Wladyslaw's summary of his early life

My grandfather Wladyslaw was asked to give a summary of his early life in a 1937 document which was part of a recommendation to award him the high honour of Cross and Medal of Independence. I received a photocopy of the full seven page documentation that comprised the report on his award from the Central Archives of the Military in Warsaw in a letter dated 24 July 2008. It contained a full A4 page in Wladyslaw’s own handwriting, translated as follows:

I was born on 19 September 1893 in Haczow, son of Josef. I finished six years high school in Sanok, and I went to practice as chemist in Strumien, in Silesia.

In 1914 I was conscripted to the Austrian army. In April 1915 I was captured and taken to a Russian prison camp where I was employed to work as a chemist in a factory in Sartana near Marjanpol [at the Azov Sea in far south east Ukraine]. Whilst imprisoned here I was charged with political agitation for trying to persuade the factory workers to rise against the Tsar and Russia. They put me in an underground cell and then sent me to Barmuta where they told me I was to be deported to Siberia.
I managed to get free thanks to giving money to the guards. In my place, with all the necessary papers, they sent another prisoner.

In 1916 the Russians sent me back to Austria as a TB sufferer. There I was still in hospital in 1917 for tuberculosis in Lesa Wielenski.

In 1918 I came back to Haczow on unlimited sick leave from the army. Here for agitating against Austria I was again sent to prison in Przemysl. After leaving prison I returned to Haczow and persuaded 170 people to desert the Austrian army. A group of us disarmed the Austrian army garrison at Nohermerjew on the 30th October 1918 following an order given to me by the Polish army organisation.

The next month, November 1918, I volunteer to join the local military unit at the war and was able to persuade about 100 others to volunteer from Haczow.

On 11 May 1921 I travelled to Lwow to volunteer to take part in the uprising in the region of Gornos Slonk [a German-Polish region whose territory was disputed and was made subject to a League of Nations sponsored referendum on which country it was to be part of] but I wasn’t sent to the front.

Portrait of dad at around fifty

Well, dad recovered from everything that life, war, disease and hunger could throw at him. He became a very successful businessman and this portrait of him was made at the peak of his energy and vigour at around fifty in the early 1970s.

Danka and Zosia, Pahlevi, Persia, August 1942

Two young girls in Polish uniforms on the beach at Pahlevi. The clothing looks fine but the faces, especially the expression in their eyes, cannot hide what they have been through. Aged fifteen and seventeen respectively they have known violence, death threats, ethnic cleansing, forced labour, hunger and near starvation, repeated bouts of disease and sickness, and the slow fading away of their mother.

The Stepek Family Farm, Haczow, Poland

Great Aunts Helena and Aleksandra enjoy the sunshine in this photo taken in the post-war years.


The family farm house in thick snow. It is a typical wooden farm house of the area in south-east Poland at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, close to Slovakia to the south and Ukraine to the east. I hope some day soon to visit for myself and add some new photos of the house to this blog.

Aunt Zosia

Two pictures of my Aunt Zofia. The first is from 5 May 1944 during the war. After recovering from the trauma of Siberia and the odyssey to Persia, Zosia went to Palestine with Danka then qualified to teach English to Polish officers in Alexandria, Egypt. It is astonishing that she looks so well, so beautiful after all that she had been through. Photographers knew the art of superb picture taking in those days; the lighting, the angle of her face, like a Hollowood photo.

The second photo shows her with her husband, Pan Repa, after the war.

Poscard from my grandfather Wladyslaw from Krakow during First World War

This is a wonderful document from 1916. Poland exists only in the minds of its people. All of Europe is at war and both Krakow (where the postcard was sent from) and Haczow (where it was sent to) are still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Indeed the little town of Haczow had an Austrian garrison, which my father and a group of twenty-five young men disarmed at the end of the war.

It is thought that for this action they were given the land in the Kresy that was to be the birthplace of my dad and my two aunts.

Dad as a student at Bojanonowo near Wroclaw 1939 just months before war broke out

In 1938 my dad finished secondary school and left home to study at agriculture college. He didn't go back after the summer holidays of 1939 because everyone knew war was coming and he wanted to be at home. I don't know who his two fellow students in the photo are, and I sometimes wonder what their fate was. Dad is sixteen in this picture.