... was stolen after she, her young brother, and her parents crossed the "green border" back to German-occupied Poland in the winter of 1939, a day before New Year's Eve (December 30, 1939), my uncle said. It was a cold night under a full moon. They dressed up as if for a party, and went without suitcases, just in warm coats and boots, to not arouse suspicion. They took a train from Baranowicze (halfway between Vilnius and Minsk, now in Belarus) straight toward the border and the river Bug. They walked across snow-covered fields, so bright in moonlight, and across the frozen river, to arrive in the relative safety of the other shore, with German, not Soviet, soldiers awaiting them.
My mom Henryka Trochimczyk as a baby, with her parents Maria and Stanislaw Wajszczuk, 1930
My mother just turned 10 years old on December 16, 1939; her winter coat was heavy with gold coins—all 293 of them, all shiny South African Gold Krugerrand.—sown into the seams under the lining. Her teddy bear’s belly was filled with my grandma's jewels. All was taken after they crossed into safety. My mom told me it was the crooked guide, a fellow Pole, who did it. I believed her, thinking how awful people are and how you cannot trust anyone. He was paid, after all, and yet he stole all they had. But my uncle, Jerzy Wajszczuk, and my aunt, Barbara Miszta, later said this story was not true; it was a German soldier who skillfully and quickly took out all the coins and jewels from the coat and the bear; he even gave them a receipt—alas, never honored by Germany after the war.
Henryka, Maria, Stanislaw Wajszczuk, with a friend (standing), Baranowicze, 1935.
My grandpa, Stanisław Wajszczuk, born in the village of Trzebieszów, near Łuków in the Lublin district of Poland (1895-1973, see the Wajszczuk family tree of thousands), worked for the Polish railroads and later for Poland's first radio station in Baranowicze. His wife, Maria, née Wasiuk (1906-1973), came from an impoverished gentry family with plenty of cousins and relatives living on local country estates near Baranowicze, the area where Polish national poets, Adam Mickiewicz and Czesław Miłosz, had their roots. One of her sisters Antonina Wasiuk – Ciocia Tonia (Aunt Tonia) to me – married Mr. Gliński, a soldier in the Polish Army. When the Soviets came after September 17, 1939, they looked for people connected to the Polish government. The Gliński family lived on a country estate in Skarbkowo and did not go to the city much, so it took a couple of months before the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) got to them. Who knows who denounced him? There are traitors everywhere.... They shot Uncle Gliński in the street, left his body there, and went to tell his wife she would be deported with her two sons to Siberia the next day. After the NKVD came to Ciocia Tonia, she had 24 hours to pack and was sent to a gulag near the river Yenisei with her two teen boys, of whom only Bohdan survived (but alas he became indoctrinated with Soviet ideology). As soon as Uncle Gliński died and his widow was deported in November, my grandpa went into hiding: he knew he was next. He stayed with friends or family one or two days at a time. My grandma started selling off family possessions, buying gold, and working on ways to take the gold back with them to Poland.
After the crossing, they lost all the gold: the German soldier story was true. I have seen the receipt. But they survived, just with some frostbite on their fingers and cheeks: they walked separated, two by two, my grandma with my Uncle Jerzy (Jurek), my grandpa with my mom, Henryka (Henia). They reconnected after the crossing and continued on to a little house in the village of Trzebieszów where by the end of the war 20 people lived in two bedrooms and starved, with food being confiscated by Germans or Polish partisans too often for comfort. They devised various ways of cheating the system, such as building hidden storage rooms or "ziemianki" underground, but still the staple foods on that farm were black bread with watery soup cooked with local weeds, komosa and lebioda, and salads of nettle and dandelions. My mom taught me to recognize them, in case I'd be starving one day like she was in that village. She also taught me what to take when running away from the war: solid boots, a warm coat, and a comforter to wrap things in and sleep under, plus gold jewelry and diamonds, valuable and light enough to carry. These I could sell along the way to buy food and survive.
Sunday walk in Kampinos Forest, near Warsaw, Henryka and Maja Trochimczyk, ca. 1964
Born in 1957, long after the war, I did not need to eat komosa, lebioda, nettle, or dandelions (though these would be good for me). I came to North America in 1988, first to Canada with my new Canadian husband, James Harley, and then, after I earned a doctorate in music history at McGill University, to Los Angeles to manage the Polish Music Center at the University of Southern California. In 1996, I arrived in the land of butterflies, sunlight, and birdsong with some gold to wear, including a turquoise pendant that my mom bought in the Emirates in the 1980s.
Henryka and Aleksy Trochimczyk, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 1988
My dad, Aleksy Trochimczyk (1927-2001), an electrical engineer, was head of maintenance at Abu Dhabi's power plant for over 20 years. Polish engineers on contracts in Iraq, Libya, the Emirates, and Syria bought gold to bring home and keep or sell to finance houses for their families (my dad's photos are now in the National Digital Archives -Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe to document that era in Polish history). Turquoise is the stone associated with the heart, or with spiritual sight, I found out later. I like to wear it often; turquoise is also among my favorite colors. My mom dressed me in turquoise dresses, the bright hue brought out my blue eyes she said. So I wear it frequently, now that I no longer wear perpetual black.
Turquoise pendant from Abu Dhabi, 1980s
I was in mourning for many years after my parents were shot by robbers on April 4, 2000, tied up and left to die in their summer house near Zegrze Lake (Zalew Zegrzynski, an artificial lake 30 km outside of Warsaw). Being feisty fighters and survivors, they managed to free themselves and lived after multiple surgeries, half-broken. My dad died on May 11, 2001, after a year in the hospital, for his injuries were too severe. His sense of humor never went away. In our last conversation, he laughingly told me he became a vampire living off other people's blood: he needed a blood transfusion every two weeks. I was touched by their bravery to the end, and also by their forgiveness. As my mom was telling me in the hospital, she was very concerned about the tragic future of the young man that shot them. Instead of being angry and resentful, she was sorry that he had destroyed so many lives – not only theirs, but also his own, which he ruined completely by becoming a murderer. Four months later another elderly couple was found dead, shot and tied up in their home in a neighboring village. How could anyone do this to them, for money, for gold? Two wedding rings, a gold chain off my mom’s neck, and 20 złoty for gas and milk money. That was the second time that my mother's gold was stolen, and so viciously, too. This attack came in their summer house, but the bulk of their jewelry was at home in a safe in Warsaw.
After my mom died on July 4, 2013, on Independence Day no less (I was riding in a parade, dressed up in patriotic garb and waving an American flag, when the news reached me), I inherited my mother's gold, including the sapphire engagement ring my dad bought in Moscow in 1956, where he traveled as a translator of technical books on electrical engineering. The sapphire is a beautiful deep hue, yet covered in scratches I have refused to remove. I value the lifetime of work and memories that this ring accumulated on my mom's finger—washing dishes, peeling potatoes, sewing clothes, cleaning up, doing the laundry. The sapphire is the stone of the voice, of communication, of expression. No wonder, I'm a writer.
So, if these jewels are not stolen again, they will become heirlooms to be passed on to my daughter, Anna, a chemical engineer with talent for organic chemistry, just like my mother’s—the turquoise pendant from the Emirates and the sapphire ring from Moscow, two Polish heirlooms in America.
Henryka and Aleksy Trochimczyk in the Emirates, in a wadi, 1994.
Story by Maja Trochimczyk. Ph.D.
NOTE: Jewelry photos taken on my mom's hand-embroidered tablecloth, in my California garden. Family photos from family archives.
Memorial stories may be found on my Poetry Laurels Blog and on my Chopin with Cherries music blog.
https://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-polish-easter-of-sorrow-and-joy-in.html
https://chopinwithcherries.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-gift-for-chopin-university-of-music.html