Amazing journey of faith and determination
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UPROOTED FROM their village, herded into railway wagons like animals and transported more than 3,000 miles to a Siberian labour camp, and suffering the unspeakable agony of seeing their two-year-old son die 24 hours before they reached the camp.
A traumatic 18 months in the labour camp was followed by a remarkable 12,000 mile journey – which started with them floating down a river on a raft made from the very logs they had harvested while captives – to a new life in Scotland.
A story of persecution, suffering and ultimately the human spirit and faith which triumped over extreme adversity is part of the remarkable family history of a Forres woman who wants to preserve it for the wider world to know.
Lucyna Bednarek-Elliot, a retired guidance teacher from Forres Academy, has translated her father’s poignant story from his native Polish and wants to publish her parents’ incredible journey.
Wladyslaw and Zofia Bednarek lived in Polesie, a small farming community in the east of Poland.
Wladyslaw, the son of a peasant farmer, had already been forced to evade the advancing Soviet forces in 1939 as a soldier in the Polish Army.
In February of 1940, Wladyslaw, then 24, and other young men from the area were living in hiding at various places across the district when the shocking news came through that his entire family had been taken by the Russians and locked up in cattle wagons.
Zofia (22) and the couple’s young son, Zbysio, not yet two, both Wladyslaw’s 50-year-old parents, and his 15-year-old brother and eight-year-old sister, huddled together in freezing conditions.
Wladyslaw was preparing to give himself up and join the transport wagons when he realised that they had already left for Siberia.
Armed with 12 loaves of bread, baked the night before by his mother-in-law, and some salted bacon and smoked meat, he set off in pursuit, able to sneak aboard another train.
"I was fully aware that I was voluntarily delivering myself into the jaws of a monster. I would certainly never again see this land which I had grown to like so much," he wrote.
After about two days he had caught up with the train carrying his family and handed himself in to the Soviet forces.
He scrambled into the wagon and the guards drew the doors shut, and the sound of the padlock could be heard.
"I had made it to my family and to imprisonment," he declared.
After embracing his wife, his son and family, he realised that his other grown-up brother, also a Polish soldier, was there too.
About 60 people were crushed into the wagon, young children to the very elderly and they lay on tiered plank beds.
Two iron stoves stood opposite the door and these gave some heat if there was coal or wood to burn.
"The second important feature of the wagon was a round hole cut out of the floorboards. About 50cm from the wall, behind the stoves, 15cm across, this hole served our needs of nature," wrote Wladyslaw.
"We had devised a method of hiding our embarrassment. When a member of the family was using it, another two would screen them with a blanket or some other cloth. Naturally, nothing could be done about the smells.
"The freezing weather added another constant problem – every few hours this very important opening would freeze over and we would have to chip away to have a hole again."
The latter part of the journey to the labour camp was carried out on horse-drawn sledges and it was as the party neared their destination, on Friday, March 22, 1940, that the Bednareks were hit by tragedy.
Their tiny son had caught a cold, and despite treatment at a local and very basic surgery, he died during the night in his mother’s arms.
"Our son would have been two years old on March 23. In our distress we refused to leave our child behind and refused to continue the journey.
"In the end they left one of the NKVD (Russian State Police) guards with us and a carpenter of sorts was sent for, who made a rough little coffin."
The following morning they completed the journey to the settlement camp, known as Siderga, along with their son in his coffin.
Wladyslaw and his brother were given crowbars, axes and spades to dig a grave in nearby woodland, but the ground was so frozen that after a day’s digging it was barely a metre deep.
"With a handful of neighbours around us, we lowered his coffin into the grave, covered it with clods of frozen earth and hastily fashioned a miserable little wooden cross. The first grave of a Polish ‘criminal, a dangerous opponent of Soviet imperialism," he wrote.
