The Little Ukrainian

Epilogue

Dedication

I dedicate this autobiography to all my mothers. First, there was my birth mother, and I thank her for bringing me into the world. Unfortunately, she didn’t live long enough for me to get to know her. Next, there was Anna Fritze, who taught me a new language and took care of me when I was most in need. Then, there was Hertha Beese-Scholz. She hid me from the communists and was instrumental in getting me out of Berlin and to places where they couldn’t get me. Finally, there was Ruth Enz. She accepted me into her family, treating me with kindness and understanding, just like her own children. She instilled in me the value of education and taught me how to be an American.

There are no words to express the debt I owe these women. May they all rest in peace.

Acknowledgments

Over the years, as I traveled halfway around the world, I received much assistance, direction, encouragement, and kindness from many people. Some were acting in their official capacities; others did it out of the goodness of their hearts. Without the help of all these people, this journey would not have been possible. I thank them all from the bottom of my heart.

Father (Elmer Carl Enz) and I had quite a few disagreements and did not often see eye to eye. However, after writing the last several chapters of this book, I realized how much he did for me. When I was at the University of Wisconsin, he visited me almost every week, bringing me clean clothes, snacks, and encouragement. He attended most of my band concerts. He always drove me home for the holidays or vacations, and he always found a summer job for me to earn money for my education. I didn’t realize it back then, but no matter what I thought, he always had my welfare in mind. I never had a chance to thank him, as he passed away while I was in the Air Force. I pray that God will thank him for me.

Gratitude is also due to my brothers, Edward and Gregory, for reading this manuscript and offering many corrections and helpful suggestions. Edward spent many hours reading, pointing out inconsistencies, and suggesting revisions. I truly thank him for these efforts.

Chapter 1

Life Where I Was Born

Suddenly, it happened. I began to perceive the world around me, even though my world at that time was very limited. I began to remember things, but only certain events, people, and places made a lasting impression. For instance, the time I fell into the water hole and almost drowned. I don’t remember how long I was in the water, but it must have been a long time, because my father, who pulled me out, had run across a field of about a hundred yards. That always puzzled me. How had he known? How had he got there so fast?

There were other events. Some I remembered but didn’t understand. Among these were my grandmother dying, a brother being born, then another brother being born while my mother was dying. I also remember the tanks rolling on our primitive roads and almost being run over by them, sleeping in underground shelters, and going to live with Uncle Joseph and Aunt Theodora.

My name is Wladyslaw Strzelecki, although I always preferred the short version of my first name, Wlady (pronounced like laddy to rhyme with daddy). According to Aunt Theodora, I was born on April 16, 1935, in a settlement of scattered shacks called Josefofka. As far as I know, there was neither birth certificate nor other papers to document the event. Josefofka was probably never on any official map. It was somewhere between Kiev and Rovno. At one time, it may have belonged to Poland, but at the time of my birth, it was part of the Ukraine and the Soviet Union or Russia.

My mother was Ukrainian; my father was Polish. When I began to remember things,

I had two older brothers: Dezik, several years older, and Adam, a year or so older. There was a baby sister called Janka, and my paternal grandmother lived with us. In addition, there were several relatives living nearby. Father’s sister, whose husband had died, lived across the field west of us. A footpath across the field connected our two shacks. On the other side, about half a mile east of us, lived another aunt and uncle. They must have been well-off, because they never seemed to need anything. They had no children. About two miles northeast of us lived another aunt and uncle. This was Uncle Joseph and Aunt Theodora. They were the wealthiest of all my relatives. At one time, they had children, but apparently they’d died in infancy, so my aunt and uncle were left childless.

The circle in the top left corner of this map is the area of Ukraine I think I was born in. The nearest city to this area was Korets. About forty miles west of this city was Rovno, now called Rivne.

All the people in this settlement made their living from the land. Some had more land, better land, more horses, more cows, more pigs, more chickens, or more of everything else. Others had less. Of those that had less, my aunt across the field and my family had the least. In my aunt’s case, the poverty was attributable to her being a widow. She had plenty of land, but most of it lay fallow as there was nobody to work it. She also had four children—two boys and two girls. In ages, the children corresponded to those in my family—the girls being the oldest and youngest, with the boys in the middle. The boy corresponding to my age was named Broniak and was my closest playmate.

No such excuse can be made for the poverty of my family, but we certainly were poor. In fact, the shack where we lived was the worst in the whole settlement. Even my aunt across the field had a better house, for at least the living quarters and the barn were different buildings. In our case, it was all one building. It was comprised of the north end as the living quarters, the middle was where the horse and cow were kept, and the south end was where the grain and hay were stored. On the west side of the south end was an annex for the pig, when there was one. Above the pigpen was the chicken coop. On the east side of the south end was the outhouse, which consisted of a hole in the ground. The south end of the building was constructed with thin boards; the other parts were made with small lumber. To make the structure airtight, the cracks were plastered over inside and outside with clay. The roof was made of straw.

There was a hall between the living quarters and the stable. There was only one entrance to the living quarters, and that was through this hall. The living area consisted of one big room. The floor was hard-packed dirt; the walls and ceiling were whitewashed clay plaster. There were two windows: one faced west, the other north. As one entered the room, the water-bucket stand was on the left, and a large wood burning oven was on the right. This oven was constructed of bricks and clay. It was constructed as a large, half-cylindrical cavity, flat on the bottom, curved on the sides and top, about three feet wide, two feet high, and eight feet deep. The whole structure sat about three feet off the ground. The chimney was built in front of and above the cavity. On the other side of the chimney and atop the oven was a flat space. This was where Adam and I slept.

The oven operated in the following manner. A fire would be lit as far inside as possible. Kindling would be added, followed by larger and larger logs. The draft of the chimney would carry the smoke up and out of the house. Sometimes there was no draft, and the smoke would fill the house instead. When the logs were sufficiently burned, cooking was done by just shoving the pots in to the coals; baking entailed raking the coals toward the front and placing the loaves beyond the coals into the cavity. Often, the bread crust contained pieces of charcoal, but with the scarcity of bread, we ate it just the same.

Proceeding farther into the room, on the right was a wood burning stove, again, constructed of bricks and clay with an iron plate on top. The plate had two holes, covered with concentric rings that decreased in size. To cook on the stove, the required number of rings were removed from a hole and replaced with a like-sized pot. Normally, the oven was lit in the morning and the stove at night. Their function was not only to prepare the respective meals but also to warm the house, as there was no other heat source.

Behind the stove was a large wooden chest that normally contained flour, if there was any. It also served as Dezik’s bed. In the northeast corner of the house stood the bed where my parents slept. Its mattress consisted of straw covered with a homespun blanket. The cover was provided by a quilt made from rags. In front of the bed was the cradle, a wicker basket suspended from the ceiling by four ropes. Ahead of the cradle, to the left of the bed was a chest. It was my mother’s proudest possession: her hope chest. It contained all her valuables, like some clothes, candles, and cherry- or strawberry-flavored vodka to be used as medicines. A table was to the left of the chest, under the north window. To its left, along the west wall, was another bed, where Grandmother slept.

Such was the situation when I became aware of my surroundings and when memorable events began to happen.

The first of these involved my grandmother. One summer day, I was told that she was ill and that I should stay out of the house. Next, I saw lots of strange people arriving. Then I was told that she’d died and that I should come in and see her. I went into the house, and there she was—pale and motionless, dressed in her best clothes, lying on her bed. Soon, some men came and brought a big pine box.

When I saw Grandma again, she was lying in the pine box, and I was told to kiss her, as this would be the last time I’d ever see her again. Immediately afterward, the men placed the cover on the box and nailed it shut. One man took a pencil and a ruler and drew a cross atop the box. The men then took the box, loaded it on a wagon, and drove away.

The next time I was told to avoid the house involved my mother; she seemed sick. My aunt hurried across the field, and there was lots of activity. When it was all over, I was told the stork had brought me a little brother. He was named Edzu, and he displaced Janka in the cradle. Since Dezik now slept in Grandmother’s bed, Janka was made to sleep on top of the flour chest.

There were also happy events, like the time Adam and I were to receive new suits. There was no money to buy clothes, so they had to be made. The making of clothes began with planting flax, harvesting it, processing it into fiber, spinning the fiber into yarn, weaving the yarn into cloth, bleaching and dyeing the cloth, and finally, sewing the cloth into a suit. The process took over a year.

Mother did everything except the weaving and sewing, as she had no loom and no sewing machine. She somehow had the yarn woven and persuaded a lady to sew the two suits. Consequently, one spring Sunday, Adam and I wore brand-new suits, consisting of shorts and jackets. The suits were all we wore, as we had no underwear, socks, or shoes. Still, we were happy to have new suits.

Again, one summer day, I was told to keep out of the house, as Mother was ill. And again, my aunt hurried across the field, and other people came too, including a man who was a doctor. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I was suspicious because people were whispering. Father didn’t look happy, either. It was a scary situation that continued until nightfall.

Finally, since I was with Broniak, my aunt from across the field told me what had happened. First, she said, the stork brought me another brother. My mother, however, was very ill and passed away. I remembered the funeral activities that followed my grandmother’s death. These were repeated. When I was ushered into the house, there lay Mother in the clothes kept in her hope chest. She was pale and still, like Grandmother had been. Men were already at work building the pine box. There was my little brother, so tiny in his cradle, completely oblivious to what was happening, but no mother to take care of him. It was a foregone conclusion by my aunt from across the field, and several other people in attendance, that the baby wouldn’t survive without his mother: soon he, too, would die.

They were right. The lack of mother’s presence, love, and milk sealed his fate and the baby followed his mother several weeks later. Meanwhile, the pine box was constructed, Mother was laid into it, and after the farewells, the box was nailed shut, placed on a wagon, and driven away.

I was too young to understand the implications of all these happenings. I wasn’t very close to Mother—none of us were—and I hardly knew my baby brother. The fact that they passed away appeared as normal occurrences, and life went on.

If life was hard for us boys before Mother died, it was much harder afterwards. Because my sister was the only girl, even though she was still a young child, by tacit agreement she assumed a favored position in the family. Father somehow procured her a Sunday dress, and it was stored in Mother’s hope chest when not worn. She received generous portions of food, and the chores she was assigned were minimized. In general, it was clear that she was groomed to someday assume the duties of the lady of the house.

Feeding the family became Father’s biggest problem, especially in winter when the house was practically snowed in. The grain he’d harvested couldn’t be transported to the mill. Even if it could have been, the mill hardly ever operated because there was either no wind or some parts were missing. To convert the grain into flour, we were forced to construct a hand mill. This consisted of two pieces of an oak tree trunk, about eighteen inches in diameter. The bottom piece was about two feet high. Into the top were hammered several little pieces of ceramic or metallic items. These shards were usually obtained from broken pots by breaking them more. The bark was removed from the circumference of the bottom block, and a strip of tin was attached all around the top, so the tin extended about two inches above the top of the block. A rectangular aperture was cut in the tin, and a little slide or spout was attached to its bottom.

The other oak block, which was six to eight inches high, had its bark removed and the bottom surface processed identically to the top of the other block. A hole two to three inches in diameter was drilled in the block’s center. A mechanism in the bottom block’s center was constructed so that, when the top block was lowered onto the bottom block, with the treated surfaces meeting, the top block would ride on this mechanism, which also controlled the spacing between the two surfaces. The spacing controlled the fineness of the resulting flour. A crank or handle was attached to the top of the top block as near to the outer edge as possible. The mill was now complete.

To operate the mill, a handful of grain—for best results, it had to be dry—was thrown into the center hole of the top block. Then, using the crank, the top block was turned, which rode on the mechanism with treated surfaces, crushing the grain into flour. After several handfuls, one would discover flour coming down the spout and through the hole in the tin. A container was normally placed under the spout to catch the flour.

I was too small to operate the mill, but I spent many hours feeding it grain while my father or older brother turned the crank. In winter, I had other chores to do, like washing and peeling potatoes and sweeping the house. I hated peeling potatoes, especially when they were small, already cooked, and cold. However, this wasn’t much work. Most of the time I spent on top of the oven playing, sleeping, or daydreaming.

Sometimes, on Sunday afternoons, I’d visit Broniak. To do this, I’d wrap rags around my feet, borrow somebody’s wooden sandals (and any other clothes that could be spared), and run as fast I could across the snow-covered field to his house. When I arrived, I’d shed as many of the clothes as was practical, unwrap my feet, and crawl up to join Broniak atop his oven.

In the spring and summer, things were different. As soon as the snow melted and it became warm enough to walk barefoot outside, Adam and I would take the cow and calves, if there were any, and drive them to the pasture. We’d tend them all day. To entertain ourselves, we played games, sang, built fires and shelters, climbed trees, looked for birds’ nests, and cried a lot, especially when I became angry, scared, separated from Adam, or lost. The pastures weren’t open meadows but, rather, marshy or wooded areas. The meadows had to be saved for hay. Consequently, it was easy to get lost, lose the cow, or both.

Furthermore, there were lots of snakes. I was deathly afraid of snakes. I always thought someday I’d step on one, so whenever I heard or saw one, I ran. When I was out of range and had more adrenaline in my blood, I’d find a big stick and carefully approach the area where I had seen the snake. My intention always was to kill it. I succeeded only once, and that snake was probably harmless.

One day, Adam and I, knee-deep in water, were slowly inching forward from willow to willow, watching out for snakes. Unexpectedly, a big bird flew up from just ahead of us. We almost fell into the water, we were so frightened. We realized that it must have been a duck or goose and that we must be near a nest. We searched, and there it was, full of big, beautiful eggs. We knew that these eggs could be eaten.

Adam asked, Can I take them home?

He knew that such errands were normally delegated to the younger brother, but I felt very magnanimous and answered, Sure, go ahead. I’ll stay with the cattle.

He was gone a long time. When he returned, he said, Those eggs sure tasted good. I wish we could find some more.

But we never did. I