Aniela was born in 1933 in the ‘Osada Krechowiecka’ military settlement, in Równe County, Wolyn Province, Poland. Her father, Klemens Grzybowski from the Krechowiecki Cavalry Regiment, was awarded the Virtuti Militari Cross, the Cross of Independence, and other medals. Her mother Maria’s maiden name was Dudelzak.

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The Germans invaded Poland from the west on 1 September 1939, and the Russians invaded from the east on 17 September 1939. They divided Poland between them. In the Russian-controlled area, the plan to ethnically-cleanse the area soon took effect with the first of four mass deportations to Siberia that were carried out in 1940 and 1941.

On 10 February 1940, Aniela’s parents and the five children (Helena aged 12, Ryszard 10, Henryk 8, Aniela 6 and Michał 4) were deported to the Dziedówka work camp in Mołotowska Oblast.

Life in the camp was very hard; her father worked in primitive conditions for a meagre amount of bread. They endured hunger, lice, and bedbugs. Aniela was operated on by a local ‘quack’ and the gland took many years to heal.

In June 1941, Germany turned on its ally, Russia. Stalin then quickly changed tactics and allied himself with the west so that the allies could help him defeat the Germans. This led to the signing of the Sikorski-Majewski agreement that called for the freeing of Poles imprisoned in POW camps and labour camps in the USSR, and the formation of a Polish Army in the southern USSR.

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The news of this ‘amnesty’ did not reach every camp, but where it did become known, the families soon made plans to make their way south to join the army. For most, this meant walking thousands of kilometers and only occasionally getting on a train for part of the journey.  Many did not make it, and those who did were emaciated skeletons by the time they got there.

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 Aniela’s father and two other men felled several large trees and built a raft on which they reached the nearest railway station along the Uszczorna River. They made their way south to reach the Polish Army that was being formed there.

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Aniela’s brother, Michal died in Tashkent. They had no choice but to bury him by the railway tracks. The death of her brother and his burial by the tracks haunted Aniela for a long time.

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They spent some time at the Kizioł-Zioł collective farm in Uzbekistan near Turkestan. They lived in a clay yurt, in hunger and destitution. A clay yurt is a house made of a lattice of bent wood. It is traditionally used by nomads in Central Asia and Mongolia. Klemens left to join the Polish Army. When his wife heard that only children would be able to leave for Persia with the army, she brought her daughter and two sons to the orphanage in Turkestan.

 

The orphanage refused to take Aniela because she was ill with a festering wound, so she remained with her mother. Aniela was almost 8 and her mother was ill with typhus. Aniela remembered that some good people brought them bread and milk. One evening, her mother said, ‘I shall die tonight’. She told Aniela to go to the head of the collective farm and tell him about the death, with the hope that he would take care of her. During the night, Aniela woke up feeling terribly cold. She was sleeping under one cover, huddled with her mother, so Aniela moved away, unaware that the cold was coming from her mother’s dead body.

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In the morning, she busied herself with the daily domestic chores and tried to wake her mother. Unable to wake her, she went to an Uzbek woman and asked her to come and see what had happened. The notion of death had not dawned on her. It was not until they took her body and lowered it into the grave, that she realized that she would be no more. It was 1942 and she was 9 years old and left on her own.

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The head of the collective farm took care of her, feeding her some fat or other and milk straight from the cow. This man, by the name of Barakiw, was called up to the army. His wife then took Aniela to a children’s home in Turkestan.

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In the children’s home she experienced dreadful hunger. In the morning, they were given 5 decagrams of bread, as black as the soil, and a cup of coffee. For lunch, there was pea soup without potatoes and a piece of bread. Supper was like breakfast. The orphanage was very frugal with the food because no-one knew how long the war would last. Aniela also remembers the ‘naked’ days when everyone had to lie naked on their beds while their clothes were being washed and de-liced, and their heads shaved.

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Suddenly, one day, they heard the news that they were returning to Poland. It was 1946. People from the whole of Poland came to collect their relatives and their children. Aniela waited, but no-one came for her. Children who had no-one were distributed amongst the different children’s homes. Aniela was sent to the Benedictines in Kwidzyń. There she completed her elementary education. In 1949, when she was 16, she went to the school of Hotel and Catering in Sopot. Most students were children from normal families, and there were several orphans. Every Christmas, the students would return home, but a handful of orphans remained. This was not Christmas; this was despair. Their carers were given time off and their charges had to manage on their own, as best they could.

Towards the end of 1949, the Red Cross informed her that her father was in England.

 

Aniela welcomed this news with great joy and relief that she was not an orphan and that, apart from her father, she had a sister and a brother. After leaving the USSR with the orphanage via Persia and India (where Henryk died tragically), Helena and Ryszard joined their father in England in 1947. They did not meet up with Aniela until 1961. Unfortunately, her father never saw her again as he died in 1957 from a heart attack.

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After finishing her studies, Aniela was employed in a hotel in Torun. It was 1955. Here she met and married Stefan Klosinski and they raised three children. Aniela eventually became the Manager of the hotel.  When she retired, she took up voluntary work in the education office in Torun. With great dedication, she prepared meals for poor children. She was a very religious person and, whenever possible, she would attend morning Mass.

Aniela was a loving mother, grandmother and great grandmother. Under the protective care of her family, she passed away on 16 February 2011 in Warsaw, where she is buried.

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Copyright: Grzybowski / Klosinski family

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