She Was Luckier Than Him

On September 17, 1939, Soviet Union invaded Poland, dividing my country among two powers - Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. Seventy three years passed and it seems as if it is a dream, a story, a fairytale or rather - a nightmare - that never occurred. Yet it was real, and the outcome of that invasion we inherit till now, when Europe was divided, our country carved and new post-war communist Poland was born. My mother side of family land in Eastern Poland has been lost, now in Ukraine. So many relatives perished under Soviet oppression. My grandfather lieutenant Adam Jakubiec was executed in Katyn forest in April 1940. Here is a remarkable story of a girl luckier than him who survived and now tells her story. Read it here.

Memory Is Our Homeland

The story of my acquaintance with Jonathan Durand, the filmmaker and producer of "Memory is our Homeland" movie is simply amazing. When Jonathan was googling the internet at the end of September 2010 in search for documents, photos and news on Polish Second World War refugees in Africa (among whom his own Grandmother was), he came across my post on Tengeru in this blog and later he found out that on the same day he was reading the post, I was landing in Montreal where he lived. He told me later on when we met for the first time there in Montreal and made preliminary plans how to help him in achieving his goal of producing the movie, he almost spilt his coffee on his macbook when he discovered I was there, a few clicks away from him...