KRYSTYNA’S STORY
Halina Ognowska-Coates – Longacre Press- $24.99

This is an astonishing book for a couple of reasons. First is the remarkable story it tells, (more about that shortly), and secondly it is notable because of its publishing history. It was first published in 1992 by Bridget Williams Books, then in 1998 by Shoal Bay Press, and now republished this week in a new edition by Longacre Press.

The author is an acclaimed, award-winning oral historian, radio documentary-maker, writer and film-maker. She is a social historian really and has produced a “beautifully evoked account of a child’s journey through Europe at war, and a young woman’s bewildering encounter with rural New Zealand.”

Here is her introduction:

This could be my mother’s story. It could
belong to any one of the two million Poles
who were deported to the Soviet Union
during the Second World War. But in a way it is nobody’s story,
for who can remember all that happened after the soldiers came
and took them away?
As a child I loved my mother but she seemed different from
other mothers. She didn’t know how old she was. She couldn’t
remember where she was born. I wondered what had happened
to her that she could have forgotten such important things. It
had something to do with the Second World War.
When I grew older I wanted to get to know my mother and
to find out about her past. Eventually I learned that she was
among the seven hundred and thirty-two Polish children who
had survived forced deportation to the Soviet Union and had
travelled half way across the world to take refuge in New
Zealand in 1944. My mother was reluctant to talk about her
past. She said it was too sad, but I kept asking her questions. I
wanted to know what had happened to my Polish grandmother.
I wanted to know about the place where my mother was born.
Slowly my mother began to talk to me. We sat together for
hours, talking and crying, putting together the tattered fragments
that were her memories, but there were many missing pieces.
My mother had been a small child when she was taken from
her Polish home.
I went to visit her Polish friends to find out more. These
people had endured similar harrowing experiences, but they
took me into their hearts as my mother’s daughter and told me
stories that will always haunt the corners of my mind.
Slowly my mother’s childhood came alive to me. I can close
my eyes and see her playing in the fields outside Baranowiczie,
a small girl with blue eyes and blonde hair. This could be her
story.

Harrowing, heartbreaking, utterly sad, joyful, totally uplifting, heartwarming, fascinating - Krystyna’s Story is all of these things and much more besides. If you didn’t read it in one of its earlier manifestations, be sure to read it now. You’ll be captivated.