My name is Krystyna Markut, nee Sawa, and I was born on 1st May 1935 in Lviv. My parents had a one-storey house with four flats in Lewandówka, in the outskirts of Lviv. My father, Józef Sawa, was a watchmaker and ran his own shop in downtown, at ul. Chorążczyzny.
Our peaceful and prosperous life ended on 1st September 1939. My father served in the air force and, just like the greater part of the destroyed army and air craft, was sent to a Romanian camp but he managed to escape. He reached France where general Sikorski mobilized the survivors and transferred them to England. During the entire war my father served in No. 300 Polish Fighter Squadron.
My mother, Maria Sawa nee Rehorowska, survived the war, as well as the period of the Russian, German and once again Russian occupation in Lviv. During the last Russian occupation we had to leave Lviv with just a few of bundles, leaving everything else behind. We spent the next ten years in Rozwadów at the San river, where I graduated from 4-class Financial Technical School and I began working as an accountant in the Gmina Cooperative.
In the meantime I met my husband to be, Jan Markut, who came to Rozwadów to visit his parents while he was studying in Poznań. We got married on 19th March 1955 in Bytom and my uncle Edward Sawa, who was like a father to me, stood by me during the wedding. In Bytom Jan, an artist by profession, designed interiors of shops, cafés, etc. In 1956 our first son, Tomasz, was born, and in 1958 our second son, Maciej.
In 1964 my mother got a permit and a passport to leave and join her husband and my father after 25 years of being apart. She died of pancreatic cancer one and a half year later. She is buried on the Polish cemetery in Glasgow, Scotland.
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Krystyna Markut: My homeland.
Moderator: And the US?
Krystyna Markut: A storage room. I’m grateful to the US for my existence here, for freedom, for the right to speak up, for the freedom of speech, for the freedom of expression but my homeland has always been Poland. Excuse me, I’m getting emotional when I speak about it.
I do not know the origins of the Sawa family, but I know that it is a Borderlands family. My grandfather, Tomasz Sawa was born in Korościatyn, a Polish village near Monasterzyska near Stanisławowo. He left his family village in the early years of the 20th century. He settled in Lviv, where he got married and had four sons: Stanisław, who died of tuberculosis in the prime of his life, Józef (my father), Władysław and Edward. To be precise it should be added that my grandfather's brother, Jan, emigrated from Korościatyn to North America, Antoni to South America, and the fourth brother, Józef (maybe Franciszek - I cannot remember his name) remained in the family estate in Korościatyn. His whole family with the exception of the youngest Józek (my generation) were killed with axes by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army bands in one night, 29 February 1944. That night the whole village was burned and razed to the ground. Currently, it cannot be found on modern maps, because there is now a new village Krynica, built by the Lemko people displaced from the area of Polish Krynica in 1946 during the famous Operation "Vistula". I found this village in July 2009 with the only Pole living there, Mrs. Helena Trus, who knew the Sawa family and I have this information from her. After this small digression I’m coming back to the relevant topic.
My father, Józef Sawa, married Maria Rehorowska in Lviv. I was born May 1, 1935. I was four years old when the war turmoil began on 1 September 1939. My father was called up into the Air Force. I saw him for the last time in mid-August at the Sknyliv airport. The whole time of the war we lived with my mother in Lviv.
In 1945, the "liberators" made us leave for the central Poland or take Russian citizenship. So we moved, leaving the house in Lewandówka and a watchmaker company of my father in Chorazczyzny Street, side street to Akademicka, in the city's commercial center.
In the cattle car with another nine families we "crawled" nine days to a small junction station in Rozwadów. When we were left at the sidetrack, my mom decided to stay in this town because there was nowhere else and how to go further. We had lived there for equal ten years until I got married and moved to Bytom in Upper Silesia.
In the meantime, my mother tried to find my father through the Red Cross, where she was told that my father had been declared missing. She found the youngest brother of my father, Edward, who at the age of 17 as a volunteer fought in the streets of Lviv and was wounded in the right arm.
Tortured by both invaders, Germans and Russians, miraculously survived the war in the guerilla troops in the forests of Przeworsk. After the war, as a war invalid, he settled in Bytom. Together with my mother we were at his wedding with Maria Surowiecka and ever since uncle Edward was a second father for me.
It was only in 1948 when we found out from my mother’s cousin that my father was a war invalid and lived in Glasgow, Scotland.
The war fate of my father led by the so-called "green border" to Romania. Internment, escape, finally re-mobilization by General Sikorski in France and transfer to England, where to the end of the war he served in the RAF in one of the Polish squadrons (300 or 306 – I cannot remember which one).
His brother Władysław, younger by three years, trying to cross the border, was caught by the Russian authorities and deported to Russia in the area of Kotlas. Mobilized by General Anders he went through the entire campaign in North Africa, was wounded in the battle of Monte Casino and transported to England for treatment. There, by a strange coincidence, what I call providence, he met my father. Władek shortly after the war married a Scotswoman and soon after went to the United States.
In a nutshell, this is the history of three brothers who fought in the Second World War on so vastly different fronts.
In the meantime, my mother began efforts to join my father under the families reunion program. Unfortunately, the secretary Boleslaw Bierut claimed that my father could also return to Poland, which in the conditions of contemporary Poland meant years of prison. Therefore, separation and very limited correspondence because of the censorship and harassment lasted next long years.
Only in December 1964, after 25 years of separation, my mother received a passport and permission to go to my father.
In August 1965 I was allowed to visit my parents in Glasgow, where I went with my two underage sons. It was the first time when I met with my father after 26 years of separation.
Married life of my parents after the reunion did not last long, because in June 1966 year my mother died of pancreatic cancer.
In 1963 Władysław sponsored the trip of Edward with his family so that they could move to Chicago.
My mother on her deathbed asked me to accept Edward’s invitation and to go to Chicago. Our efforts to go to America with the family lasted five years. We came to Chicago in 1972, and six years later moved to Florida. Soon after my father joined us, and then arrived also Władek and Edek with their wives.
My husband, Jan Markut, died in 1993. My father passed away in 2000, his brother Władysław three years later, and Edward in 2008. All died in Florida.
This way the story of the three brothers ended.
Honor to their memory.
September 1, 1939 I was exactly 4 years and 4 months old. My father was called up into air forces shortly before the war. I remember that we visited him at Sknyliv airport in Lviv. I remember the first bombs dropped on Lviv, which I watched with childlike curiosity running with my mother to the shelter. In these first days of the war we were delivering repaired watches to father’s customers. My father owned a watchmaker company in Chorążczyzny Street in the downtown.
During one of the bombing of Lviv with a bribed taxi driver we brought my grandmother to the hospital, where she died the same day during the operation. Edek, the youngest brother of my father, lay at that time in the hospital wounded by a sniper from the German 5th column. For that reason he could not attend the funeral of his own mother. September 20, 1939, the Soviets entered Lviv and deportation to Siberia started, especially of political suspects and military families.
At that time we did not live in our house in Lewandówka, but we were hiding in houses of the family, relatives and friends. Then the younger brother of my father, Władek (who also took part in the defense of Lviv), trying to cross the border, was arrested and sent to Siberia. When the Germans ousted the Soviets from Lviv, a long occupation began.
For fear of being deported to Germany for forced labor my mother took a job as a cleaning lady in the office of the management of Polish State Railways, which entitled her also to receive food stamps.
In 1942, I was supposed to start primary school, but schools were already closed for us. I was probably only two or three times in the classroom located in some closed shop in Królowej Jadwigi Street, and that is how my education ended. Locked in the apartment during the working hours of my mother, I learned to write in old notebooks of my cousin, my mother taught me to read and count.
I remember that winter was very cold with lots of snow. The granted rations of coal were not sufficient to heat the apartment, thus my mother went in the evenings to the railroad tracks to collect coal heaped up from the engines by Polish railwaymen. Once she almost paid for it with her life, chased by a German guard.
Two lumps of sugar a day from the emolument of my mother for the worker and sugar beet watery marmalade were my candies. Mom made do with saccharin.
In 1943, I received First Holy Communion in the Saint Elizabeth church from priest Szatkowski. I had a dress sewn from curtains.
During the winter I wore a coat sewn from a blanket, and in the summer clog sandals.
At that time we didn’t know anything about both the father and uncle Władek. Edek with his limp right hand worked in the conspiracy. Ratted out by a spy, imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo he survived only thanks to a youthful condition.
When the Soviets were approaching Lviv, bombings started again. Edek escaped from the prison in Łąckiego Street. He came to us to have a bath and sleep. That evening, when the alarm announced the next bombing, we asked him to run away with us to the shelter, but the only thing he wanted was to sleep. We ran to the shelter by ourselves. After the raid was over, returning home, we saw three huge holes in the ground. Very close to the house where
Edek was sleeping three bombs were dropped, none of them exploded.
Soon the Germans fled from Lviv under the pressure of the Russian invasion. This way began the next occupation, this time called liberation.
Edek, a member of the Home Army, fled to the guerilla in the forests of Przeworsk. One of our relatives, uncle Piotr Kmyta, was arrested by the Soviets for possession of a radio and transported to the Donbass for work in a coal mine. His wife, and my godmother, aunt beloved by the whole family, was left alone with the youngest son Marian, the eldest son Zbigniew died during the German occupation of tuberculosis, and the younger son Julek was deported by the Germans for forced work in Germany. We moved with my mother to my aunt, because it was easier together. In 1944, after passing the exam, I started going to a school where lessons were in the Russian language. I was admitted to the third class, which I finished the following year, but in Rozwadów. Already in 1944 it was known that we would have to leave Lviv or take the Russian citizenship. We started efforts for the evacuation card and packing. Most of these parcels and furniture was later left on the platform because there was not enough place in the overloaded freight cars. On the evacuation card the destination town was Rozwadów. Uncle Kmyta’s relatives lived there, apart from them we did not have anyone in central Poland. When at the beginning of March 1945 we were leaving our city in the freight car with seats for nine families, there was no room for anything else apart from things necessary to survive that very long and arduous journey. Our liberators deliberately delayed our trip, stopping the transport in the middle of nowhere, collecting from people whatever valuable they had left.
No wonder that our trip from Lviv to Rozwadów lasted full nine days. When our transport was sidetracked in Rozwadów, because the engine was needed for more important purposes, my mother went to the town in search of food. She found a State Repatriation Office kitchen, which was organized especially for the displaced eastern people. She got some soup and engaged there to work as a cook. She also found the aunt’s relatives, who had a place to live, because the Bednarek family were due to move to Poznań soon. When the State Repatriation Office kitchen was closed down, my mother got a job as a cook in the municipal nursery. Living in post-war Poland was not easy, my mother earned very little, aunt kept house and took care of us, two children attending primary school, but finally there was peace. Families broken by the war began to find each other.
With the last transport from Lviv in July 1946 returned to Rozwadów my mother’s sister-in-law with three children. Soon uncle Kmyta returned from the Donbass and shortly afterwards all three of them went to Wrocław, where the uncle got a job as a watchmaker in the management of Polish State Railways. I do not remember how my mother learned that uncle Edek Sawa, the youngest brother of my father, lived in Upper Silesia in Katowice.
In March 1946 we went with my mother to the wedding of Edek and Maria Surowiecka to Bytom. The train was so full that me and my mother with the help of other people squeezed to the train through the window. The train was going very slowly, people were hanging on the steps of the wagons like grapes. Ever since Edek took the role of my caretaker. Still we did not know anything about my father. It was only in 1947 that Julek Kmyta found his parents in Wrocław and we learned from him that my father survived the war in England in one of the Polish Aviation Squadrons and, as a war invalid, lived in Glasgow, Scotland.
Correspondence with my father was very limited due to censorship and harassed by the authorities. Anyone who had contacts abroad was a political suspect. I remember that my mom was repeatedly summoned for questioning by the militia. These were the times of Bolesław Bierut. We tried to get permission to go to my father, but we were denied. To my letter, written by a child who wanted to connect with her father, secretary Bierut answered that my father should have got back to us. We knew cases of such returns, which ended up with many years of prison. For safety my mother quitted the contact. We lived with my mother for ten years in Rozwadów. I finished Financial Technical College and I got a work order in the Agricultural Cooperative as an accountant. There I met my future husband Janek Markut and only then we moved to Bytom to uncle Edek, who accepted Janek, and after our wedding we lived in Bytom. There were also born our two sons, Tomek and Maciek.
During that period, uncle Władek, who went from Kolyma with Anders’ Army through the combat trail through Iran, Tobruk, Monte Cassino, where he was wounded. He was transferred to England for treatment and where he found my father. In a short time he married a Scotswoman Elizabeth Allen and they emigrated to the United States. When he visited us in Poland, he always stopped in Scotland to see my father.
In 1963 Władek invited Edek’s family and sponsored their permanent residence in the United States. In the same year, Edek with his wife and two children went to America. Once being in Poland Władek asked my mother if she wanted to go to my father. I remember my mother’s answer that she would like to be with her husband even for as little as a year before death. We started efforts, and then it was much easier and in December 1964 she flew to Scotland to reunite with husband after 25 years of separation. From the later stories of my father I know that she missed me and my children. The following year, in August 1965 at the invitation of my parents I went to Glasgow with my boys. My encounter with father after 26 years of forced separation was very emotional, but very quickly we found each other spiritually. Just as in Lviv before the war my father had a watchmaker company also in Glasgow. In August, in Scotland days are very long, so every evening we were sightseeing the surrounding area. Unforgettable holidays. A month spent with my parents allowed me to see and enjoy their happiness. I returned to Poland glad that my mother was finally with her beloved husband. Unfortunately, according to her wishes, the happiness lasted only a year. In January 1966 she fell ill, in February I went to take care of her after a surgery. I was with her until the end. June 21, 1966 she died of pancreatic cancer. She is buried in the Polish cemetery in Glasgow.
In the same year Edek invited my whole family and sponsored the trip to the US for permanent residence. It was not so easy for us. For five long years the communist authorities refused us passports. Only a large bribe opened the door to the west. We sailed on Stefan Batory to New York on 29 February 1972, and from there we took a bus to Chicago. After 6 years in Chicago we moved to the hot part of the US, Florida. In 1993 my husband died. We buried Janek’s ashes in a family grave of his parents in Rozwadów. I still live in Florida with my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but I often visit Poland.
