Occupied, but Never Erased
An immigrant's diary, in memoriam
Note: My great-grandmother survived a smallpox epidemic in Poland that killed most of her family. She lived through three occupations. Has official records that claim her a citizen of Germany, Russia, and Prussia. Kings, emperors, and dictators attempted to strip and realign the ethnicity of her and every Pole time and time again. Occupied, she would say, but never erased.
By sheer determination, she and my great-grandfather found a way onto a ship to America. Through wars and deportations, extreme personal loss, and more than ninety years of life, she remained firm in her identity as a Polish woman. Even in her new life, she understood what it meant to give away one’s identity; the dangers of letting a government determine her worth. She was not a gentle woman. Life taught her to be closed and hard, but she believed in doing whatever it took for her family, community, and people to carry on.
She’s gone, and has been for some time.
On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, this pairing of mixed-media collage and words, which includes papers and images from her life, imagines what might become of her now, as the American administration strips away the lives built by people who survived atrocities and sought safety.
I know what she would tell me: ”We are occupied, but never erased.”
Sophia. 26. Smallpox scars. Faded flowers in her hair. Ravaged by death. Family nearly wiped out. Survivor. Get out. Survive. Make sure your children live. Russia on the origin line of the form. Russia, but not Russian. “Polish,” she tells the officer. “Occupied, but never erased.”
Not erased. Colors of home. A dress with familiar patterns. A bowl of borscht. Sister’s words pulled from an envelope. True origin lines. Stamps. Polska. Tlucowo. Home, But, not where she sleeps any more.
Not where she sleeps anymore. With her smallpox-scared face. 27. 37. Weddings. Births. Houses. Lives. All the safety she imagined crossing the ocean to that place. But, America could not save from loss. Polio. Her son. 19. Gone.
Gone. From her mother’s warmth. Her sister’s easy words. War after war, disease after disease, steals the rest. Polska, a place of long ago, but always stuck to her like ice in a bitter winter.
Ice in a bitter winter. She watches her dentist’s mother ripped from her car and slip on the ice. Been here forty years, an old woman, dragged along the pavement. She’s howling, “Rose!” But, the woman shakes her head. No way out. A letter in her hand. Her sister. Sophia, Come home. Before they come for you, Sophia. The frozen winter strips her back to her roots.
Her roots, that is the question. The officer demands papers. She weeps for the first time since Henry, then Rose. Does ninety-three years count for nothing? An officer reads aloud, “The papers say Russia.”
Russia, she knows, but not Russian.
This is America, she thinks as the officer handcuffs her, but this is not American. She closes her eyes. An old woman. Get out. Survive. Borscht with her sister. Fresh flowers in her hair. Only the two of them left. Survivors.
“Polish,” she declares as all that she’s lived disappears in the distance. “Occupied, but never erased.”
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.