CHAPTER V

1. A New Home, Old Shadows

It was already spring, but the morning of May 1, 1965, gave no hint of it. The sky was overcast, and a cold wind blew—yet not everyone stayed inside. Jadwiga, baby wrapped in a blanket, set off toward the highway to catch the bus. She would have to transfer two more times before reaching Pomiechówek.

“Sir, could you hold the baby so I can step down?” she asked the man waiting at the top of the bus stairs. He scowled and stepped back. Jadwiga had to manage on her own. Shivering and weary, she paused to rest by a narrow path running alongside the bridge over the river. It led to Alina Pawlicka’s home—her cousin, Aunt Józefa’s daughter. Alina welcomed her kindly, let her warm up, and later guided her to the Kamiński residence.

No, she hadn’t fled from her husband. Meanwhile, Adam was driving their belongings in a tractor-pulled trailer. His sister rode along—he wanted her to see Aunt Chojnacka’s plot of land where they would spend the next fourteen years. Jadwiga arrived several hours later.

“Jadzia, who was that girl with your man?” her aunt demanded once they found themselves alone. After hearing the explanation, she replied, “She said that if he beat you, you’d be different. You know, better.”

“You should’ve hit her in the head!” Jadwiga snapped.

“I didn’t know who she was—saw her only once at a wedding in December,” the older woman stammered.

In Aunt Chojnacka’s tiny room, space suddenly felt tighter than usual. To the left of the door stood a narrow but tall cabinet squeezed between the wall and a two-burner stove built into the chimney. Clothes hung on a rack next to a narrow, two-part window. A dresser with four drawers occupied the far corner; atop it stood a crucifix on a doily and two lit candles. Opposite the window was an old wooden bed, with a portrait of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux above it.

Now they had to make room for three new occupants. The wardrobe was wedged between the bed and stove. The mattress of a folding daybed—the “Americana”—was crammed in between door and window, pushed sideways to fit. Once opened, it blocked the front door entirely. At night, anyone needing to go out to the outhouse had to wake everyone up.

At first, the landlady worried about the new tenants. “Bring the baby to me tonight—you can get some sleep,” she offered one evening, seeing how exhausted her niece was. Jadwiga gratefully accepted—but still woke up at every cry. She watched her aunt tolerate the first night, grow impatient on the second, and by the third, she’d had enough.

All this pushed the young couple into action. Adam started working nearby on the construction of a holiday camp built by Warsaw’s Róży Luxemburg lighting works. Minutes after finishing, he’d rush home to start building their own house. Time wasn’t the only urgency: Marianna Chojnacka worried about raising a child in such cramped quarters. Months later, she’d grumble, “You’ll finish that house by Saint Michael’s Day!” (Saint Michael’s feast is in September, though no one knew why she chose that date.)

Progress was slow—Adam did nearly all the work himself, with Jadwiga’s occasional help. They bought new cement, white bricks, wood, and roofing felt. Everything else—like red bricks from demolition sites—came cheaper.

After a year of hard work, they were ready to move “into their own.” Three new walls and a roof—sloping toward the road—went up adjacent to the old wooden house. A single large window faced the road; on the opposite side, pressed up to the old house, stood the wardrobe. The kitchen settled to the left of the window. A round table and two chairs took the center. The exit faced west.

When they brought in the last piece of furniture, they paused. For a moment, they were just happy: a home of their own, real and whole.

The house sat on Aunt Marianna’s plot. She had once expected a child of her own—returned from town one cold winter evening, she soaked her legs in hot saline water… which eased nothing. She miscarried. Now, all she had to pass on would go to an orphan. At least in her old age she’d have someone to look after her…

In that moment, Adam and Jadwiga allowed themselves to dream: the baby sleeping, imagining the house expanding, another child arriving, laughter filling rooms.

Looking through the large curtained window, they saw not just the fence, the road, the forest beyond—but a world. A world that was entirely different for each of them.

2. Two Worlds

Jadwiga, though raised in poverty, had a sharp eye for learning, culture, and knowledge. She knew her way around world history—especially that of her homeland—geography, even a bit of the hard sciences. But most of all, she held tight to moral and religious values.

She lived, and wanted to live, in a world where only family was allowed entry. Family, in her view, was a narrow circle: her mother’s siblings and their children, her husband, her own child. The rest of the world—outsiders—were dangerous. They could wound, exploit, steal. She didn’t fight them, didn’t seek out conflict—she simply kept her distance and lived life by her own quiet code. One rare exception: Stasia Wierzbicka, née Radomska, her childhood friend. They'd built castles in the sand, chased each other through the schoolyard, sat side by side in their First Communion photo in Pomiechówek. When the Kamińskis left Szczypiorno, the Radomskis bought their lot—to the joy of both girls. Stasia married young, which only deepened Jadwiga’s yearning to start her own family. Stasia waited two years for her first child, and when little Ewa finally arrived, she became the center of her mother’s world.

In Jadwiga’s world, the biggest problem was... her husband. He had his place, yes—but it was limited. He didn’t measure up to her standards. He should’ve been grateful some “foolish girl” even took him in. He could remain in her world only if he cut himself off from his own—his friends, his habits, his whole way of life.

Adam lived in an open world. To him, everyone—except his mother’s enemies—was family. He was sharp, tricky to beat in checkers. His smarts hadn’t come from books, but from craftiness and cunning. Raised on the belief that “a man only has what he can hustle for,” he stuck to that motto. Reading was tough for him; writing, worse. And yet... sometimes he wrote like a genius. Everything spelled just right. He’d laugh: “Why ‘ż’ and ‘rz’? One letter oughta do the job.”

He never smoked. As a kid, he’d hand cigarettes out to others but kept none for himself—passed them on to his father. He liked a drink, sure, but rarely let it show. And he knew his place in the world, knew it too well—and sometimes made a joke of it. He scorned the well-off—mocked the “bourgies,” kings, and anyone he thought lived off his labor. But he could pretend, too. On the job site, foremen wore orange hard hats, laborers white. Adam painted his half-pink: “I'm a semi-foreman,” he’d grin.

He dreamed of rising up but couldn’t take the first step. Early in the marriage, he signed up for a tractor-driving course—easier work, better pay. He flunked the test. Got drunk to the point of blackout. His mother was proud anyway.

Their worlds were miles apart. When Adam tried to step into Jadwiga’s, he could only do so as someone new—leaving behind his past, his buddies, his old ways. He’d have to accept everything she held sacred. No matter what he said—he always gave a loud “yes”—he’d still end up doing things his own way. He returned to those who backed his words and actions—sincerely or not.

The next spring, the couple began expanding their house. They started building a new room, meant to be a kitchen, right against the wall with the front door—facing the Wierzbicki family next door. It began small but was later stretched out, away from the road. That very construction marked the first memory little Piotr ever held on to. He was standing on a makeshift scaffold. Before him rose a wall—two layers of brick with a gap between them. He grabbed a pair of pliers to pass to his father... but they slipped through his small fingers and fell deep into that narrow space.

The tool must’ve been replaced somehow, because the building carried on. Finally, a tiny entryway was added, facing the road, to shield the house from winter drafts and muddy shoes. When the work was done, the warmth of the new home left the child with a lasting sense of comfort and a well of good memories.

When Piotr woke in the mornings, his father was already gone—off to work. What he remembered instead was his mother, kneeling in prayer beside the “Americana” couch at the end of the kitchen. He would lie under her chest, playing with the little cross that dangled from her neck.

Lying there, he could witness a curious thing. When it rained hard, a bulge would form in the ceiling above. They’d poke a hole in it, and the water would gush into a bucket, drumming like a little storm of its own. The ceiling would sag less afterward, but never quite flatten.

Still, life in Szczypiorno felt softer, gentler somehow than what they'd known back on Kępa. Just a year before, a doctor in Pomiechówek had given Jadwiga grim news.

“You’re headed for the grave, ma’am,” he said flatly.

“Who knows who gets there first,” she snapped back.

The diagnosis had ground to stand on: 1.7 million red blood cells—a terrible count. The rest of her labs weren’t much better.

Their child fell ill often. The ambulance barely made it back to Nowy Dwór before being summoned again to Szczypiorno. The villagers, seeing the flashing lights, would murmur knowingly, “It’s for them again.”

After the home expansion, the main room fell quiet and cold. Life clustered in the heated, cluttered kitchen. That’s where the boy got his first lessons—about the world, about the body. One evening, near the coal stove, his mother was bathing in a large metal basin. He already knew her chest looked different from most people’s—it never fazed him. But that night, he noticed something else down below that seemed... off. Later, his father sat at the table in nothing but his underwear. Jadwiga gave him sharp signals with her head—something she saw alarmed her. Piotr couldn’t tell what it was. “What do grownups keep in their underwear that’s such a big secret?” he wondered. The question stuck with him.

“Mama, can I borrow your mirror?” he asked one warm afternoon, reaching for the one on the table.

“What for?”

“I want to look at the world,” he lied. Really, he liked seeing things in reverse through it.

He took the mirror and slipped outside. Instead of watching trees, he crept behind the house, where no one should’ve seen him. He set the mirror against the wall, leaned over, and took a peek. “So that’s what it looks like,” he thought—but he wasn’t alone. He’d been followed. His lie had clearly not convinced anyone.

3. Play by the Stove

That summer brought other, less bitter changes. By June, a giant mound of sand rose by the fence in front of the house. Digging a well was one of the last things on their list before the baby arrived. They used to carry water from faraway lots, lately from the Wierzbickis, who had put in their own well just a bit earlier. Now, water would be only a few steps away. Weekly laundry days, daily diaper washings, cooking—none of it would be such a torment anymore.

Day by day, the sandpile grew right on the border between the two plots. And for the kids, it was paradise.

“I see you!” three-year-old Ewa squealed with delight when she spotted her little neighbor rolling naked in the sand. She didn’t even notice she was in the same state herself.

The two properties were technically fenced off—but in practice, the rickety slats were usually lying flat. Either from sloppy construction, or more often, the work of children. If someone did set the fence back up, Piotr wasn’t about to walk around it. He climbed straight over. Once, that got him a nasty gash from a rusted nail on the forearm—a mark he’d carry for life. Worse still, was the time a spindly branch snapped under his weight as he climbed a young pine near the Wkra. He cut himself so deep he could see inside the wound. By some strange luck, there wasn’t much bleeding. That meant he could hide the whole thing and avoid getting grounded.

Most of the time, though, the gate was the problem. It was too far—several whole yards away. Especially annoying when they had to meet up for games of tag or stick battles or pretend shootouts with cheap toy pistols from the church fair. Even worse when playing hide-and-seek.

The backyards offered all kinds of entertainment. One popular game was bicycle racing—though bikes weren’t needed. They’d draw two winding lines in the dirt to make a racetrack. The racers? Bottle caps. You flicked them with your fingers. If your “cyclist” veered off track, he had to start over. First cap across the finish line won. Sometimes, to spice things up, they'd build obstacles out of twigs and dirt.

Another favorite was calling out war. This one took more room, so they did it in the road out front. They drew a huge circle, like a pie, dividing it into slices—each one a “country.” Each player ruled one. One by one, the leaders took a stick and declared war—“I declare war on... France!”—then hurled the stick into that territory and ran as far as they could. The “Frenchman” would snatch the stick and yell, freezing the attacker mid-run. Then came the duel: he’d throw the stick at his attacker. If he hit, he got to march to the border and claim as much land as he could with outstretched legs. If he missed, his rival got the land. The winner? Whoever conquered the world.

As the years passed, the games grew more elaborate. Badminton rose in popularity. The Wierzbickis had built a front gate with wide posts that made a perfect makeshift net. Aside from Piotr and Ewa, their games often included Iwona, Mrs. Wierzbicka’s niece, and sometimes Jacek from the Kielak family, Janusz Nowakowski, or Grzesiek Żabowski. Other kids came and went, but not all encounters ended sweetly.

After a visit to Dziekanów, Piotr brought back a gift from Aunt Wanda: a gleaming glass syringe. He’d never held one before, only feared them from doctor’s visits. When he returned to Szczypiorno, he proudly showed it to everyone nearby—this time, that included Jurek Radomski. Jurek admired it too, then suggested a game. The syringe was buried like treasure—to be found later.

Piotr searched for hours. The syringe was gone. So was the friend.

A tough lesson—but maybe not tough enough. A few years later, Piotr took something even more precious: a Virtuti Militari cross, passed down from his grandfather and kept by his father. He brought it to Janusz to show off. Janusz asked to keep it. Piotr handed it over, no questions asked. The medal was never seen again.

But summer wasn’t just for play. During their thirteen years in Szczypiorno, Adam and Jadwiga bought exactly one ton of coal. Most of the time, they burned gathered wood in the stove. Pinecones were a valuable fuel, too—enough to last the winter if you collected enough. Sometimes the whole family would set out to gather them.

“Piotruś, hand me the sack,” Jadwiga would say, apron filled with cones. The boy stood just a few yards away. The sack lay right beside him.

“Hand me the sack.”

“No.”

“Hand me the sack!”

“No.”

He didn’t hand it over.

Later, just before the gate, Piotr learned what a “pyta” was—a short stick with a few leather straps tied to the end.

He remembered.

4. The Last Summer

Marianna Chojnacka never received a pension. All the money she had to live on came from a small public allowance—200 złoty at first, later raised to 300. But she lived frugally, under the roof of family, and always managed to put aside a few coins for what she called “special needs.” That’s how it was when she asked Jadwiga to buy her a gold chain with a cross—“from the city.” That’s how it was again in the summer of 1970.

“Jadzia, go to Zakroczym, to the friars,” she said. “Give a Mass offering for my parents and Staśek. Here’s two thousand. A month’s Mass costs fifteen hundred—use the rest to buy a blanket for the boy.” She knew it was one of their pressing needs.

The relationship between the two women wasn’t always smooth. At times, it turned bitter. The older lady sometimes received relief parcels from UNRRA—American aid to Polish families. Oil, flour—things every household could use. You had to pick them up at the Pomiechówek township office. That late-summer day in 1970, Jadwiga didn’t feel up to hauling a heavy box. She struck a deal with her husband—she’d meet him on the bus on his way back from work, and they’d walk home together.

The township office was barely a few steps from the bus stop. Even the sudden downpour wasn’t too much to bear. With her belly swollen and the box resting on it like an altar, she made it to the bus. But Adam wasn’t there.

When the vehicle reached the Szczypiorno loop, one of the village women offered help. She walked Jadwiga three hundred meters to her own yard. From there, over a kilometer remained—and Jadwiga had to walk it alone. When she neared her home, a wild scream pierced the air.

“There’s no food in this house! They’re starving me!”

Her aunt, likely watching discreetly for her niece, had stepped outside to make sure the whole ghetto heard.

Neither that drama nor the earlier row over the UNRRA parcel had taught pregnant Jadwiga caution. The first signs of labor came on September 14—in the woods, while foraging for mushrooms. It wasn’t the first time the forest had surprised her. But this time, it wasn’t a mushroom she found. It was a child.

A few hours later, just before five in the morning, a daughter was born to Adam and Jadwiga in the Nowy Dwór hospital.

“Get yourself ready, Grandma’s here to pick you up,” the midwife advised Jadwiga a few days later. Sure enough, a taxi was waiting outside the hospital, but it wasn’t Grandma—it was Aunt Jadwiga Kamińska with her son, Piotr.

The car was already passing the woods bordering Śniadówek when one of the women realized they’d gone too far. They hadn’t been watching the road. The mother was preoccupied with the newborn, while the other woman was tending to the older child, who had just fainted. They laughed later, joking that it was out of jealousy over his new sister. But that probably wasn’t true, because soon after, when the mother saw her son lying next to his sister, his arm around her, she cautioned him:

“Careful now, don’t crush her.”

“I know. I’m careful,” he replied thoughtfully.

At the family meeting, Piotr also took part in choosing a name for his sister. When someone suggested calling her “Urszulka,” he agreed without hesitation: “Let’s call her Kosiulka.”

Shadows of the Past, Hopes for the Future

Later, as they walked through the woods to visit the Szcześniaks, crossing an anti-tank ditch, Adam, pushing the stroller, joked:

“Guess I’ll let her roll down the hill now… you’ll be on your own again…”

To the parents’ surprise, Piotr protested:

“It’d be better if she wasn’t here, but since she is, let her live,” he declared, though as time passed, he increasingly felt the weight of being the older brother. Phrases like “Give in, she’s little,” “Look after her,” or “Play with her” became the stuff of nightmares. Worse still, though “Kosiulka” often stretched the truth in her complaints against her brother, she was always credible to their parents. When she threatened to tell them something, Piotr braced himself for the consequences, no matter what had actually happened. Eventually, he stopped even denying her accusations. Unable to escape his sibling’s company, he recorded his life’s frustrations for the first time: “Ulka is a tag-along,” he scratched onto a brick of the house.

He wasn’t always a good or prudent caretaker.

In the corner of the lot stood the so-called “summer house,” a structure that served as a chicken coop, woodshed, and a space where the family’s life shifted during the warmer months. Every spring, the eagerly awaited day arrived when they moved from the main house to the summer house. In the fall, they’d move back, which was no small thrill for a child. Attached to this building, on the other side of the lot, was a similar structure belonging to the Wierzbicki neighbors. The roofs of both were a playground for games and dares, but also for risky challenges.

“Come on, jump, it’s not that high,” Piotr urged Urszula. Ewa, Iwonka, Grzesiek Żabowski, and even Tomek, Ewa’s brother, two years younger, had already made the leap from the roof to the Wierzbickis’ garden. It wasn’t a great feat—barely three feet from the roof’s edge was soft, tilled soil. But Piotr, in urging his sister to jump, overlooked one thing: the wooden fence with sharply carved stakes separating the garden from the yard. Urszula jumped. Fortunately, she didn’t aim for where the others had landed. She chose the hard ground of the yard, right by the wall.

A warm, slightly hazy September day, a walk through the meadows near the banks of the Wkra. After crossing a ravine, the croaking of frogs could be heard in a cluster of alders. Then came the climb up a steep bank… That’s how Piotr remembered the September morning when he first walked to school.

He loved it. There were only six children in the class, including his cousin, Jacek Pawelski. The school’s only teacher, Mr. Lipko, taught both the first and second grades at once. When he finished, the next two grades came in. Sturdy old desks with inkwells and shelves for satchels were arranged in two rows, one for each class. Piotr sat in the first row with Marzena Marciniak, and while doted on at home by his mother, he was a star at school. “He’ll go far,” the teacher predicted, and Jadwiga swelled with pride.

The school wasn’t far. By cutting through the ravine, it was barely half a mile. Taking the road added a few hundred yards, but it meant they could pick up Janusz along the way. Often, the two boys would stop to fetch the only girl in their class. One day, however, this detour dragged on because Marzena was unusually unprepared. The trio arrived at class a bit late. The teacher lined them up, questioned their reasons, and decided to punish them anyway. Janusz got his ear tugged hard, Piotr got a symbolic pull, and Marzena just a wagged finger. In time, they likely all forgot the incident—except Piotr, who took from it a lesson about the unequal treatment of children and the favoritism shown to girls. He didn’t like it.

The school year was winding down. The kids, staring out the window, were already dreaming of summer. On the rarely traveled road, a huge truck appeared, carrying a “Ruch” newsstand.

“That’s for my mom,” Piotr bragged.

Indeed, Jadwiga was starting seasonal work as a newsstand vendor. Szczypiorno was a small village. The newsstand had no place there in winter, but in summer? In summer, the recently built apartment blocks housed hundreds of kids—campers from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. Customers were plentiful. Piotr enjoyed hanging out at the stand, but that summer, his parents had a surprise for him. While kids from far-off places stayed near his home in Szczypiorno, he was sent to a camp in Gołotczyzna. He was supposed to stay two weeks. He lasted one, and in that time, he accomplished the impossible. The Polish postal service in the PRL era wasn’t known for reliability—letters could take weeks, months, or even years to reach their destination. Yet from Gołotczyzna to Szczypiorno, several of his letters arrived in a single week, sometimes two at once, filled with pleas to be taken home… and candy.

In the fall of 1972, an era ended for the family. Marianna Chojnacka, persuaded for years by relatives that she was being neglected, demanded to move to a nursing home. Her niece, long dismissing these demands as whims, finally gave in. Piotr remembered the sight of Aunt Chojnacka walking with her cane toward the gate. Before climbing into the ambulance that would take her away forever, she didn’t even look back. She settled into a facility run by nuns near Ciechanów. Her old home was quickly repurposed.

The family used the recently installed electricity sparingly. If a light was on, it was always the dimmest bulb. But a thick, long cable ran outside, past the fence, and into the temporary home of the Wierzbickis. The neighbors had torn down their old house and were building a new, brick one. In the meantime, they lived in their summer house, using the borrowed electricity. This neighborly favor seemed natural, necessary. No one begrudged the power.

“They could at least turn it off during the day,” Jadwiga grumbled repeatedly, seeing the light burning all day. Her friend and neighbor, Stasia, didn’t know how to save and didn’t realize how much it irritated Jadwiga.

“They turn on the light and leave the house, but you still pay for the electricity!”

Piotr overheard these complaints many times. He also saw the adults grumble without doing much about it. One day, the power through the long, black cable stopped flowing. A thorough search for the cause ended when they found the cord had been cut… The culprit was never identified.

The following years passed without much distinction, save for a few notable events. The school in Szczypiorno closed, forcing students to transfer to one in Pomiechówek. There, in a crowded class, Piotr was no longer the center of attention. He was one of thirty kids. Worse, due to the large number, students were split into classes “A” and “B.” The first was for kids from Pomiechówek; the second, mostly for village kids, the “second-class” ones. When Piotr saw his first-ever “D” in his notebook, he was outraged. How could someone give him a D? How dare they? He’d fallen from the pedestal, just one of the crowd, average.

On May 23, 1974, he received his First Holy Communion in the Pomiechówek church.

On October 13, the family was living in Aunt Chojnacka’s old room. Piotr wasn’t a timid child. He wandered the woods alone, unafraid of the dark. That night was different. He woke up terrified from a horrifying dream. He saw himself standing over his own bed. When he pulled back the blanket, a skull stared back. Waking, he tried to calm himself. But every time the nine-year-old closed his eyes, he saw skulls sliding everywhere. He asked for the light to be turned on. The only time in his life.

The next day, news came that Grandpa Władysław had died of a heart attack.

Two years later, after passing his exams, Piotr, now in fourth grade, participated in a General Communion, while Urszula started kindergarten that September. Each September, after the newsstand closed, the family acquired another important appliance. The first year, it was a Saturn 201 television; the next, a refrigerator; later, a washing machine…

During the summer, they went picking strawberries or raspberries, usually at the Zawadewiczs’ place in Cegielnia, a part of the village tucked behind the woods. When the season ended, they were allowed to gather fruit for themselves. Then came the time to make preserves for winter. Sometimes, Adam went to Edmund Pawelski’s to pick apples in the fall. The money helped, but the real perk was bringing home as many apples as he wanted.

“See, there aren’t even clouds up there,” he’d say to his young son, tossing an apple high into the sky. Piotr was amazed that something could be so high even his dad couldn’t reach it with an apple.

Twice a year, Jadwiga took her son to visit Aunt Chojnacka. Each trip was costly and exhausting, requiring three PKS buses and a few miles on foot. During the first visit, it became clear that the old lady, too late, realized her mistake and would have gladly returned to Szczypiorno. She never said it outright, and her niece pretended not to notice.

The spring of 1978 brought upheaval to Szczypiorno. Every few days, a fire broke out, consuming someone’s home or outbuilding. Everyone lived in fear, dreading each night. Arson was widely suspected, but the culprit was never caught.

“If our house burned down, they’d have to give us an apartment from the cooperative,” Jadwiga, known for her timidity, surprised everyone with this remark. The couple had long been members of the housing cooperative in Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki and had even saved money for furnishing. But waiting for an apartment allocation took years. Such conversations were common at home, and the teenager, listening, followed his parents’ vision, imagining the family’s happiness in a new place.

It was early summer. The family was living in the Chojnackis’ old room. The rest of the house stood empty. Jadwiga feared storms. When she heard the first distant rumble of thunder, she sent her son to fetch something from the “empty rooms.”

“Hurry back,” she ordered, anxious about the approaching storm. Piotr took longer than usual. A lightning bolt struck closer, heightening Jadwiga’s worry. She felt relief when she finally saw her son in the doorway.

“What took you—”

“Mom, the house is on fire,” he interrupted, handing her a small metal suitcase that held the family’s hard-saved money, buried in the house’s cellar. “When I saw it burning, I dug it up.”

They rushed outside. Smoke was billowing from the roof, where the brick and wooden sections met. The first flames were visible.

The house wasn’t badly damaged. Firefighters arrived quickly and put out the blaze, but the family chose not to stay. Moving to the summer house gave them a chance to press the authorities for the long-awaited apartment. The fire’s cause was investigated by the fire department, the power company, and the militia. The first suspected an electrical short, as the fire started near exposed wires; the others blamed a lightning strike. The militia briefly suspected the teenager of arson, perhaps from secretly smoking, but dropped the idea. He was too composed, answering every question smoothly. The investigation was closed.

Autumn approached, and the family of four remained homeless. The Nowy Dwór housing cooperative, despite good intentions, had no apartments ready.

The situation seemed hopeless, the hopes futile.

“We’ve got an apartment!” Adam burst out, returning from Warsaw. “I fixed it!” he added joyfully.

His wife, skeptical that her husband could arrange anything, must have looked unconvinced, because instead of erupting with joy, she began questioning him with disbelief.

“I went to the Party.”

“Where?”

“To the Central Committee of the PZPR in Warsaw.”

“They let you in? To who?”

“Sure, they let me in. I don’t know who. I walked in, told them everything, and he asked if I was a Party member. I said no, and asked if that meant they wouldn’t help me. He said no, absolutely not, it didn’t matter, and they’d help. Then he picked up the phone and called someone. Later, he told me there were no apartments in Nowy Dwór, but we could get one in Legionowo. We need to go to the cooperative and sort it out—everything, because we have to transfer from one cooperative to another,” Adam recounted chaotically, while Jadwiga still couldn’t believe her ears. It came so suddenly, so unexpectedly.

The events that followed unfolded at lightning speed. On an October morning, taking nothing but a handful of clothes, the whole family set off. Only the lonely chickens remained on the lot, fed that evening by a neighbor.