🕑 00:00:00

Agnieszka Tadaj: My name is Agnieszka Tadaj, today is 20th of March 2021. We’re both in London, on a Zoom call. I will be talking to Ania Oprawska. So let’s just start with a little bit of introduction. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

🕑 00:00:24

Anna Oprawska: Ok, my name is Ania Oprawska, with a “w” - Oprawska, I was born in London of parents who had come to England after the Second World War via Italy, actually, but they had been released from incarceration in a Russian labour camp during the Second World War and had joined the allied forces in Italy, having travelled through Iraq, Iran, Palestine and Egypt, I think, they’ve spent time in Cairo and all the way back, and then to eventually to Italy. So after the war, we all know Russia took to the… Poland became a satellite state, became communist, and so it was too dangerous for anybody who had served in the allied forces, having experienced what Russian rule meant, to go back to Poland. So they then dispersed and hence the Polish diaspora was created across the whole world and many thousands came to London, came to England and then started their lives in the U.K. and my parents then began their lives in London, eventually in London.

🕑 00:02:32

So I was born in two cultures. I was born and grew up speaking Polish and then speaking English when I started primary school, me and my brother - Irek. So we went to school locally and like most Polish… There was a hub, if you like, of a Polish community in the Clapham and Balham area. I think partly that was because there was a house on Nightingale Lane, it was kind of like an advice centre and a hostel for women who had come to England and hadn't settled yet, for single women. So there was an equivalent house for men as well. But the one in Nightingale Lane was a women's one. For the people that were coming to London for the first time, had nowhere to go, needed some direction, some support, some help, they would go there. So that was called the Bursa. And that building is known as Bursa to everybody of my generation. That building then became the Polish school, which was set up by pan Arciszewski and his wife.

🕑 00:04:44

And so I learnt my Polish not only at home, but also at the Bursa where there was a whole curriculum, Polish language, there was a nursery. And so the building evolved along to reflect the needs of the Polish community, as it settled. My parents were already married. They married in Italy before they came over, but obviously there were many Poles that came and met each other in this country. And so ksiądz Cynar who came over with the Poles from… I believe he was in Italy as well, I'm not sure. Yes, I think he was. They came over and the church in Clapham Common, St. Mary's Church, it’s got a big steeple - can't miss it, just behind the High Street was the church where all the masses, all the baptisms and all the weddings took place. And that church also has a hall, a church hall, a very large church hall with a stage. And so the first gatherings and dances and akademie, so that's linking back to the Polish school. The Polish school, which would organise these big sort of celebrations, Akademia 3-go Maja and various other events. Święcone would be there, the blessing of the Easter eggs and the Easter baskets would take place originally, it would be there, in Saint Mary's hall.

🕑 00:06:50

And then there was also a small chapel in Clapham South, in the building which…. I think it was a school. Well, it became a school called Clapham College and is now a sixth form college, St. Xavier's, and there was, I don't know if there still is, there was a chapel and some large grounds at the back. And so for some, Polish masses were held there. And the procesje Bożego Ciała were also held in the grounds of St Xaviers’s. So the whole of… sort of all our lives in the Polish community was really centred around those hubs, the Bursa on Nightingale Lane, the chapel in St Xaviers, and initially the church at St. Mary's Church in Clapham Common. So every Sunday we would get on the bus to go to Clapham Common to begin with.

AT: So what was your involvement in organising events? In the hub or in the St Mary’s church, how were you involved in the community?

🕑 00:08:37

AO: I was involved as a child. I was baptised in St. Mary's Church, my mother passed away and my father remarried and I attended their wedding. I was a Harcerka from the age of about 11 to 18, till I left London to go to university. So I was heavily involved in Harcerstwo.

AT: Can you tell me a little bit about that? Your involvement in Harcerstwo - what was that like?

🕑 00:09:30

AO: That was the source of my social life at the weekends. All the young people, the children of parents who have come over to… have come to England, were attending the Polish school, which was being organised at the Bursa. There was a nursery there and a school, which covered the whole curriculum of language, dancing, folk dancing, singing history, geography, Polish history, Polish geography and, of course, religion. The preparation for attending your first communion, so that was all standard. So Saturdays, when all the English children were going to the morning cinema to watch films, [laughter] I was being dragged uphill to Nightingale Lane, to the Bursa in Nightingale Lane and my mother volunteered to teach because she had a degree in pedagogy. And so she was teaching the older children. And she really did sort of pioneer… She was one of a small group of teachers, a smaller subgroup of the teachers who prepared the older children, as we got older, prepared the children to take the GCSE O level exam in Polish, Polish language, a year before the then normal GCSE. So sort of at 15, at the age of 15, we would all take the GCSE O level Polish and then as we got older, then obviously we were eligible to sit, or not so much eligible, but our knowledge of Polish language and then literature, because we started to learn about the Mickiewicz and Sienkiewicz, and so we then were able to take the A-levels, the GCSE A level in Polish. That was also done a year before on a normal standard English exams.

🕑 00:12:32

So Bursa was a real sort of destination. On a Saturday for Polish school, when we were younger, on a Sunday for the zbiórki, the meetings as a Harcerka after mass. So we would attend mass at the St. Xavier, Ksawerianów, in Clapham South, which is also on Nightingale Lane, it’s about 10, 15 minute walk to the school, to the Bursa. So we would then have our zbiórka in Bursa. There was a very large playground with some volleyball nets there. Zbiórki were held there and there was a boys’ Harcerze as well. There were the younger sort of divisions. The girls were called Bratki and the boys were called Kosynierzy. And then, as we got older, the we joined the male drużyna, Saska Kempa, Hufiec Warszawa, so all the groups in London, the boys groups were named after regions in Warsaw and the Kamienna, we were named after a river, a tributary to the Wisła and we were Hufiec Bałtyk. So there was a Wisła, there was Kamienna, there was San, Pilica, Dunajec, so all the various drużyny, the various groups, were named after rivers in Poland. So my education, my social life, my character building was all really formed through the weekly weekend contact with my peers and it was like a sort of little Poland. Bursa became sort of synonymous with Polish life, Polish traditions, Polish culture and alongside Harcerstwo, which was very much built on Scouting foundations, but with a Polish twist, because of the contribution that Polish Harcerstwo made in the Warsaw Uprising. So those that survived and had come to England, who had experience of being those messengers running through the sewage tunnels underneath Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising, very much came from the tradition of Harcerstwo because they were organised - you know, they responded to the call for help and that was the part of their DNA. [laughter]

🕑 00:16:41

So that tradition, that culture, that helping, being involved in an organised way, was very much part of my mind and became part of my DNA and all the young girls that had similar backgrounds, all the Polish girls and the Polish boys.

AT: What’s your best memory from that time?

🕑 00:17:16

AO: Well - many memories! My link to the Polish community then expanded because the A levels were held as an evening class on a Friday, so my link to the Polish community and my friends then spanned over more than just the two days because I think it was Friday nights, we were then prepared, we're doing the literature, and that was as we were older, obviously 16, 17. There was also, in addition to that, was the Orlęta - the Polish dance troupe that was being set up by Basia Klimas-Sawyer, so that was another evening class at [inaudible], the local school that ran Friday evening classes for adults, so we were able to legitimately go out in the evening and meet up with the boys and and learn how to dance. How to dance not only oberki, polki, polonezy, but also tangos and waltzes, which was, you know, essential if you are going to take part in the zabawy. By that time the Polish community had managed, under the leadership of ksiądz Cynar, to acquire an old gambling casino on Balham high road known as Hamilton House or the 211 club (because its address was 211 Balham High Road) and that became the Polish Club.

🕑 00:19:23

Before that I think if people, my parents for example, wanted to go out I think there were some dances in the St. Mary's Hall, I'm not sure. But the hub for that generation was obviously the Polish government in exile based in Kensington and the Ognisko Polskie in Exhibition Road, the Polish Hearth Club, which still exists, I believe, there. There is a restaurant there and a sala for meeting and socialising. My teenage years were strongly associated with Harcerstwo and with the annual three week obóz in outdoors, in Dorset, in Devon, in Ireland, in France. Those were the main destinations, but others went to the huge zlot at Monte Casino back in the day. I didn't go. I can't remember, I think I had only just joined the Harcerki, so I was a Bratek at first, and then I moved over and became a Harcerka, so the annual start of the year, rok harcerski, would start with a pielgrzymka. We would all go in coaches to Aylesford and that was the rozpoczęcie roku harcerskiego, the start of the year, the harcerski year. And that was a whole gathering of Harcerstwo from all around the area, so it was a, you know, a big deal to go there. We would all go with our parents in a coach down to Aylesford and start the harcerski year. The reason I'm saying that is the tradition of being pasowana, meaning you were being upgraded, [laughter] if you like, moved from being a Bratek to a Harcerka, from a Zuch to a Harcerka - that happened at Aylesford. Sometimes that happened at obóz, but for me it happened in Aylesford and you were sort of very unceremoniously carried by two Harcerki. They would sort of make a seat for you out of their arms and they would carry you across ceremoniously and you got your husta, which for Kamienna was a beautiful navy blue with green edging, so that were the Kamienna colours. You were then sort of embraced and welcomed into the Kamienna drużyna. So I was “pasowana” in Aylesford.

🕑 00:23:16

And from then on… And my first obóz was in Ireland, it had such an impact. You know, as a child we didn't really go on holidays. My only holiday before that was, I think, it was a week or two weeks, but it was a period of time in Hastings… Oh, no - we had two holidays: one was in a house somewhere in Surrey, Horsham, somewhere around there, I think. So we did have a holiday in Surrey, I can't remember how old, I was with my mum. And then the holiday in Hastings with family was with my mother. The only time I remember having a holiday with my father being present was that was a week in Hastings. And the reason for that is because many parents, many Poles, those that got work, those that learnt the language, those that had skills, those that were able to, would buy their house. And back in those days, the only way to be able to afford to buy a house would be to work. And if you've got children, very young children then the mother, the woman would be bringing up the children, we were going to primary school. So the house would be big enough to rent out rooms. This is how we were able to, you know, get by.

🕑 00:25:46

In my case, I was just thinking about this [laughter] earlier this morning and I was counting how many lodgers we had in the house, because they bought a big house here in Balham. I haven't been born yet, so my parents were in East London, which is an area traditionally with a long history of new influx of communities, from all over the world, which would first settle in East London. They had the Jews before that, the Jewish community, the Bengali community after the Polish, so it's a very, very rich heritage and history of communities coming to London and settling in East London first.

🕑 00:26:51

I guess it was sort of the cheapest place to live and my father was a printer. He had a trade when he came to England, he had a skill that had value in those days. The print was booming. The difficulty he had in getting work was because the print was unionised and it was what they call a closed shop. So unless you knew somebody to help get you in, it was quite hard for an outsider, if you like. In any case, it was difficult for Poles to find work. It was a struggle. You had to learn the language. You had to prove yourself. You were competing against English people looking for work. You were maybe sometimes considered with suspicion, because, as a Pole, whatever the English people knew about Poland was that it was communist. If they didn't know the history and the contribution the Poles had made to the overthrowing of the fascist regime and also especially in the Battle of Britain with the Polish Air Force. If they didn't know that, then there may well be some suspicion. But I think in the main it was because it was a closed shop, but anyway, my father did eventually manage to secure a position in a print works called Waterlow and Sons in Worship Street in East London, having had several other printing jobs before that, and that was where he worked for his entire life.

🕑 00:29:21

Because he had a steady income, they could afford to buy a house, so they bought down here in Balham. Why they bought here in Balham? I could only guess that friends and people who they knew were also buying in this area. The houses were affordable, presumably. Anyway, so they bought and they rented. And so my brother and I would be in one room. My parents would be sleeping on a, we called it, puciułap, that’s a new Polish word, it was a “put-you-up”, it was a sofa bed called “put you up”, we called it puciułap and they would take that, that would be in the living room. So it was a sofa in the day, it was a bed at night and they would sleep there. Every room in the house had a sink in it, so running water. I'm guessing, I don't know if that was the standard design in those days for a big Belfast's sink to be in the corner of every room. I think that's how they were built in those days, the big houses. There was one bathroom, so we all had to take turns to go to the bathroom. Fortunately, there were two toilets, one outdoor toilet and one indoor toilet, which is separate from the bathroom. So we as a family would live downstairs and all the lodgers would live above us. And so they would have priority really over the bath. We would wash in basins in the kitchen. The kitchen was sort of a lean to greenhouse originally, it was freezing cold and we would have a sort of old paraffin heater in the kitchen heating up that space. It used to stink [laughter] if it got too fumy. Paraffin really stinks. And we would have coal fire in the living room. Every morning would have to set the coal fire, light it up and then the kitchen would be heated by a paraffin lamp or by opening the door of the oven and keeping the oven on. That would throw the heat out into the kitchen. We would sort of boil up some water, put it in a big tin basin, stick it on a stool and wash your armpits, the neck, behind the ears, you know, bit by bit, [laughter] to not to expose too much to the cold air. [laughter] Obviously we would have bath nights as well. I do remember sitting in a bath with my brother opposite me [laughter] in the bath. I mean, I must have been about 5 or something, maybe younger, 4.

🕑 00:33:26

So there would always be people in the house. And there was a friend of my father's who obviously had a similar history and had come and was also a printer. And he was called Aleksander Stankiewicz. He lived with us until he became too old to manage the stairs. And eventually he got, you know, many, many, many years. But we used to call him Wujek Stanek. Wujek Stanek used to live with us, but the other people, the other lodgers… I remember a lady called Mrs. Walker who looked after us after my mother died and before my father managed to get his youngest sister over from Poland to look after us. I think she came from Poland, maybe she was in England already, I don't know. But I think she was in Poland. But anyway, she came over to look after us because he was at work and we were on our own. So my auntie, who we didn't like, we thought she was a bit of a witch, really. She had a big spot on her nose. Ciocia z kropką na nosie we called her. The aunt with a spot on her nose. And she was very strict. She was very authoritarian. She came from ze wsi, you know, from the country, and the children were always naughty. And so we became very naughty when we were around her. We used to try and play tricks on her, run away and see if we could get away with it. When my father remarried, then I was introduced to my new mother and that was, you know, like a breath of fresh air. She was the most wonderful woman.

🕑 00:35:43

The house was occupied by Mrs. Walker, that was one that was lodger that I remember, and I don't remember many of the others, but I do remember one lodger called Akeem Akeem, I think his name was. I think he was Nigerian or somewhere from Africa, and he was studying very hard, very studious, very quiet. My memory was that, you know, my father would take in and accept people for who they were. At that time English people who were landlords would be quite specific about who they want, who they would take into their houses. And, you know, the most despicable signs would be up. You know, that people quote now, “no dogs, no Irish, no blacks”. That was not my lived experience. My father would sort of interview the lodger, would show them the space, would talk to them, would get to know them a little bit, and then would accept them and say, this is what we have on offer, this is the rent. Akeem Akeem I do remember, because he was so quiet and so studious, and he was obviously sitting some accountancy, or something similar, exams. But he was the most wonderful lodger.

🕑 00:37:54

A whole load of people would pass through the house as lodgers. They would study or they would work and then they would meet partners or their lives would then evolve and develop and they would move out to pursue their own lives. The rent was always, if you like, sort of affordable, because my dad knew how hard you have to work to save the money to make a life for yourself. And because he didn't need to charge vast sums because there were five, I think, off the top of my head, rooms that he was renting out. So it was sort of equal, if you like, it was shared. Every room had a gas meter in it. And every so often he and I would go into every room and he would have a bunch of keys with a padlock and he would open the padlock, open the meter and empty out the pennies. That time you had to put a penny in the slot. I remember they started with a penny and then it went up to shillings in the old money, pounds, shillings and pence. Those pennies, then shillings and then half a crown. And so we would go round and empty into these bags on a Saturday, it was my task, I would sit at the table and I would put the money in little piles. And then bag them up in these paper bags, like the plastic bags that you have that you have now, the bank bags, so they were paper with little holes and with sort of that, you know, for copper and silver. And then dad would take that to the bank in a big in his work bag, actually, would take his bag and bank all the money. So that was our living conditions in the early days. And then as we got older, then we got bedrooms, our own bedrooms. [laughter] You know, it was something we would aspire to: getting our own bedrooms. And as the mortgage became more easier to handle and dad’s wages increased, the unions were very strong, and would negotiate as good as they could get conditions. So in the end, you know, he became reasonably well paid.

AT: I wanna stop you here, let’s just go back to few things you mentioned. You mentioned the lodgers, the people you were sharing your house with, I wanted to find out what was that like when holidays occurred. English holidays or Polish holidays or traditions. What was that like for you? Do you have memories from that time?

🕑 00:41:52

AO: I mentioned holidays already in terms of holidays with family that I had. In terms of family in London or anywhere in the U.K., we only had one uncle and his Italian wife in Whitechapel who remained in Whitechapel. Actually, uncle, he was my second mother's brother. So my father knew of that family when he married my mum.

AT: I meant more like the Christmas holidays, Easter, things like that - did you celebrate Christmas at home? What was that like?

🕑 00:42:55

AO: Yes, we took turns: we would either go to Whitechapel and have Wigilia or Easter meal with Święcone in Whitechapel or they, my uncle and wife, and then and then later on cousin, would come down and eat with us. So it would be spent with that branch the family, the only one that existed at that time. It would be traditional. It would be Święcone, we would take the Easter baskets initially to St. Mary's Hall, later on it would be the Klub in Balham High Road, and the eggs and the babka and the bazie and everything, we would decorate the eggs. My father was quite artistic. We would sit there making patterns on the eggs and dyeing the eggs various colours and then scraping out patterns. He would collect postcards because we would get Easter greetings from Poland, from family. Many of them would be postcards of the decorated eggs and he would keep them for the design, to inspire him to make designs. And we would shine the eggs with a little bit of butter to make them really nice and shiny, so they would stand out in the basket.

🕑 00:44:48

And Christmas was Wigilia. Not Christmas Day, it was Christmas Eve in traditional way. We would have the tree, we would have the presents, we would have the 12 course meal. My aunt would always bring freshly made ravioli for the barszcz and in fact she was an amazing cook. Absolutely amazing. [laughter] We would joke and say we would have to not eat the day before, if it was our turn to go to Whitechapel. So for Christmas, we would have to starve ourselves the day before and not eat anything because she was a real sort of Italian mama. And as soon as your plate was empty, it would be refilled. And if you said no, that to her meant “yes, I want more”. So you would have to either eat really, really slowly, but it was really delicious, [laughter] so it's very difficult to eat slowly. [laughter] We would be really enjoying the food. And of course, because we were enjoying it so much, more and more, we were like barrels at the end. My dad would always have to undo his belt at least two notches [laughter] before we would sort of stagger out of the flat. They lived in this little flat in Whitechapel. Stagger out of it and home on the tube. [laughter]

🕑 00:46:44

Actually, I remember when I was very young, they would play records, they had a record player and they would play old records, old records of Italian songs. So there were a couple of hits that if I had them, I'd remember and think “oh yes, I remember that from those days”. I did go to Poland as a child, but not during the Easter or the Christmas holidays, that was more in the summer. But only twice, maybe twice with my mother, my father never, never went back to Poland.

🕑 00:47:38

Yes, so it was traditional. The holidays in terms of Easter… And of course, the whole whatever tradition was linked into life with the Harcerstwo, we would go and we would have a wędrówka out to a wood on the outskirts of London and we would collect bazie. We would chop, get permission, of course, and cut the catkins, the bazie, and make and sell bazie outside of the church. We would make sugar lambs, baranki from sugar. Harcerstwo got the moulds from somebody who went to Poland. Some people were going to Poland more regularly than us, so they got the moulds and we would make sugar bazie, sugar baranki and sell them outside the Polish church as Wędrowniczki. Wędrowniczki was the older group, so we were… we were more encouraged to be entrepreneurial and we would bake honey cake hearts, serca kaziukowe, and ice them and wrap them up in cellophane and sell them outside the Polish club at that by then. So that was outside the Klub. So all those sorts of Polish traditions would be echoed within our life in Harcerstwo. We would sing carols at Christmas. We would walk to the Polish houses in South London in our local neighbourhoods and we would sing carols. We would have learnt those carols in the church and at the Polish school and in Harcerstwo, so all of that would have been taught. There are some very creative people in the Polish community. One of them made one of those… is it called a cep, the head, the sort of dragon's head, the mouth would snap up, or was it a lajkonik. I can't remember the terms, but we had one of those and polska szkoła, of course, would reinforce those traditions. Święty Mikołaj would come and would give the children presents. There was a Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Dzieci i Młodzieży. The parents would make donations, the Koło, KPH, which was the Friends of the Harcerstwo, would help to fundraise for the obozy that we went on and for the, you know, whatever needed doing, the coaches that we needed to take us to the obozy, that sort of thing. So we would fundraise ourselves a bit and the parents and the adults in the community would chip in as well.

🕑 00:51:13

And some of the businesses, because, of course, there were Polish bakeries set up where we got our pączki from. We would eat the pączki at przerwa, at the Polish school during the refreshment breaks. I do remember really early on there was a guy with a van. A small van. Not like a transit, but one of the smaller ones. And he would drive around the neighbourhood and at the back of it were loads of kiełbasy [laughter] and ogórki and, you know, powidła and all the Polish produce. Before there was a Polish shop, there was a man in a van, [laughter] going around selling all the food that our parents would eat, the kiełbasy especially. So he would sort of drive around and mum and dad would buy stuff out of the back of his little van. [laughter]

🕑 00:52:26

So, you know, the more I speak, the more I kind of remember little things. You can see, we were very knitted and integrated, how each branch of activity would sort of reinforce the traditions, the culture, the language. The way of being Polish was all wrapped up in the life of the church, the life of the school, the life of the Harcerstwo.

🕑 00:53:06

You know, the lodgers were lodgers, they would come and go. Apart from wujek Stanek, who, you know, was a friend of the family, the other lodges would sort of keep themselves to themselves. Maybe that was one of the conditions for living here? You know, I don't recall any huge difficulties. I only recall one incident when actually wujek… Because… - ah! - so the other thing was dad actually liked to drink. Not a lot and only at Christmas and Easter, usually. He liked gin, interestingly, he didn't go down the vodka route. It was gin, Gordon's gin, and he would drink it with orange squash because we didn't have juice in those days, we had orange squash. So he would put a bottle of gin on the table at Christmas or at Easter, wujek Stanek would come down. He would join us with my uncle and aunt and they would have a drink, you know, and it would all be discussions about the politics, their experiences, etc.. You know, what was happening in the world, Winston Churchill and Wilson, the prime ministers at the time. Lots of debating, lots of politicking. And there was one in one incident when wujek Stanek got very, very drunk. And he had gone out, I think, for a walk, to walk it off. And he came back and he couldn't open the door. He couldn't put the key in the door, [laughter] he was very plastered, [laughter] and he smashed the door of the glass to open the door. He smashed it with his fist to open the door. And that's the only kind of, you know, incident, if you like, that I, as a young girl, was frightened of, you know. This sort of behaviour when a man is drunk and I was quite frightened at that time. But that's the only incident, everybody else was really well behaved.

🕑 00:56:08

And my father was not a drinker in terms of being reliant on, you know. It would only be family occasions and of course my uncle would bring, at Christmas, a little bottle of Baby Champ. [laughter] That was my first introduction to alcohol [laughter] at quite a young age, actually. I think maybe he brought a bottle of it at my first komunia [laughter] to celebrate. So it was Baby Champ, baby champagne that was actually alcoholic. [laughter] And, yeah, from then on the kids would… Well, I… can't remember if my brother drank it, maybe he did, maybe he thought it was too babyish, but it was called Baby Champ. It had a little Bambi on the label, you know. I remember he would always bring a couple bottles for the children. [laughter] So that was lovely.

AT: Sounds amazing. Ania, should we just take a little break?

AO: Sure!

AT: I really enjoy listening to your stories, it’s amazing, but let’s have a little break. Should we do 5 minutes?

AO: Yeah, no problem, OK.

[5 minute break]

AT: So we are back, refreshed, hopefully. So, Ania, I wanna go back to a few things. One - you mentioned going back to Poland and we discussed that previously and I really enjoy those stories, you know, so I wanna just find out if you can tell me about the time you went to Poland. You know, the way you travelled, this first interaction with, you know, people in Poland, back then, behind the Curtain and so on…

🕑 00:58:34

AO: When my father remarried, it was, you know, a family. He married a woman from a family that he knew, who had gone to school with during the war, before the war, sorry, as a young man, he knew this woman and he knew the family because they lived in the same wieś. My mother was originally from Łódź, but had moved to a little place called Radzyń Podlaski. Her family had moved there. And so she knew her. So my mother, my… I don't like to call her a stepmother because as far as I'm concerned, she wasn't a stepmother. She was my mother. And she had a different experience of Poland. She was more, if you like, sort of in tune with the changes and the situation in Poland and didn't have that history of… Her family remained in Poland and survived the war in Poland. So she was more… felt more comfortable about going to Poland even in those days in the ‘60s. So even though my father really never went back, but she did. And she wanted to stay in contact with her family in Poland. She was one of five. And so she wanted to connect not only with her brother in Whitechapel, but also her three sisters in Poland. So she managed to sort of convince my dad that it would be OK and that she would look after us and bring us back. [laughter] And we went, the first time I went to Poland was by coach. We got on a train and then I don't actually remember much about the ferry crossing, but I remember it was a Harwich to Hook of Holland. I think that was the route. And then a coach from there over to Poland, with an overnight, I think, somewhere in West Germany. But we definitely stayed overnight somewhere and there was a lot of time spent at the border because we all had to get off the couch and some suitcases were taken out and searched and, you know, I was very young at the time, I was nine years old, so I, you know, never travelled before abroad, so I didn't know what was going on. But yeah, then we sort of bundled back on the coach and took a huge… I mean, it took two days to get there because of all these border crossings and passports and everything. I travelled on my mother's passport and as did my brother, I think we were both… we didn't have our own passports.

🕑 01:02:42

And then we were introduced, we were sort of embraced into the bosom of my mother's family and I met all my cousins and there was a cousin that was of similar age to me. Most of my cousins were older because obviously my parents did not start a family till after the war, my father was sort of well into his ‘40s. So everyone in Poland was, you know, getting on with life and so my cousins were older than me, but there was one that was my age and she and I became the best of friends. And we stayed with my grandmother. And she had the most enormous garden, I mean, huge garden in Olsztyn.

🕑 01:03:48

And we used to play outside and climb trees and build dens and hide under the pierzyny, you know, at night and pick gooseberries. And in the evenings my aunts would come round and we would play sort of Cluedo or, you know, board games. It was just a very, very happy time. Yeah, that first visit to Poland was… It was just a very positive experience for me because I didn't realise I had family, you know, so, yes, that was good. Sorry. Subsequent visits… Oh! And we also obviously went to Radzyń, we met with my father's side of the family, got to know my uncles and aunts there. And that was very much a small holding. My uncle had a strip of land. He grew potatoes. We would go and help dig the potatoes. He had a cow. A horse. A pig. Some chickens. Think he had a dog, a guard dog, and I remember the outdoor toilet. [laughter] It was like a wooden box and there was, you know, a desk with a hole in it, you know a plank of wood with a hole in it. And then if you look down the hole, it would just be a board at an angle. It wasn't, you know… It was open air and the chickens would be pecking around in whatever was falling through [laughter] and the flies! Oh, my God, the flies! You didn't want to spend that much time in there. So it was a very, very hot summer, I remember.

🕑 01:06:32

And the stodoła was thatched. I can't remember if the house was thatched, it probably was. And so life, life… was, you know, a real contrast between my father's, you know, background, this sort of farming, small holding and my mother's, which was, I mean… she educated herself, you know, she was very studious. She was the oldest of all the children. And, you know, she… I don't know how she managed to afford to get herself to educated, but she did. And she went on to higher education. So it became quite academic, her background. I mean, not in the early days, obviously, but that was her… that was her sort of way of getting out of the house, I think, escaping the responsibilities of looking after all the other brothers and sisters.

🕑 01:07:57

But, yes, that was my first visit to Poland. I wasn't aware of the politics because I was too young. There wasn't anybody my age to play with in Radzyń, so I kind of, you know, got a bit bored after a while because they're all grown ups, you know, talking about stuff I didn't understand. And I remember it was a very hot summer. We would go for walks into the woods across the łąki, you know, and I do remember there was one big sort of… looked like a pond. Well, it was a deep sort of area with water, and it was a bomb, a hole that had been made by a bomb that had fallen there and there were lots of frogs in there and lots of frogs in the woods as well. And I was always worried about treading on them because they were sort of jumping as I was walking along. I remember being taken on a ride by my uncle on a horse and cart, and he had rubber wheels on his cart, which were the envy of the whole area because it was such a soft ride, riding on a car with pneumatic wheels, nice, soft, nice and soft, you didn't feel the bumps. And I had a ride in the back of the cart which was full of hay and we used to play in the stodoła as well. It was like there's lots of bales of hay and we would hide in that and slide around and jump off the bales and things like that. So that was my experience of Poland for the first time.

🕑 01:10:09

Then when I came back, of course there was all this sort of, “Oh, you went to Poland!” - people were sort of curious, but in a sort of cautious way because it was behind the Iron Curtain. So I said, what do you mean? You know, later on, obviously, when I was in secondary school and learning about history and stuff, we did cover the Second World War. So, this term the Iron Curtain came in and then suddenly began to realise, lots of television programmes about the Second World War and about how Britain won the war and, you know, lots of films about it. And a lot of the films and, you know, was about the, you know, the story of the Nazis. Nothing about the story of the one point seven million Poles that were taken away from their homes. Civilians as well as soldiers and taken to Siberia to work in forced labour camps. That history is only just coming out, but that history is the reason why there are people of my generation here in London and across the world, that our parents had that experience and did not return to Poland because Poland was not free.

🕑 01:11:46

And because it was under Russian rule, the chances that they would be allowed to live as civilians, having had the experience of being arrested and taken away for no reason, was not something that they wanted to risk. They didn't want to risk that for their families in Poland, so like my father, they didn't return and they decided…. Those that came to England, I think, and France and, you know, those sort of areas that were closer to Poland, always lived in that hope because there was a government in exile in London. So there was a strong kind of feeling that, you know, if we stay close, if we stay together, then we, at some time, at some point, if we raise our children with our traditions, the knowledge, you know, then we can return to Poland. And, you know, there was that real nationalism. Patriotism, I think, because nationalism has a very different kind of meaning now, but there was a real kind of yearning to rebuild the country, and that was sort of the, I think for some, that was a sort of a thread running through, you know, reconnecting with family, with the motherland, ojczyzna, the fatherland and reconnecting with family and rebuilding what the damage that had been done. Huge amounts of damage obviously being the sort of centre of where the whole war started. Huge amounts of damage. So that's sort of… the sort of wanting to do that I think initially was a very strong feeling amongst the community. Wanting to stay together so that they could then en masse return and maybe… I don't know. I don't know what their dreams and hopes were at that time. I'm just sort of speculating.

🕑 01:14:19

And then I remember going to Poland a couple more times. Once with my mother and brother. And then my brother went to Poland on his own. Something that I never forgave my parents for [laughter] because I wanted to go with him, because he spent an absolutely amazing summer in Zakopane or somewhere on the outskirts of Zakopane, in the house, in a wooden sort of chalet looking house on the hills, on the mountain side. Idyllic, absolutely idyllic holiday with the very cousin that I was such good friends with, you know, and her family and other friends and family, you know. It was just the most beautiful holiday that my cousin always speaks very fondly of that time and wished that I had been there with them. But I wasn't allowed to go. I was too young, so I didn't go. But then I went as I was a bit older and obviously mum wanted to go again. So I went and my brother went with her and again, everyone was older, some people had married, as the family sort of grew, and had accommodation. I mean, accommodation… they were all living in osiedle, in flats and that would be three generations in that flat. There would be, you know, grandmother and aunts and uncles and aunts and children. And it would be, you know, a couple of bedrooms. There would always be a sofa bed. Someone would always be sleeping on the sofa in the living room. But we would be accommodated around the sisters, you know, and we would every day we would go and we would sightsee because one of my cousins was in Warszawa at that time. And so we would sightsee Warszawa and then we would go and go to Radzyń and stay with my aunt.

🕑 01:16:47

And there weren't any children there yet, but they came sort of a bit later. Well, actually they came, yeah, there was… There were two, sorry, two cousins, but they were older than me. So, you know, they were sort of out digging up potatoes or…. No, actually, my uncle was doing all the labour and work and my two cousins, their two girls were, I think, I'm not quite sure what they were doing, but I think they had got some sort of work in… But obviously always helped out on the land as well. I think they had other work as well. So, you know, there wasn't many people around. We would stay in a few days and then we would leave. So that was that time. And then I went again. Not long after the martial law was imposed. And oh, no, I went… Oh, that's right, I went specifically to… My brother, I don't know how, maybe he talked to my father, but he managed to find… he managed to make contact with the family of my birth mother. They were down in the south in a place called Jarosław, and he wanted to connect with them. So he went and met with them and discovered there was yet another huge family of cousins, more in line with, because my birth mother was 10 years younger than my father, so those are the cousins with a more mature of similar age to my brother. And so he came back really enthusiastic and told me all about all these cousins that he discovered, etc. spent time with. So on, when I was about 18, maybe 17 or something, I went and I met with them, too. I can't remember if on that trip I actually went to the, you know, [inaudible], I think I did because I would and probably did go and see everybody. So this included the family in Olsztyn, the family in Warszawa, the family in Radzyń. You know, it was a sort of a whistle stop tour of everybody.

🕑 01:19:48

And then I forget whether this was the next time I visited, whether that was during… whether martial law had happened then or later, but there was another visit. I went on my own. It might have been the same one, but martial law had been imposed earlier. There was nothing, I mean, my first port of call is obviously Warszawa, that was kind of like the destination, to go to Poland you stopped in Warszawa. Fortunately, my cousin was living there and her family. So I always started with them and I got to Warszawa and it was a bit like lockdown now, you know. [laughter] It was very sort of ponuro, you know, the atmosphere was very suppressed. And it was only when I started… I didn't quite know what was going on or why. I mean, I didn't quite appreciate the impact of what was going on politically. I mean, I knew from the news reports, you know, we had a television by then, so I knew from the news reports. But to actually know what the impact was… And I remember becoming aware that, you know, of the queues everywhere. Lots of queues outside. Not everywhere, but just certain shops, there were queues. The bread shop, the bakery shop, you know, and then any like a supermarket shop. All the shelves were empty, but there was a huge queue outside of it because they were expecting a delivery of sugar or flour or something, you know. And so then I realised the scarcity, how scarce everything was and how little people had, but then there was this whole sort of underground bartering system. You know, everybody had family somewhere in the country. Most people in Warszawa had a działka. What's the English word for a działka?

AT: Allotment!

AO: Allotment, that's right. Everyone had an allotment or had someone in the family with an allotment. So there would be this trade, you know, these goods, these fruits, vegetables, etc. They made do with the connections they had through friends and family because everyone in Warszawa was living in these huge blocks. They all knew neighbours, you know, they were all very well networked, very well connected. And so everybody was acquiring… all the pregnant women would go out to stand in the queue because they would have priority. All the women that weren’t working were also sent. All the grandparents, those that were alive, were sent to stand in the queues.

AT: Would you send anything from UK to Poland and did they ask you to send anything?

🕑 01:23:20

AO: Well, there was always paczki to be sent to Poland, you know. We would send our clothes over. My communion “wedding dress”, as I call it, was sent to my cousin. This was before this happened. Medicine was being sent to Poland. We would have a suitcase, not with clothes for us, we would have a suitcase of clothes for the family and tea or coffee. I think coffee was more the preferred drink. And, you know, anything that was light, that wouldn't be, I mean… In a coach I don't think, I'm not sure how restricted the weight was, I don't think it was as restricted as with flights, so you could get away with heavier stuff. And some of the clothes weren't for the family to wear. They were for trading. You know, Levi jeans and things like that or, or… plastic bags! I mean, reklamówki, they were like, you know, especially if it had Harrods written on it or Selfridges. I mean, there were people selling plastic bags on the street. You know, there was this huge interest in that. This was sort of Iron Curtain day still. I mean, huge interest in the music. The Beatles, the English language, the culture, the fashion. I mean, it was just an insatiable kind of hunger for these things that were in the West and a kind of thinking… sort of how lucky we were, not really appreciating how hard, you know, forging a life in a foreign country was, but, you know, if you were young enough, it was possible to do. And of course, my contact, my conversations were with people similar age. But they were all, you know… Huge curiosity about what was going on in England. In a way that was sort of, like, I kind of felt I wasn't well read enough to discuss, you know, the intricacies of all of this, you know, because politics was not a subject at school. [laughter] And so, you know, we wanted to sort of play. [laughter]

🕑 01:26:25

But the time when I went there, you know, with all the restrictions was very… I mean, I just… I would not stay more than one, maximum two nights in any one place because I just didn't I didn't know where all this food came from. You know, there was nothing out there and yet every evening there would be a table laid with, you know, the most delicious kiełbasy, soup and, you know, fresh bread and I’m thinking where did this come from? And I didn't want to be a burden to anybody, you know, and I would leave dollars for them. Not that you could buy anything, but, you know, at some point, you know, it could be used in some way.

AT: You were just talking about music and I just remembered that we mentioned this before, apparently you recorded vinyl? I would like to know a little bit more about that. How did that happen?

🕑 01:27:40

AO: This was all to do with my involvement in Harcerstwo and we sang a lot. There was a very, very active family… I mean, the Poles that came over… I so admire their creativity. They did not lose their creativity, but, you know, whenever in the Klub, whenever we went there or even in St. Mary's Hall, it was decorated so beautifully, the akademie, the costumes, everything. So, I mean, basically, there are a lot of very musical, creative people in the community and they expressed that, and had a way of channelling that into the community. And Harcerstwo was no different. And amongst the families that were kind of driving and leading, leading this sort of creation Harcerstwo in London was a family called Bogdanowicz, who actually lived in the same road, and there were also Paluch and Mr. Paluch was a lawyer, I think, and a solicitor. And his wife was very active in Harcerstwo and was very artistic, too. They had, I think, seven…. seven daughters, all daughters, and they have this musical, creative gene, all of them. One after the other, they all became the drużynowe of the Kamienna, of the drużyna, the girls scouting group, division. I don't know the sort of English equivalent for that word, but anyway, as we got older, I became Wędrowniczki, so we were not only inspired to be more, you know, just sort of create these baranki and these bazie, these eggs and everything that we were selling outside the church, but there were also courses, leadership courses. They were training us up to become drużynowe ourselves. You know, we were zastępowe, we had our own little brigades in the obóz, in the obozy. You know, the old girls were in charge of it, you know, of a zastęp, of a small patrol in their tent. So it was all about leadership and about being creative, so I got very involved. My father was very musical in his own way. He used to play a mouth organ. And so he would, you know, on a Sunday, he would play all these tunes, these marching tunes and also some of the church songs, hymns. And I used to play recorder, a little wooden recorder at primary school, and I got an ear for it. My father used to play by ear, he would have the gin and then he would play his mouth organ. I would learn the notes, but once I knew the notes, I could work out a tune. And then when I was in secondary school, I was given… I wanted to play when I was in primary school, I wanted to play clarinet because it would have, you know, this sort of finger skill, which would just easily… School didn't have clarinets. I ended up with a violin. So I had to cart this whopping great box, I mean, it's such an awkward shape, it was horrible. And I started violin lessons, I think, in primary school and with my primary years and then carried them over into secondary school. And I was not… I mean, I was getting on with it. I was even playing in a school orchestra. You know, we did a concert. I remember going to what was then Garrett Green School. It’s now called Birdwood School, but they had, I remember, rehearsals and playing my violin in this orchestra, but my passion wasn't that.

🕑 01:32:49

The day… I remember the day I decided I would no longer… I would object and I would just ditch this pesky violin. I was walking up the escalators, going to school, my secondary school, which is an all girls school. Not Catholic, CLV. I was walking up and in those days, the escalator stairs were wooden, they had these wooden… and they had these teeth that the escalator would disappear because these teeth would catch any kind of rubbish, so that it didn't it didn't get caught in the mechanism of the escalator. So at the top of the escalator…, I mean, you see that in the current, modern escalators, they're steel, but they have these little teeth and the steps disappear, but pass through these teeth. Well, the wooden ones had long teeth, like the length of your finger, possibly a bit longer than that. But anyway, I was walking up the long escalator at Clapham South and I had my gym kit, I had my school bag and I had this violin. I was completely [laughter] covered in baggage [laughter] and I was rushing, I was running up the stairs, the last few, you know, and I tripped. I didn't lift my leg high enough. And I fell on the top of this escalator and all I could see is these teeth coming towards me and I thought… and I blamed the violin case because it kind of swung round and I tripped over it. And that's it. No more. I am not playing that violin again. [laughter] And I was getting quite good. Interestingly, interestingly, I met a few years back now… I actually found my best friend from primary school on, what was it called, Friends Reunited or something. That was that there was a website where you could try and trace your old school friends. And I found her and we met and we had this talk and I was saying all that voice said, “Do you still play vinyl?” So I said, “Do I!”. And she said, as it happened, she became a professional violinist. And she always thought that I was a better violin player than her. So I was more musical than her, and so when she went to a different secondary school and I lost touch with her, but she then went on to become a professional violinist and she played in an orchestra in, oh, somewhere in the West Indies, I think it was, or South America. But I ditched it, I just did not want to do that.

🕑 01:36:01

And yet so the other part of the musicality was my brother. A friend of mine at secondary school had a guitar and I started… I asked if I could borrow it at lunchtime. And I asked her to show me the chords, how to play. You only need three chords to play a song. Most songs only take about three chords. So I learnt three chords and I started to… And then because of my ear, I started to understand, because of the catalogue of Polish songs that I had, harcerskie songs. I started to work out the chords for the piosenki.

AT: That’s a brilliant story, just I feel like we have not much time left.

🕑 01:37:00

AO: OK, well, back to the record lot. [laughter] So what happened was I loved singing. I loved singing. At the obozy, you know, the three week outdoor scouting experience that was obóz, and I haven't even told you yet, skimmed the surface of that, that's the whole one hour conversation in its own right, but obóz was where we would sing our hearts out. We would sing marching to the local Catholic church, we would sing every evening around the campfire. Ognisko was a real tradition that we, you know, very special, all the songs there. Anyway, so this creative family… and the fact that we were getting older and that we needed challenging and we needed, you know, pushing us to do bigger projects and stuff, that was sort of a little bit more challenging for us.

🕑 01:38:05

So we were sent on a course. Me and my friend Ela were chosen from our drużyna to be on a course. It was a course that would ultimately create the tracks of the record, the vinyl record called Harcerska Dola, the Life of a Scout. And on it, from what I remember, because I haven't played it and I haven't heard it for so long, I don't have a record player, but it's not just songs, it's like the experience of sitting around a campfire and the initial song that, you know, the initial song, the pokazy that you would have, the little sketches that each zastęp would perform around the campfire. The gawęda… The gawęda was always a talk by one of the elders. So it would either be the komendantka, the leader, or it would be somebody who was invited to come, to visit the obóz and would say something… And then it finishes… I think it finishes with a modlitwa which is sung, which is Idzie Noc, which is the last post, the song of the last post. Oh, and okrzyki. Okrzyki were always again a very traditional method of… instead of clapping after a sketch you would shout something. And this is a very scouting thing that I could, you know, spend time telling you about. But they were very, very specific calls and shouts that you would do in unison. And it sometimes would involve actions. Sometimes it would be a yell, sometimes it would be a sort of a little snippet of a story. Lots and lots of different okrzyki.

🕑 01:40:31

So that's how I got onto vinyl, because I was part of the group that had gone on the course, the course which was organised by Harcerze. Harcerki, actually, I think it was just a women's thing. Yeah, it was just a female project, so it was just Harcerki. The cover of the vinyl, if I'm not mistaken, was actually… I'm pretty sure the cover was painted by one of the Paluchy, it was either the mother or one of the daughters. Pretty sure, yeah. So that's that's the story of the vinyl. [laughter] I should release it now and it will go platinum. [laughter] Yeah, actually, that's an idea. Maybe, maybe I should seek permission and see if I can publish it or something.

AT: Exactly. So we will be finishing soon, but before we finish I just have last question to you. Is there anything else that you wanna talk about that we haven’t covered and you really wanted to mention?

🕑 01:42:08

AO: I pulled together lots of photos and things like that. I think the whole world of Harcerstwo has so much resonance with my peers, I probably haven't done it justice in terms of all the things that we learnt and all the experiences that we had and the fun. But, you know… but I think that would be another hour [laughter] at least in itself. It's a very rich… a very rich vein of experience during my formative years, which, you know, played a very big part in my becoming who I am and how I am.

AT: How about the Polish organisations? How that evolved throughout the involvement, throughout your life? You were very much involved when you were young, but what happened then? You know, the church, the Orlęta and everything else.

🕑 01:43:32

AO: Well, they're all still going, they're still going strong. I went to university in Wales, so I left London, and so that whole life that had nurtured me and developed me… I appreciate, obviously, I appreciated it, but it was time to stretch my wings and go… and go and sort of try life out for myself and create my own culture and tradition or friends, you know, rather than it kind of created for me. I would come back during the holiday times. My involvement at that point was only to support my mother, who was still teaching Polish language and Polish literature at the Polish school, so I would help with some of the translation from Polish into English. So that and, you know, some of the traditions of the Święcone and of course, at Christmas when everybody was home, home from university, we would go to the midnight mass. By that time, the church on the other side of the Balham High Road, opposite the Klub had been purchased. And so we would meet up there. Several of my friends were married there. They had met up through Harcerstwo and had partnered up and married. So I would go to their weddings and then they would obviously have their own lives. They were pretty much… Most of them went to university, or if not, they would get a trade. We would meet up in each other's houses rather than at Bursa or at Klub, we would meet in the pubs. You know, we no longer needed that. I mean, we would initially meet perhaps at midnight mass or we would maybe go to the bale, you know, the sylwestry. Obviously Harcerstwo has organised [inaudible] ball as a fundraiser, it was called Obozowe Tango. So we would maybe meet up there, you know, before the children came along. Once the children came along, then you would see less and less and less of them. But people who are, you know, who have the children continued the traditions and were involved, especially in Harcerstwo. I don't know how many went on to get involved in the polska szkoła, but they were at Bursa. So they may have been a bit… Well, obviously, their children went there, so they continued sending their children to learn the language, so, you know, there was a generation that continued those traditions to this day because their children are now leading the Harcerstwo and are old enough, have gone to university, some have come back, some, you know… It's fewer, but the tradition continues. My direct involvement pretty much ceased once I went to university. Like I say, the only connection was either because of doing something with my parents, which would be from the sort of religious side of things and traditional side of things, or by connecting with my peers, which wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with a Polish activity per se. Those that stayed and studied in London, they became sort of a group like Wędrowniczki, they continued the Harcerstwo side of things. There was a group of Wędrowniczki, they would have their own adventures and, you know, their own projects that I was not involved in because I wasn't that I wasn't in London at the time. And that kind of lasted for, you know, another two, three years until they graduated and then did their thing. There is a sort of… I think there are other people who have a more… possibly older than me, slightly older generation of people who retained and continued those institutions, those Polish institutions and social involvement. My involvement was more into sort of wider charitable activity, and involvement with young people, not just the Polish community.

AT: Ok, I think we need to wrap up here. We could just talk for another hour.

AO: Easily. Well, I can. [laughter]

AT: Thank you so much for talking to me today. I really, really hope that we can meet up soon and listen to your vinyl.

AO: Oh, yeah, I'd love to listen to that vinyl.

AT: [inaudible] [laughter] So you bring the vinyl, I’ll bring the recorder.

AO: Yeah, that's the deal. [laughter] I don't know how many people have still got that record.

AT: Probably not many.

AO: I don't know how many were made, but, yeah, it would be something to hear. I remember actually hearing… When I did hear it, I could actually pick up my voice in there. I could hear myself singing on that record. [laughter]

AT: Thank you very much.

AO: Wow, what a journey.

AT: What a journey, yes. Thank you.

AO: You're welcome.

End of Recording