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Antoni Ostrowski "Życie najlepszej żony opisane przez czułego męża dla kochanych dzieci" oraz "Dziennik moich uczuciów, czyli elegia serca" [II - red.] ['Your death'. Origins of intimate journal in Poland at the turn of the 19th century"... more
Antoni Ostrowski "Życie najlepszej żony opisane przez czułego męża dla kochanych dzieci" oraz "Dziennik moich uczuciów, czyli elegia serca" [II - red.] ['Your death'. Origins of intimate journal in Poland at the turn of the 19th century" ang.; (Ta Mort. Les débuts du journal intime en Pologne au tournant des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles franc.]
Recension :
Francesco Annicchiarico, « Elżbieta Z. Wichrowska, Twoja Śmierć. Początki dziennika intymnego w Polsce na przełomie XVIII i XIX wieku (Ta Mort. Les débuts du journal intime en Pologne au tournant des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles) », Slavica bruxellensia [En ligne], 9 | 2013, mis en ligne le 15 avril 2013, consulté le 16 février 2018. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/slavica/1381:
"Ces deux œuvres, précédées d’un appareil critique, constituent la seconde partie de l’ouvrage. La première partie est quant à elle tout d’abord consacrée à une mise au point critique sur le journal polonais au seuil du XIXe siècle, dans lequel l’auteure propose une éclairante typologie illustrée d’exemples. L’auteure se livre ensuite à une analyse de la biographie épistolaire et de la correspondance intime par le biais des œuvres d’Ostrowski. Par sa lecture questionnant la langue de ces textes, leur style et les conventions du journal en Pologne et par l’analyse de ses principales thématiques, Wichrowska offre un nouveau point de vue replaçant la littérature des mémoires dans une nouvelle perspective au sein de l’histoire des lettres polonaises : en examinant les relations entre la pratique de l’écriture personnelle et les autres formes littéraires. La langue d’Ostrowski, en tant que moyen d’expression des sentiments et donc langage intime entre l’auteur et son épouse, avec Dieu, sa patrie, ses enfants, mais encore plus avec sa propre personne, constitue aux yeux de l’auteure le signe d’une évolution des rapports homme/femme et l’annonce d’un nouveau type d’écriture des mémoires.
5L’ouvrage est le fruit du travail méthodique de l’auteure qui s’est consacrée à déchiffrer les lettres autographes d’Ostrowski ainsi que ses manuscrits originaux : un travail méticuleux qui a non seulement le mérite de faire connaître des textes jusque-là inédits, mais aussi d’enrichir l’analyse du journal d’un point de vue très précis. Le livre a été conçu à partir d’un travail conséquent de recherches dans les archives de Pologne et d’Ukraine, travail qui a permis de faire découvrir des documents jamais encore utilisés dans la recherche, comme par exemple la correspondance qui date de la période de la Grande Diète et du Duché de Varsovie."
Recension :
Francesco Annicchiarico, « Elżbieta Z. Wichrowska, Twoja Śmierć. Początki dziennika intymnego w Polsce na przełomie XVIII i XIX wieku (Ta Mort. Les débuts du journal intime en Pologne au tournant des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles) », Slavica bruxellensia [En ligne], 9 | 2013, mis en ligne le 15 avril 2013, consulté le 16 février 2018. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/slavica/1381:
"Ces deux œuvres, précédées d’un appareil critique, constituent la seconde partie de l’ouvrage. La première partie est quant à elle tout d’abord consacrée à une mise au point critique sur le journal polonais au seuil du XIXe siècle, dans lequel l’auteure propose une éclairante typologie illustrée d’exemples. L’auteure se livre ensuite à une analyse de la biographie épistolaire et de la correspondance intime par le biais des œuvres d’Ostrowski. Par sa lecture questionnant la langue de ces textes, leur style et les conventions du journal en Pologne et par l’analyse de ses principales thématiques, Wichrowska offre un nouveau point de vue replaçant la littérature des mémoires dans une nouvelle perspective au sein de l’histoire des lettres polonaises : en examinant les relations entre la pratique de l’écriture personnelle et les autres formes littéraires. La langue d’Ostrowski, en tant que moyen d’expression des sentiments et donc langage intime entre l’auteur et son épouse, avec Dieu, sa patrie, ses enfants, mais encore plus avec sa propre personne, constitue aux yeux de l’auteure le signe d’une évolution des rapports homme/femme et l’annonce d’un nouveau type d’écriture des mémoires.
5L’ouvrage est le fruit du travail méthodique de l’auteure qui s’est consacrée à déchiffrer les lettres autographes d’Ostrowski ainsi que ses manuscrits originaux : un travail méticuleux qui a non seulement le mérite de faire connaître des textes jusque-là inédits, mais aussi d’enrichir l’analyse du journal d’un point de vue très précis. Le livre a été conçu à partir d’un travail conséquent de recherches dans les archives de Pologne et d’Ukraine, travail qui a permis de faire découvrir des documents jamais encore utilisés dans la recherche, comme par exemple la correspondance qui date de la période de la Grande Diète et du Duché de Varsovie."
Henryk Andrzej Łęczycki was born on February 4, 1903 in Warsaw. His parents were Stanisława (née Sikorska) and Witold Łęczycki – a Warsaw tailor. Henryk was their youngest child, he had three brothers: Tadeusz (1893-1944), Jerzy... more
Henryk Andrzej Łęczycki was born on February 4, 1903 in Warsaw. His parents were Stanisława (née Sikorska) and Witold Łęczycki – a Warsaw tailor. Henryk was their youngest child, he had three brothers: Tadeusz (1893-1944), Jerzy (1896-1977), and Stanisław (1898-1962) and one sister Eugenia (1905-1992). He spent his childhood and teenage years in Warsaw, where he received his education. In 1920, he joined the Polish Army as a volunteer during the Polish-Soviet War. In 1927 in Piotrków Trybunalski, he married Maria Michalska, a history student at the University of Warsaw. Henryk himself graduated from the Civil Engineering Department at the Warsaw University of Technology. After graduation, he was sent to Terebovlia – a poviat city in the Ternopil province – where he worked for the Poviat Road Administration till the outbreak of WWII. He and his wife Maria had three children: Andrzej (born 1929), Witold (born 1933) and Agnieszka (born 1938).
When the Red Army entered Terebovlia, Łęczycki was employed by the Road Administration office, however, in March 1940, he was arrested by the NKVD. After an investigation which lasted for a month and a half, he was transferred to prison in Ternopil. On April 13, 1940 his whole family was deported. His children and wife, as well as her family (parents Jan and Eleonora Michalski, and sister Aniela Michalska) were sent to Kazakhstan, whereas Henryk Łęczycki was transported to a prison in Kirovohrad, where the Special Council of the NKVD sentenced him to 8 years in a correctional labour camp. From there he was transferred, in May 1941, to a labour camp in Bezymyanka near Kuybyshev (now: Samara). More than a year in prison and forced work in the labour camp both contributed to the deterioration of Łęczycki’s health, the result of which was a several-week stay in the camp hospital. After the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, when amnesty was granted to Polish citizens in the USSR, Henryk Łęczycki decided to do everything possible to find his family. Having only some uncertain information about their exile fate, he travelled to Djanghishtobe in the Djarmin district of the East Kazakhstan region, where he was happy to find them in a town of Bolshaya Bukon. After a few months of convalescence, Henryk found a job as a road engineer in Kokpekty.
In 1942, the author decided to join the Polish army under the command of General Władysław Anders. He was assigned to a sapper unit of the 10th Infantry Division of the Polish Armed Forces in the USSR. On March 17, 1942 he was evacuated with his unit through Krasnovodsk to Iran and then to Iraq, Palestine and Egypt. Then he was transferred to the 3rd Division of Carpathian Rifles. At the turn of 1943 and 1944 the whole 2nd Corps were transported to Italy, where the Polish soldiers were included in the British Eight Army under Lieutenant-General Oliver Leese. Together, in May 1944 they fought at the Gustav line. Henryk Łęczycki, in the rank of corporal, fought in the 3rd Division of Carpathian Rifles, in the 3rd Sapper Battalion. He took part in the Battle of Monte Cassino, after which he received promotion to master corporal and was awarded the Military Cross of Merit with Swords. In June 1945 he joined the 20th Sapper Battalion. With the rest of his unit he was sent to Fano in Italy, becoming a part of the Sapper Group of the 2nd Corps. When his unit was disbanded, Łęczycki decided to return to his country. First, he spent some time waiting to travel back to Poland in a repatriation camp in Scotland, and then he made a sea journey from Edinburgh to Gdynia. In 1947 in Wrocław, he reunited with his family, who had been repatriated from the USSR in 1946.
After his return it did not take him long to find a job in the Provincial Commission for Economic Planning of the Presidium of the Voivodship National Council in Wrocław. In 1950, Łęczycki started work in the Transport Department of the Voivodship Council in Wrocław. In the years 1950-1953 he was in charge of the Investment Department of the Provincial Public Road Administration. At the same time, he also gave commissioned lectures at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology. In 1953 he became the University’s employee, working in the Department of Roads and Streets at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, first as deputy professor, and next as senior lecturer. While working at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Henryk Łęczycki performed various functions: he was deputy dean for Extension School (1954-1955), deputy dean for Evening School (1956-1958), and deputy dean for Full-Time School (1958-1960). In 1968, after the reorganisation of the University, he was appointed head of the Traffic Engineering Unit at the Civil Engineering Institute. He was also engaged in social activities, for example, he served a few terms as a member and deputy chairman of the Sailing, Transport and Communication Commission of the Presidium of the Voivodship National Council in Wrocław. For his many years of work he was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order Polonia Restituta, the Lower Silesia 25th Anniversary Medal, and the Gold Medal of Merit for Lower Silesia. In 1971 Henryk Łęczycki retired. He never joined the Polish United Workers’ Party. He died on January 13, 1979 and was buried in the family grave at the St. Wawrzyniec cemetery in Wrocław.
Henryk Łęczycki’s memoir is interesting for a few reasons. It is worth noticing, that the text was being written in the times when its publication was highly unlikely. The author started writing in 1975, and the work was completed most probably at the beginning of the 1980s. Łęczycki supplemented the text with many pictures, newspaper clippings, as well as his own notes, which expand on the information given in the main text. He writes in a matter-of-fact way, presenting only specific events and states, and applying objectivity also to his own observations. His account is full of mindfully delivered details, it can be assumed that Łęczycki intended his text to be used as reliable testimony about the Soviet terror. The author turns into a reporter, giving an account full of details and recounting events he witnessed or took part in. This is best noticeable in the fragments related to the Polish Army and going through various countries with it. Łęczycki describes not only his own experiences, but social situation as well, and he also adds some historical information on places he finds himself in. He sees cultural differences and describes them, sometimes trying to explain them also to the reader. In each part of his memoir, one can find topics interesting both to any person interested in the history of the 20th century, as well as a historian, professionally interested in this period of history.
Tłum. Michał Sikora
When the Red Army entered Terebovlia, Łęczycki was employed by the Road Administration office, however, in March 1940, he was arrested by the NKVD. After an investigation which lasted for a month and a half, he was transferred to prison in Ternopil. On April 13, 1940 his whole family was deported. His children and wife, as well as her family (parents Jan and Eleonora Michalski, and sister Aniela Michalska) were sent to Kazakhstan, whereas Henryk Łęczycki was transported to a prison in Kirovohrad, where the Special Council of the NKVD sentenced him to 8 years in a correctional labour camp. From there he was transferred, in May 1941, to a labour camp in Bezymyanka near Kuybyshev (now: Samara). More than a year in prison and forced work in the labour camp both contributed to the deterioration of Łęczycki’s health, the result of which was a several-week stay in the camp hospital. After the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, when amnesty was granted to Polish citizens in the USSR, Henryk Łęczycki decided to do everything possible to find his family. Having only some uncertain information about their exile fate, he travelled to Djanghishtobe in the Djarmin district of the East Kazakhstan region, where he was happy to find them in a town of Bolshaya Bukon. After a few months of convalescence, Henryk found a job as a road engineer in Kokpekty.
In 1942, the author decided to join the Polish army under the command of General Władysław Anders. He was assigned to a sapper unit of the 10th Infantry Division of the Polish Armed Forces in the USSR. On March 17, 1942 he was evacuated with his unit through Krasnovodsk to Iran and then to Iraq, Palestine and Egypt. Then he was transferred to the 3rd Division of Carpathian Rifles. At the turn of 1943 and 1944 the whole 2nd Corps were transported to Italy, where the Polish soldiers were included in the British Eight Army under Lieutenant-General Oliver Leese. Together, in May 1944 they fought at the Gustav line. Henryk Łęczycki, in the rank of corporal, fought in the 3rd Division of Carpathian Rifles, in the 3rd Sapper Battalion. He took part in the Battle of Monte Cassino, after which he received promotion to master corporal and was awarded the Military Cross of Merit with Swords. In June 1945 he joined the 20th Sapper Battalion. With the rest of his unit he was sent to Fano in Italy, becoming a part of the Sapper Group of the 2nd Corps. When his unit was disbanded, Łęczycki decided to return to his country. First, he spent some time waiting to travel back to Poland in a repatriation camp in Scotland, and then he made a sea journey from Edinburgh to Gdynia. In 1947 in Wrocław, he reunited with his family, who had been repatriated from the USSR in 1946.
After his return it did not take him long to find a job in the Provincial Commission for Economic Planning of the Presidium of the Voivodship National Council in Wrocław. In 1950, Łęczycki started work in the Transport Department of the Voivodship Council in Wrocław. In the years 1950-1953 he was in charge of the Investment Department of the Provincial Public Road Administration. At the same time, he also gave commissioned lectures at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology. In 1953 he became the University’s employee, working in the Department of Roads and Streets at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, first as deputy professor, and next as senior lecturer. While working at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Henryk Łęczycki performed various functions: he was deputy dean for Extension School (1954-1955), deputy dean for Evening School (1956-1958), and deputy dean for Full-Time School (1958-1960). In 1968, after the reorganisation of the University, he was appointed head of the Traffic Engineering Unit at the Civil Engineering Institute. He was also engaged in social activities, for example, he served a few terms as a member and deputy chairman of the Sailing, Transport and Communication Commission of the Presidium of the Voivodship National Council in Wrocław. For his many years of work he was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order Polonia Restituta, the Lower Silesia 25th Anniversary Medal, and the Gold Medal of Merit for Lower Silesia. In 1971 Henryk Łęczycki retired. He never joined the Polish United Workers’ Party. He died on January 13, 1979 and was buried in the family grave at the St. Wawrzyniec cemetery in Wrocław.
Henryk Łęczycki’s memoir is interesting for a few reasons. It is worth noticing, that the text was being written in the times when its publication was highly unlikely. The author started writing in 1975, and the work was completed most probably at the beginning of the 1980s. Łęczycki supplemented the text with many pictures, newspaper clippings, as well as his own notes, which expand on the information given in the main text. He writes in a matter-of-fact way, presenting only specific events and states, and applying objectivity also to his own observations. His account is full of mindfully delivered details, it can be assumed that Łęczycki intended his text to be used as reliable testimony about the Soviet terror. The author turns into a reporter, giving an account full of details and recounting events he witnessed or took part in. This is best noticeable in the fragments related to the Polish Army and going through various countries with it. Łęczycki describes not only his own experiences, but social situation as well, and he also adds some historical information on places he finds himself in. He sees cultural differences and describes them, sometimes trying to explain them also to the reader. In each part of his memoir, one can find topics interesting both to any person interested in the history of the 20th century, as well as a historian, professionally interested in this period of history.
Tłum. Michał Sikora
Jan Konopielko’s memoirs of 1906-1956 are a part of Testimonies of the Twentieth Century – a subseries of the Exiles Library published by the Polish Ethnological Society (Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze) in Wrocław. This publication was... more
Jan Konopielko’s memoirs of 1906-1956 are a part of Testimonies of the Twentieth Century – a subseries of the Exiles Library published by the Polish Ethnological Society (Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze) in Wrocław. This publication was made possible through funds from a project financed by the National Programme for the Development of Humanities.
Jan Konopielko was born on February 12th, 1906 in a village called Kolpeya in the Ashmyany poviat of what was back then the Vilnius Province. He was a son of Agata née Leoszko and Wincenty, both of whom came from the local rich and Catholic peasantry. The Konopielko family grew bigger fast. Jan had 9 siblings. During World War I, in 1915, as the fighting was getting closer to their village, the whole family had to flee. For some time they had no roof over their heads, and finally they came to stay with their relatives in Konstanpol’ye. Jan’s parents decided to place him in an okhronka (a kind of a kindergarden or orphanage, usually run by religious institution – translator’s note) for evacuated children in Radoshkovichi. After coming back from okhronka, Jan started going to a Russian primary school in Matsevichi. However, his attendance was irregular, interrupted by periods of cow grazing or rebuilding the house with his father. Jan only went to school for two years, since after the outbreak of the Russian Revolution the school in Matsevichi was closed, and the whole area was occupied by the German army.
In the first year after the war Jan and his family suffered hunger and diseases, such as dysentery (which affected most of the villagers). At the age of 15, Jan started learning to be a shoemaker. In 1922, he went back to school and after graduating, since he truly wanted to continue his education, Jan demonstrated great perseverance in trying to be admitted to secondary school. In 1924 he got in the Teacher Training College in Boruny, where he completed 3 years. It was at that time that he met his distant relative – Helena Wojciul – who would later become his wife. Jan went on to continue his education in a Teacher Training College in Vilnius, where in 1930 he passed his school-leaving exams called matura. He found a job in a public school in Bile near Konvalishki in his home poviat. Apart from teaching, he devoted his time to participating in the community’s cultural life and social work. He also helped his family, and in particular his younger siblings, to get education. He was respected for his social advancement, so difficult to achieve on one’s own, and under such adverse conditions. In 1932 he was transferred to a one-class school in Rudnia, after a few years to a school in a village called Glinno, and then to Halshany. In 1934 he married his young love Helena Wojciul and in 1935 their first son, Mirosław, was born. At that time Jan was also a student of a higher level teacher training course in Warsaw. When he finished it, together with his wife and son, they moved to Sukniewicze, where he was a director of a six-class school.
After the outbreak of World War II, this part of Poland was under Soviet occupation. Jan and Helena suffered a terrible tragedy. Helena’s family, quite wealthy by the standards of those times, were brutally murdered by some bandits, who used the war chaos to break into rich people’s houses in the area. During the Soviet occupation both Jan and his wife continued teaching in the school in Sukniewicze, but after Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, the school was closed and the Konopielko family moved to a nearby town of Smorgonie. This is where they survived the whole occupation. In 1942 Helena and Jan had their second child – a son named Paweł.
When the Soviets entered the Vilnius Region again, at the end of August 1944 Jan got arrested by the NKVD and put in the Vileyka prison on charges of collaboration with the Germans. He was sentenced to 10 years in a corrective labour colony, and in 1945 he was sent to a camp in the North of the USSR in Molotovsk (now Severodvinsk). In 1946, together with his fellow political prisoners, he was transferred to a special camp near a town called Tayshet, in the Irkutsk Oblast in Siberia (probably, this was the No 7 special camp – Ozerlag). He worked at clearing the taiga and when his health begun to fail he started working as a fireman, canteen worker, and a warehouseman in the lager. In 1953 he was placed in a transit and transmission camp in the Vanino Harbour, from where he was supposed to be sent to the terrifying Kolyma. In the end, he was sent to a camp in Zhezkazgan Region in Kazakhstan. In August 1954 Jan was released from this camp, sentenced to the so-called eternal exile and sent to the E. Thälmann sovkhoz in Karaganda Region (Kazakhstan), where he worked as a builder, but also an accountant and a warehouseman. All this time, he kept on trying to contact his immediate family, who – after his exile – left for Poland and settled in Lidzbark Warmiński. His siblings and other relatives still remained in Belarus. After a year in the sovkhoz, Jan was allowed to settle in Belarus. He went to Smorgonie, where he was reunited with his siblings. At the same time, he did not stop applying for a permission to leave for Poland. It is quite possible that had he stayed in Kazakhstan, he would have returned to his country a few months earlier, since in November and December 1955 the Soviet authorities sent repatriation transports with a few thousand Polish exiles, former political prisoners. Jan, however, managed to get to Poland only in 1956. He joined his family in Lidzbark Warmiński, and started working as a Russian language teacher in a Vocational School in Lidzbark Warmiński, at the same time managing the school’s boarding house. His wife Helena was a teacher in a Pedagogical Secondary School in Lidzbark Warmiński. Jan Konopielko did not limit himself to his professional work, but he also engaged in social and cultural life. His favourite pastime was bee-keeping. He died on December 22, 1985 in Olsztyn. Jan and Helena are buried in Lidzbark Warmiński.
Jan Konopielko’s memoirs cover a few time periods, or maybe even eras, in history of Poland in the first half of the twentieth century. The author describes his childhood, which includes years before 1914 and the years of World War I. He also offers a comprehensive account of his youth and the first phases of his career during the Second Polish Republic. Konopielko brings also up, although not always with the same attention to detail, the issue of the Soviet and German occupations in the years 1939-1944. However, the core of his memoirs is the period from 1944 onwards. As a prison and the Gulag camps inmate, he had to learn to live in extreme conditions, and fight for his survival, alone, far from his countrymen. He was hardworking and smart, and he displayed great fortitude – all the traits that had helped him gain education and good social standing, now let him get through almost ten years of Soviet repressions. Konopielko’s memories contain a lot of information about everyday life, work conditions, relations among inmates and between inmates and guards. The author shares also his observations about the Soviet society, which he got to know during his years in exile.
Jan Konopielko’s account is interesting for several reasons. What is of particular interest is that his recollections were written when there was very little chance of having them published. Konopielko continued writing till the middle of the 1980s, almost till the very last months of his life. As his health got worse, he would write some parts of the text in hospitals. When he died at the end of 1985, it was not possible to add any corrections or modifications to it, whether required for a hypothetical publication in the future or resulting from political changes of the end of the 1980s. Interestingly, the author, writing his memories down in the 1980s, made a kind of auto-compilation by using also his earlier text which had probably came into existence at the end of the 1930s and was entitled My life story. He intended his memoirs to be bequeathed to his grandchildren.
Usually, when memoirs are written down years later, different parts of the text contain information of different significance, or – if we look at it in a broader context – of different quality of narrative. This is also the case with Konopielko’s memories. However, it should be emphasized that in each part (as the text can be divided into parts, based on chronological order: time till the end of WWI, interwar period, Soviet and German occupations, Soviet repressions) one can find topics interesting both for a reader who simply is interested in the history of the twentieth century, and for a professional researcher of this time in history.
The printed version of the memoirs was prepared using a typescript which is now kept in the Archives of the Polish Ethnological Society in Wrocław (ref. no.: 127/s). Originally, the text was an entry sent in to a contest for memoirs organized in 1988. Editorial modifications were limited to the absolute minimum, and the text was provided with notes containing additional information to make the memoirs easier to read. An extensive collection of illustrated materials coming from the private archives of the Konopielko family is also an important part of the book.
Tłum. Michał Sikora
Jan Konopielko was born on February 12th, 1906 in a village called Kolpeya in the Ashmyany poviat of what was back then the Vilnius Province. He was a son of Agata née Leoszko and Wincenty, both of whom came from the local rich and Catholic peasantry. The Konopielko family grew bigger fast. Jan had 9 siblings. During World War I, in 1915, as the fighting was getting closer to their village, the whole family had to flee. For some time they had no roof over their heads, and finally they came to stay with their relatives in Konstanpol’ye. Jan’s parents decided to place him in an okhronka (a kind of a kindergarden or orphanage, usually run by religious institution – translator’s note) for evacuated children in Radoshkovichi. After coming back from okhronka, Jan started going to a Russian primary school in Matsevichi. However, his attendance was irregular, interrupted by periods of cow grazing or rebuilding the house with his father. Jan only went to school for two years, since after the outbreak of the Russian Revolution the school in Matsevichi was closed, and the whole area was occupied by the German army.
In the first year after the war Jan and his family suffered hunger and diseases, such as dysentery (which affected most of the villagers). At the age of 15, Jan started learning to be a shoemaker. In 1922, he went back to school and after graduating, since he truly wanted to continue his education, Jan demonstrated great perseverance in trying to be admitted to secondary school. In 1924 he got in the Teacher Training College in Boruny, where he completed 3 years. It was at that time that he met his distant relative – Helena Wojciul – who would later become his wife. Jan went on to continue his education in a Teacher Training College in Vilnius, where in 1930 he passed his school-leaving exams called matura. He found a job in a public school in Bile near Konvalishki in his home poviat. Apart from teaching, he devoted his time to participating in the community’s cultural life and social work. He also helped his family, and in particular his younger siblings, to get education. He was respected for his social advancement, so difficult to achieve on one’s own, and under such adverse conditions. In 1932 he was transferred to a one-class school in Rudnia, after a few years to a school in a village called Glinno, and then to Halshany. In 1934 he married his young love Helena Wojciul and in 1935 their first son, Mirosław, was born. At that time Jan was also a student of a higher level teacher training course in Warsaw. When he finished it, together with his wife and son, they moved to Sukniewicze, where he was a director of a six-class school.
After the outbreak of World War II, this part of Poland was under Soviet occupation. Jan and Helena suffered a terrible tragedy. Helena’s family, quite wealthy by the standards of those times, were brutally murdered by some bandits, who used the war chaos to break into rich people’s houses in the area. During the Soviet occupation both Jan and his wife continued teaching in the school in Sukniewicze, but after Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, the school was closed and the Konopielko family moved to a nearby town of Smorgonie. This is where they survived the whole occupation. In 1942 Helena and Jan had their second child – a son named Paweł.
When the Soviets entered the Vilnius Region again, at the end of August 1944 Jan got arrested by the NKVD and put in the Vileyka prison on charges of collaboration with the Germans. He was sentenced to 10 years in a corrective labour colony, and in 1945 he was sent to a camp in the North of the USSR in Molotovsk (now Severodvinsk). In 1946, together with his fellow political prisoners, he was transferred to a special camp near a town called Tayshet, in the Irkutsk Oblast in Siberia (probably, this was the No 7 special camp – Ozerlag). He worked at clearing the taiga and when his health begun to fail he started working as a fireman, canteen worker, and a warehouseman in the lager. In 1953 he was placed in a transit and transmission camp in the Vanino Harbour, from where he was supposed to be sent to the terrifying Kolyma. In the end, he was sent to a camp in Zhezkazgan Region in Kazakhstan. In August 1954 Jan was released from this camp, sentenced to the so-called eternal exile and sent to the E. Thälmann sovkhoz in Karaganda Region (Kazakhstan), where he worked as a builder, but also an accountant and a warehouseman. All this time, he kept on trying to contact his immediate family, who – after his exile – left for Poland and settled in Lidzbark Warmiński. His siblings and other relatives still remained in Belarus. After a year in the sovkhoz, Jan was allowed to settle in Belarus. He went to Smorgonie, where he was reunited with his siblings. At the same time, he did not stop applying for a permission to leave for Poland. It is quite possible that had he stayed in Kazakhstan, he would have returned to his country a few months earlier, since in November and December 1955 the Soviet authorities sent repatriation transports with a few thousand Polish exiles, former political prisoners. Jan, however, managed to get to Poland only in 1956. He joined his family in Lidzbark Warmiński, and started working as a Russian language teacher in a Vocational School in Lidzbark Warmiński, at the same time managing the school’s boarding house. His wife Helena was a teacher in a Pedagogical Secondary School in Lidzbark Warmiński. Jan Konopielko did not limit himself to his professional work, but he also engaged in social and cultural life. His favourite pastime was bee-keeping. He died on December 22, 1985 in Olsztyn. Jan and Helena are buried in Lidzbark Warmiński.
Jan Konopielko’s memoirs cover a few time periods, or maybe even eras, in history of Poland in the first half of the twentieth century. The author describes his childhood, which includes years before 1914 and the years of World War I. He also offers a comprehensive account of his youth and the first phases of his career during the Second Polish Republic. Konopielko brings also up, although not always with the same attention to detail, the issue of the Soviet and German occupations in the years 1939-1944. However, the core of his memoirs is the period from 1944 onwards. As a prison and the Gulag camps inmate, he had to learn to live in extreme conditions, and fight for his survival, alone, far from his countrymen. He was hardworking and smart, and he displayed great fortitude – all the traits that had helped him gain education and good social standing, now let him get through almost ten years of Soviet repressions. Konopielko’s memories contain a lot of information about everyday life, work conditions, relations among inmates and between inmates and guards. The author shares also his observations about the Soviet society, which he got to know during his years in exile.
Jan Konopielko’s account is interesting for several reasons. What is of particular interest is that his recollections were written when there was very little chance of having them published. Konopielko continued writing till the middle of the 1980s, almost till the very last months of his life. As his health got worse, he would write some parts of the text in hospitals. When he died at the end of 1985, it was not possible to add any corrections or modifications to it, whether required for a hypothetical publication in the future or resulting from political changes of the end of the 1980s. Interestingly, the author, writing his memories down in the 1980s, made a kind of auto-compilation by using also his earlier text which had probably came into existence at the end of the 1930s and was entitled My life story. He intended his memoirs to be bequeathed to his grandchildren.
Usually, when memoirs are written down years later, different parts of the text contain information of different significance, or – if we look at it in a broader context – of different quality of narrative. This is also the case with Konopielko’s memories. However, it should be emphasized that in each part (as the text can be divided into parts, based on chronological order: time till the end of WWI, interwar period, Soviet and German occupations, Soviet repressions) one can find topics interesting both for a reader who simply is interested in the history of the twentieth century, and for a professional researcher of this time in history.
The printed version of the memoirs was prepared using a typescript which is now kept in the Archives of the Polish Ethnological Society in Wrocław (ref. no.: 127/s). Originally, the text was an entry sent in to a contest for memoirs organized in 1988. Editorial modifications were limited to the absolute minimum, and the text was provided with notes containing additional information to make the memoirs easier to read. An extensive collection of illustrated materials coming from the private archives of the Konopielko family is also an important part of the book.
Tłum. Michał Sikora
„Sanctity is scary”. Seeking for transcendence in 'The City of Herod: Palestinian Notes' by Maria Kuncewiczowa The article written by Barbara Szymczak-Maciejczyk delivers an analysis of Maria Kuncewicz’s book 'The City of Herod:... more
„Sanctity is scary”. Seeking for transcendence in 'The City of Herod:
Palestinian Notes' by Maria Kuncewiczowa
The article written by Barbara Szymczak-Maciejczyk delivers an analysis of Maria Kuncewicz’s book 'The City of Herod: Palestinian Notes'. The Polish writer describes her trip, and pilgrimage at the same time, to the Holy Land where she was invited by the PEN Club in 1936. The text addresses several issues. There is a fascination with traveling to a foreign country with a different culture, which Kuncewicz writes down as colorful and interesting; there is also a need to experience transcendence, referring to the writer’s religiousness and the desire of her ancestors to visit the Holy Land. The author of the article examines the sacrum of Jerusalem and surrounding places related to the Biblical events and the need to meet God. There is also the question of how the penetration of three cultures affects Kuncewicz’s experience of transcendence.
Palestinian Notes' by Maria Kuncewiczowa
The article written by Barbara Szymczak-Maciejczyk delivers an analysis of Maria Kuncewicz’s book 'The City of Herod: Palestinian Notes'. The Polish writer describes her trip, and pilgrimage at the same time, to the Holy Land where she was invited by the PEN Club in 1936. The text addresses several issues. There is a fascination with traveling to a foreign country with a different culture, which Kuncewicz writes down as colorful and interesting; there is also a need to experience transcendence, referring to the writer’s religiousness and the desire of her ancestors to visit the Holy Land. The author of the article examines the sacrum of Jerusalem and surrounding places related to the Biblical events and the need to meet God. There is also the question of how the penetration of three cultures affects Kuncewicz’s experience of transcendence.