Memoirs Red and White: Poland, the War, and After - Softcover

Dembowski, Peter F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0268026203 ISBN 13: 9780268026202

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015

Synopsis

Born after World War I into an educated and progressive Polish family, Peter F. Dembowski was a teenager during the joint occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. His account of life as a young Polish soldier, as an immigrant to Canada, and finally as an American professor is a gripping narrative of life before, during, and after the horrors of World War II. Skillfully weaving a tapestry of emotion and history, Dembowski recounts the effects of loss: at age twelve, his father’s death; and later, the arrest of his mother and sister by the Gestapo and their execution in 1942 in the women’s concentration camp of Ravensbrück. Balancing those tragedies, Dembowski recalls the loving care given him by Janina Dembowska, the wife of his paternal uncle, as well as the inspiring strength of character he witnessed in his teachers and extended family.

Still a very young-looking teenager, Dembowski became involved with the Polish Underground in 1942. Suspected as a konspirator, he was incarcerated in Pawiak Prison and later, after a rare release, fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. His on-the-ground account describes the deprivations Polish soldiers faced as well as the fierce patriotism they shared. With the defeat of the Uprising, he was deported to Sandbostel; once liberated, he joined the Polish Army in Italy, serving there for two years.

In 1947, Dembowski made the momentous decision not to return to Poland but rather to emigrate to Canada. We learn of his stint as a farmhand and, later, of his studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He continued his education in France, receiving a Doctorat de l’Université de Paris in Russian philology and, in 1960, a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in medieval French. In tandem with his successful academic career teaching at the University of Toronto and at the University of Chicago, Dembowski describes his happy marriage and the joy of family life.

About this title

About the Author

Peter F. Dembowski is Distinguished Service Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago. Born and raised in Warsaw, Poland, Dembowski was involved in the underground activities of the Polish Home Army and participated in the Polish uprising. He was twice a prisoner of the Germans―first at the infamous prison known as Pawiak, where comrades bribed corrupt Gestapo officials to win his freedom, and later at Stalag XB Sandbostel, where he remained until the prison was liberated by the British. Upon liberation, Dembowski joined the Polish Army in the West. For his war service, he was decorated twice with the Polish Cross of Valor and the Silver Service Cross with Swords.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

BEGINNINGS

I was born in Warsaw on December 23, 1925, the son of Henryka (Henia) Dembowska née Sokołowska and Włodzimierz (Włodek) Dembowski. My parents had three children before me: Katarzyna (Kasia), born July 30, 1919, who became Sister Zofia, a Franciscan in the Laski convent near Warsaw, and died there in 2002; Małgorzata (Małgosia), born February 26, 1922, arrested by the Gestapo on May 14, 1941, and executed, together with her mother, in the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück on September 25, 1942; and Franciszek (Franek), born February 2, 1924, a retired geologist living in Kraków. The youngest member of our family, Bronisław (Bronek), was born on October 2, 1927. He became a priest in the diocese of Warsaw in 1953 and was bishop of Włocławek from 1992 until his retirement in 2003.

Both of my parents came from landowning families of the old szlachta class, that is to say, the gentry. The gentry possessed a coat of arms and a long family history, both authentic and mythical. According to Jan Hempel, an ardent genealogist and family member (the husband of the daughter of my great-aunt), the Dembowski family can be traced to the beginning of the fourteenth century.

The szlachta class was a specific Polish institution. It should not be confused with the aristocracy, for only the very top of the szlachta constituted the true aristocracy. Before the partitions of Poland, at the end of the eighteenth century, the gentry were relatively numerous, constituting 20 percent of the population. They elected the king of Poland (who was automatically a grand prince of Lithuania), and they voted for the members of Parliament (the Sejm). After the last partitions in 1795, they played a leading role in all cultural, social, and national movements. They have been, in fact, a voice of national conscience. In the nineteenth century (above all, after the 1863–64 Insurrection) the szlachta class lost much of its economic power.

The descendants of szlachta families became the soul of the Polish intelligentsia. The Communists talked about Polish society of the 1940s and 1950s as a post-szlachta society, and quite rightly so. To give just one example, Lech Wałe ̨sa, a peasant turned proletarian, talked, looked (his mustache, for example), and acted like a good old member of the szlachta; his opponent, General Jaruzelski, the last general secretary of the Polish Communist Party (KPP), was an authentic member of the szlachta and acted like one, in spite of his Communist role. The main characteristics of this post-szlachta intelligentsia class were a high level of Polish patriotism,

MY FATHER’S FAMILY

Both of my father’s parents were members of the landowning gentry, quite impoverished at the time of their birth. I do not remember my grandfather Aleksander, who died in the early 1930s. He was apparently charming, and, according to my cousin Jadwiga Dembowska, his grandchildren adored him. His brother Bronisław (after whom my brother was named) was a pioneering ethnologist who “discovered” the folklore of the Góral people from the Tatra Mountains region and was the author of a dictionary of the Góral absolute devotion to the idea of the independence of Poland, often combined with social and political progressivism, a sense of personal involvement, and a highly developed capacity for improvisation. I was born into this post-szlachta intelligentsia milieu. dialect. According to my mother, he belonged to the most creative group of the Polish intelligentsia. In the summer of 2009, a museum originally founded by him in Zakopane was officially opened as a state museum. Bronek, Franek, and Franek’s children were guests of honor at this occasion. My grandfather had a third brother, Tadeusz, who was an outstanding surgeon and an active citizen of Vilna (Wilno).

My paternal grandmother, Helena Brodowska, was what we used to call “a brave Polish woman.” She came from an important but impoverished family. Her father, Ludomir Brodowski, was dean of the Medical Faculty in Warsaw and an accomplished researcher. Helena was totally devoted to her children, three daughters, Hanna, Aniela, and Stanisława (Stasia); and three sons, Kazimierz (Kazik), my father, Włodzimierz (Włodek), and the youngest, Stefan, who drowned in the Vistula River when he was a boy.

My grandmother was given to social causes, or, as Poles called voluntary involvement in neighborhood associations, praca społeczna, literally, “social work.” In independent Poland she became a school principal and always remained an ardent Polish Socialist, and therefore anti-Stalinist. I knew her well, because during the 1938–39 school year I lived in her tiny apartment in Warsaw and spent time in Hanna’s and Stanisława’s households. At the beginning of the war my grandmother was ill with cancer. She went to live with her son Kazik and his wife, Janina. I was living with them, too, and I assisted my grandmother in her last weeks on earth. She loved her children and grandchildren, but she was far too possessive and not easy to get along with in daily life.

(Excerpted from Chapter 1)

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0268026203
• ISBN 13: 9780268026202
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216