My Grandpa, Stanislaw Brzeski, was born during World War II. During the interview he mentions what he remembers about the war. He then goes on and talks about how life was after the war during communism in Poland.

I was born in 1942. In 1939 the war started. In 1945 the war ended. I lived with my parents, 2 sister and 2 brothers. There were 7 of us in the house including me. We lived by Budnica where the church is at. My dad’s name was Antoni Brzeski and my mom’s name was Maria Brzeski. My dad was born in 1901 and my mom in 1907. The older siblings all moved out right after the war ended. One of my brothers went to Cieplice, to learn. Another brother moved to Warsaw. My sister also moved to Warsaw.

My oldest brother, Alexander, along with my parents are now dead. The rest of my siblings are still alive.My brother still lives in Cieplice.  One of my sisters now lives in Jakubow. One lives in Warszawa. And my last sister lives in Australia.

Even though I was little, I remember fragments of the war. I remember when the Germans were in our house. They were on the second floor where they lived. If someone had three houses or buildings they would kick them out of the two extra houses. They would make the owners live in just one house. The soldiers would take the rest of the houses and live in them. I remember fragments of Germans putting on guns on their shoulders and me pretending to do the same. My family used to sit in the basement in the field by a lamp. The basement was in the ground and had a brick wall. We couldn’t sit in the house because in the house a bomb could have gone through  the ceiling or walls.  The last memory of the war that I have was when I found out the war was over.

My father apparently was in the war but I don’t remember. I don’t think I was even alive when my father went off to be in the war. But he came back not too long after he had left. He didn’t fight though. He was a cook  for some high ranking officer in the war.

After the war everyone had to work hard. In stores there was nothing. There were cards that were marked with how much you could get of something. There was no material in stores. You had to give to the government 10 meters of material, a cartload of potatoes, grain, and one or two pigs. In return they would pay you by cents.  We sold all those things practically for nothing in return and it was a requirement.

In the stores you couldn’t  even find bread. Everyone had to make their own bread. We would bake it once every two weeks. People would bake bread and give it to others so that they could have fresh bread. They would share it like that. There were no pigs or meat on a daily bases because there was no money for it.  We had meat on holidays but they had no fat. The basic animals that we had were cows, goats, and chickens. If a chicken laid an egg. Most of the time we had to sell it to make money because we had nothing to live off of.

As a young boy I went to school. School stared at age 7.  I used to go to school in Budnica where the church is. But back then the school was in many different buildings and you had to go from one building to another. Later after my time they changed it all into one building. I lived 3 kilometers from my school. I had to walk by foot no matter if it was freezing outside or not. We had to walk no one drove us. When I was in fourth grade my brother got me a bike from the East and I would ride the bike to school in the summer. But in the winter I had to walk.

My favorite thing in school was doing things by hand. We would do a lot of things. We would even make ice skates that were made out of wood. We would use wire to add on and later on once they were finished we would use them to ice skate. We would even make sleds that way.

My backpack  wasn’t bought. Instead it was made out of material that my mom sewed and made from scratch. Same with shoes. The reason for this was because there was nothing in the stores, so most of the things had to be homemade.

In school the hardest thing for me was finding time to do homework. It was especially hard because there was no time to learn and there was no light. I had to sit by a lamp and learn. Also I had to help out around the house a lot. In the summer I had to work a lot in the field. I had no time to learn and sometimes I had to do my homework in school because I didn’t have time at home to do it.

After school once I got home there was always something to do. I lived on a farm so I had to cut down trees, and take care of the cows. Sometimes when I went to work in the field I would kick a ball with my siblings and we would play a game.

Back then I ran around barefoot.  One of my neighbors had a basement in the ground and he had just gotten a new door for it. The door had nails sticking out of it and I ended up stepping on one of the nails. The nail went through my foot. To make it better I put it in sand and shook it off.

I moved when I was 16 years old. It was the first time I didn’t live with my parents. I was in a different town called Bialobrzegi. There, I studied for three years  to be a baker. Back then there were no machines; instead, we had to do everything by hand. It was hard. Now something could take 2 hours to make but back then it would take up to 12 hours.  Sometimes you even had to work on Saturdays and Sunday.

I met my wife, El?bieta Brzeski, where she worked. She worked at a dinner where I would go often to eat. There weren’t many places where you could go out and eat.

In 1962 I went to the army. I was there until 1964. I served for two years. It was a requirement and we had to serve prectactly for free. If someone tried to get away with not serving in the army for two years like they were required to and they got caught doing so, then they were put in prison.

While I was in the army one of the things I did was learn how to setup the communication lines for the higher ranking officers. That way they can communicate with other people in different parts of Poland. The communications were an army secret and every city had a secret name. Warsaw was Dunaj.

Also while I was in the army, I was at a campground where we trained. There we practiced shooting guns. They taught us what a gun is made up of and how to put one together.

The second year I had it easier. The day would start at 8 and would go until dark. It was the same every day. A lot of us would go to the forest to pick mushrooms. There were also two lakes nearby and we would go there to fish.

The happiest memory I have is when they gave us the order that we were done serving in the army. While we were in the army it felt like prison so when we could leave it felt like we finally had freedom.

Stanislaw Brzeski and his wife, Elzbieta, have recently moved to the United States. They have two daughters and five grandchildren.