Read Tailor of Inverness, The Online
Authors: Matthew Zajac
However, there is no hard evidence that he did desert, go into hiding and eventually join up with the Germans, by coercion or voluntarily. There is also no hard evidence to support Mykola’s claim of capture by the Germans as part of Vlasov’s army near Leningrad, although there was the story of the soldier who retuned to Gnilowody, who had last seen my father starving in a German POW camp in 1941. Maybe he was in one of these camps, maybe he wasn’t. But this much was clear: his movements and actions for over four years, from spring 1941 to June 1945, remained almost completely unknown.
Pidhaitsi 17th February 2005
Dear Matthew,
Firstly, please accept my apologies for taking so long to write to you. Just before the new year, I fell down and had a fracture in my right hand, so I had a kind of ‘break’!
As I’ve already told you on the phone, I was in Hnilowody twice: in spring with Hryts and in autumn with my husband. I had a talk with Olga. We also spoke with two other old women, trying to know something about your father’s visit to Hnilowody in 1944. But no one knows about it. You see, it was a difficult time. People were afraid of everything. Even if he was there, he tried to be inconspicuous, not to cause trouble to his family.
Olga gave me two addresses and here’s what she told me:
1. Laska, Maria. She was a girlfriend of Adam Zajac, your uncle Adam.
2. Szarejko, Stefania. She was Anna Laska’s friend.
Maybe they will help you.
As to your grandfather’s grave, nobody knows anything about it. But Olga promised to try to find out. Have you already persuaded your mother to give you permission to look at your father’s army records? I think you can get a lot of information there.
Now some words about us. We had a stressful time at the end of the year. I mean an Orange Revolution. Thank you for supporting us. With all good reason, I can say that World History has never witnessed such a kind of protest. Thousands of people, standing shoulder to shoulder in the square crying out ‘We are together! We are numerous! No one can conquer us!’ A blissful aura reigned about the square. Just think about it! Such a huge crowd of people, it was rather cold, but they stood there day and night. One had to see it. It was neither a revolution nor an upheaval. Revolution brings heavy fighting, radical changes, bloodshed. But this was a peaceful protest of the people who want to live in justice. We support Yushchenko with all our heart and we are glad that Ukraine has a president like him. It’s high time…I guess we have been waiting too long for that moment in Ukrainian history.
I hope to hear from you soon, not like I do it and trust that you are well.
Love,
Lesia
Edinburgh 1st March 2005
Dear Pana Szarejko,
I have been given your address by Olga Kindzierska, who I met when I visited Gnilowody, near Podhajce. I was there in September 2003.
My name is Matthew Zajac. I am the son of Mateusz Zajac, also from Gnilowody. Perhaps you remember him. He had two brothers, Adam & Kazik and an older sister, Emilia. He died in 1992. He married Anna Laska around 1939. They had a little daughter, who I believe is called Irena. When I visited Gnilowody, Olga told me about my father’s marriage to Anna and their daughter. It was the first I had heard of it.
I would like to contact Irena and Anna. I was given an address for Anna in Mieszkowice, but I have had no reply to my letters. I don’t mean to rake up painful memories, and I quite understand if Anna has no wish to meet me, but I feel an obligation to tell Irena about her father. She may want to know about him.
I understand you are Anna’s friend. I am writing to you now to ask you to help me, if you feel you can. Please talk to Anna. I am quite prepared to come to Poland to meet her. I mean no harm and simply see this contact as a way of healing the wounds of the past. I would very much like to meet my half-sister Irena.
My father settled in Scotland after the war. He married another Anna, my mother, and had four children. We grew up in Inverness in the north of Scotland where my father had a tailoring business. I work as an actor and director, mainly in the theatre and occasionally in film and television.
I would be very grateful if you would help me. Please reply.
Yours sincerely,
Matthew Zajac
Szczecin, Poland 18th March 2005
Dear Mr. Matthew,
Thank you for your letter. I receive it 15
th
March a few days ago. How glad I am that you write to me. When I read your letter I was surprise and understand all. That is all true what said Olga to you. I remember your all family, your father (he was very tall) and brothers Adam and Kazik. I visited Gnilowody in 2002, you in 2003, why write to me so late? I can help you because my first name is also Laska. When your father married with Anna I was there with my parents. Please await for my long letter. I will write soon. Bye.
Stefania
Szczecin 6th April 2005
Dear Matthew,
Irena is very sick on the heart. She is 63 years old and her mother Anna is 84 years old and she is also sick. They have very hard problems and great terrible. Irena has husband and three children, they all have own family. Now Irena two weeks ago went to hospital. When she go back home I don’t know.
I call to Irena but she was in hospital. I speaking with her daughter Mirka. She is teacher. I think that she write a letter to you soon.
Anna has also husband. He is a good man, he take care of her. She is very tired by life and sick now.
In Polska we have a very great mourning. I think that you and your family are seeing on TV. We all cried for St. Papa (Pope John Paul II).
Excuse me that I do so many mistake, but I many words forget and many years I don’t write in English language. Do you understand my letter? Matthew please me answer! I give address to Irena. In holiday I want to go by train to Mieszkowice to meet Irena and Anna. It is 90km.
Good luck and goodbye,
Stefania
Mieszkowice 17th April 2005
Dear Mr. Matthew,
I am your sister, Irena. I am very happy to learn that I have a brother who wants to meet me. I never imagined that any member of my father’s new family would like to contact me. The only things that remind me of my father are his photo and a dress, which he sent to me in Mieszkowice, when I was a little girl. Besides, he has appeared in my dreams, however in each dream he was trying to run away from me.
I was born on the 2
nd
of February 1941. I don’t really remember my father as he had been transferred to the Eastern Front soon after I was born. He was captured by the Germans. In 1944 he sent a letter to my mother Anna posted from Germany, in which he was asking her to visit him there as he was unable to come back. Anna wanted to go, but she had me and her parents to take care of. Even Mateusz’s father dissuaded her from her journey to Germany.
After that, we had to leave Gnilowody and move to Podhajce as in summer of 1944 Ukrainian nationalists started to slaughter Polish people. We barely survived, hiding from the Ukrainian bandits, my mother forced to labour for the Germans digging trenches, then hiding from the Russians as they looted and raped. We were suffering from starvation. I temporarily lost my eyesight. In 1945, we were deported to Western Poland. The journey took six months. My mother carried my father’s sewing machine with her, for his return.
In 1948 my father sent a letter saying that he had settled in Britain and asking for a divorce. He also sent the dress for me which I remember to this day. From that time on we lost contact with him. My mother never spoke badly of him. She always said he was a good man. She loved him very much.
I am very glad that you have made contact, because it helps me to believe that not everything connected with my father has to be painful. I hope that a prospective meeting and an honest conversation will help both sides.
With kind regards,
Irena
Edinburgh 6th May 2005
Dear Irena,
This is my first letter to you. I didn’t know whether I would ever get the opportunity to send it.
I hope you are recovering well from your operation. I am very sorry that it has taken me a long time to reply in person. I have been extremely busy, working away from home on a new theatre production. Finally managing
to make contact with you has also stunned me. I am very pleased! Thank you very much for sending the photographs. They are quite moving to me – I gaze at them in wonder! You look like a warm friendly woman. I think I am like that too. As you probably know, I first tried contacting Anna in autumn 2003, and had no idea if I had the correct address, or that you even lived in Mieszkowice. Someone in Gnilowody thought that you lived in France!
I am so sorry that you never knew our father. If it’s any consolation, I can tell you many things about his life in Scotland and how he was as a father to me and my sisters. I realise that this is a delicate and potentially painful relationship to open up but, as I said in my letters to Anna, I feel compelled to give you the opportunity to know something of your father and, perhaps, develop a new relationship with a new branch of your family! Strange indeed! My visit to Gnilowody in 2003 taught me that my father kept a number of important facts from me. I went there because I was curious about his life before the war. I had recorded conversations with him about his life in 1988, knowing that one day I would want to write about him. I discovered that there was a lot more that I didn’t know: that his mother was Ukrainian (he never told me); that he had been in the Soviet Army; and, most important of all, I was told by Olga in Gnilowody that he had been married and had a daughter. After my letters to Anna didn’t reach her, I asked a friend I’d made in Podhajce, Lesia Kalba, to visit Olga again to see if she could give us any more help. She gave Lesia addresses for Stefania Szarejko and Maria Laska, as you know…
Irena, I know that all this has happened at a bad time
for you, when you need rest and peace to recover. I hope you aren’t finding it too stressful. I really do have the best intentions. I would like to come and visit you and your family, Stefania and, of course, your mother, but I don’t want to do it until you are well enough. Please let me know what is best. I can come very soon.
You know much better than I ever will how difficult the war years were. You, your mother and father were survivors and for that I am thankful. I don’t understand why he never contacted you, although I can guess at reasons. There is much to be talked about and it will be best to meet face to face.
With best wishes,
Matthew
He had been in Germany in 1944. He had sent Anna a letter from there asking her to come and join him. Maybe he was working in a sawmill there at
that
time. He certainly felt settled enough to ask her to undertake the risky journey to Germany. Or maybe he was undergoing military training, or carrying out military duties in Germany. There is a multitude of
possibilities
. With the letter from Germany providing the only hard evidence of his whereabouts from spring 1941 to his enlistment with the British army in June 1945, four years are unaccounted for. One can’t even discount the darkest possibilities. He could have become a Nazi. He could have participated in war crimes. I would be amazed if that turned out to be the case as there was never anything in his behaviour to suggest he harboured those repugnant secrets or beliefs, but when one knows
nothing
of his actions during this period,
anything
becomes possible. Did he ever go into hiding? Was he taken prisoner by the Germans? Did he simply come out of hiding to volunteer for
the Germans? My efforts with the German, Russian and Polish military archives were fruitless. I think I will never know more than the sketchy facts I have. The real story of his life during those four years will remain unknown. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. My father was just one of the millions tossed about by the merciless currents of the war. He was just lucky to survive it all and to retain the strength of character to build a decent life for himself in the aftermath.
Edinburgh 6th May 2005
Dear Stefania,
Thank you so much for your letter of 22
nd
April. I am very glad that I was given your address: you have been the key which has opened the door to Anna and Irena. And its great that you can speak English! I think I understand everything that you have written to me, so don’t worry about your grammar etc.
I must admit that the whole process of discovering that my father was married before and had a daughter, the subsequent attempts to contact Anna and finally making contact has been quite strange. Sometimes it feels like a dream. In fact, life can feel like a dream or an invention when I consider the secrets which my father concealed and lived with for most of his adult life. But you, Anna, Irena and Mirka are all real people and so am I and there is a blood relationship which is also real!
Thank you too for inviting me to Szczecin, and for Anna’s invitation to Mieszkowice. Irena and Mirka have also invited me. I think I’ll be coming quite soon. I have sent an email to Irena saying that I will wait to see how she feels about a visit as she must recover from her time in hospital, so when I come is dependent on Irena’s health.
There is much to say about my father and his life. I realise that it is a very sensitive subject and that Anna and Irena may feel a lot of bitterness towards him. I don’t understand why he never contacted them and I can’t excuse it. It is shameful, even though they were forced apart by extraordinary circumstances. He was a very good father to me. I loved him very much. He was popular, generous and hard working. He rarely talked about the war, although as I grew up I became aware that it clearly had a profound effect on him which he didn’t always conceal. He did tell me a story of what happened to him during the war which I have since discovered is nearly all a fabrication.
You told me that Anna’s husband did not give her a letter I sent. Does this mean that I had the correct address for Anna? Perhaps Jan thought it would be too upsetting for Anna.
I enjoyed reading about you and your life. I too love singing songs, so perhaps we can sing a few when we meet! It sounds like you lead a very active life now that you have retired. That will keep you young!
I very much look forward to meeting you. Please pass on my regards to your family and to Anna
Best wishes,
Matthew