One Black Marble Plaque – Circa 1914

Dearest Old Bolds, Friends, and Family,

Yesterday morning before heading out, we drove down to the center of Lodz and were surprised to find a five-kilometer-long pedestrian boulevard lined by over-the-top 19th and early 20th century ornate buildings and villas.  It is said to be the longest such shopping street in Europe, and built by the industrialists who became fabulously wealthy from the textile trade during the industrial revolution here.  Each building strives to outdo the next, some dripping with plaster reliefs that would put a wedding cake to shame, others constructed out of a rare, red marble.

One had fire (gold)-breathing dragons on its façade.

We took a pedicab/rickshaw down the length of the street and back for twenty zlotys – about four Euros or five dollars, ate some breakfast pastries (all we could find for breakfast), and left for the countryside.

As in Breslau/Wroclaw – as soon as one leaves the main area of restoration, one passes street after street of crumbling, grey, decaying, formerly-glorious homes.  Once the prominent inhabitants, with their know-how, drive, and business-friendly environment were killed en masse or driven out, the fabulous cities they created slowly withered.  The question is, can the Poles stop exporting their best talent, and recreate at home the type of entrepreneurial culture that built these great cities in the first place? A great treasure of architectural and cultural history depends upon their success. For many of the structures, it may already be too late.

Although we only had about 50 kilometers to go, it took Charley and I almost two hours to drive to the small, neighboring villages where his father was grievously wounded in March 1915.  The first one we entered had two cows staked, grazing in a circle, who were fascinated by our arrival.  Trying to communicate with a local young man painting a fence proved unsuccessful.  He pointed down the road, and then ignored us.  Further down, we found a very old man sitting on a bench.  I tried writing the year 1915 on a piece of paper, showing it to him, and miming war.  He shooed the paper and us away.

Undeterred, we drove on to the second village, where there was a closed-up, old villa just barely visible in the distance through a locked gate along the road.  Some middle-aged men were getting drunk in the middle of the town, and some old people walked slowly down the dirt pathways by the houses.  At a small cluster of homes we found a mother with young children, and stopped, hoping she might speak English.  I asked, do you speak English?  Deutsch?  She shook her head violently.  Apparently she had never heard the words before, didn’t know what they meant.  She came out to us with her children waving her arms.  We were finally made to understand that we were sitting, with the car running, in front of their driveway, and so for some reason that we could not imagine in this bustling metropolis, population circa 57, were therefore causing them some great distress.  Dozens of arms flapping, the woman and her children kept trying to shoo us away.

We did not come thousands of miles at great expense to simply be flapped away.

We handed them the paper with 1915 on it; I again tried to mime war.  She had no idea what I was trying to convey.  I looked to her like an idiot, and certainly felt the part for not having purchased and brought a Polish-English dictionary. Then the growing crowd of old people and children gathering around us thought we were looking for an address – that must be what 1915 meant. She tried to tell us there was no such address.  When we said we did not understand Polish, she raised her voice and repeated herself, looking at us wide-eyed in frustration.  When we still did not respond back in Polish, she repeated herself again, raising the volume to a veritable scream.  The crowd became agitated, surrounding our car.  My God, I thought, what on earth is happening here?  I reached back into the back seat and found some papers I had printed out from the Internet with pictures of World War I soldiers.  I handed them to her, she handed them around.  There was murmuring, but no understanding.  I used the Polish word for cemetery.  Still, that brought us no further.

Finally, she said Engelsky, Engelsky?  I nodded, yes, Amerikansky, Engelsky.  At last she understood that we did not speak her language; we were foreigners.  No one alive in the village could ever remember having had foreign visitors before, so it’s no wonder that it took a while for them to consider this possibility.  She smiled and excitedly ran to get her small car, motioning for us to follow.  We drove to the next village, where she parked in front of a farm, ran in, and came back leading a young lady who spoke English.

The young lady was able to explain the situation to us, and in turn translated our story and desire to find the battlefield.  They decided together to consult an old man.  He told them of a World War I cemetery in the fields, but that it had been destroyed.  We told them that was ok, we would still like to go to it.  It was decided an old man from the second village would take us there.  We went back to our starting point, and he got in the back seat, pointing the way.  When we got to the field, he indicated it was the stand of trees about 500 meters into the field.  I looked for a dirt road and found none.  Impatiently our guide pointed to the trees, and urged me to start driving towards them.  So we started across the deep, soft earth, with our rental car’s sensors madly beeping pretty much all the way.

My prayer sounded something like this:  Dear God, please do not let us get stuck in the middle of a Polish field.  With only two elderly men onboard, miles away from the nearest farm, how on earth would I get it back out?  Dear God, please do not let us get stuck in the middle of a Polish field.  What would I tell the rental car company?  Dear God…

We did make it to the mound in the field, and on top of it we found one black marble plaque, circa 1914, surrounded by the ubiquitous glass mourning candles on their sides and half-buried in the dirt.  There were signs that some very recent digging into the sides of the mound had occurred – there is every reason to believe that hard cash is hard to come by here and perhaps someone thought valuables might still be available.  Who, indeed, would care about those buried here 100 years ago?

Our guide, Jusef, took great care of Charley, giving him physical and emotional support.  Although we could not speak to each other, his empathy and embraces were most touching, especially as he knew Charley was German and had fought in World War II.  It was extremely emotional for Charley, as one might expect.

Jusef brought us back to his farm, where his wife and sister were sitting outside, enjoying the afternoon sun. They insisted that we sit at their table before leaving, and in order to avoid insult, we entered into their small kitchen/sleeping room, and were served tea and cake.  Younger family members came and stared at us.  Cows and geese were brought along the narrow road outside back to their barns as we watched.  It seemed not much had changed here in several hundred years, although our friends had a washing machine, a great luxury.

Meanwhile, we ate, and ate, and ate.  Unlike in Germany, where 2-3 helpings will normally suffice, here we were made to eat three pieces of cake and a puff pastry each, and were still encouraged to eat more.

We asked Jusef to write his name and address in our small notebook, and he handed it to his wife, who took ten painstaking minutes to pen the details.  There was no telephone here, and when we gave her Charley’s telephone number, she motioned to our camera in question.  It seems she had never seen a camera before, although surely a cell phone.  When we took pictures of these adorable old folks, they thanked us over and over again.

Jusef’s wife, in turn, asked us to write our ages down on a piece of paper and then read them out to him.  Jusef was 77.  When she saw how old I was, she made a sound of great surprise and started stroking my face, not believing I could be as old as I say I am.  This dear lady, whose name we never learned, would not join us at the table, nor tell us her age.

They made signs of offering us sleeping places in their home.  We, in turn, said thank you, and motioned we had to leave to go to our hotel.

It was only when we had gone that it finally dawned on me.

Jusef may not have been able to read or write.  Nor could perhaps the old man from the first village, who would not bother to look at our piece of paper.

Yet, despite their circumstances, these quiet and shy people offered closure to very old soldier, and then a very generous hospitality and sincere friendship that we will always remember with great fondness.

From the Pilica river with much love.