Barbara Legutko was born in 1942 in Chełm. Her family history has been connected with Greenpoint since 1910, when Barbara’s grandfather emigrated to the US. After the I World War he decided to come back to Poland with his family. After the outbreak of the II World War Barbara’s father moved back to New York, and after two years his wife and children joined him. In 1948, Barbara sailed to the US on board of MS Batory.
At first, Barbara’s parents lived in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Barbara’s father worked as a mechanic and after that he was employed at the Singer sewing machine factory. Barbara’s mother looked after the house and fostered their Polish family traditions. At home, she only spoke Polish and she used to take her daughters to Greenpoint to the Chopin Theatre to see Polish films.
Barbara got a degree in History of Art and Art Therapy (psychological therapy via art) at the Fine Art Academy. In New York, at a party organized by the Kościuszko Foundation to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Poland, Barbara met her future husband, a Pole. They got married in 1967. One year later, the Legutkos went to visit Poland. For Barbara, it was her first visit to Poland since she emigrated.
Barbara’s husband got a degree in civil engineering and his dream was to become a Polish art dealer. The Legutkos regularly visited Poland to take part in auctions of the Polish painters. They bought an old house in Greenpoint dated to 1893 and with time, they turned it into an art gallery. Barbara Legutko organized art therapy sessions.
Interviewed by Karolina Łukasiewicz, Ewa Dżurak and Ewa Maliga on 22nd June 2015 in New York City under the „Greenpoint. The Transition 2015” project. More at cultureshock.pl.
I came to the US in 1948. It was a horrible winter. We came on board of the Batory. I went to first class when we came because here children start school when they are six. And my sister was a baby. My father was born here, in Greenpoint. My grandfather came here back in 1910 with his brother. And he got married here in 1912. They got married here, at Kostka’s. They liked it here, but my grandfather decided to come back to Poland because he wanted to buy some land and he was interested in the Polish politics back then, when Poland became independent. And so, he came back but my father and his brother didn’t want to go back to Poland. They had to, though, they were little. And my father always wanted to go back to the US and when the war broke out he was 100% certain that he doesn’t want to stay in Poland any more. So, he came back right after the war. We didn’t come here with my father. Well, we came here later. It took my father 2 years to bring us here. The war ended in 1945 so he and his brother left. They still had their American passports and the documents proving that they were born here. They were American citizens, so it was easier for them to leave. We left Poland in 1947. I can still remember Christmas. We departed from Gdynia. So, it’s nice to have some proof. We set off from Gdynia, our Lipert family, to reunite with father who was waiting for us here, on [inaudible] Island. It was amazing. I do remember London, we had a stop-over there. London was beautiful, it was all great. Afterwards, I can still remember when we got off the ship in New York. It was a totally different world for me and a new life but now I remember very little. That’s it. But there are those memories that stay with us forever. I can recall how my father was glad to see us. We didn’t spend much time together because he was in Chełm Lubelski during the war. My mother was in a family who owned a house in Chełm, in ul. Narutowicza. And my mother was really emotional about the situation. We had no idea where father and his brother were. They were in many places. I can’t remember. I really can’t remember my father from Poland. Only some photos when I was really little. And there was a photo of me and my mother, but my father was not there. I have no idea where he was. I think they were hiding with the partisans. I can’t really say. Anyway, this is how it was back then. That’s it.
The way I saw the Statute of Liberty was the same as in Godfather, part II. There was this scene with a young boy, Dan Corleone, very little. And he was also lonely, and he saw that statue. I remember that. I’ve experienced it with my mother. And my sister can’t remember anything. She was born in 1946, just right after the war. And we left Poland in 1947, so she was really little, and I started school when we arrived. I attended the St. Adalbert Catholic School. Polish children went to that school because St. Adalbert was a Polish church, many Poles from the Polish diaspora came to that church, and the newcomers, like my father. There was no work in Greenpoint, so what he could do? Those factories by the river where my grandfather had worked, maybe they were closed after the war, I don’t know. Anyway, he couldn’t live here. He had no family here, so he went to New Jersey. My father graduated from the Lublin University in 1939 and the war broke out. His career in Maths, he studied Maths, ended because of the war. And he was a really good mechanic. His uncle was my grandfather’s brother who hadn’t come back to Poland and had said to my father that he is not coming back because it won’t change, and it will all be bad again. So, he stayed here. And he had some land in New Jersey and he had his oil gas station. My father started working there, helping with cars and engines and so he got a job at [0:02:34.1 nz] the sewing machine factory in Elizabeth, New Jersey, but now the factory is long gone. He had been working there for over 30 years, since he and his brother got their jobs there. Anyway, all those years after the war, when Harry Truman was the president, it was really hard for everyone. Truman did a lot of good for those soldiers coming back to the US. And Truman was the president who ended segregation in the army, but that was only in 1949 or 1948. I can’t recall but I do remember him as the president. He was on TV.
It was a paradise here. I remember that because I went to school, and I was slowly learning the language. There were the Felician Sisters who spoke Polish and English and they took care of the new children after the war. It was amazing back then but that world is no more. I was very lucky because I really liked going to school there. I attended St. Adalbert from the first to the eight class. It is still opened. It’s a baroque church. I enjoyed living in Elizabeth, New Jersey. I remember our first Christmas. My father bought a wonderful Christmas tree. And I remember Saint Nicolas Day. I was in my classroom and I told everyone that I had found such nice toys under my pillow. Nobody understood me. They all told me that Saint Nicholas comes on the 25th. Here nobody celebrates St. Barbara's Day, Saint Nicholas Day nor any such days because Americans have their own traditions. And the tradition does not include Catholic feast days. So, I’ve never celebrated those feast days, only the St. Barbara's on the 4th. This is how my mother taught me, she told me that it’s the most important feast. A birthday, hah. It wasn’t important for us. And that was a bit of a struggle for me because other children liked happy birthday and all. For me happy birthday wasn’t as important, there was something more significant for me. We stopped celebrating Saint Nicholas Day because other Poles who came after the war said that you can’t celebrate it anymore because in America it is celebrated on the 25th.
My father, when he was in Poland, he still spoke English. He didn’t lose the ability to speak the foreign language. He spoke Polish back in the 1930s because he had his jazz band. He knew American music. And he always liked jazz. He could play a couple of instruments. And because he had a band he met my mother. My mother's brother played in the band and this is how they met. My mother had three brothers. And my mother was the youngest. She was the baby in the family. And she met my father in the band. He had records back in Poland and I don’t know how he had gotten them. He had his jazz records from America. And he played the accordion really well. My father loved music and he could read notes. He could be a music teacher here, but he had to work at the Singer’s factory to feed his family. My mother couldn’t work here, she didn’t know the language and it was very hard for her. She learnt really slow but in Elizabeth there were no schools for adults. They didn’t have that at the time. She was learning by watching TV.
We had a TV in the block right away, in the 1950s, the TV set was so small and nice. My father was a mechanic, so he was interested in all that. He bought it so that we could learn. Everyone watched TV, everyone, the entire family. For us, my sister, my father and mother, for us watching TV was like learning about America. You know, American lessons. It was all great, those were the golden years of TV. We were living in the first house my father bought. My father did buy a house. Back then houses were cheap, oh my God. And we bought a twin house in Atlantic Street. That was a street in Elizabeth, there were a lot of Italians, Irish and Polish Americans. I’ll never forget when some Poles came to us to watch I love Lucy. It was the first and the best situation comedy in America. A sitcom. Oh boy, they all laughed. And that was at 9 on Mondays. Everybody was watching that. Later, they all got TVs, you know. Antennas on the roof, everybody had that in 1955 so nobody came to us to watch that. Maybe just one elderly lady but it ended a long time ago.
We were both interested in art. Only I chose a different path than my sister. She chose commercial art and I chose fine art. Later I did Art History and Art Therapy afterwards and now it is all with me. It runs in the family. They were in [inaudible]. Their grandfather did some pottery painting in Germany, in ceramics factories. So, my grandfather came here, he worked there on the river for the owner of the ceramics factory. And vis a vis there is a gay flag there. It was a private mansion of the ceramics factory owner and my grandfather worked for him. He didn’t work there long because the work conditions were really hard. It’s not easy to work in ceramics. The clay, you breathe in everything, but the ceramics runs in our family, like art. Drawings, everything, there’s something there. I believe it because it’s a matter of genes. My father had a talent for music and mechanisms. And my mother, she came from a family and her father was German. He barely spoke Polish, but he also worked in ceramics in Chełm. This is how me and my sister got out talent. And this is how it is. She is working all the time, they hire her at all those parties. Wedding parties, Bar Mitzvahs, private parties and she organizes everything. She makes a lot of money. She doesn’t have to do that because her husband is quite well-off, they have a good life, but she does it because she's an artist. She makes wonderful things.
Greenpoint – a link to the past
We came back here because my husband wanted to be an art dealer. He had studied here for 5 years at Barns in Philadelphia and he had a good position. They really helped to stabilize it, like in the European Art History. That wasn’t his profession when he came here. And he really wanted to set up private galleries. It was downstairs. We chose this house because it was old. For him this historical element, it was really important. He liked it a lot. He really wanted to have such atmosphere. And we had known Greenpoint for years. When I look at Greenpoint, when my grandparents had walked the streets, when my grandfather had walked the streets, to the river and he had worked here, it’s very sentimental to me. He came here as an immigrant, he had nothing. He even didn’t know the language. And now I have a house built in 1893 that now is a landmark house. And the church now, once the entire mansion belonged to the factory owner. And now there is a church that helps people in different ways. There is this lady pastor who is really good. She feeds people in the streets and she’s really friendly. Anyway, it’s sentimental for me.
Barbara Legutko: From time to time, we used to come here from Elizabeth, New Jersey. Why? Because my mother wanted to watch some Polish films. In Elizabeth, New Jersey, we couldn’t do that. Here they had a movie theatre called Metro that showed Polish films. We used to come here with our mother from time to time to watch Polish films. That’s it. There was also the Chopin Movie Theatre. They also showed Polish films. The theatre was over there. Now the building belongs to Starbucks. I didn’t understand much of the films I saw with my mother.... They didn't have those...
Moderator: Subtitles.
Barbara Legutko: Yeah, yeah. I saw my first Polish film in the 1960s. “Knife in the Water”. That’s when it was.
My mother died, and my father used to speak English to us all the time. Soon afterwards he got married. He married a Pole, but she was raised in France. She didn’t feel as sentimental to Poland as my mother did. Anyway, my Marysia, she was called Marie, she was married longer to my father than my mother. And that's that. She’s my second mother. She spoke English fluently because during the war she had been working as a nurse in London. There she had married a Polish Englishman. They had all been working with English soldiers. And there were Polish nurses. They spoke Polish. So, she spoke English, Polish and French. Right after the war they got a permission from Truman, I mean those people, the English nurses and doctors who had helped American soldiers, so they could come to America without any problems.
I spoke Polish with my mother. I spoke better than my sister. She didn’t speak Polish at all. It was when I met my husband. He was a Pole and I learnt a lot from him. I went to a Polish course at the Kosciuszko Foundation, but I didn’t learn much. It was a bit too late, but it was fun because the Kosciuszko Foundation is very special. I would have never met my husband if it hadn’t been for the Kosciuszko Foundation. There was this organization looking for an artist like me to paint them the set design. And I knew how to do it because I used to do that in college and the Fine Arts. They were giving a show to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Poland. So, I met them via the Kosciuszko Foundation and they told me: “You have to help us because we are doing a show in downtown, in 8th street, and we need somebody who can paint it all.” “I can do that.” - I said. So, I went there. And my husband was there too. He wanted to be in the show, he was an amateur actor and he wanted to get a part. Not Mieszko because they cast that role. So, he was helping because he also liked art. Always, only in Poland he wouldn’t have made such a career. He had a degree in civil engineering at [0:01:56.1 nz] University. And back in 1965 he worked as an engineer. We wanted to do the show and make nice decorations to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of that event. OK, so we were to go there. I was there with some other people, actors. They were to star in the play. And I met him there. This is how it all started. And in 1967 we got married. I’d have never guessed but he spoke English perfectly. So, we spoke the same language. I’ve learnt a lot from him, I discovered Polish anew. However, it’s not such a good language. He learnt a lot of America from me. And a lot of the language, how to pronounce words, etc. It was important for him.
The conditions back then were great. Because of desegregation there was funding for education. I mean, they had to stop segregating people and make them all equal, so we had black people, Hispanic and white children in our classes. They all had to be equal. The federal government gave us financial support and these diverse schools just flourished. That was the atmosphere of the 1960s. Martin Luther King did well. JFK. He was shot in 1963 but Robert had high chances of being the president. He was shot too. And Martin Luther King was shot. So, this is how the country is today, this is how it was, nothing new. Everyone shots everyone, there are major problems because of the slavery. My beloved Tadzio Kościuszko. I really appreciate him. He spoke to Thomas Jefferson, he spoke to Tomek. He wrote him a letter. “You cannot allow slavery in this country. You have to end it because it will cause trouble. It’s not good, it's hypocrisy. Everyone has to be free in this country.” He wanted the same for the farmers because this is what he believed in. When he was in America, he got his money from the federal government. He served as an engineer, he built West Point. He left his money to educate black people. In the 18th century. Give me a break. Jefferson was the third president and they wrote letters to each other. He asked him whether he fired those people. What happened to my money for the black people school? You have to care for those people, those slaves. He wanted the same for Polish peasants. And that was Tadzio.
I came back to Poland for the first time with my husband. I would have never been here. When you are here, under the influence of American culture, you have an American husband so why the hell you want to go to Poland in the 1960s? Anyway, I really wanted to go there and see it all. OK, so we went there in 1968 and we met my mother’s family. In Gdynia, Gdańsk and Chełm. My mother's grandmother was still alive back then. And my beloved aunt Jula, my father’s younger sister. It was an amazing experience for me. She was so much fun. And she introduced me to my cousins. Really nice. I spoke some Polish and it was all really pleasant for me. Those were wonderful vacations for me. My husband was already into Polish painters and painting. We visited all the museums. In Cracow, in Warsaw. It was terrific. Really amazing. And later, when he started studying in Philadelphia, we used to go to Poland because he wanted to be an art dealer. He started buying Polish paintings here. There were many painters here, at the auctions. In [inaudible]. They’ve always had these auctions in New York. My husband used to study all those catalogues. Bum, a Michałowski, great. Nobody here knew who Michałowski was. He bought it. Just like with all those other Polish painters. He would always go there. He left his job, he was buying and going home. He had some Kossak’s paintings. You could buy them here. He had contacts with the Polish community. He called them. He was such... this is how he was. He was educated here, he graduated [0:02:34.9 nz]. And thanks to Philadelphia he had this unique approach to art. And he made a career of it.
