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black blue and yellow textile

It all started when we found the treasure

After the Millenium, in the attic of our Sydney family home lay an old suitcase packed with correspondence, among them the 260 aerogrammes my mother and father had written while they were separated for over a year. In 1951 Stefan, my father, had sailed for Australia in the quest for a new life for his family. By reading their letters to each other, I met the parents I had never known.

John Krupski's uncle, auntie, father and mother with Jaś in Greenwich, London, August 1948
John Krupski's uncle, auntie, father and mother with Jaś in Greenwich, London, August 1948

Yet this account begins earlier

during the 1930s, in the eastern border lands of Poland where the Stalinist terror regime caused a major exodus. Heads of families were confronted with arbitrary arrests, deportations and constant fear for their lives. Leaving everything behind, my parents survived the War in central Poland - with no illusions about the future facing them following the country's "liberation" by the Soviets in 1945. Starting out on foot, they crossed several borders, eventually making their way to England, where I was born. While willing to assist migrants, the British populace ruined by massive losses had little to offer newcomers, circumstances which obliged my parents to look farther afield - to Australia.

Memory is rarely a straight line; it is a room you re-enter when the light hits just right.

Each edition is bound with care, meant to sit on a shelf and be re-read over decades. Whether in the original Polish or the English translation, these stories carry the same honest weight.