By Stu WhitleyBioThis is the third in a four-part series.
The
new museum dedicated to the Battle of Warsaw is a compelling place to
visit. It opened the weekend we arrived, and the queue stretched around
the block. But after being informed of Dad’s participation in the
battle, we were afforded special treatment, moving quickly to the head
of the line. Serious deference is paid to elders. People give up their
seats on trains and trams; seniors are acknowledged in the streets,
especially those who, like my father, wore the pin bearing the insignia
of the resistance, a stylized ‘P’ with curving feet. He did not wear
the Cross of Valour, awarded to him in absentia, for sustained courage
in the face of the enemy. This an honour I only learned about recently.[
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By Stu WhitleyBioThis is the second in a four-part series.
There is no country more
tragically concerned with war, oppression and the visitation of death
than Poland. This is saying something for a continent riven by ethnic
and political conflict for millennia. It is my impression that war—and
in particular, the Second World War—casts a long shadow there, for the
occupation by the Soviet Union that followed for nearly half a century
afterward had its bitter roots in that conflict. The scars are yet
there, literally. In the large block in Lublin where my father lived as
a boy, a line of machine gun bullets fired 67 years ago is neatly
stitched across the stone façade.[
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By Stu WhitleyBio
there's a fading, sepia photograph of me, shipboard, clutching my mother's hand
immigrants to a new life, worlds separated by an ocean from all that was then known
taking seven days to cross.
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Written by eldering at Learning
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