As Life Stands Still: Czesława Cabut's Story

Hung on the wall in the kitchen as you entered my Babcia’s house was a small, colourful painting. It had been in her house for as long as I remember.

The painting depicts a white cottage with a thatched roof surrounded by green grassland. Ducks and chickens graze in the foreground during what appears to be spring-summertime. Plants are in full bloom and a pale blue sky lays above.

This is a pretty looking piece which evokes a bucolic charm. It is by a man called Roman Doniec, an artist about whom there exists little information online. This, I think, is quite fitting given my family’s experiences of near erasure.

Since my Babcia’s passing, the painting has been rehomed and hung in my parents’ house. It is placed on a thin sliver of wall by the back door, an inconspicuous location for a piece which holds much meaning; it represents a young girl, stripped of her home, and the possibilities of a future which never came to pass.

In December 2018, I interviewed my Babcia on the events of her life and her experiences of being ethnically cleansed from her homeland.

I began by prompting her to describe her life in Poland, as well as her house and her family. She hesitated, speaking first to my dad in Polish and pointing towards something at the back of the room. Then, she returned to English, stating, “the house, yeah, my house. I have photo”. She spoke not of a photograph, but of the painting of the cottage. Despite not capturing the reality of a photograph, it most closely resembled the place she lived, the mood and the emotion.

Czesława Cabut, ‘Babcia’, was born 14th March 1930 in a town called Sutkowszczyzna in former Eastern Poland. From Soviet to Ukrainian territory, today the area where she lived lies between the towns of Konyukhy and Horokhiv in Western Ukraine. She lived on a farm with her mother and father, Aniela and Andrzej, and her siblings Adam, Henryk and Jadwiga. Czesława attended a local school from the age of five years old, of which she had fond memories. Her two younger siblings never got the chance to enrol in school, however her eldest brother finished the primary level and was due to continue his education. To make a livelihood they reared cattle, grew vegetables and owned horses and other animals. The agricultural goods that they produced were sold to those passing through the village. What’s more, the family owned a milling machine which they rented out to other farmers. By today's standards of living the family weren't well-off, but in comparison to other local inhabitants they were wealthy. Before marrying his wife, Aniela, Andrzej had worked abroad helping to construct trains. He brought his earnings back to Poland and before the war commenced he began constructing a new, bigger house near to the town. The family looked forward to this upgrade.

At nine years old, unbeknownst to Czesława and her family, the events due to take place that year were to alter their lives completely and the idea of home forevermore.

In August of 1939, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin made a secret pact to partition Poland: the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This served as a nonaggression treaty, allowing Nazi Germany to invade and occupy Poland from the West and the Soviets from the East. And so followed the mass deportation of Polish people.

On the evening of 10th February 1940, in the small village of Sutkowszczyzna in Eastern Poland, Stalin’s Red Army forcibly entered and removed Czesława and her family from their home. They held her father and brother to the wall at gunpoint, commanding them to stay still or else they would shoot. The soldiers directed her mother to take some clothes for her children, warning her that they were being taken somewhere very cold. Babcia reflected on this moment: “And what you can take after fifteen minutes, not much. Not much time. Only mum, she take what she can take. And take some little bread for journey.”

The family were terrified, they did not know what was to come but knew they were about to leave everything behind. Destroying their ID’s, passports and important documents, the family were rendered identityless. Stalin was to use and control them like objects; they were political tools for his totalitarian state.

Families were first assembled at the local school, and then taken by ‘sanki’, sleigh in English, to the station in town. There, a cattle train awaited them which would be used to transport people to the cold forests of Siberia. Whilst waiting to board the train, Babcia recalled the moment when the soldiers found out they had forgotten a family: “Because there was no way for him to order another one train for one family. And they kill all seven children and mum and father. There was whole family killed.”

Onboard the train headed to Siberia, they had nothing - no food, no water. The toilet was a hole in the ground, and the icicles hanging from the train’s ceiling were food and water. In the dead of winter, it was a struggle to survive, and many people died on the journey, “and we didn't eat blooming two weeks,” she exclaimed. Out of desperation, Andrzej stole a few tomatoes and sugar from people aboard the train. This small ration most likely kept them alive for the painstaking journey which lasted nearly a month.

In Siberia, the gulags had already been in use since 1918. Created by Lenin after the Russian Revolution, they were used to enslave political prisoners. In these camps, Czesława lived with her family in simple wooden houses. They were overrun by woodlice and other insects, preventing them from sleeping. During the day, her father and older brother worked in the forests cutting wood. She attended school with her siblings. Families were provided small amounts of food under this condition: “if you don't go to work or if you don't go to school, you don't got no bread at all. You can’t buy bread, you can’t buy nothing,” Babcia explained.

The school was a place of indoctrination and repression. A system of ‘re-education’ forbade all expressions of religion. “And every day in school the teacher, first what she come, ‘no god, no god’,” Babcia told me. “And one time, you know, the Polish boy ask the Russia boy, ‘god is, or not?’. And he put the hand on the neck for this Russia boy. And he was frightening I think. And he was said, ‘yes, is god.’ And you know what, when we come from school to home they already take his father and finished. Nobody knew what was happened with him. The poor boy was crying always: ‘why I say that, why I say that.’”

The family spent two years in the camp. Their determination to survive prevailed despite the difficult conditions, as they came to depend upon quick thinking and resourcefulness. For some time, her brother experienced serious malady and extreme hunger. To save him, Czesława’s mother exchanged her wedding ring for a small cup of milk. Her selfless act proved invaluable, as this meagre nourishment brought him back to health.

To make the home liveable, Czesława begged a shopkeeper to give her some bleach. He took pity on her as she was a child and later that day she used the chemical to kill the insects lining the walls and biting the family: “You know what they said, they give me something for that. They said it's the best floor in all the building. There was lovely one. And we could sleep because all this died,” Babcia smiled proudly at the recollection of a compliment given to her home in Siberia.

Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941 marked the end of the states’ political alliance. The Sikorski-Mayski treaty was signed by the Soviet Union and Poland, nullifying the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It provided some hope for Poland and its exiled citizens. The Polish state was reestablished and Polish exiles were due to be released from labour camps. A Polish Army was also forming in the USSR which would aid the fight against Germany.

Czesława’s father and brother joined the Polish Army, based in Iran (then Persia). So, after two years in Siberia, the family began a new journey together, this time Southwards, towards the army camp. They travelled in dangerous conditions, with little assistance and much uncertainty. Babcia described the difficulty of travelling such a distance with no money and limited options: “Little this, little that. Little boat. One time there was a little boat, we go. It is very hard to say because some place there is no water, no nothing, then a train. Only you haven't got the money, you can't go nowhere.”

The exodus of Poles saw roughly 116,000 refugees arrive in Iran. Czesława’s journey took two years, during which she was separated from her parents and joined the Junaczki (girl cadets). Her parents had encouraged her to join so that she could receive regular meals. However, due to the large influx of refugees in Iran food remained scarce. Babcia recalled this period: “Only when we was in Isfahan there was Persia some rich man, they give this building and we live in this, quite nice. Only food is very bad. Everybody fighting for little bread. They make weigh because everybody want the same little piece. If it’s little bigger or smaller than another one, they was fighting. Because everybody was very [hungry].”

Isfahan was nicknamed the ‘The City of Polish Children’ as 2,000 Polish children passed through. For some time, Czesława did not know whether her parents were still alive, and if so, where they might be: “My father and my mum go different place and I was different place. And there no telly, no nothing to find out.” In Isfahan, she planned to travel with the Junaczki to Mexico, which was accepting Polish refugee orphans. However, she was deemed unfit to board the ship due to her poor eyesight. This moment revealed itself to be a blessing in disguise.

Soon after, Aniela located her daughter in Isfahan using the Red Cross. Czesława travelled to the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda, to be reunited with her mother. When she reached Uganda, Czesława was told by her teacher that the ship to Mexico had been torpedoed by the Germans, killing everybody on board: “He said, my god you would be dead. Because all children sank.”

When the war ended in 1945, Czesława and her family needed to decide their next move. Home in Poland no longer existed; the Soviet Union had retained Eastern Polish territories which included her home town of Sutkowszczyzna. Czesława and her family decided to leave the refugee camp in Uganda and resettle in Britain.

In 1948, at the age of 18, Czesława came to Britain with her family. The International Refugee Organisation used the ship Scythia to transport more than 490 displaced Poles to Liverpool, England. They were provided accommodation in a Polish resettlement camp in Bedfordshire, called Marsworth. The site housed 900 displaced individuals, having previously been used as an airfield for the Air Ministry. The camp consisted of basic corrugated iron huts, washrooms, a small chapel and a playing field. Czesława began work in a nearby factory, and formed a tight-knit community in her new home. “Yeah, I was very good. I tell you true, I had done very well. And everybody was like me,” Babcia expressed her happiness in England.

At Marsworth she met Ludomir Cabut, formerly a soldier in the Polish Army. They married and forged a life together in Dunstable, England, where they had two children, Danuta and Richard.

My Babcia died in 2020, at the impressive age of 90 years old. Her life was not easy, but she lived it with real gratitude for all she had and endless love for her family.

What is left of a person when they pass? The memories that you create with them live on; the stories that they hand over to you must be preserved; and the objects that they leave you are reminders of where they have been and what they have done.

An object can be so small and unassuming, a thousand strangers could walk past and not blink an eye. But the effect it can elicit from one person, at a conscious and unconscious level, is undeniable. With meaning imbued in these objects, our bodies are affected as an automatic response is felt; memory translates into emotion and feeling.

For my Babcia and I, the effect of this painting, the small cottage in Poland, is understandably different. For her, this painting signified home. It represented a previous life, a girlhood without strife, without memory of suffering and hardship. It represented a future, one with her family, her life at school and a new house that was to be built for them soon enough. It also represented a place tarnished by the events of one evening in 1939 and the difficulties to follow. For her family, this painting signifies the life of a loved one with all its complexities and contradictions - bravery, fear, sorrow, luck, contempt, faith, confusion, joy and longing.

Now that you’ve heard her story, perhaps you - the reader, may look at this picture and feel something of your own.