Tamara Slawny

Introduction

Albert Einstein said:
“The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd.

The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has been before”.

I walked alone, but most of the time it was not by my own choice.
Stories, and texts I’ll share with you today represent the unforgettable events from my life and underline the tragic human consequences   of political heartless games.

Fifty years ago, in 1968 as a result of political crisis, the Polish Government declared thousands of Jews enemies of the State, and forced them to leave Poland after taking away their citizenship, and their passports. Stateless rejects from Poland were allowed to take five dollars per family for their one way trip out of Poland. Their travel documents were valid only for 24 hours.

“Rainbow in a Test-Tube”

“When you find a dream inside your heart – don’t ever let it go”

I wanted to be a journalist. This was not a dream. I made this decision in my senior year of high school , in Warsaw. Writing was a part of me. I had so many stories written in my little notepad and so many more still to write.

I wanted to write about my mother who escaped from Poland one day after the war started. She was trying to hide in Russia. To terminate her pregnancy, on the train, she jumped from one car to another.

I wanted to write about my uncle who during the war lost his wife, five children, seven brothers, two sisters and ten years after the war, he was told by the Russian doctors that at the age of fifty five, he was already too old to have his cataract removed. He lived blind.

I wanted to write about my father who fought Germans from Stalingrad to Berlin and about his famous Sunday breakfasts many years later. These Sunday breakfasts became our family tradition.

I remember this incredible smell of boiled potatoes, skin and all, and herring in cream sauce. It filled our home with such warmth. Friends were coming from all over Warsaw to our tiny apartment. They were talking, sharing their worries, crying, laughing, singing and playing piano the whole day. I wanted to find words and maybe to create new words to describe the passion of their pain, tears and joy.

I was confident that I would be a good journalist and my essays, articles and stories would be filled with colors like a rainbow.

I did not study journalism. Just before sending my college application my father surprisingly asked me to study chemistry and eventually later journalism. For the first time in my life he shared his doubts with me. He openly admitted that he was not sure anymore , if he was right in believing that Poland could be a country for all of us – regardless of religion, color, race. He feared that one day, we as a minority group would be forced to settle in another country, and then I might have difficulties in supporting myself as a journalist.

I studied chemistry, and almost immediately, I was overwhelmed by the magic of atoms, molecules and electrons jumping from one orbit to another, absorbing or releasing energy. The world of science enriched my life, and my little notepad was full of amusing technical stories.

After getting my chemistry degree, I was still determined to study journalism. I was confident that I would be a good technical journalist. I wanted to write about the incredible changes in the world of technology and its impact on our everyday life.

I wanted to share with others how wonderful it was to see a rainbow in a test- tube.

However, I did not become a technical journalist.

One spring day and the events, which followed, changed my life and the lives of others. It became evident that my father and other fathers and mothers were wrong thinking that the sun above Warsaw and Poland would shine for all of us regardless of our color, race or religion. They were wrong in believing that all people had equal rights.

Twenty four years after the war, I witnessed in Poland, cruel, inhumane and cold racism.

Polish Jews were brutally forced out of their homeland.

I left Poland speechless. I was incapable of finding a language powerful enough to articulate the sound of engines pulling hundreds of wagons full of stateless, frightened once again Polish Jews expelled from their native soil.

I was incapable of finding a language expressive enough to describe the courage of my parents and their friends to start again, to fight again, and to win again a warm place for their Sunday breakfasts gatherings.

Wherever they are, all over the world, I hear them once again talking, crying, laughing, singing, playing piano.

I am with them and with my words vibrant enough to illustrate a “Rainbow in a Test-Tube”

“When you find a dream inside your heart – don’t ever let it go”

SOUND OF ENGINES

Goodbye Poland