My mom's stories of wartime suffering taught me about kindness and tolerance

This First Person article is from Agnieszka Matejko whose mother lived through the mass deportation of Polish people to Siberia during the Second World War. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

I used to be jealous of my friends' mothers who hosted parties, baked cookies and chatted with us when we visited. My mother never baked a cookie in her life — she barely knew what they were — and mostly scurried away when my friends came over. 

An accomplished historian in Poland, she'd come to Canada in 1970 as an unwilling emigrant dragged away from her homeland by my dad. Even after decades of living in Canada, she never became comfortable speaking English. She never felt like she belonged.

Perhaps that's why her storytelling focused on immigration. In 1979, Joanna Matejko (née Grześkowiak) published Polish Settlers in Alberta, a compilation of stories she collected from Polish families around the province.

Back in Poland, both of my parents were anti-communist activists. I still recall the excitement of watching them deliver sandwiches to student protesters in the '60s. To my eight-year-old eyes, the demonstrations felt like a street party. I didn't realize my dad risked losing his job or worse. 

He decided that we would move to Zambia and once his two-year teaching contract ended, we escaped to Canada. We landed in Edmonton in the midst of a February snowstorm.

After we settled into our apartment, I became painfully aware of how different my parents were. Where my friends' parents chatted easily about events of the day, conversations at our dinner table dove right into 100 years of eastern European politics. As a teenager, I listened attentively and found my parents' heated disagreements entertaining.

But when my mother told her stories, a hush fell over the table.

My mom barely survived the brutal Soviet deportation of Poles to Siberia. Starved as a child, she remained so diminutive as a grown woman that she could barely see above the steering wheel of her car, even when propped up on a pillow. Yet as she told her stories of childhood suffering, I was always puzzled by her exceptional kindness. She never once said a bad word about the Russian people.

My mom's story started in the early morning of Feb. 10, 1940, when Russian soldiers came banging at the door of the Grześkowiak family home — a forestry hut in northeastern Poland. As part of his efforts to absorb eastern Poland into the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin sent over a million Poles to labour camps in Siberia, including my grandparents and their seven children. Families were loaded onto cattle trains and many, mostly children, died en route. 

But my mom's story included a Russian soldier who she believes saved their lives. He loaded a sewing machine onto their horse-drawn sled and put pots, bowls and cutlery into a chest — treasures that would be later exchanged for food. A wall hanging was sold for a wreath of onions and kept them alive for a week.

Now, long after she passed away, I remain baffled that the only story she related about that fateful February day was the compassion of this one soldier. It was as if the horror of being corralled onto cattle trains paled in the face of his one kindness. Perhaps what she tried to teach me was that this Russian soldier, like many others, was an unwilling participant in the deportations.

The family arrived in a labour camp south of Arkhangelsk in northwestern Russia, greeted by a previous wave of deported Ukrainians whose families had been wiped out by brutal working conditions and -40 C winters. These traumatized survivors taught my grandparents how to adjust to the horrific circumstances, helping them dig up stumps and dig the soil between felled trees to plant potatoes and vegetables.

You didn't eat if you didn't work so my 13-year-old mom lied about her age and got a job numbering logs before they floated down the River Iksa.