Anna Błoczyńska née Nowicka is originally from Gdańsk. She was born in 1960. While she stayed on the coast, she worked as a preschool teacher. She came to the United States in the 1980s along with her boyfriend. Her journey to Hamtramck took her all the way through Italy, where Anna went on a pilgrimage. Her arrival to the US was organised by the Tolstoy Foundation. She came there as a political refugee. She took on various jobs, at a school, as a store clerk, and caregiver for the elderly.
The interview was conducted by Anna Muller on 2 August 2015 in Hamtramck.
I came here, to the city of Hamtramck in 1986, I... immigrated first from Italy, when the Pope, John Paul II, it means our Polish Pope resided there and there was such an opportunity to make pilgrimages to Italy. Lots of people made those pilgrimages and these were one-way pilgrimages, as it was an excuse to visit the Pope and (the people) learned through different… channels, that you can stay there and possibly emigrate further to the other place. I actually left, because my boyfriend… I am from Gdańsk in general and my boyfriend had left earlier to Italy for a pilgrimage and wanted to go somewhere abroad, to earn money for an apartment, since those days in Poland there was a perspective of either living with parents, as they agreed, or having money faster, to receive a community housing. Yet, unfortunately, as he left for Italy, then he chose an emigration to the US, he didn’t want to go to Germany for some particular reasons, he didn’t want to go to Canada, he picked the US. I later realized that I actually should also have gone, been together with him. Hentremig, since I was going through the organization of Ukrainian Jews Tołstoj, that, generally… those days in Italy, in Rome, there were various organizations, that helped emigrants to handle traveling issues for those, who were going to the US, Canada, I don’t know what other places, as I hadn’t known so many people. I knew these people, who were going to those countries. And that organization sent people just to Hentremig. Everyone, who was coming through this organization, stayed in Hentremig, at Belmond street, close to the monument of the Pope, there was a house, where the majority, perhaps not all the comers, stayed for a short time and the organization even paid them the rent… they had their apartment paid, so that’s why it was Hentremig, that’s why many emigrants, who were coming here through Tołstoj, they were coming here first. I know many people, who came from other organizations and they also were directed to Hentremig, and the reason was that Hentrmig was a Polish city and it was easy for these emigrants to start their living at the beginning. In the place I currently live in, I used to have a neighbor, who told me a lot about how life looked like and her stories made me realized that in 1960-1970, in order to get a job in Hentremig, you needed to speak Polish. It changed over the time. I was considered a political refugee, since when I made this pilgrimage, I stayed and didn’t return. At that time, the US accepted political refugee, it was 1985. You needed to have, so called, political justification, of course accepted by the US consulate in Italy and following such an interview, the decision was made whether this person would go… to the US, or not. But, I could have… presented my justification in a way… as I was working with children and, apparently, some things, like… to give an example, a holiday, Corpus Christi, church holidays, as, in fact, we are a Catholic nation, those days we were in 99%, so, unfortunately, you couldn’t have used it during the sessions with children. There were some summaries, curricula, that didn’t specify it. And, among other things, it helped me to write down my justification in a way, that enabled me to leave.
At the beginning, I was happy to meet my boyfriend. Then, there were loads of things to be done, since the organization sent people to the airport, who drove us, and my boyfriend was living on his own, but, due to the fact, that I was an emigrant, I was cared for and he didn’t have to help me and, what is more, we had two different last names, so he wasn’t obliged to aid me. I handled all the issues and it took me some time, and over that period I could have become familiar with the city of Hentremig. (I was doing it) on foot, I was happy, the monument of the Pope, Polish stores. Now, some of them have gone, but those days they were, and there were Polish sweets in Polish stores, that you sometimes couldn’t have found in Poland those days, as they were always sent abroad. And, generally, I am… Gdańsk is a huge city, I had (…) in the old town… the development is different, and it wasn’t shocking to me actually, as I had sometimes seen these big cities in the American movies, but there was a church, one, two churches, and (I was wondering) where to sign up to this Church, as I wasn’t delighted, but honestly I had no vision of America, since I had never dreamed to go abroad, I felt like such a… local patriot, as I had been raised in my home, that everyone else might have left, but not me, for what reason. And then, all went fast, after my boyfriend had left, I (decided) to go, as reality was actually not interesting there, and I wasn’t fully realized how it would all go and I remember us driving from the airport. It was already dark, huge outdoor advertisements. You could have seen many things in the movies, but as we were staring at those sky scrapers, clothes that we didn’t have in our place. At everything we didn’t have, we were staring. At that time, there were not so many cars, you didn’t care so much about the roads, maybe, it was showed then, but… I remember I was sitting in the back of the car and my head was bumping, as (I was wondering) if I noticed this or that, or “take a look at this, take a look”. Vast advertisements at the side of highways, that you could have seen at night, so you could have imagined how awesome they would look like over the daytime. And I accepted Hentremig. When other people, I arrived with, or knew, they didn’t like some things, and then I said: “there is such a city and now I live in such a city, it is different, there are detached houses there”. There were none of those in my city. It was also something different and perhaps interesting to me… that’s why I didn’t criticize it and truly accepted it. Probably what was hard to accept was that the US always seemed to me the state, that is better, nicer in any aspect, but when you took a look in the backyards, then, unfortunately, you saw the toher flip of the coin, mess, not exactly because… it was only in Hentremig...
I have just made a pilgrimage and there were Poles, and one lady told me that he had an American husband and she wanted to clean windows in their house, and he said: “what are you doing, why are you doing it?”. At first, she thought she misunderstood him, or he misunderstood her, what she wanted to do. Basically, here some things… for us, they are normal, while for others this is something… a kind of abstract. They say that… some women, for example, clean houses, drapes, curtains, and she says that this woman had some newspapers, drawing pins stuffed, so that it looked nice. And she says that she doesn’t wash it at all, as, firstly, she doesn’t wash it at all, and secondly, when you drag such a structure down, then you need to hang it, and it has to be done by someone, who deals with it. So we have our… habits, that are surely good.
Americans are smiling people. Sometimes they smile so artificially, but mainly they have a positive attitude towards life and, in general, when you contact them… you like it. Simply, you change your own ways. This is what I like. In the US, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, you can fulfill your plans, make your dreams come true. If you have less money, then you can buy a smaller canoe, boat, for example. If you have lots of money, you have such a boat that you don’t even have to be able to steer it. Only with your dreams, no matter what, how much money you have, you can live your life.
I am Polish, for me Poland is my homeland. My first homeland. Now, it’s not the only one, since the country I live in, due to the fact that where I live, this is some sort of a homeland to me, and Poland is my roots, my youth, my parents, my brothers and sisters, something that no one can ever change, that it was, yet it is no more. I don’t feel American. I like many things in the US, but I feel more Polish. Still, I have more in common… though, I am surely perceived by my brothers and sisters, my family in other way, and me, myself… I don’t know, but they say that I have this or that… I realize and I have talked about it with my friend who also goes there, that I know, we are different, as this country has shaped us a bit differently, however, I feel Polish.
