusiastically to his mother. To his dismay, he wrote a response on her behalf saying that she didn’t want to go.

In 1934, Michal extended a second invitation. Marja again rejected it.

The ten-year-old Jozef couldn’t fathom his mother’s behavior. Maybe she felt that she couldn’t leave her family in Poland. Or maybe she hoped that Michal would change his mind and return to Poland for good. She never explained her reasons to Jozef. She just told him no.

Jozef didn’t know what would happen to his family. The only thing he knew for sure was that his big chance to go to America, the land of freedom and dreams and opportunity, was swiftly slipping away.

The next thing Jozef learned came in the form of an official notice from a Detroit attorney, who had written the notice in Polish on behalf of a Detroit court. In late 1934, the court had ordered Michal to pay child support for Jozef in Deszkowice. Evidently, Michal had divorced Marja in Michigan, prompting the Detroit court to adjudicate the child support order for continuous payments to Marja.

Little about his immediate family made much sense to the young Jozef. But he found a source of meaning, stability, and succor somewhere else.

Jozef was never far from religion: at church, at home, or at school. Each Sunday, he and Marja rode in a neighbor’s horse-drawn wagon to the Roman Catholic church in Szczebrzeszyn. There were no books at home, but Jozef borrowed a children’s Bible from a neighbor to prepare for his first Holy Communion. The public schools in Poland taught children Roman Catholicism, scheduling the religion classes for the last hour of the day so that the Jewish students could leave the schools and study their own religion either at a synagogue or at home.

In religion class at school, one story captivated Jozef more than any other. It was the legend of Our Lady of Czestochowa. The legend revolves around the wondrous powers attributed to a Byzantine painting of Mary and Jesus. In July 1655, a Swedish army marched across Poland and dominated almost the entire country. In November of that year, the Swedes arrived at the southern Polish city of Czestochowa, demanding the surrender of the Pauline monastery that, to this day, houses the venerated painting. The intrepid monks of the 17th century refused to surrender. The prior of the monastery gathered together 70 monks, 20 noblemen, 160 mercenaries, a group of women, and 24 cannons. For six weeks, the scrappy resistance of fewer than 300 Polish fighters repelled the 3,725 Swedish invaders and their 36 cannons. The Swedes had the best army in Europe at the time, but the vastly outnumbered Poles prevailed.

The devoutly religious Poles ascribed their spectacular victory neither to their military skill nor to the solidity of the monastery but to the miraculous protection from the Mother of God herself, guardian of the site. The triumphant display of conviction by the monks inspired the whole country to rise up and drive away the Protestant Swedes, enemies of Roman Catholicism. In April 1656, the Polish king, John Casimir, solemnly consecrated the lands of his kingdom to the protection of the Mother of God and proclaimed her “Queen of the Crown of Poland.” The monastery staved off several subsequent attacks, each time reinforcing the legend of Our Lady of Czestochowa.