Babcia, or reading my grandmother’s memoir
‘Do you recognize us?’, a plump lady in her sixties asked with a smile that promised mischief.
Her husband stood behind her with a stern face. Even without him saying a word, they came across as clashing personalities that somehow made a perfect match. But I had no idea who they were. Embarrassed, I shook my head.
‘I’m your Babcia’, she explained. That’s how I met my grandmother. I was nine and it was the day of my first communion.
My father left my mom when she was pregnant. He went back to his wife and their daughters, and did his best to keep my existence a secret. I grew up on the outskirts of Kraków, Poland — in the 90’s it was still a religious, conservative neighbourhood. I was the only kid from a split family in my class. The odd one. Mom wanted me to at least meet my grandparents, so she asked my father to invite them to my first communion. It was a stretch. I was a bastard child of their son — a reminder of his moral shortcomings. But they came. They smiled, hugged me, and invited me to spend the summer with them in Nowy Targ, a town in the Tatra mountains.
In Catholicism, first communion is a foundational moment. And that day 18 years ago was for me, though it’s not meeting Jesus that I remember today. Despite my upbringing, I was never religious. But it was then that I met someone who would become a friend, guide, and a bottomless well of inappropriate jokes.
That’s it, though. I only ever thought of Babcia and her warmth, wit, and that mischievous smile in context of my life. Things she told me, times she helped me through a difficult moment, pranks she played on me. Until she showed me her memoir last year. It was a story brilliantly told, something she’s always had a talent for. She could talk for hours about people and events, both monumental and insignificant, and leave you hungry for more. But this one was different. It was her own. She wrote about how she fled genocide as a child, maneuvered the oddities of communist Poland as an adult, and ended up trying to find her place in the disappointing aftermath of her generation’s struggle for freedom.
Last November, we celebrated 100 years since Poland reemerged on the map. It’s been a turbulent time and Babcia has been around to witness and participate in most of it. Ten days after Poland’s 100th birthday, my family toasted Babcia’s 84th. One of the first female engineers in post-war Poland and a local activist. Stuck in a small, conservative town by love and circumstance, but unrelenting in the conviction that women can and should ask for more. A patriot swept by the currents of history. Bogumiła Borowicz.
Her earliest memories are of an ethnic cleansing. During the Volhynian genocide, at the height of World War II, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) slaughtered about 100,000 Poles in the disputed territories in eastern Poland. Little Bogusia was living with her mother, Maria, in the Rejowiec village and every day watched the stream of refugees passing through. Some of them maimed, others insane, few with anything more than the clothes on their backs. Maria let one family stay with them. A teacher was fleeing the massacre with his wife and child after people whose kids he taught at school came to his house and said:
‘You were good to us, so we won’t kill everyone.’
Then they murdered his adult daughter, her husband, and their son.
UPA was burning down entire villages. Family, dispersed around the country in the storm of war, was sending Maria letters urging her to flee. But she wanted to stay. She was waiting for her husband, Kazimierz, captured and imprisoned in the early days of war. As a teacher, he fell victim to Intelligenzaktion, the Nazi extermination of about 100,000 Polish teachers, doctors, priests, and other educated citizens. Nazis executed Kazimierz in Castle Lublin, just 60 kilometers away from Rejowiec, but his wife didn’t trust the reports. Maria’s conviction that he will return before UPA reaches their home broke only when she saw fire flare up on the horizon. The slaughter had started in the neighbouring village. Maria, crippled by polio in her childhood, and nine year-old Bogusia grabbed whatever they could carry and left. That night, in the glow of a distant fire, was the last time they saw Rejowiec.
It was February 1944. With the eastern front closing in, the only way to catch a train was blind luck — any timetable was mostly aspirational. Then you needed more luck to reach your destination without starving, freezing, or getting blown up by an airstrike or sabotage. Maria and Bogusia had the fortune to board a freight train that took them all the way to Nowy Targ, a small town at the foot of the Tatra mountains in southern Poland. There, they were reunited with Olek, Kazimierz’s younger brother. Unlike Bogusia’s father, he managed to evade capture and found refuge in Nowy Targ. Olek and his wife lived in an apartment in a half-finished building, with no heating or electricity. Any furniture or equipment they had, Olek either made from scraps or received from friends. Despite the spartan conditions, their house was always open to family members and refugees. Maria and Bogusia were among many who found safe harbor there.
It was the start of a new life, away from the frontline and UPA. They were no longer in the shadow of genocide, but other struggles kept mounting up. Initially, uncle Olek was the sole breadwinner for the entire bunch staying under his roof. They were so poor that sometimes Bogusia had to venture to a nearby meadow and gather sorrel leaves so they would have something to eat. She was also alienated. She cried every day. Schools were closed during the war and many children were left to their own devices but they wouldn’t play with her because she came from the east. They called her ruska.
The bullying only stopped when one of her uncles visiting Nowy Targ gave her a proper western doll that blinked and said mama — an unbelievable luxury. With a toy so desirable, even a ruska was in high demand. The doll was quickly stolen but it gave Bogusia just enough time in the spotlight to charm the other children. Her apartment was a flimsy accomodation but what the unfinished house lacked in comfort, it made up for as an outlet for imagination. It became a stage for plays Bogusia invited her new companions to perform with her. Together, they ran from the reality of war and poverty into worlds and stories they shared.
Then, the Red Army came. The war was ending. Nowy Targ greeted its Soviet liberators with an offering of vodka and pocket watches. People came to the streets to celebrate and sing patriotic songs. They didn’t know yet that what the Soviet Union was bringing, was certainly not freedom. But at that time, a new order was replacing the old chaos. Nowy Targ reopened schools and Bogusia resumed education. Classes were assembled from kids of different age and skill, study materials were incomplete, and equipment was whatever could be salvaged, borrowed, or crafted by the community. But it was a start.
Maria was a qualified teacher and got a job at the new school. A modest salary and money she made on the side as a tutor allowed her and Bogusia to move out of uncle Olek’s into their own apartment. The building, however, was crawling with bed bugs. Every couple of months, the neighbours would pour boiling water over the furniture but scoffed at any suggestion of a continuous effort to keep the house free of insects. To them, hygiene was a modern fad.
But bed bugs were the least of their problems. The Soviets were rolling out an education reform and Maria’s employment hinged on the results of a state exam that checked her ability to impart to students the wisdom of Stalin, the Party, and the working class. After she passed, she was appointed the new Russian teacher. Problem was, she didn’t speak any Russian.
‘You lived in the east, you know the alphabet. You’re starting immediately,’ the headmaster announced, glossing over the fact that she only knew the Ukrainian alphabet.
Maria borrowed a textbook and started learning. Most of the time she was a lesson or two ahead of her students. She was working and cramming, day and night. Already disabled, she also started showing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Maria’s struggles meant Bogusia had to grow up quickly. She learned how to cook, clean the house, and fix her own clothes. At the same time, she was pressed to be both a good student and an attractive lady. The former was Maria’s dream — only select few got admitted into university and she was adamant her daughter would be one of them — while the latter was an economic necessity. In a town that was behind the times even in post-war Poland, a woman’s calling was primarily to find a husband. Not an easy feat for a girl with no money and a disabled mother to take care of.
Despite poverty and everyday hardships, Bogusia found ways to keep her spirits up — sometimes by getting in trouble. Her and her friends’ ideas of fun included spitting contests and smearing ink over each other’s hair. In high school, they spent afternoons on the hiking trails around Nowy Targ and on weekends they danced into the night. During that time, they forged friendships that lasted a lifetime and Bogusia met Józek Borowicz, a shy boy who would later give up his calling to priesthood to marry her.
The end of high school was a stressful time. Excelling at humanities and lagging behind in maths and sciences, Bogusia decided to study… hydraulic engineering. She passed finals from literature and history with flying colors but it was her nemesis, maths, that would decide her future. At an oral exam, she drew a question about the golden ratio. She launched into a soliloquy about the ancient Greeks, only lightly touching on the finer mathematical details, and, unlike 17 of her classmates, passed. Later, she would lean on that talent for spin in times of need — and sometimes just for kicks.
I went to Nowy Targ with my mom, just a few weeks after my first communion. I was to stay with my newly-discovered grandparents for a few days. Many years later, Babcia recalled that meeting to me:
‘When you first came to visit, you brought plain, washed out clothes. But everything was so neatly folded. Your mother’s love showed even in the way she packed your bag.’
Money was always tight but mom worked her butt off to make sure I was never cold or hungry. Babcia saw in her a fellow woman sacrificing herself for someone they both loved. Against odds, they became friends. They have supported each other through difficult moments and haven’t skipped a single Christmas card in 18 years. When two years ago I told Babcia I was moving countries for a new job, her first words were:
‘Don’t forget about your mom’.
That summer 18 years ago I got to meet the rest of the family from my father’s side. Up to that moment I was a dirty secret, but Babcia made me feel like I was one of them. For a kid used to being the odd one out, this meant the world. Since then, I had spent part of every summer and winter in Nowy Targ until I became an adult. I would hike with my uncles, ski with my cousins, or argue about politics with my grandfather but most of the time, I would just hang out with Babcia. A history buff, she would tell me stories of kings, wars, and revolutions. She wove tales that went on and on and whenever grandfather was in earshot, she would drop a bit of salacious trivia and chuckle as he lamented her morals.
Sometimes, she used her storytelling gift to prank me. She would say utter nonsense and keep making things more outlandish until I finally caught on. She once told me not to wash my hair too often, because when it dried, brain cells evaporated.
‘And if you have to wash, always use a hairdryer. It’s faster, so you can save some cells for later.’
If the penny didn’t drop, she would give herself away with that mischievous smile and a chuckle.
Kraków’s Politechnika was founded to prepare a new generation of engineers for the task of rebuilding and modernizing a country ravaged by two world wars and over a century of oppression and neglect. In 1958, Bogumiła became one of the first female engineers to graduate. While studying in Kraków, she stayed in a dorm room with 12 other women. They slept in bunk beds and had one small table per two people. The whole building had a single drawing room — essential for to-be engineers and always occupied. This did not deter Bogumiła. Even though she spent a lot of time on the road, traveling back to Nowy Targ to help her disabled mother, she fell in love with Kraków. The city of art and culture, filled with wide-eyed students just like herself, was a welcome break from small-town life. It helped that Józek, her high school sweetheart, was also studying at Politechnika.
Bogumiła got her first taste of rebuilding Poland during a summer internship. She worked on the reconstruction of a hydroelectric power plant near the German border. Workers lived in barracks and ate at a canteen that supplied only pasta, sweets, and vodka. The construction crew had to hunt hares in a nearby forest to have something else to eat. But Bogumiła not only survived, she loved it. Coming back to Nowy Targ, she was already dreaming of the next projects she would tackle, this time as a full-fledged engineer. Specialists were needed to rebuild the port city of Kołobrzeg and to build new power plants to satisfy the country’s exploding electricity needs. She received an offer from Kraków, too. Life, however, came at her fast.
In August that year Józek invited Bogumiła to a family dinner. She was nervous. Not only was Józek’s mother known as strict, she was also hoping for her son to enter a Catholic seminary and become a priest. His falling in love interfered with those plans. And were he to forfeit clergy in favor of a woman, the expectations would be higher than a dirt poor refugee.
‘We’re getting married’, Józek announced at the table, much to Bogumiła’s surprise.
Not unreasonably, she expected he would ask her first. But she loved him more than she resented his patriarchal antics, so she accepted her new status as his fiancée.
Józek wanted to get married in February, which left them only a couple of months to find jobs and a place to live, on top of organizing the wedding. They also had to put the dream of joining the biggest engineering projects in the country on the shelf. Józek’s family situation was similar to Bogumiła’s. His mother fell sick and required support. She raised him on her own after his father, a prisoner of the camps in Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen, was killed by the Nazis and there was no chance Józek would leave her behind. The world out there had to wait.
With help from Józek’s brother-in-law, Bogumiła got a job on the city’s new water supply network and wastewater treatment facility. The only person with a degree on the team, she was appointed lead engineer. But it was far from glamorous. Laying groundwork for the new infrastructure meant getting up at dawn and walking to the site with the construction crew that comprised a local drunk, a bunch of Roma people, and a couple of mules. Bogumiła was also responsible for the legal work, which involved expropriation. Taking away people’s land rarely went smoothly, especially in a region where families had owned it for generations. When someone made a ruckus, the Party sent down their local representative, Mr Lis, a semi-literate gardener-turned-apparatchik. Comrade Lis had a simple message.
‘Communism strives to offer everyone the best living standard. Those of you unconvinced by the benefits of modern sewerage will be offered an educational trip to the far north of the Soviet Union, where every home has to be connected to sewerage because it’s hard to shit in the cold.’
No one ever took him up on the offer.
If the field work wasn’t difficult enough, the atmosphere in the office was toxic. Colleagues considered Bogumiła a threat. As the only engineer on the team, she was an obvious candidate for promotion and eventually the director’s job, a position held at the time by Józek’s brother-in-law. He recommended her for the lead engineer himself but then realized she could soon outrank him. For him, to be threatened by a younger, better educated woman from his own family was unthinkable. Their relations grew colder every day as he made sure to show Bogumiła her place, both at work and privately. Józek’s mother wasn’t a fan, either. Not at first. Bogumiła was earning more than Józek, which offended Ms Borowicz. What decent wife would humiliate her man like this?
Persevering through adversity, Bogumiła and Józek got married in February 1959. The ceremony was a sign of the times, with her wearing a borrowed dress and him wobbling in shoes a size too small. Shortly after, at the age of 24, they learned they were about to become parents. They were elated. For both her and Józek the atrocities of World War II were still fresh in memory, and in the early 60’s every day seemed to bring the world closer to an even more catastrophic conflict. Starting a family felt like an act of defiance against politicians willing to wipe out the human race over their squabbles. And then, she almost died.
Back then, the quality of healthcare in Nowy Targ left a lot to be desired. Even doctors called the local hospital a pesthouse. After Bogumiła went into labour, a drunk obstetrician wanted to hurry up the process. He pressed down on her abdomen during contractions to help her push. It caused heavy tearing and they stitched her up without anesthetics. That pain is still vivid in her memory decades later, but it was only the start. Little Kuba was born — blue-eyed boy, bruised from the doctor’s pressure but healthy otherwise — but Bogumiła couldn’t go home. She was running a fever and getting worse by the hour. For the first two days, the staff only treated her with aspirin, until Józek bribed a doctor to examine her. She needed an antibiotic that was expensive and, more importantly, unavailable. Pulling all the strings he could, Józek managed to buy the drug on the black market and gave it to Bogumiła’s obstetrician. Next day, he learned it was not administered. It turned out the hospital’s director tried to steal the medicine. After he was caught, Bogumiła eventually received treatment and two weeks later, she was out. Barely standing but alive — and a mother.
In a span of few years, they had two more sons, Kazek and Wojtek. Working and married to a man as loving a he was traditionalist, Bogumiła spent evenings between the kitchen, drawing board, and boys’ homework. She was also still taking care of her mother. Maria was too sick to even go to the toilet unassisted and spiralled into depression. In a moment of despair, she overdosed on medication. She was taken to the hospital where she passed away several weeks later, at the beginning of 1966.
‘I will never forgive myself I wasn’t there when she died. The loss of a mother makes you realize you’re on your own,’ Bogumiła wrote in her memoir. ‘Even when she’s sick and suffering, you’re still the most important to her. Nobody, not even the sweetest husband, will ever give you that love and kindness. Nobody will ask you that infuriating question again — are you wearing warm pants?’
‘I know y’all still lived in caves a hundred and fifty years ago, but I’m sure you can do better.’ The room exploded in laughter as Babcia berated her husband’s table manners. ‘Behave yourself. You’re being recorded.’
In anthropology class, we were looking at how millenials communicate with their grandparents. I recorded a dinner with mine, but me and Grandpa were just props for the one-woman show Babcia delivered. First, she drove Grandpa to fury, dragging through the mud what Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine wrote about women. For him, words of the Doctors of the Church were undisputable. For her, it was outdated gibberish. Then she defused the tension with a joke and sprang to another topic. History — punchline, religion — punchline then chuckle, politics — punchline. The room was in stitches.
Before I hit record, she combed through her remaining hair and pouted at the mirror. At first, she didn’t want to do the video. Octogenarian, diabetic, and obese, she detests what time does to the body. She has trouble walking, her hearing is bad, and a long conversation makes her so tired she needs to lie down. But still, against doctor’s orders, she refuses to exercise. Her husband and children lament her stubbornness but she wants none of the unfair battle against aging. Painful exercise just to live a few years longer in a body that won’t cooperate? Waste of time.
‘There’s one last challenge ahead of us. The biggest one. To go away.’ she wrote in the opening page of the memoir.
But even in that weakening body, she always had insatiate curiosity. In the 90’s, as she was approaching her 60th birthday, she decided to learn English. She’s now a communicative speaker and comfortable reader. In the 00’s, she wanted to get on Skype and email. Using the computer for the first time, she struggled to remember the steps. Undeterred, she wrote down each one and stuck tens of Post-it notes to the wall next to the monitor. Once she nailed down email, she expanded to comment sections on news sites, where she still confronts conservatives.
‘This is depressing,’ she says, and then adds her voice to the conversation.
In her eighties, she found a passion for genealogy. She browsed archives, sent letters, and wrote down what she learned about our roots (yes, on a computer). Then, she found a local publisher to print it and last year she’s had her first author’s meeting. She’s also written 120 pages of a memoir. Even though she says her last challenge is to leave, she always finds another reason to stay.
Polish People’s Republic lasted under the Soviet boot until 1989. A failed state in all but name, it subsisted on heavy industry, foreign loans, and wishful thinking of the communist propaganda. Rife with corruption, in short or no supply of absolutely everything, it somehow raised again the cities and infrastructure that were reduced to ashes during the war.
The Wild East standards of the times are well explained by the story of Bogumiła’s and Józek’s car. Syrena 105 was a miracle of communist engineering, in the sense it seemed unbelievable you could actually drive it. Each Syrena was unique, with its own collection of faults. Theirs had a broken door lock and old underwear in place of the v-belt. The engine wouldn’t start without a prod with a stick. And they could have only afforded this gem of vehicular transportation because of a streak of lucrative projects in the early 70’s. When they were picking up the car, they stumbled upon a man who came to the state-owned dealership just before them. He was pleading to return his Syrena after it broke down right outside the gate. No success. After having witnessed that, they tried to bribe the dealer to find them a decent unit.
‘We don’t have decent cars here. We have car-like machines.’ he replied with a laugh.
The whole country operated like this. There were no products or services, just product-like and service-like mockups. And eventually, it crashed.
In 1980, Solidarity was founded — the trade union that brought together hundreds of thousands of Poles and challenged the communist regime. Strikes erupted across Poland, including in Nowy Targ. Bogumiła and Józek thought Solidarity was the chance for their generation to wrestle their country back from the Soviets. They devoted much of their lives to rebuilding Poland, but they had never seen it free. They joined the union.
After the army introduced martial law in 1981, the state collapsed. Food and sanitary items were rarely available and prohibitively expensive. Military took the streets and police arrested thousands of people. Solidarity was forced underground, where Bogumiła and Józek followed it. Along with other local activists, they helped raise money and distribute illegal publications.
In the early 80’s, their three sons were leaving Nowy Targ to study in Kraków, like their parents did before them. And just like their parents, they got involved in the fight for free Poland. Kuba, the eldest, was expelled from university for participating in a student strike. Kazek went to the Kraków steel plant to take part in a Solidarity strike that was later broken up by the military. Early on, Bogumiła supported their efforts. But when soldiers met protesters with bullets, fear crept in. She and Józek taught the boys to love their country and now this love was putting their sons in harm’s way.
The Polish crisis eventually found a peaceful resolution. The Soviet Union abandoned Poland and fell shortly after. 1989 marked the end of the People’s Republic. Bogumiła was enthusiastic. She was already a grandmother of Kazek’s daughters. Unlike her, Józek, and their sons, they would get to grow up in a free country.
Freedom, however, turned sour. Dissidents and former Solidarity activists were now in power but it quickly became obvious they had no idea about governing. Unrestrained capitalism replaced centrally-planned economy. Entrepreneurs drunk on free market and officials high on power came around. Corruption, incompetence, and inequality didn’t go away — they just put on a different mask. Bogumiła didn’t have the energy to fight fraudsters and hustlers popping up around every corner. In 1994, she retired. On her last day she handed her replacement a folder containing all the necessary health and safety laws, regulations, and codes. The lady put them aside and said:
‘I don’t think I’ll need any of that.’
Poland just celebrated 100 years of (relative) independence. For 84 of them, Babcia has both witnessed and written history. She literally helped rebuild her country. In Nowy Targ you can still visit buildings she worked on: a kindergarten, a community center, a publishing house. But underneath the accomplishments and the cheerful chuckle, there remains a shade. Just like Poland’s, Babcia’s story is one of violence, pain, and struggle. She’s never stopped being afraid her loved ones might go through the same.
A few months ago I exchanged emails with Babcia. I shared an essay with her, in which I wrote about my death fantasies. It upset her. She was proud I had been published but the content terrified her. The writing was tongue-in-cheek but she has seen enough death in her life. For her, it was nothing to be trifled with, especially not by her grandson. She wrote:
‘We love you so much and just want you to be happy.’
That line sums up Babcia’s life. She confronted adversity on every corner, from people burning down villages to people thinking women couldn’t and shouldn’t be engineers. She put up with that because she had a goal she deemed bigger than herself. She was building a home for her grandchildren. She wanted us to be happy.
