On the eve of our departure from England to Poland, my father’s dearest friend toasted our family’s journey and wished for all of us an experience that would not disappoint. He then turned to me, raised his glass again and said “… and I hope it will also serve to exorcise the ghosts that have walked with you these many years and grant you a quantum of peace. They are at rest. You should allow yourself the same.” When he turned his attention from my gaze and redirected his conversation elsewhere I gave his remarks more than a moment’s thought. Is this what has come to define me at the age of 52? A middle-aged woman whose quest for her roots has led her to be seen by others as one mired in a world long since gone? True, my life’s focus over the past few years has been distilled into a narrower field of vision, rooted in the fates of those who came before me. True, I am more aware than ever that the groundwork for my life today was laid on the dirt streets and market squares of those unpronounceable towns that time forgot. And true, I now see all current world events through a lens crafted 100 years ago. But ghosts in need of exorcising? To my mind, the act of compiling and documenting the names, photographs and anecdotes of my family merely added me to a growing legion of contemporary Westerners dipping our toes into the ocean of ancestry search sites and testing its waters. Nothing more. I didn’t embark on this journey to exorcise ghosts. I went in search of answers. In the decades since I began asking the question “How?” I have yet to hear a response that has satisfied me. Perhaps on some level I believed that I’d find that answer within Poland’s borders – go to the source, so to speak. After the mountain of painful literature I have read, the heart-wrenching movies I have watched, the poignant museum exhibits I have toured, the broken survivors I have questioned, nothing and no one has been able to convince me that a poorly crafted peace treaty tethered to an improverished, once-proud nation could on any level possibly explain how an entire continent lost its collective mind. I’ve come home without the answer. Did I exorcise the ghosts of my family? On the contrary, I finally met them face-to-face.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 19:44:56 +0000