Memories from Childhood

This is a commented translation of Bohdan Pawlowicz’s original article in Polish (pdf) done by Barbara Dieu and published on November 27th 2024.

Context: “Memories from Childhood” is an excerpt from a larger memoir chronicling the author’s vibrant, adventure-filled life. This heartfelt and evocative narrative takes us to Korwinów, Poland, during the years 1904 and 1905, offering a vivid portrayal of the historical and political landscape of early 20th-century Poland. It poignantly illustrates how deeply political events and social unrest permeated even the lives of children, shaping their earliest memories.

The industrial development of Korwinów, a settlement in the Poczesna Commune, began with the construction of the Warsaw-Vienna Railway. The settlement grew around a brickworks established at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, during a period when Korwinów was part of Częstochowa County in the Piotrków Governorate of the Russian Empire.

In 1901, the Joint Stock Company of the “Korwinów” Ceramic Works built factory facilities in the area. The following year, in 1902, Kazimierz, the father of Bohdan, was appointed director of the factory. He moved to Korwinów with his wife, Helena, and their two young children, Bohdan and Krystyna. By 1909, the brickworks had established its reputation and participated in the National Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition to promote its products. Kazimierz had already relocated to Warsaw and opened his own consulting office but was invited to be one of the judges of the contest.

The storm of revolution and the fire of the fight for the country’s independence did not spare our home. Only a Polish child is entangled from the dawn of life in the tragic complexities of struggle; only a Polish child is introduced from the earliest days into the midst of national issues, suffering, rebellion, and hope… For two centuries, the childhood of Poles has been deprived of care, and the smile and joy of each generation have been interwoven with tears, blood, and tragedy.

Gloomy, prolonged, and abrupt factory whistles… A strike. Father standing on the veranda, addressing a silent, tightly-packed crowd of workers gathered on the flowerbed below. Roses, flowers, and grass—trampled, pressed into the earth. Familiar, once-friendly faces of factory colleagues now seem almost hostile, unwelcoming. A strike…

A little six-year-old boy, pressed into the corner of the veranda, tries to understand, struggling to make sense of it all.

“But Daddy is in the PPS,” he whispers to his nine-year-old sister. “Why are they so angry?” “These are the leaders of the Social Democracy,” his sister explains with an air of authority. She knows because Magdusia in the kitchen had said: “They’re social democrats, miss. They side with the Russian socialists. They say Poland isn’t needed—only the class struggle matters. And the director, well, he always talks about Poland… and he is the director.” 1

Finally, some workers begin to shout: “Let the director not listen to them! Long live the PPS, long live an independent Poland! They follow Moscow’s orders; they spill our blood—executioners!”

A song erupts, taken up by the crowd—thundering, mocking, and threatening.

“Why don’t they sing Poland Is Not Yet Lost? Why don’t they sing it?!” 2

The sister doesn’t know. “How would I know?”! she thinks. But she says what her childish imagination conjures: “Because they’re afraid of the Russians!”

Just then, the phone in the hall rings violently. An old-fashioned, clumsy device with a tube and receiver—one that often “shocks you with electricity.” It rings persistently. We hear Mother answer.

Mother speaks in a calm, steady voice: “Yes… all right, yes… I’ll inform him… yes… thank you for the message, thank you… goodbye.”

After a while, Mother’s slim and graceful figure appears on the veranda. She approaches Father and whispers something into his ear. The song starts to fade. Here and there, some false notes arise… but finally, they also go silent. Silence falls.

Father raises his hand high.

” Comrades! ” – he calls – ” Someone has betrayed us! So far, I’ve considered our disputes internal, among ourselves. You know that my party, PPS, is against “wild” strikes, and this strike, like many others, is “wild”… It’s unclear whose interests it serves… Moreover, someone betrayed us, I repeat, and informed Chief of Police Awałów in Częstochowa about the strike in Wrzosowa and Korwinów. A squadron of Cossacks and gendarmes has been sent from Częstochowa!”

A cry rose among the workers: “Provocation, Moscow’s doing!” The crowd began to sway…

“Calm!” Father called out in a strong voice. “Now is not the time for reckoning! … Damage has been done!…”

“What do you advise we do?” came a question from the crowd.

“Go home! No brawls, no arguments, no shouting! … When they arrive, I’ll take full responsibility!”

And Father raised his head high, smoothing his thick, blond hair with his right hand. At the time, I didn’t know why, but I felt very proud of him…

The crowd dispersed, and within minutes, everyone was gone. Only trampled flowers and grass embedded into the earth remained…

Mother sternly instructed us to go to the children’s room. We were given dinner and told to go to bed earlier than usual…

I was awakened by light and unusual commotion in the house. When I opened my eyes, my heart stopped at what I saw… At the edge of my bed, with its net lowered (evidently Greti had forgotten to raise it when I went to sleep), sat a huge brute in a gray greatcoat, holding a rifle between his knees. He leaned his elbow on the muzzle and dozed off…

I dared to glance towards my sister’s bed. There sat another, identical “soldier.” This one must have noticed the glimmer of my eyes because his Kalmyk3 face lit up with a smile, baring yellow, deeply rooted teeth, and he said:
“Niebezpokojties, malczkik, niebezpokojties!” (“Don’t worry, boy, don’t worry!”)

I lay motionless, listening to the strange sounds of banging and shuffling in the other rooms. After a while, Mother entered our room.

“You’re not asleep?” she asked, surprised. “What’s happening, Mommy?” my sister asked.
“A search.”
“Where’s Daddy?”
“Be good and sleep! Tomorrow we might go to Częstochowa to see Daddy.”
“Daddy is in Częstochowa?”
“They took him away… sleep now!”
“But these Russians… and this light…”

Mother left the room. Moments later, she returned with a gendarme officer. He wore crimson piping, a violet cap, and very shiny epaulets. He was young and tall. He tapped his polished boots impatiently with a riding crop. Both soldiers jumped to their feet like scalded cats.

The officer glanced quickly around the room. He looked into the drawer where my books were kept, pulled one out, opened it, and read aloud:

” Książę Józef Poniatowski” . Przyborowskowo! Wot i litieratur dla malczika! A ruszych kniżek niet?
(Prince Józef Poniatowski, by Przyborowski! So, this is literature for a boy! And no Russian books?)

Mother didn’t answer. The officer shrugged and slammed the drawer shut. “Udirajtie won!” (Get out) he barked at the soldiers.

Then, turning to Mother, he said, as he left: ” Wy dies wsie prestupniki! (You’re all criminals here!) and kicked the door in a rage.

Mother blew out the lamp and said to us very clearly and calmly, though with a choked voice: “They’ll leave soon… Don’t be afraid… Sleep, my little ones.”

But we didn’t go to Częstochowa the next day, nor the next month. Chief of Police Awałów refused all permits and didn’t allow families to visit prisoners.

The factory workers and staff showed Mother and us, children, much kindness and compassion. They seemed ashamed and uncertain, but always ready to help or lend a hand. Every early morning, a relay ran to Raków, a large ironworks between Częstochowa, Wrzosowa, and Korwinów.4 In Raków, one of the directors was Engineer Władysław Hackiewicz, a close friend of Father and an active PPS member. He always had news from prison for Mother, and often even small notes, called “grypsy,”5 handwritten by Father. However, at the start of winter, this connection was also severed when Hackiewicz himself was arrested.

Many workers from the factory were conscripted into the army for the Russo-Japanese War. My poor friend Danek’s father, the watchman Blinstrup, was also taken. On his farewell, he and the coachman Piotr had a hearty drink. I met them both, leaning against each other, trudging through the snowdrift on the way to the barracks.

“Oh, young master!” Piotr exclaimed, delighted. “The buddy here is going to be a ‘soldier’ and will warm up the Japanese… and the Cossacks will get a beating!” he shouted with obvious illogic. Then, taking his friend under his arm, he finished melancholically: “And you, buddy, come back, and don’t get killed, because it’s a pity!”6

That scene particularly stuck in my memory. Blinstrup never returned. Instead, a large, sealed envelope arrived by post, over which his wife cried and sobbed for a long time. Her two little children, Danek’s brothers, screamed their lungs out, not understanding what had happened to their mother.

A small, lame boy sat in the corner of the gatekeeper’s lodge, his heart pounding as he gazed at the woman’s deeply wrinkled face, so profoundly transformed by the spasm of pain and despair.

During the winter of that year (1904–1905), heavy snows fell. This was a source of endless joy for us children. Snowmen, snowball fights, “palaces” made of snow… My sister didn’t travel to Kraków as planned; Mother was afraid of her being cut off from us, and border permits were becoming harder to obtain. We played together in the garden, bound by shared worries: Father’s imprisonment and Gerti’s departure to her native Tyrol. Our outings beyond the garden were strictly forbidden. As a matter of fact, we played… mostly by ourselves. Near the factory, strange, grim-looking men often loitered. Gunshots from rifles and revolvers frequently echoed from the direction of the railway tracks. The track and the bridge over the Warta River were occupied by “soldiers” in large fur hats—”Sybiracy” (Siberians)7 On the roads, Cossacks patrolled, and one could receive a lash across the back, as happened to our Magdusia’s children when they were bringing milk and baskets of butter from the village to us in Korwinów.

They came running, crying, and breathless, clutching the baskets to their chests. When little six-year-old Jaś’s sheepskin coat and shirt were removed, a huge welt ran across his back. Magdusia cursed and lamented, saying that if words could crush, there would be no “kacapów” (Russians)8 left in the world.

“It’s all the fault, ma’am,” she insisted to Mother, “of those ‘democrats’ and those ‘specialists’!” “What ‘specialists’?” “Well, the ones from the party your husband joined and now sits in prison for!” “Socialists, Magdusia, not ć!” “Maybe ‘socialists,’ if you say so, ma’am, but I heard it myself when a soldier shouted at one man trying to cross the bridge: “ej, ty, specjalistów, kuda id kosz?” (Hey, you, specialist, where are you going with the sack?). And when he didn’t answer, the guards took him to the “karaułu” (punishment cell). The soldier said they found a pack of dynamite on him and that he’s a ‘specialist’.”

One day, the snow was so deep, lying in thick layers on fields and roads, that when Mother was returning from Częstochowa after her futile attempts to visit Father, Piotr drove the sleigh into a ditch near the barracks. The horses sank up to their bellies, the shaft broke, and the sleigh, with its passenger, got buried in the soft fluffy snow. No one was hurt, but for some reason, this scene stuck vividly in my memory. Even now, when I close my eyes, To this day, when I close my eyes, I can see from the window of Magdusia’s servant room, which had an excellent view of the servants’ quarters and the road: the restless, nervous gray horses being led out of the ditch by their bridles. I see Mother in her black fur coat and black round cap, trudging through the deep snow toward the gate of our yard… It’s strange how certain images imprint themselves on a child’s mind, like on the sensitive surface of a film strip, while others, far more significant, fade into oblivion, never to return.

That same winter, another event occurred that etched itself into our memories: a massive fire broke out in one of the factory buildings. I can still hear, in my imagination, the cries of people running to the blaze. I can see the red glow casting a bloody hue on the snow-covered windows, and I can still hear Mother’s calm voice as she entered the children’s room and leaned over my sister’s bed, where she had started crying.

“Sleep, Krysiu, sleep!… It’s far from us!… They’ll put the fire out.”

Apparently, the fire was started by two members of the “bojówki” (combat group)9 who had been sheltering in the empty building and barely managed to escape the guards. My sister and I only knew that the day before, two “gentlemen” had visited Mother, that they had talked for a long time in the parlor behind closed doors, and that afterward, they went to the garden with Mother while we were told to go to bed, which we didn’t like at all.

Finally, spring came, and new games in the garden entirely captured our imagination. We mainly played “Russian” and “Japanese,” each of us insisting on being the “Japanese,” which led to hour-long arguments. Once, we even played “guard” and “revolutionary,” during which, as the “officer,” I locked my sister in a storage room we’d turned into a “prison.” I locked it so effectively that a locksmith from the factory had to be called to open the door. The key was missing, and my sister sat in the dark for four hours. She had hysterical fits of crying, and to this day, we argue whether there were mice in the room or not. I insist there were no mice; my sister claims there were plenty, and they ran over her legs, which is why she screamed as if being skinned alive. After this “incident,” “revolutionary games” were strictly forbidden.

And at last, I remember that early summer day when Piotr brought Father back from Częstochowa, and Mother, smiling and joyful, led us into the dining room.

“How you’ve grown, little rascals!” Father exclaimed and lifted us both into the air. He was pale and gaunt but freshly shaved and wearing new clothes.

“When will we go to Częstochowa?” I asked immediately, because I hadn’t had the chance to sit on the coachman’s seat next to Piotr, which Father sometimes allowed.

“Not today!” Father replied with a laugh. “This afternoon, Mother and I are going to the city because there will be a great demonstration. Crowds of people! We now have a ‘constitution,’ and for the first time, we’re openly taking to the streets with banners!”10

I didn’t know what a “constitution” was, but from the cheerfulness and excitement of my parents, I guessed it was something joyful and hopeful.

After lunch, Father got dressed, and we were allowed to accompany him in the bedroom as he prepared, which included fastening the cuff links to his stiff, high-collared shirt. This time, instead of becoming irritated and angry at “the idiots who invented these cursed cuff links and this idiotic contraption called a collar,” Father sang his favorite song, one we only heard when he was in an exceptionally good mood:

“Oh, Miss Margaret, don’t be so cruel, You’ve burned me with your iron, oh, don’t be so mean!”

Footnotes

  1. The paragraph reflects the complex political landscape in Poland during the late 1904 period, a time when Poland was under the partitioning powers, with the Russian Empire controlling much of its territory. It highlights the ideological and political tensions between two key movements: the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL).
    The PPS, founded in 1892, was a nationalist socialist movement advocating for Poland’s independence and workers’ rights. It sought to combine the fight for social justice with the restoration of a sovereign Polish state. Kazimierz’s affiliation with the PPS underscores his alignment with these patriotic and progressive ideals, emphasizing the importance of Polish independence alongside social reform.
    The SDKPiL, formed in 1893, was a Marxist socialist party opposed to Polish independence. Its leaders, including Rosa Luxemburg and Julian Marchlewski, believed that Poland’s liberation would come through a broader, international proletarian revolution rather than through national independence. The party rejected nationalism and instead prioritized class struggle and solidarity with Russian and global socialist movements. ↩︎
  2. “Poland Is Not Yet Lost (Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła)” is the first verse of the Polish National Anthem, primarly known by the name “Dąbrowski Mazurka (Mazurek Dąbrowskiego)” ↩︎
  3. Kalmyk: a Mongolic ethnic group primarily living in the Republic of Kalmykia, a federal subject of Russia located in the North Caucasus region. ↩︎
  4. Raków, four kilometres from Częstochowa, was one of the largest ironworks in Poland at the time. ↩︎
  5. In a prison setting, “grypsy” are small, discreet messages passed between inmates or sent to contacts outside the prison. They often contain information about plans, warnings, or requests and are usually written in cryptic language or symbols to avoid detection. During times of political repression in Poland, political prisoners would use “grypsy” to communicate secretly with each other or with resistance organizations. ↩︎
  6. The reaction of Polish workers to conscription for the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) was overwhelmingly negative. This period saw growing dissatisfaction among the Polish population, particularly workers and peasants, who viewed the Russian Empire’s war efforts as irrelevant to their own national interests and a burden on their already difficult lives. ↩︎
  7. A sybirak (Polish: [sɨˈbirak], plural: sybiracy) is a person resettled to Siberia. Like its Russian counterpart sibiryák, the word can refer to any dweller of Siberia, but it more specifically refers to Poles imprisoned or exiled to Siberia ↩︎
  8. word borrowed from Ukrainian – slang, derogatory, ethnic slur: katsap, a Russian person ↩︎
  9. “Bojówka” can refer to an organized militant or combat group, often with political or underground resistance connotations, especially in historical or revolutionary contexts. In this case, it refers to the Combat Organization of the Polish Socialist Party, an illegal Polish guerrilla organization founded in 1904 by Józef Piłsudski. It was the paramilitary wing of the PPS – Polish Socialist Party. ↩︎
  10. The events of 1905 were a precursor to the eventual re-establishment of Poland’s independence in 1918, as they fueled nationalist sentiment and solidarity among various political movements fighting for Polish autonomy. ↩︎