Łazy (I)

My father was born in the farming hamlet of Łazy in Galicia (in southeastern Poland). He was the oldest of six children.

On his first day of school, his mother Julia had packed his lunch and sent him off on his two and a half mile walk to the town of Rymanów.

But he had only gone part way when suddenly he turned around and ran back home in tears.

It sounds like an early metaphor for his whole life.
When my dad was 13, he was one of the few young people able to go on to high school. But that meant boarding 25 miles away at Sanok, and though he could not foresee it then, it meant essentially leaving his family home for good -- since when he graduated, the Nazi blitzkrieg struck.

On September 9, 1939 a special mountain battalion of German forces entered Rymanów. And the Soviets and Nazis had signed the secret Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement, dividing Poland between themselves. The dividing line was at the San River, right by Sanok where my father had gone to school.

The Jewish community in Rymanów was ordered to cross the San River into Soviet-held territory. Those who did were subsequently driven into Siberia and beyond. Many died in the ordeal or disappeared.

My father was in the Polish army then, and he was scattered, too -- fighting later at Tobruk and then training as an RAF pilot in Britain.

Those in the Jewish community who had chosen to remain in Rymanów were forced into a ghetto without a fence.

On August 13, 1942, the Nazis exterminated the Jewish ghetto in Rymanów.

My father wasn’t able to return to Łazy for 25 years. When he finally could go back, he took me with him. I was 13 – the same age he was when he left. In this photo from that trip, I'm standing between my dad's father Jan and his brother Vladek.

My uncles Vladek and Gienek took me out on the farm like I was a farmboy myself.

My grandfather Jan was struggling with cancer. In fact, he was hanging on so that he could see his oldest son one last time. He died a month after we left.

At the beginning of the first world war, he had been captured by the Russians and taken to a camp in Siberia, from which he later escaped.

He walked all the way home to Łazy from Siberia, hiding by day and walking by night, finding or stealing another pair of boots when the ones he was wearing had worn out.

Some years after my father’s return to Łazy, his mother Julia also died, and the small family farm in Łazy was sold – though my brothers and I pleaded with our father to buy it himself. But perhaps that was too difficult for him.

In 1994, my brothers Mike and Victor and I returned to Poland with our dad. He is in the center of this photo from that trip. Our aunts Marissa and Jadwiga are in the upper right of the photograph, and Jadwiga’s husband, our uncle Kuba, is to my father’s right.

Now my father and all of his siblings, except for Jadwiga, are gone as well.

That trip back to Łazy in 1994 was bittersweet. The person who now owned our family’s home had renovated it and made it comfortable again.

So afterwards, I turned to my cousins Romek…

…and Staszek and asked them,“What would it cost to buy back the family home again?"

But Staszek was one step ahead of me. “I’ve got a better idea," he said. "Let's buy the small farm next door instead."

So my brothers and I sent a modest sum to help make that possible, and Łazy 9, next door to my grandparents' home, began to be restored.

Staszek and his father Kuba stand before Łazy 9, a traditional Galician farmhouse built in 1894.

By 2005, enough renovation had been done that our first family reunion was held in Łazy.

It began with Mass in the church in Rymanów.

And the festivities at Łazy were full of local music and lore, which my cousin Zbyszek knows as well as anyone.

Uncle Kuba beamed and wept through it all…

...and Jadwiga shone with the same compassion and understanding she always has.