Photo Album
Donna Urbikas
As a child, this photo album fascinated me. I would sit on my father's lap as he showed me his journey during World War II from Russia and the USSR, through Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine (now Israel), Egypt, and Italy. He took and developed all the black and white photos filling this album. It is the first album of several with its rich blue leather cover decorated with his military insignias. I grew to love geography and developed a wonder of the world through his clever photos, not only of military functions and events, but also of the native local people in all those interesting places. He expertly captured scenes of their daily lives as war raged on in the world and found beauty among them and in their country landscapes, especially of clouds, their sheep, goats, camels, and horses.
Later he developed those films in his makeshift photography darkroom, first in tents in the desert army camps and later in America in our small kitchen. As a child, I used to work with him in the kitchen darkroom and marveled as these images emerged magically under the vinegary scent of the photo-chemicals. It was such a joy to work with him and the albums remind me of his generosity, kindness, and hard work for our family in America.
My father, Lieutenant Wawrzyniec Solecki, adjutant for the 5th Artillery Regiment, Anti-tank Division of the Polish Second Corps under General Bronisław Rakowski, and later adjutant for the 10th Hussar Regiment under Major Antonii Smodlibowski, was an amateur photographer from his boyhood days in southern Poland. After he was released from the prisoner-of-war camp in Kozelsk, Russia, he miraculously obtained a photographic camera and began documenting the war, beginning with the Polish Army camp in Tatishchevo. Eventually, he fought at Monte Cassino and ended up in England where he met my mother again and where I was born. We left England for America in 1952.