Less than eight miles south of Warsaw's centre, yet within its city limits lies Jeziorki. Through it runs ul. Trombity, one of Warsaw's more fascinating streets. A mile long, ul. Trombity is full of contrast - houses old and new, farmyards, wildlife, wetlands; aircraft fly over it, trains trundle past it. Suburban yet rural, this is Jeziorki - 'Land of the Little Lakes'.
After our successful visit to Mogielnica to seek out my father's ancestors, I received three comments from readers with more clues as to the were to seek family history. I was led to my father's maternal grandparents' wedding deeds by Janusz. This document mentioned that Teodora Sepczyńska's mother (so my father's great-grandmother) was born Franciszka Świderska, and her parents were Andrzej Świderski and Franciszka Sawicka (not Dawicka as I'd incorrectly made out from the handwritten script). The document refers to the Świderscy as coming from Budy Biernickie, which looks odd. According to the extremely useful Urzędowy Wykaz Nazw Miejscowości Polskich, there's a Budy Biejkowskie (part of the village of Budy Brankowskie), by the Pilica river, in the parish of Stromiec.
A nice ride on a beautiful day, so off I go. Below: the neo-Gothic church of St John the Baptist in Stromiec, built in 1905.
In the nearby cemetery, in search of Sawicki graves. I found none; however, there were six Witkowski family graves (my father's mother's maiden name). It was really interesting looking at the graves in this small town. So many infants, dead before their second birthday. Really noticeable. "Żyć dłużej chciałem/Bozia mi nie pozwoliła/Umrzec musiałem", it says on the grave of Rysio, aged six months. So many dead teenagers, young people in their 20s and 30s, who would probably had survived had they had the medical attention that their peers would have had in a larger town or city.
Looking carefully at the graves, I noticed many unusual surnames that kept on appearing frequently in this cemetery. Duranc, Moskwa and Kornet, to name three. Of the more usual Polish surnames, the most often encountered were Matysiak. Every cemetery has a great many stories to tell.
Below: the village of Stromiecka Wola, on a day like today, a beauteous sight, the quintessence of rural Mazovia.
There's a village called Biernik in the Puszcza Mariańska, near Żyrardów, also in Mazowieckie province, which is where 'Budy Biernickie' should have been adjacent to. Puszcza Mariańska is just a bit further from Mogielnica (the other way) than is Stromiec.
When my father landed in Warsaw with Moni, she told me about that moment at security at Heathrow when they discovered his penknife among his carry-on luggage. They let him on the plane, reasoning, as Moni said afterwards, that the blade (two and a quarter inches long) was too short to penetrate the human chest as far as the heart. Another, unsaid, reason was probably that nonagenarians are the least likely demographic group to want to hijack a plane.
The incident was forgotten about until the return journey, with me accompanying my father on the Warsaw-Heathrow flight. At Okęcie, security also picked up the penknife, but were adamant that they'd not be letting it on the plane. My father protested that, while of little value in its own right, it was a precious possession of his of great sentimental value, something he'd had for many decades. But the security guys would not let Dziadzio on the plane with the knife, saying that should he produce it during the flight, someone might have a panic attack, and they would be blamed, not the passenger. The security guards said they'd let me take the penknife back out of the security area and make my own arrangements for its safe keeping.
This I did, but not having with me my wallet, I had no means of sending the penknife on to London from the post office on the first floor of the terminal. So I struck on brilliant idea of hiding it in a Cold War spy-style drop point from which I could retrieve it on my return.
Walking out of Departures I noticed the sliding doors are mounted in aluminium frames, with a hollow rear profile. Ideal! I could see the CCTV camera (top right in picture below), so it could see me. I knelt down next to the door-frame pretending to tie my shoe lace, then using my hand to push myself upright; as I did so, I slipped the knife round the side of the frame, out of sight.
And a week later, returning there yesterday evening, I made my way upstairs from Arrivals to Departures, turned left out the same door, stooped to "tie up my shoelace", put my hand behind the door frame... Bingo! There it was, just as I'd left it. It gave me great satisfaction to report to my father that his little penknife was safe in my hands.
Given that I nearly always travel light without any hold baggage, it will be sent back to London by post to avoid any such problems in the future. Indeed, the penknife, manufactured by Richards of Sheffield, England, is of little intrinsic value (ones identical to this, with picture of hippo, marked 'Africa', are available on Ebay for around $20). But it felt so good to have retrieved it.
Sixteen years after 9/11, we have become inured to airport security and grudgingly accept it as the price we pay for safe flight. But the incident of Dziadzio's penknife - consciously allowed onto a flight at one airport but refused by another - makes me realise that much of airport security is indeed theatre.
I am a frequent flyer, boarding a flight around 20 times a year. Going through security is something one does, it's not pleasant, but put away your ego to ensure a smooth passage through the terminal from street to plane. Every now and then I walk through the x-ray gate and the beeper goes off. I've stripped every smallest bit of metal off of myself, so I know it can only be one thing - the Random Passenger Beep. This is to reinforce the impression to other passengers that even should every single passenger conform totally to the demands of security - belts, watches, jewellery, glasses, footwear over ankle-high, nothing in any pocket - someone every now and then must make the thing go Beep. So it's preset to a random number. You're the 17th (or whatever) passenger going through - and Beep. Even though you are as clean as a (plastic) whistle.
At Luton you get shepherded into a full-body scanner. You are then patted down. The people doing this know full well there's nothing the matter with you, but they have to be seen to be doing this. Theatre. It is of course, highly humiliating to be treated as a potential terrorist threat.
At Okęcie, they can see that a middle-aged European guy does not fit the profile. But still the beeper went off, and the red light flashed. But instead of wasting time and resources on a thorough check of someone who's not in the least bit likely to try it on, they merely ask me to hold out my hands and pass a swab on a stick over my palms. "You may go." Great! Theatre achieved, passenger only minimally put out.
However, there are different differences. At Okęcie, your laptop must be taken out of its case, which cannot be put either under or on top of said laptop. Ideally, the case should go through the scanner in a separate tray. At Luton and Heathrow - not a problem, sir. The laptop can stay in its case or bag. Better scanners, I guess. One funny situation at Okęcie. I was flying with two camera lenses in my rucksack. I was told off for not taking all the electronic equipment out for the scan. I protested that a lens contains zero electronics, being merely glass, metal and plastic. The electronics are in the camera, which was indeed scanned separately. The security guys ummed and ahhed and finally said - triumphantly "but it is PART of electronic equipment". No point of arguing the toss. Just smile, say yes and go through. (At Luton I'd had no problem with lenses in rucksack).
So it's one rule here, one rule there. In the meanwhile, let us give conscious thanks that the security measures in place at our airports are preventing any further terrorist outrages in the air.
The picture of the tape measure and blade puts me in mind of the great, curiously haunting Jim Ford song Thirty Six Inches High, performed definitively by Nick Lowe, on his Jesus of Cool album.
My brother's imagined lyrics from Roxy Music's Editions of You (from the band's second album For Your Pleasure) set us both thinking. The line of course is 'learn from your mistakes', but Bryan Ferry's lyrics were not particularly clear when listened to on a C90 cassette bootlegged from vinyl and played on a mono tape player.
The imagined line makes for an excellent starting point for a short post about how we seek out the sense and meaning of life.
Which mystic? Let me start with one mentioned to me recently by my brother - G.I. Gurdjieff. Many years ago, at least half a lifetime ago, I read his Meetings with Remarkable Men, intrigued by that heady late-19th/early-20th century mysticism which blended European, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern metaphysical influences. Learn from your mystics, but don't follow them. Take on their insights, mull them over, work through them. "The soul is the totality of moments of self-awareness." Well, that's one way of seeing it - but not the only one. Today, our mystics see a rich spectrum of possibilities rather than One Way; David Eagleman's Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives gives 40.
As we grow older, our consciously observed experiences act as a scalpel that whittle down the inchoate confusion that surrounds us, that so overwhelmed us as children, into ever-sharper definition. The ways of nature and humans become less mysterious as we subject them to decades of conscious observation. But still we are far from total awareness. Still we seek answers and solutions. For instance, how can the good person overcome the evil person without resorting to evil?
The answer is out there for us all to seek. We will not have it delivered for us on a plate. Nuggets are to be found in the great religious works - but only nuggets, for us to smelt into a material from which parts for a working prototype can be made. How we choose to build it is up to us; but it will not have been handed down through the ages. Nor will it have been hidden in esoteric or hermetic writings of mystic philosophers. They will have seen a glint, a sparkle, yet the entirety lies above and beyond us all in the here-and-now. We can but evolve spiritually towards it, one life at a time.
We observe. Some of us see greater detail than others. We are curious. Some of us go to greater lengths to get answers than others. We judge - then we re-evaluate those judgments in the light of new insights and experiences. Some of us are continual learners; some of us don't bother. Others like to hold on to what they learnt as children and question it never. Is it laziness? Lower levels of consciousness? Regardless of your education or even your innate intelligence, if you are curious and questioning, if you observe consciously, your spirit will grow.
We live upon an unfolding continuum; we were, we are, we will be.
We will be intrinsically, spiritually better, but only as the result of learning, experiencing and putting the insights gained into practice; improving our behaviour continually. We should not strive for perfection but instead for continual improvement, slow, steady, incremental.
We die. We return to forever, to the infinite and eternal. "Everything dies, baby, that's a fact/But maybe everything that dies someday comes back." Musicians - some musicians - the conscious, observant, curious musicians - are mystics. I'll leave it there with a line from Atlantic City by Bruce Springsteen from his album, Nebraska, that belongs to the ages.
I have written today; put down my thoughts; looking at Google Analytics I can see that by this time next year, this post should have been read by between four hundred and six hundred people, which fills me with satisfaction; I can go to sleep to rest easily, the day has been fulfilled.
One of my favourite haunts in West London is the stretch of the Thames between Hammersmith and Chiswick. I'd spend many a summer evening here in the pubs and on the riverside paths and lawns; pleasure cruisers would make their way up and down stream, disco music blaring - The Hustle by Van McCoy from 1975 there in my memory. Pints of ale at the Blue Anchor, the Rutland, the Dove, the Old Ship and the Black Lion. And plenty of Brictorian architecture along the way.
From the roofs of these desirable riverfront properties, the views of the Thames - in both directions - must be truly uplifting. Note the raised step and solid wooden gate - a sign that flooding is a risk that householders have to live with.
Below: the view westwards towards Chiswick, visible on the bend of the river. Close to this viewpoint is the house, now occupied by the William Morris Society, from which in 1820 Sir Francis Ronalds sent the first electrical telegraph a distance of signal eight miles.
Below: the view eastwards towards Hammersmith Bridge. Note the sprawl of houseboats at anchor on the northern bank of the river.
Below: a floating residence upon the Thames has long been popular alternative to ultra-expensive bricks and mortar. The solid Victorian embankment stands over the river at low tide, exposing its muddy bottom.
Below: quintessentially English view; Georgian architecture, an MG Midget sports car parked outside. The high wall to the left backs onto the river. Down the passage to the left is the Dove, a charming and historic pub, in which it is said the poet James Thomson wrote the words of Rule Britannia!. At the far end of the passage is Furnivall Gardens, a popular park wedged between the roaring traffic of the Great West Road and the placid waters of the Thames.
Looking west down the passage with the Dove to the left. Many's the time I made my way here, the half-way point of the five-pub riverside stroll that starts at Hammersmith Bridge and ends at the Black Lion.
This is London at its best, day or night, summer or winter, if you're in town for several days, this walk is certainly worth it, especially if you call in at the pubs along the way for refreshment.
Below: bonus shot - a Rolls-Royce 25-30 HP Touring Limousine with bodywork by Park Ward, near Scotch Common, Ealing.
A huge, huge thanks to Janusz for taking the trouble to find out more about my family, from the side of my father's mother, Stefania Dembińska, nee Witkowska. As I wrote, she originally hailed from Mogielnica; he mother's name was Teodora; and my father recalls meeting her cousin before the war, whose surname was Sepczyński. From these three pieces of information, Janusz has been able to track down my father's family back a further two generations.
Below: grave of my father's mother and grandmother, both buried in Bródno cemetery, Warsaw. Until now, my father had very few clues as to what came before.
Teodora Sepczyńska was born in 1865, the daughter of Piotr Dominik Sepczyński, aged 35, an illiterate cobbler of Mogielnica, and Franciszka, nee Świderska, aged 31. [Moni noticed a fair number of graves bearing the name Świderski in Mogielnica, so they are related to us as well!] Piotr and Franciszka had eight children, Teodora was the fifth.
Piotr and Franciszka were wed in Mogielnica in February 1852, when Piotr was 21 and Franciszka was 18. Piotr's parents, Michał and Rozalia, were by dead by the time he married. Franciszka's father, Andrzej Świderski, was unable to make the wedding for the same reason. Franciszka's mother, also Franciszka, nee Dawicka, was from Budy Biejkowskie, a village on the banks of the Pilica (which I visited, not knowing about a family connection, in May 2015)
My grandmother's birth certificate was in Russian; smotret w knigu widiet figu, so I can't tell you what was going on there. The Russian Empire had not forced itself upon the records of its Polish subjects in 1865 or 1852, but by the time my grandmother was born, Russian had become the official language for birth records.
Janusz also provided me with a link to my paternal grandparents' wedding certificate from 1920. An interesting detail emerges; my grandfather's address is given as ul. Łucka one thousand one hundred and fifty five - an impossibility, given that Łucka then and now only has buildings numbered from one to thirty-something. Curiously, this same address (ul. Łucka 1155) also features on the notarised copy of my father's birth certificate issued after the war. Initially, I assumed this was a mistake made by a sloppy communist-era clerk, but it now seems that the mistake had been made back in 1920.
This is all fascinating stuff, and thanks to the tools that Janusz has used, I will be able to do more genealogical digging. The fact that these records of our ancestors are available, scanned and digitised and available online, is a huge testament to the organisation powers and effort of the Catholic Church, the Polish state and an army of enthusiasts. Without our history, we are no one.
My father's mother, Stefania Dembińska nee Witkowska, came from Mogielnica, a small town 70km south-west from Warsaw. She met my grandfather Tomasz Dembiński after the First World War. My father has never been to Mogielnica, so I thought it would be a good idea to take him there, along with Moni, to trace our family's rural roots. Below: the neo-Gothic church of St. Florian.
Mogielnica I've visited a few times, a small country town of 2,500 inhabitants. My father's mother, Stefania (1893-1975) came from around here, but he has few details. He said they had a farm which they had to sell at a low price because of the economy. We come to the cemetery to look for traces of family history.
We find three graves bearing the surname 'Witkowski'. My father recollects having family across the river in Warsaw, visiting them in Grochów. Although his mother was an only child, she had cousins, also originally from Mogielnica, with the surname Sepczyński. It is probable that Stefania Witkowska's mother Teodora, who died in 1943 and is buried along with Stefania in Warsaw's Bródno cemetery, was from the Sepczyński family. Moni scouts on ahead and finds a grave of the Sepczyński family, below.
Below: we find a few more graves of the Witkowski and Sepczyński families. The oldest contains the body of Ignacy Sepczyński, born 1805, died 1885. His wife Florentyna, 22 years his junior, died in 1917. Both reached the age of 80.
If these are indeed my father's grandmother's grandparents, it would mean that I can trace my roots back to 1805. Some genealogical digging is required!
The trip answered another question for my father. After his father's death in 1941, his mother would make trips back to Mogielnica to buy food, which she'd smuggle back into occupied Warsaw. Some she'd sell on, the rest would feed the family. How did she manage to do that, wondered my father, given the distance between Warsaw and Mogielnica? A horse-drawn wagon would take forever...
The answer was - narrow-gauge railway. Moni found the station that served Mogielnica, to the north of the town, from 1917 to 1988. The line, which ran through Grójec and Tarczyn, terminated at what is now Metro Wilanowska bus terminal, then Dworzec Południowy.
After our visit to the cemetery, we had lunch at Mogielanka, the town's only restaurant, where I paid 52 złotys (£11.17) for: cold beer, half-litre, two sparkling mineral waters, two soups and three massive main courses. My father's portion was so large, half of it served as his supper back home!
Back again, back to the building in which lived my father before the war and during the occupation. And the building in which General Chruściel "Monter" gave the order to launch the Warsaw Uprising. Of course my father didn't know this, but suspects that "Monter's" HQ might have been the flat in which a scout leader named Kamiński lived. Outside the building, ul. Filtrowa 68, in which my cousin's family has lived from the end of the war to this day, a wreath-laying ceremony is about to begin. The guards of honour await. The street is just how I imagined Warsaw prior to the uprising as a boy; wide, tree-lined streets, sun-dappled, with fine architecture on either side.
After the ceremony, my father becomes the focus of interest; he is unique in being a participant of the Uprising who lived in this very building, from 1926 until the morning of 1 August 1944.
Time for a family reunion; my father meets his two cousins Ala (left) and Hanna (right). Their three fathers were brothers. And see that photo on the wall? That's of my father, centre, with his brothers Jozef (left) and Zdzich (right)
Left: at Plac Narutowicza, my father is about to board the vintage tram heading up ul. Towarowa in the direction of Powązki cemetery. Two special heritage tramlines are operating on the day, T and W. Beautifully restored, they give an authentic taste of prewar public transport in the Polish capital. Respect to the guys who keep these trams going in concours condition.
Below: we reach Powązki military cemetery, where the main commemoration of 'W' Hour is to take place. A group of reenactors, wearing captured German camouflage smocks and whatever else they had to hand, are marching in step towards their assigned position.
It was a sweltering hot day, with temperatures in Warsaw exceeding 35C. Below: my father was treated as a star! Two girls stopped him to hear his story - and to get his autograph on an Uprising armband.
Below: my father met his colleagues from Batalion Odwet, by the unit's memorial. He reflects upon those who fell during the Uprising.
Below: on to the memorial of Batalion Golski, the unit with which my father fought for most of the Uprising. After the failed attempt to seize the SS barracks in Kolonia Staszica, soldiers from Batalion Odwet made their way across Pole Mokotowskie to join Batalion Golski, with whom they fought right through to the end. They were fighting in the area around the Politechnika. This is why students and graduates of that institution from the Korporacja or student fraternity (which has roots going back to 1908) tend the Golski memorial.
The next stop was to pay respects at the grave of my father's younger brother, Jozef, who died aged 18, fighting with Batalion Miotła in Czerniaków. This time last year, Moni found the grave. Thanks to Peter Chudy for a photo that includes me in it!
On to the central Gloria Victis (glory to the vanquished) memorial in the centre of Powązki military cemetery. A great many people milling around, visiting the graves of family members who fell in the Warsaw Uprising. On the Metro heading back to Ursynów, people would shake my father's hand and thank him for their freedom - extremely touching gestures.
Monday 31 July, the day before the big commemoration, and there's much to do. After a 6am wake-up call, my father and I travel by Metro to town to meet his old AK comrade from Batalion Odwet, Kazimierz Możdzonek. We are accompanied to the Warsaw Uprising Museum by three reenactors who have driven over all the way from Berlin overnight to be here for the commemorations.
Outside the museum there are speeches from Poland's president, Andrzej Duda and Warsaw's mayor, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz. But the one that really gripped the nation was by 100 year-old General Zbigniew Ścibor-Rylski, the last surviving leader of the Uprising, whose speech was particularly moving. "Poles must have respect to everyone, regardless what their point of view, their nationality or their faith".
Below: after the speeches and the awarding of medals, it's time for food. The food is good, and free, laid on by the City of Warsaw. So there's a scrum. And veterans of the Rising, whose day this is, did not have an easy time getting to the front of the queue for barszcz, pierogi, kaszanka and krokiety. Fortunately, there were many young volunteers on hand to help; a girl guide managed to get hold of a bowl of barszcz for my father.
After the event, crowds of people poured out of the museum; we headed to the bus stop to catch a bus towards ul. Królewska. Lots of people, all chatting and swapping stories.
Below: corner of ul. Świętokrzyska and Jasna. This is the main post office, and it was here that my father's father, Tomasz Dembiński, worked before the war, in PKO (then Pocztowa Kasa Oszczędnościowa - the post office savings bank). My father went to school in the building on the opposite side of ul. Jasna, on the site now occupied by new offices. Funnily enough, I also worked for a while on ul. Jasna, up by Pl. Dąbrowskiego.
Below: back in Jeziorki for a walk, at the northern pond, with Moni, who took these two photographs. Beautiful hot weather, cloudless sky, in time for sunset.
My father is enchanted by Jeziorki, and how beautifully the wetlands have been turned into a park that brings people closer to nature.
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