It seemed, finally, to be over. The suicides of Hitler and Eva Braun in April 1945 marked the end of Nazi rule. Prisoners of war held in camps across Germany — among them Jozef Pluskowski, who had been detained in the so-called “Officers Transit Camp” at Gerolstein — were at last able to return home.
Warsaw lay in ruins. Jozef’s family had been forced by retreating German units to walk to Grodzisk, where he eventually rejoined them. From there, they moved to Mińsk Mazowiecki, some 40 kilometres from the capital.
Liberation by the Soviet army brought a very different set of problems. Poland was now falling under Soviet-backed communist rule, and the political freedoms of the pre-war years were rapidly disappearing.
Rumours had already spread of the graves in the Katyn Forest, where, in 1940, the Soviet secret police had executed thousands of Polish officers, officials and members of the country’s intelligentsia. Others from Poland’s eastern regions had been deported to forced labour camps in Siberia. Many never returned.
In Mińsk Mazowiecki, Jozef, together with family and friends, attempted to establish an independent mineral and soda-water business. Before long, however, he was summoned by the local authorities, interrogated, and informed that there was no place in the new Poland for members of the pre-war Polish Socialist Party, the PPS.
It became clear that he was in danger of imprisonment, and friends began organising his escape.
This was no easy matter. The Iron Curtain was descending across Europe and Poland’s borders were tightly controlled. But remnants of the wartime underground still existed, and through their help Jozef was smuggled out of Poland by a circuitous route, including small mountain paths, eventually reaching Prague and then France.
In Paris, he became editor of Światło, a publication providing a forum for political ideas and commentary. He worked alongside his fellow socialist Zygmunt Zaremba, and they maintained contact with Tomasz Arciszewski, the former Polish Prime Minister in exile, who was then living in London.
They were also able to publish a selection of Jozef’s poems, Poesie, in 1947, followed by a second edition in 1949 — a literary record of those extraordinary years.
For the family Jozef had left behind, however, the situation was far more difficult.
His wife, Irena — herself a fellow conspirator during the German occupation — remained in Poland with their son, born in 1944. With the borders under increasingly tight control, there seemed little prospect of their being able to join him.
Help came from an unexpected direction.
At the time, one of the few groups permitted — and in some circumstances encouraged — to leave Poland were Polish Jews travelling towards Palestine and, after May 1948, the newly established State of Israel. In the aftermath of the Holocaust and the horrors of the death camps, a large movement of Jewish survivors was making its way out of Eastern Europe.
The Bricha movement — bricha being Hebrew for “flight” or “escape” — organised the clandestine movement of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe towards British Mandate Palestine and, subsequently, Israel.
Among the documents used to enable these journeys were black emigration passports, inscribed in Polish and French.
One such passport was given to Jozef’s wife, Irena.
But it gave her an entirely new identity.
Stamped EMIGRACYJNY / D’ÉMIGRATION No. 3263, the passport was to be used in August 1948 for a journey through Czechoslovakia to France.
Officially, Irena was no longer Irena Pluskowska.
She was Rachelle Miller, resident in Warsaw: a married schoolteacher, 1.63 metres tall, travelling with one child — a son named Adam.
The son, of course, was actually Jozef and Irena’s four-year-old boy.
There was an obvious danger in expecting a child of that age to remember a new name and invented personal details. So he was taught a simple answer to give whenever anyone asked him a difficult question — particularly:
“What is your name?”
His reply was to be:
“Nie pamiętam.”
I don’t remember.
It was a phrase he continued to use, apparently with some enthusiasm, for months afterwards.
Preparations for the journey included carrying packs of cigarettes to use for exchanges, favours and gratuities during the roughly 60-hour train journey. Cash was of limited value along the route; cigarettes were often much more useful. Marlboros, in particular, were highly prized.
Eventually, Irena and her son reached Strasbourg.
There, Jozef was finally able to meet them and take them on to Paris, where he had established a home at No. 3 Rue Brey, close to the Arc de Triomphe. His office was in Montmartre.
In his final collection of poems, Jozef placed himself among those displaced by war, imprisonment and political upheaval:
“… citizens of the world
No citizenship do we have
After prison, detention, confinement and gulag
We travel the roads of the world.”
The 1948 Emigracyjny passport remains unforgettable: a small document that records an extraordinary journey across some of the most tightly controlled borders of post-war Europe, at the moment when the continent was being divided once again.
And behind its false names, stamps and invented identities lies a very simple family story: a wife and a four-year-old boy trying to cross Europe to be reunited with a husband and father.
When anyone asked too many questions, the boy had only to remember two words:
Nie pamiętam.
After the war, and 20 years spent in Spandau prison, Speer moved back to Heidelberg and lived in a villa above Heidelberg Castle. His son was also an architect but the two were estranged until his death in 1981 in London. He was on his way to a BBC interview on his bestselling autobiography. To his death, Speer always denied knowledge of the Holocaust and is said to have donated a good part of his publishing income to charitable Jewish institutions.
p, land of the endangered Amur Tiger. There are less than 30 left in China and 400 in Siberia, some of which prey on bears. There is also an Amur leopard, though only about 45 adults remain in the wild. Earlier in 2014, Vladimir Putin released three tagged Amur tigers into the wild in this region. One, a male called Kuzya, made headlines by quickly choosing to cross the river into China, where local officials welcomed the event, promising that “if necessary, we can release cattle into the region to feed it” .Siberia remains in the news…
Stories of the great treasure, said to be buried with him, have always circulated among Mongol tribes.The site of his former palace is located about 150 miles from today’s capital, Ulaan Bataar. Despite rumours and many searches (even, most recently, by satellite), nothing has ever been found. In the city itself, the main city square is dominated by the seated statue of Chingghis (Genghis) Khan on the approach to the National Museum.
to sheep”). Traditionally a nomadic people, they were accustomed to live in relative isolation from each other. Once guided by Shamanism then by Buddhism, they were ruled from the legendary capital of Karakorum, the center of power moved later by Kublai Khan to Shengdu, an event imagined by poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his memorable verse
the city still has some of the lowest crime rates in Asia.
here. A popular restaurant, DGH, is subtitled “Dreams Get Happiness” while another sign reads “DESTROY, Hair and Beauty Salon”?! The largest commercial enterprise is the STATE DEPARTMENT STORE, “All Needs are Fulfilled,100% cash back guarantee”. It is full of Western and UK brands that, according to our British fellow-travellers, are offered at 2/3 the price of Marks and Spencer.
While two of our intrepid travellers, Bob and Geraldine, head out of the city to see the enormous (40 meters/about 130 ft tall) Genghis Khan statue by the Tuul river, the rest of us leave for the dramatic rocky Terelj National Park. The tour is led by our local guide Buyana, whose name, we find out, means “heavenly light”. It is a chance to catch a glimpse of wild Mongolia.
to Russian tradition and a fascinating visit to an Old Believer community, exiled to Siberia centuries ago for refusing to accept reforms aligning the liturgy with that of the Greek Church. During the visit we have lunch, enjoy village songs and jokes, admire the colorful painted houses and their gardens. Soulful Russian poet Yesenin, once lover and husband of Isadora Duncan, came from an Old Believer peasant family. We hear about even more traditional Old Believer communities such as those in Estonia that still follow ancient prohibitions such as the one where men who die without a beard have to be buried in an unmarked grave or another about women who, unable to enter a church bareheaded, must have their scarves pinned under their chin for tying a knot is symbolic of the suicide of Judas by hanging. Otherwise the traditional icons are similar, the “onion domes” of churches still represent the flame of a candle, while the lower bar on the crucifix, at an angle to the cross, represents pointers signifying up to heaven, down to hell, a reminder of the choices made by the two thieves crucified on either side of Christ on Golgotha. Another window on the Russian soul.
s ! Locals point out Baikal is the ideal crime site, as there is absolutely no evidence left.
