GLOSSARY
Poland glossary

Maria

(POLAND 11)

Sex	female
Age	63
Occupation	former farmer
Location	Wilkanów
Date	July 1999

transcript

The Muschiols received me warmly. You could see that they had prepared for the meeting carefully, wearing their best clothes; each room of the house was freshly cleaned and tidy. Mrs Muschiol offered us coffee, tea and a delicious home-baked cake. From the kitchen window, we could admire a beautiful view - Mount Maria Sniezna, Mount Czarna Góra etc. The rooms and the garden were full of beautiful flowers, plants, shrubs, which gave the house a special ambience.

Section 1	What’s your name? My name’s Maria Muschiol, nee Urner.
	Where and when were you born? I was born in Roztoki near Miedzylesie in 1936. I’ve got a brother - my mother’s son from her first marriage. My father died in 1943. Mother re-married. There was this man from Lvov - back then, it was obligatory work there (?). In 1946 my widowed mother somehow fell in love with him, I don’t know how [laughs], married him, and later I had one more sister.
	What are your recollections of the war? We didn’t have a war around here, only when the Russians came. They lived in people’s homes here, but they didn’t do any harm to us.
	Your childhood - what were your favourite plays, ways of spending leisure time? What do you remember most? Oh, well! We didn’t have toys. We were quite poor. We didn’t have much money back then. We had almost 10 hectares of the land. They were difficult times - two of us, not much in terms of dolls. Today, it is quite different. Now they have various wonderful toys. We didn’t have anything like that then.
	What values were cultivated in your family? How were you brought up by your parents? Not much of that. Work was the most important thing. My parents didn’t have much time for us. We didn’t have any machines. All the farm work had to be done by hand. During the war, we bought some more land from our neighbour, and so there was even more work, as we didn’t have any machines, we had to cut everything with a scythe. The grain, hay - all of it had to be raked with hands. Although I was very young at that time, I had to help, take the cows out to the pasture. Later, in ‘44 I went to the first Holy Communion, and to confirmation in ‘45, when there already were Russians. And then, it was a really hard time for us, cause they started deporting us in ‘46, the first round was in the spring. When the Russians were there, it was awful: they took away our cows, they took away the radios. I remember, there was a large horse-drawn cart in the neighbouring yard, and we all had to bring our radios and throw them onto that cart, like hay [laughs]. There was this Russian soldier, drunk as a lord, and he wanted to come to one of the widows living there. There were no men around, so she locked herself in her house and wouldn’t let him come in, so he broke all the windows in the house with his gun. We were so scared of that, and that lady ran away to the forest. Apart from that, I cannot say a bad word. They didn’t do anything wrong to my mother or to myself. One evening, I was already lying in bed, and two Russians came, and my mother was terrified because they liked to rape women, and my mother told them that her daughter was lying in bed with typhoid. They were so afraid, they ran away immediately. Later, we went to school.
Section 2	Why did you decide to stay? Well, we stayed because my mother had married that father from Lvov, so they didn’t deport them. And we were their children - how could they deport us? And so it went slowly: autumn, summer. But we all had to leave the village. Although some stayed behind. There was this man, a lonely person, he had a very old mother. She was seriously ill, she was over 80 years old. She was lying in bed, so they couldn’t deport her. And there was one farmer, he originally came from Upper Silesia, and he said he was Polish, I think he said his name was Nowak. All the others had to leave everything and go. Because it happened that the Germans were taking away with them anything they liked. But I didn’t go through anything like that. My aunt told me.
	What was the Polish settlers’ attitude towards you? I can’t say anything bad. When we were going to school, they didn’t make fun of us, only the following generations - when our children went to school, it was much worse.
	How do you recollect your school, relationships between the teachers and the students. Perhaps there were some problems because of the language? Yes, it was difficult, I didn’t know a word of the language. There was an elderly man - a teacher - Picinski his name was. And there was another teacher, a woman, she was very strict, very unpleasant, but it’s better not to remember that. But she was such a ragged, neglected woman. She was strict to everyone. I can’t say she was vicious to me only. The Polish children - I can’t say anything bad about them. Only when I got married in ‘63, and we moved here (Wilkanów), we were strangers. People looked down at us, and when the children went to school, it was even worse. They were good learners. But others would say to them, you write in the Kraut language and that’s why you get good grades, you read in the Nazi language, that’s why learning is easy for you. Poles thought their stepfather was from Ukraine. At the beginning, when they saw that mother decided to stay, they helped us a lot, they brought and gave us bedclothes, towels, crystal glass. What they could, they gave us, they were not rich themselves. They wanted to deport my mother, and they put my father to prison in ‘46, just when my sister was born. One day after the sister was born, they imprisoned my father and they wanted to deport my mother. They wanted to take all our belongings for themselves. A man - he was the mayor, quite a nice person, but who would have guessed what he really thought, deep at the back of his head - came to our neighbours, to a party. And while partying, they said to one another, more or less, you know what, you will take their land and we will take what they’ve got inside. And they were drinking. One of them had a gun - well, back then they had all that. And they quarrelled. One of them said, no, I’ll take everything that they’ve got inside and he shot the other one. Immediately they took him to prison, the police did.
Section 3	How did you bring up your children? [doesn’t want to talk...] Differently, well, I must say, everyone respects what they’ve got from their parents. At school, they were good students, later on they went to secondary schools, and they went to music school, they were good students, they received diplomas. But later, in ‘88, they went away. My daughter is a teacher of music. Other children went to their aunt in Germany and stayed there. They’ve got jobs there, got married. But we brought them up normally, the Catholic way, to be good people. All our neighbours liked our children, the children always greeted everyone.
	How was the problem of language in the church? Well, we had to learn everything from the very beginning, even to pray. Somehow, slowly, we managed eventually. I don’t know myself how this all entered my head.
	What did this area look like back then? Well, there were traditions. I cannot tell you much, cause I would have to have lived in it. You would have to ask my parents.
	Was alcohol a problem or didn’t people drink back then? I cannot tell. In our family, the problem didn’t exist. There were four restaurants in Roztoki. It’s such a small village. And always after the church, men would go in. Mother said that some women would go round the place so that they wouldn’t meet them.
	Your first meeting with your husband... There was such a family in Roztoki, who stayed as well - they originally came from Upper Silesia. My husband lived in Waliszów. And that man in Roztoki. They had such a large farm, a restaurant, a large house. So he didn’t have to build any more, only buy some machines and go on working. And I lived a few houses away. And so we met. They didn’t have a horse or anything, it was such a beginning. We had a horse, and they often came to borrow it. And so we met, but we weren’t engaged for a long time. He was 29 years old, I wasn’t young, either, I was 27. Three months passed and there was a wedding party, and so we’ve lived somehow ever since. My husband is a good man, hard working, I’ve never complained. He doesn’t drink, only he’s got poor health because we had to work in a workshop with chemicals, varnishes, and it had an effect on the health later on.
Section 4	What was the situation in Polish public offices? Did you have any problems with changing your name? We didn’t have any problems, only in Silesia, they had. My maiden name is Urner, they didn’t change anything at our office.
	How did local authorities function back then, public offices? I cannot tell you anything about that, I was too young. I never had anything to do with public offices, cause all the matters were fixed by my father. My mother didn’t speak Polish and she never learned. My stepfather spoke German, he spoke quite good German.
	What did this culture clash look like? Are German traditions cultivated in your home? This was a poor area, we all lived simple lives. They had traditions in Upper Silesia. We were thinking only about work. There was a linen factory in Roztoki, they took poor people there, the others - the better-off ones - had their own farms. If someone had some more than others, they thought they were better then others. There were such differences back then. Now we know more about Polish traditions, I can’t compare the two. We didn’t go to parties or anywhere. We were careful. Because you know, if there were some talks about politics, it was always about us. We were trying to avoid that. Now it is not that bad - good morning, goodbye. People have got used to us, we have got used to them. So many years have passed now. Children have grown up, they’ve got their own families.
	How does the mountainous area influence your life? Perhaps you would like to go elsewhere? At the beginning, I wanted to be among my own kin. Once we went to visit my aunt in Germany, that was in ‘74, and everything was different there. Everything was available in the shops, I was offered a job there, my husband worked a little in Germany, cause we wanted to earn some money. And because we could work there, our life improved a bit. But that brought about people’s envy. It is normal, I think, because everyone would like to have a better life. We wanted to stay there, but it would have been difficult to leave all our belongings back in Poland. After all, we built all that with our own hands. Others came and found ready farms, we had to make something out of nothing. At my aunt’s in Germany, the area was more flat. Why did we come to Wilkanów? My mother-in-law lived here. For two years we lived at my mother’s-in-law, later we bought the plot where our house is now standing, we bought it from our neighbour, and we built the house in ‘68. And so, slowly, slowly, unlike today - today, they want to have everything, TV set, virtually everything as soon as they move in - first we furnished one room, then the second one. We put paper on the floor, it wasn’t easy for us. We were the first ones to start building a house in this area. Neighbours shrugged and said, you will be building, you will be building, and there will be a war. We were forced to start building, cause we couldn’t live all our lives at the mother-in-law’s, all of us in one place, husband’s sisters, brothers, us. My husband said, we have to build our own nest. At first we wanted to buy something, but all that was available were old and expensive houses. At first we didn’t have much money. We made hollow bricks ourselves. In the first year, we prepared everything, so later, everything went much more smoothly.
Section 5	What did you do in your respective family farms, and what when you had one household, after you’d got married? My husband had hens, but then we were not yet together, and in my family home, there was just the regular farm activities. At first, when I was 16 to 19 years old, I worked at timber works, we manufactured fruit baskets. Some of us plaited the bottom, others the sides, and I, among others, did the handles. The factory was situated in Domaszków. In the summer, we went there by bicycles, in the winter - on foot. It was nice and clean work. Only young girls were employed there. It was a way of earning some extra money. Because there wasn’t much from the farm. Because we had to sell all our crops for half price, for half its value. For example, on the market 100 kilograms of wheat cost about 50 zlotys, and we had to give it away for 18-19 zlotys. We were obliged to give it away. One year, we had a lot of wheat, and it remained for the next year. But it wasn’t that good, because over the year, some worms infested the grain. My father tried hard to clean it and managed to sell it. But when we went to the granary, the operator must have noticed something, cause some of the grains had holes in them. I had to always be with my father, cause he wouldn’t manage to unload all the sacks to the warehouse. And the owner said, pull it, pull, and he looked, but luckily he didn’t notice anything. If he had, that man might have been punished. That was back in the Stalin days. We did everything together, we had to varnish everything, saw, heave. My mother-in-law also had a farm, she rented 3 hectares, so we helped her as well, and she had three cows which yielded a lot of milk, and later, there was that elderly couple, and they couldn’t work any more, so my mother-in-law advised us to buy their land. I said, who’s going to work there. My husband, however, got convinced, and we bought four hectares. We gradually got into farming and, starting from one cow, we finally had three and four calves. We had 50 litres of milk. Later on, we sold everything, when times changed so much.
	Back then, you kept various farm animals, farming was more profitable, wasn’t it? Yes! A lot of milk. In ‘83, ‘84 and ‘85 people sold a lot of milk. There were such little benches by the street, on which you put milk containers, and they would come from the dairy and collect them. But you had to hurry, cause later, there was so much milk, that there was not enough room on those benches. When I carried three milk cans, I... [silence]. I worked so much, but then I said that’s enough.
	Are you resting? I’m not resting, but I don’t work all that much. My hands hurt, I suffer a lot.
	What is it like now? Do people come back to the country or do they rather go to towns? Oh, well. In the ‘80s a lot of people wanted to run to towns, because young people are like young people have always been, they’ve never wanted to work hard. And because life wasn’t that easy in towns, either, cause the shops were empty, all you could buy was what you had coupons for... Some didn’t succeed and later they said it was just as well they hadn’t succeeded, now they came back and started building. In the village of Wilkanów, there are a lot of new houses. But it is still quite unprofitable to work in farming, it is difficult to sell their products. Some of them still have the all wheat they harvested, they keep it in the attic somewhere. And that’s their sole source of income. They will not buy milk, either, cause the dairy in Bystrzyca is closed. I don’t know why they do this. Well, we still have something to do, but my husband has just renovated his workshop, cause he doesn’t feel well, and still he wants to do something for himself, cause it’s always deadlines, deadlines, and you cannot do anything for yourself.
Section 6	Over the years, did you notice any changes in the natural environment in the mountains? In the old days, we cooked, did the laundry, using the river water. We bought our first cooker in ‘62 or ‘63. Before that, we cooked on this plate. I went to the river to rinse the laundry, there was such a river nearby. Then we bought our first washing machine, but it still needed boiling - it did the washing only - you still needed to rinse it, but still people had time for everything. After all, we had 9 hectares of land, and all that had to be cut with a scythe. All the grain was cut with a scythe and then gathered by hand. Mother would gather it, I did the binding. Then we had to thresh it. It usually took the whole winter, but still we had time for everything. Now we have automatic machines, all that stuff, but still there is so much work. Back then, we had only bicycles - sometimes we would go sightseeing, my friend and myself. There was no tradition, like there is now, that they have to go to Polanica, by car. We travelled by bicycles, but never too far, only to the next village, cause how far can you get by bicycle. We didn’t have time to get close with the nature, admiring it. On Sundays, we had only two to three hours of leisure, then you had to milk the cows. On Sunday morning, we had to cook dinner, then, at 12 o’clock, there was the Sunday church service, dinner, washing up, and only then you were free. That’s how it was at mine. Some parents did everything themselves, but I couldn’t leave everything to my mother. She was already old, had problems with her legs. Then, we had to help in the cow-shed.
	Did you catch fish in the river? No, not us. I remember that there used to be trout in the river, my brother sometimes caught them, although we were not allowed to.
	And how about the fruit of the forest - mushrooms, berries? We didn’t go mushroom picking, either, it was too far to the forest from ours. I was a bit scared, my mother was afraid to eat mushrooms [laughs], and my husband’s brother doesn’t like mushrooms and he doesn’t eat them. I, personally, like to eat some from time to time. Now, it is not far to the forest so sometimes we go mushroom picking. My daughter likes it and she’s good at preserving them, she will always find something.
Section 7	Seasons of the year - there are four of them? Here, it has always been winter. When I came home, it always was all white, frozen, ice-covered. And now there’s almost no winter. Nor are there summers: it rains continually. All I know is winters. And in the summer, whether something was growing or not, we were not interested as children. But maybe it’s different now.
	Do your children often come to visit you? They come every year. This year, they are going to come in the summer, on holiday. Last year, they spent Christmas with us. She also has a job there, they’ve got a small child now, two and a half years old, so they cannot come so often as they would like. But my son, who’s in Germany as well, he comes quite often, every three weeks. He got married here, with a girl, she was a teacher in Roztoki - quite a nice girl, and my daughter got married there, in Germany.
	That is very strange. You have stayed here, and your children went to Germany. My daughter said, ‘What you didn’t do, I did.’ It was hard for her. Without parents, without anyone. Not far from the French border, she got a job. She never admitted but I think she cried from time to time, but she wouldn’t come back, it would be such a shame. She’s been there for quite a while now, and she sometimes comes to Wilkanów. She managed to survive, and then she met her husband. She’s a music teacher, and so is his mother. They organised some sort of a teachers’ party, and he came there, cause he plays the violin as well, and they met there. She works there, she’s got her friends there, maybe it’s a bit easier for her now. But we are not happy about it, it’s too far. We sometimes go there as well. We’ve been there twice already.
	Did you observe the settlers here, those who arrived at your village after the war, how did they cope? They didn’t know how to handle certain things. They learned a bit from the Germans, cause they lived together for some time, they came in ‘45. The Germans had to work, and they only watched how things were done, they learned and drank a lot, cause they saw, they’d obtained such properties, so they had to celebrate. Some of them didn’t have the slightest idea what to grow, they didn’t know how to till the soil. They had a lot of weeds in their fields, thistles. There were instances of the settlers moving again, to some other parts of Poland. Some of them stayed for a while, they took whatever was valuable, worth taking, and they went to the central parts of Poland. For example, on Mount Czarna Góra, there used to be villages, but now you can hardly find a sign of life there, there’s only a small chapel. Generally speaking, there’s hardly anything left in the mountains.
	The Germans who had to leave these areas, do they come back, do they still remember, talk about the old days, their native land? They come here very often, they want to talk. Some people receive them warmly, but some only ask, what do you want here? But as far as Wilkanów, quite a lot of them came. One year, there were three coach loads that came at a time. Well, it’s because the surroundings are beautiful, the walk the mountains, go sightseeing, sometimes they get invited. It’s only the young generation that doesn’t want to keep any contacts. The older generation does. They all do so little for the tourists. In the ‘80s, when the Germans came here, they said, Mrs Muschiol, we can’t even get anything to drink. That was terrible. Or, if you go to Mount Snieznik, there used to be such a beautiful viewing tower; why should anyone want to demolish it, I don’t know. It could be used for tourists, couldn’t it? Or on Mount Maria Sniezna, everything is falling apart, and I think they could open some sort of a nice shop, a restaurant. They don’t have such traditions around here.
Section 8	Did you or your neighbours think about opening an agro-tourist farm here? We [laughs] didn’t. There was too much work in the carpentry shop. From the very beginning, we’ve been into furniture manufacturing, now we make doors. There was one German, he came here and was looking for it, it’s always cheaper for them. And we had to do it precisely, clean it, file. They have always been satisfied.
	Have you experienced any calamities here? Yes, there were floods. In ‘41 or ‘42, there was a flood in Roztoki, everything was flooded. It’s more or less every 10 years that there is high water, but the one two years ago was exceptional. They say there was a similar flood back in the 17th century, but then it was 20 centimetres lower. Not anything like what happened two years ago. You couldn’t see the road.
	Did the flood affect you directly two years ago? Well, we had water in the cellar. But we managed to get the cars further up. Where the workshop is, there was only 10 - 15 centimetres of water. The whole road was demolished. On Sunday came the first wave, and on Monday night came the second, and it took away half of our garden. At our neighbours, it was close to completely destroying quite a new house.
	What were the people’s reactions when faced with such a danger? Everyone was alright then, only later, when the assistance was distributed, there was envy, hatred. Some got it, others didn’t. There is one neighbour, who lives upstairs, doesn’t say good morning to her neighbour who lives downstairs. She says those various things that they got will last them for a lifetime, and she will never be able to afford them, and she never got anything. Although she should be glad she wasn’t affected, she didn’t lose anything. We had problems as well, but there’s nothing to talk about.
	How do people explain to themselves the causes of the flood? They say it’s a punishment from God, but I don’t think so. God doesn’t want to punish anyone.
	From what you say, I gather you’re quite a conscientious, hard-working person. I have always worked, cause you cannot manage on your own in a workshop. You have to turn things, bring, take out. And those doors can be very heavy - 80 kilograms. Some people, when they come to collect them, they say, don’t carry them [laughs], they’re so heavy. Or when building. Normally, you would say, women don’t have to assist in building. And I was. I wanted to have a place to live in, I helped with the concrete, and I could see the effects, the wall is here that wasn’t here before, there’s one more room, you know. I have to be where things happen. People always take off their shoes when they come to us. I always say, you don’t have to take off your shoes. After all we’ve got water, rags, we can clean it. At other peoples it’s out of the question. When my husband comes in from the workshop, cause he’s forgotten something, he will not take off his shoes. I’m not going to fly, he says. That’s not what I built it for. We built this house together with my husband, but the man is the head anyway. We have such a beautiful view, there’s the Maria Sniezna church, there is Mount Czarna Góra, there is Mount Snieznik. There, you can see a construction site - a new school is being built, a modern one. We will see what comes out of it [We approach the window, Mrs Muschiol talks about what we can see]. They complain they don’t have enough money. The Germans help a lot in the construction. Even my husband applied for those machines, diggers to remove the flood damages, and they brought three machines.
Section 9	What do you now think about your decision from 50 years ago? I made a mistake, cause everybody left, all the village.
	How did you keep in touch with your relatives? At first, they couldn’t come to visit us. For the first time they came in ‘73, and still they needed an official invitation. I’ve got a cousin, a distant relative, she’s got the same name as I, and I invited her as a sister, and so she was able to come then. Somehow they found out she wasn’t a sister. That was back in ‘65, they were quite well-off - they lived in West Germany.
	From what your relatives told you, how did those deported ones accommodate to new conditions, their new home? They had to start from scratch as well. They were not welcome there, either. When they first arrived, they had to live in some sort of a shed for two years. Someone told me that the gaps in the walls were so wide, you had to fill them with rags. They didn’t have much space, either. If there was a larger family, they would get a better room. But they were laborious (industrious) people, they soon bought houses for themselves, partially from the damages that were paid to them for the properties left behind in Poland. Our neighbour told me that his daughter wrote to him that the father died from nostalgia. After all, he’d had a nice farm, he’d had horses and things. And now he went there, got a small room, back here, he’d had freedom. But that was the war. They wrote letters. My mother wanted to go there on holiday but that was impossible. The border was closed.
	What do you and your brothers and sister feel to be - Poles of Germans? Well, my brother speaks very little German, he married a very nice Polish girl, my sister married a Pole as well. I don’t even ask them how they feel.
	And you? And me. I am German and I will never be Polish. It’s impossible. Nobody will convince me. You see, when they came here, those, asking questions, they told my husband to shut the door. And he said there was no need to shut the door, the wife would hear everything anyway. We don’t have secrets. They wanted to ask him questions. Why do we feel to be Germans? And my husband said, why don’t you feel to be Russian? After all, my mother was German, we all were, so what do you expect me to feel. Everybody says we are German, Krauts, no matter whether we say we are Polish or not. It will never be different. How would you feel? I prefer speaking my dialect, it’s more difficult to speak clean German. But I manage, we keep in touch with the Germans. They always asked how come I still speak such good German.
Section 10	When you decided to stay, how did you imagine your future? I remember, I always listened to such a song from a gramophone record. It said, I want to have a house with a garden. That’s what I dreamt about, and my dream has come true!
	Thank you for the conversation.