© ATOM 2013 A STUDY GUIDE BY MARGUERITE O’HARA
http://www.metromagazine.com.au
ISBN: 978-1-74295-344-1 http://www.theeducationshop.com.au Historians can tell lies. Overview Their sins are the sins of Once My Mother (2013) is a documentary film by omission. They choose filmmaker Sophia Turkiewicz about her struggle to what to put in, what to leave reconcile with her refugee mother for abandoning her in out. When I go searching an orphanage as a child. The story takes in the sweep of their two lives, beginning with her mother, Helen, born in for your story in the history Poland in the early 1920’s, and covering her epic journey books, the chapter on your from a Siberian gulag to Uzbekistan, Persia and Africa story is missing. before finally finding safety in Australia with her young daughter, Sophia. It is a story of survival and forgiveness. Sophia Turkiewicz The story raises a number of interesting questions about the nature of memoir and biography, about how we tell stories, about memory and forgetting, about knowing some things but not others. In telling her mother Helen’s story, Sophia is also telling us her story. An experienced filmmaker, Sophia draws on a number of sources to tell this story about her relationship with her mother, including SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013 conversations and interviews with her mother.
2 Did she ever truly know this woman who became her mother? Does she have it in her heart to forgive her? And is it too late?
As Sophia re-examines her mother’s life, she discovers the Synopsis historical truth behind Helen’s deportation to a Siberian gulag. Abandoned in an Adelaide orphanage at the age of seven, Helen was one of almost two million Poles who were incar- Sophia feels betrayed by her mother, Helen. In early adult- cerated in Russian gulags during World War Two. The truth hood, Sophia still feels angry and resentful. Her mother is now behind this little-known episode of history reveals a dark story married with two more children. Sophia rejects her new family of betrayal involving Stalin and the Allies. and refuses contact with her mother. Miraculously given their freedom, Helen is part of a vast In her twenties, Sophia is a filmmaker living in far away Sydney, exodus of Poles who travel from Russia with no food or embracing her independence, but deep down blaming her organised transport. Over months, they trek thousands of mother when things go wrong in her life. Yet Sophia finds miles to Uzbekistan and, eventually, freedom in Persia. Most herself drawn back to her mother’s life, using Helen’s stories as of the Poles perish on this treacherous journey. Helen is one of inspiration for her films but disguising them as fiction. the few survivors and she’s sent to a Polish refugee camp in Lusaka, Africa. Here she meets Valdiero, the love of her life, an Thirty years on, Helen has dementia. Sophia starts to question Italian prisoner-of-war who becomes Sophia’s father. their deeply troubled relationship. She digs out an unfinished documentary film about Helen that she’d started as a film stu- Finally, a decade after leaving Poland, Helen and her baby dent years before and finds herself compelled to finish it. daughter arrive in Australia as refugees. Not long afterwards, she abandons Sophia in an orphanage. Returning to her mother’s former homeland of eastern Poland, in what is now Ukraine, Sophia begins to trace her mother’s With growing insight, Sophia starts to reassess her troubled traumatic childhood. Orphaned as a young girl, Helen grows relationship with her mother. But as Helen slips out of reach, up in a rural Polish village. As an adolescent, she’s illiterate Sophia must confront her own demons. Did she ever truly and homeless, somehow surviving on the streets. know this woman who became her mother? Does she have it in her heart to forgive her? And is it too late? SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013
3 [1985], I’ve Come About The Suicide [1987]). She spent six years as a lecturer in the Directing Department at the The Filmmakers Australian, Film, Television and Radio School before leaving in Once My Mother is a Screen Australia and Change Focus 2008 to work on her own projects, including making Once My Media production in association with Kalejdoskop Film, Mother, her first documentary. Poland. The film is a feature-length documentary and runs for seventy-five minutes. Producer: Rod Freedman
Screenwriter/Director: Sophia Turkiewicz Rod Freedman is an independent director, producer and executive producer whose documentaries have won Australian Sophia was born in a refugee camp in Northern Rhodesia, and international awards and screened in dozens of film festi- now Zambia. She arrived in Australia as a young child. Sophia vals. Rod and his partner, Lesley Seebold, run Change Focus grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, where she completed an Media, producing television documentaries and educational Arts degree at Adelaide University. She became a primary and programs. Rod is particularly interested in stories about high school teacher before being selected for the prestigious people and their life-journeys. His films includeUncle Chatzkel first intake of full-time students at the newly created Australian (2000), Welcome to the Waks Family (Barbara Chobocky, Film, Television & Radio School. 2003), One Last Chance – War Criminal (Rod Freedman, 2000) and Wrong Side of the Bus (2009). Since graduating from AFTRS in 1978, Sophia has worked in the film and television industry as a drama director. Her Associate Producer: Bob Connolly credits include the feature film Silver City (1984), which was released internationally in 1984 and won three AFI Awards, Bob Connolly is an Australian film director/producer and as well as Best Film at the 1984 Sydney Film Critics Awards. author. He is best known for his documentaries, includ- Her television work includes both adult and children’s drama ing The Highlands Trilogy (Bob Connolly & Robin Anderson, (Something In The Air, Escape Of The Artful Dodger, Mirror 1983–1992), Rats in the Ranks (Bob Connolly, 1996), Facing Mirror, A Country Practice) and telemovies (Time’s Raging the Music (2001) and Mrs. Carey’s Concert (2011). SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013
Associate Producers, Poland: Janusz Skalkowski and Kamil Skalkowski. Editor: Denise Haslem. Narrator: Jen Vuletic. Composer: Cezary Skubiszewski
4 Background Trace Helen’s journey on online maps from Poland in 1939 to a Siberia gulag, then to Uzbekistan, to Persia (Iran), to Lusaka in Africa and finally to Australia. Her journey across continents is not an uncommon one for people displaced from their country of birth through wars and conflicts and genocide, particularly during the first half of the twentieth century.
The background information about Helen’s life before set- tling in Australia is recreated in this film to make it absolutely clear that ‘the past’ is not some time that is finished or over; it is integral to the present and to how people now live their lives. Life in ‘the past’ may well have happened in foreign countries where things were done differently, but these events and attitudes are integral to the present, not simply ‘another country’. Memories of what happened remain alive for generations, shaping the present and the future. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013
5 Glossary – Gulag 1. A network of forced labour camps in the former Soviet 3. A place or situation of Union where thousands of great suffering and hardship, prisoners were held between likened to the atmosphere in the 1930s and 1950s under a prison system or a forced the Stalinist regime. The word labour camp. ‘gulag’ is from an acronym The term ‘gulag’ is today made from the Russian term used to describe places where for Chief Administration of people are detained under Correctional Labour Camps. isolated and very difficult 2. A forced labour camp or conditions. For instance, prison, especially for political Guantanamo Bay prison is dissidents. often described as a ‘gulag’.
Curriculum Guidelines Once My Mother would be a fascinating film text for middle and opportunities were very different to those of their parents, many of senior secondary students of Twentieth Century European History, whom are now very old and increasingly less able to testify and bear Australian History, Migration Studies, Media and Film Studies, Family witness to their earlier lives. Studies, Biography and English. It would be an excellent film to ex- One of the key tasks for all students of English Language and plore and inspire students in cross-curriculum projects investigating Literature is to recognise that written and visual texts are created by concepts of identity, belonging, alienation, inheritance and genera- authors who tell stories and share experiences that may be similar or tional change. Teachers can watch a trailer of the film at
(Some background that may be of interest: IRO [International Most World War Two stories focus on the soldiers and battles of the Refugee Organisation] was created in response to the vast numbers war. In Sophia’s story, the focus is on the civilian population and the of civilians displaced during World War Two. This organisation took impact of their lives. charge of the relief work for the Poles who had escaped from the For Media Studies and Film students, this documentary offers a fine Soviet gulags. IRO eventually became UNHCR, the organisation example of ways of telling and constructing contemporary stories which continues to care for displaced civilians from the world’s cur- from a range of historical archives, drawing on public and private rent trouble spots.) sources. Whose story is it and why is the telling of it so important? Why can this be done so vividly on film rather than simply through
Once My Mother is an example of an approach to storytelling where SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013 the written word? layers of complexity are overlaid and threads unravelled to present an often searingly honest account of family relationships, particularly Later in this guide there is a brief account of the major political between a mother and daughter. At the same time, the documentary events in Europe – particularly as they related to Poland and its tells a story of generations, of the enormously disruptive and difficult people – between the 1930s and 1950s. There are also references lives experienced by many post-war migrants who came to Australia to several interactive maps that help explain the political geography at the end of the Second World War and of how their experiences of Poland. Teachers may find it useful to work through this mate- affected their children, many of them now in their sixties and part of rial before watching Once My Mother, depending on their students’ the ‘baby boomer’ generation. Their expectations and educational knowledge of European politics and history at this time. 6 STUDENT ACTIVITY
Pre-viewing questions
Talking about family
• ‘Every family has an interesting story to tell and at least one really interesting character or event in their immedi- ate past.’ Do you agree? • What part (if any) does family history play in your life? • Is there a particular member of your family who acts as the keeper of your family history? What are the benefits of having such a family history? What are the potential problems of delving into family history? Are there limits to what should be revealed about family history? • How much (if anything) do you know about the early years of your grandparents’ lives? • Do you have grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and/or nieces and nephews, stepsisters and stepbroth- ers who are an important part of your daily life? • Do you know any of the details of your own family’s stories, e.g. their life before coming to Australia, whether they fought in any wars, their educational ambitions, sporting skills etc? • For what reasons do you think some family members become estranged or separated from their immediate family? • ‘You can choose your friends, but not your family.’ Apart from the more obvious truths of this common saying, what do you think it implies? • Why is it important to record interviews or conversations with elderly people? • Why do you think some people do not want to talk with Every family has an interesting family about their experiences, particularly wartime story to tell and at least one really experiences? interesting character or event in Read through the following sets of questions before watch- ing the film. It may be useful to print Worksheets 1 and 2 to their immediate past. use for note-taking. These notes will help you discuss the film afterwards.
Perhaps half your group could take notes about Helen’s life and the other half could focus their attention on various
stages in her daughter Sophia’s life. You will be separating SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013 out the interlocking narratives in the film, but once you have the information you will be better able to make the connec- tions and comparisons.
Use the questions and some of the information given in the Worksheets and in the Polish history section later in this guide to help you with this viewing activity. 7 Student Activity 1
Helen
• Using Worksheet 1, create an outline of the facts of Helen’s life as they are revealed in the film, i.e. Helen’s birthplace and earliest years as a child – Helen was born in Oleszow, a village in eastern Poland that is now part of the Ukraine. (It is not always possible to be absolutely precise about dates as children like Helen would have had little chance to celebrate their birthdays or have identity documents.) Beside each place where she lived, write down approxi- mately how old she was at this time. If Helen was sixteen in 1939 when she was living on the streets of Lwów in eastern Poland, she would have been born in 1923. • What happened to Poland in the 1930s? How did this have hugely disruptive consequences for Poles such as Helen? • Why did Helen not learn to read and write as a child? What were some of the consequences for her growing up illiterate? • What were the geopolitical circumstances that led to Helen • After all the things that have happened to Helen, what is the leaving Poland and eventually finding herself in Siberia? news she gets in Perth that causes her enormous distress? • Why did Stalin send so many Poles to Siberia? What work • What were Helen’s reasons for placing her daughter in an were they given there? orphanage when Sophia was seven? • What was the incident in Lwów (now Lviv) that precipitated What were some of the difficulties for unmarried mothers her being sent to Siberia? in the early 1950s, as Helen explains them to her daughter • Having seen the archival images of the Siberian Labour many years later? camps and heard something of Helen’s story of life there, • What did Helen decide to do so she could have her daugh- can you conceive of what it would be like – even for a ter living with her? week, let alone a year – to be in such a place? Write an • In what ways are social attitudes and daily life different imaginative diary for a week, either as a prisoner or one of today for single mothers? the prison guards, describing your daily activities as well as your observations of people or events that you might Worksheet 1 – Helen. See page 9 for table. see occurring on each new day. • In what sense is it ‘thanks to Hitler’ that Helen is able to Helen remembers leave the Labour Camp in Siberia? • Why was it that Polish people in particular had such a diffi- Identify the context of what Helen is referring to in the fol- cult time in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century? lowing quotes. What is behind these often apparently quite • How far was the Siberian Camp from Buzuluk, where the matter-of-fact observations? Polish army was intending to train Poles for war service? • Why did the Poles then have to walk another 2000 kilome- Use these excerpts from the soundtrack to discuss what they tres to Tashkent in Uzbekistan? reveal about Helen and her past as she reflects on it as an • The Poles were released from Siberia to form an army. older woman. Why might Helen’s lack of education be a reason for not being selected for the army? I’d like to know how my mother looked. • When and where did Helen finally feel free? Everyone went to school except me. I couldn’t write my name. • How did the move to Lusaka in Northern Rhodesia (now I was embarrassed. Zambia) come about? My uncle threw me out. He said he didn’t have time for me. • What was one of the most significant things that happened People were frightened. They didn’t know what they’d be do-
to her in Lusaka? ing in the war – what war means. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013 • How did an Italian soldier and a Polish woman each come I was very upset and doctor come in and say they have to send to be in Africa at the end of World War Two? me back to place where there was more Polish community. • Four years or so after the war ended in 1950, why did I couldn’t find a job when Sophia was small. They didn’t like it Helen come to Australia to live? Why could she not go to in hotel or somewhere if you bring children. England or a country closer to Poland? I don’t want another country; that’s my first and the last.
8 WORKSHEET 1 – HELEN
TIME PLACES WHERE IMPORTANT PERSONAL POLITICAL AGE FRAME HELEN LIVED EVENTS/FAMILY TIES EVENTS SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013
9 She’s not only forgetting her stories, she’s also forgetting me, her daughter. SOPHIA
Student Activity 2 seven and the place where she is now living as an old woman? Sophia • At the end of the film, Sophia ‘forgives’ her mother, then asks to be forgiven herself. Elaborate on this idea. What • Using Worksheet 2, create an outline of the facts of does it mean to forgive? To be forgiven? Sophia’s life as they are revealed in the film, i.e. As this story unfolds, Sophia’s quest for reconciliation has Sophia’s birthplace and where she spent her earliest an urgency because her mother is suffering from dementia. years as a child – Sophia was born in Lusaka in Northern Why is this so important? Rhodesia (now the capital of Zambia). • How did Sophia come to be born in Africa at the end of the Worksheet 2 – Sophia. See page 11 for table. war? • Beside each place where she lived, write down approxi- Sophia reflects mately how old she was at this time. Sophia was born in 1946, just after the war had ended. In the Press Kit notes to accompany this film, Sophia • What were the circumstances that led to Helen and Sophia Turkiewicz writes about the renewed urgency she felt about coming to live in Australia in the early 1950s? getting down the story of her mother’s life before her mother • Where was she living between the ages of seven and nine? was no longer able to remember details of her past. Born in • Why did Sophia’s mother feel she could not care for her 1923, Helen was close to ninety in 2012. Sophia explains: daughter in the early years of their life in Adelaide? • How did Sophia regard this decision as a child? Thirty years later, my mother has dementia. I’ve still not forgiven • Why did she leave home as a sixteen-year-old? her. I remember the film that I’d abandoned and feel compelled • Why was Sophia embarrassed by her mother’s lack of to complete it. I start digging. Communism has fallen and education? Is her embarrassment understandable? eastern European archives are now open to the public. I learn • Was Sophia’s rejection of her family understandable/ the remarkable historical details behind my mother’s Siberian justifiable? What could she have done differently? survival story. It’s an epic tale of betrayal, involving the Allies’ • Sophia was lucky enough to get educated. How did this relationship with Stalin. With this knowledge, I start filming my affect her relationship with her mother? mother anew, trying to fill in gaps I’d left all those years ago. • What were the reasons Sophia joined the Communist Party? But she’s not only forgetting her stories, she’s also forgetting • Sophia feels a sense of urgency in finding out as much as me, her daughter. I’m desperate to complete her story before she can about her mother’s life. Why is this the case? it’s too late. Perhaps this is how I can reconcile with her? • In what sense is meeting her father in Italy so important to Sophia? Sophia Turkiewicz, writer and director of Once My Mother, • How does Sophia’s mother see a parallel between her expresses her feelings about her mother. She reflects on how placing of her daughter in the orphanage when she was she remembers feeling at different times in her life. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013
10 WORKSHEET 2 – SOPHIA
IMPORTANT PERSONAL TIME AGE PLACES WHERE SOPHIA LIVED EVENTS/FAMILY TIES/ POLITICAL EVENTS AND IDEAS FRAME MILESTONES SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013
11 Director’s Statement – by Sophia Turkiewicz
First and foremost, Once parent? Can one learn the 8 and mini-DV ‘home movies’ laden taiga forests, crossing My Mother is a compelling role and be a ‘good’ parent shot over many years, my treacherous rivers, struggling survival story. The tragedy of without an example? What is 16mm student films shot across mountains, using my Polish-born mother’s early needed for a successful journey in the mid-70’s, my 35mm railway lines as a compass, life – and the epic scale of her into adulthood? What is one’s professional films and recently searching for grass to eat on wanderings – before she found responsibility towards an shot professional material – we the endless plains, steppes and ‘home’ in Australia attests to ageing parent? What does it see the characters of myself barren deserts of Uzbekistan her determination to survive. take to forgive? Why is ‘truth’ and my mother develop on and beyond. Why did she survive while so so important – both personally screen. As our two stories many of her countrymen and and politically? play out, our younger selves A series of impressionistic, women fell by the wayside? morph into our mature selves, dramatised recreations filmed What gave her this strength Through these personal ageing with each decade. in Poland and Ukraine, and resolution? Was it her explorations, I reveal a We see Helen’s decline from that focus on small details childhood years surviving remarkable, little-known story bright and engaged woman from Helen’s early life, are on the streets? Was it some of almost two million Poles telling her poignant stories, integrated into the film. imagined future that gave her who were sent to Siberia and to the person who no longer Along with fictional films that the will to keep going? then miraculously released, remembers them. We see my I’ve made over the years, in embarking on a chaotic own changes, from bewildered which I happily plundered At an emotional level, Once exodus which took them to young girl to angry adult, my mother’s life for stories, My Mother is a personal Uzbekistan, Persia, India, and finally, mature woman these elements add another story exploring the issue of Africa and beyond. This story reflecting on my primary and textural dimension to the story ‘forgiveness’ as seen through has been airbrushed from the most difficult relationship. and expand the form of the the prism of that most primal history books, both in Eastern traditional documentary. of bonds: the parent/child Europe and in the West. Some Augmenting this footage is a relationship. The film explores prominent Western historians range of historical material, Award-winning composer this bond by investigating a argue that this ‘forgetting’ some not seen publicly Cezary Skubiszewski’s troubled relationship with was deliberate because of before. Archival footage, evocative music expands the my mother, ranging from the ambiguous wartime graphics and maps give a emotional impact of the story. my childhood, through to relationship between the sense of the scale of Helen’s Visuals are also augmented by adulthood and middle-age, Western Allies and Stalin. epic journey and also reveal sound design that resonates when each of our roles has the constantly changing with the motifs of the story, been reversed and my mother Once My Mother is also a terrain through which she for instance train journeys, has become dependent on me. portrait of a ‘typical’ Australian travelled. Helen’s feet are the sounds of camps, wind and family, viewed over two repetitive drumbeat that pulses snow. The story raises questions: generations. Through personal through these landscapes, How does one learn to be a footage – ranging from Super moving through bleak, snow-
Read through the excerpts from the film’s soundtrack below English; I don’t want my new friends to see me with you. and identify what it is that Sophia is referring to and the con- For the first time I see you through other people’s eyes. text in which the remarks/observations/reflections are being Some historians say this forgetting is deliberate … that those made. who liberate you from Siberia, then give your country away, don’t want their dealings with Stalin examined. Use these excerpts as points for discussing the film. I gather, I shape, I invent, I choose what to put in, what to leave out, and turn your truth into my fiction. It is here I found I could love you and hate you in equal meas- You are proud of me. I secretly know I have not done your ure. Over the years I played my role as dutiful daughter. I story justice. played my role well. But some part of me never forgot you I know you should have been here with me [at the 1984 AFI had abandoned me. awards] but I can’t bring myself to invite you. I’ve become the mother now. It’s my job to care for you. That’s At the heart of my life is a puzzle – my missing father.
what mothers do. Was my journey to Italy the first steps of my journey back to SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013 I need to know who you were – this woman who became my you? mother. Now when I think of your stories, I see that they’re my stories. I did not ask this question – ‘If you were this motherless or- They tell me who I am. phan, how could you wish the same destiny on me?’ Eventually I stop listening … your stories are a burden. They Read through Sophia Turkiewicz’ Director’s Statement before make me feel responsible for your blighted life. responding to the questions in the third student activity. I’m ashamed of you now. You’re uneducated, you don’t speak 12 Student Activity 3 Now think about how Once My Mother is told:
Telling Stories • As an experienced filmmaker, what advantages does Sophia have in telling this story? • Who is telling this story and why is this important? • What material is available to her (and us) today that earlier • Could it have been told by anyone else? historians and storytellers did not have? • Whose story is it? • What were the principal records on which earlier writers and filmmakers relied? 1. Why do we tell stories about our family and our lives? • What is archival footage and how can it be integrated into 2. How do we bring these stories to life so that they become the story of people’s lives to bring the past to life? something other than photo albums, diaries, newspaper • List some of the primary sources that Sophia is able to clippings or home movies? use to provide a visual picture of her mother’s life before 3. How can the story of an individual be both unique to that she came to Australia. What would be some of the difficul- person and, at the same time, tell a more universal story? ties faced by a documentary filmmaker such as Sophia in 4. What distinction would you make between autobiography, sourcing and putting all the archival material together in a memoir and biography, whether in prose or on film? Are coherent and dramatic way? any of these forms of expression likely to be any more • While there is quite a lot of film and photographic material ‘truthful’ than another? from the period between 1930 and 1950 on which Sophia 5. Is it ever possible to really know another person and un- can draw to provide compelling visual evidence of how derstand their motivations and inner demons? her mother survived during this period, how much of it is 6. What do you think the overarching theme of this story is? of Helen’s actual life as it is reconstructed visually by her daughter? SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013
13 When I was young I had used your life to learn my skills as a storyteller. Sophia.
• How does Sophia’s trip to Poland, which includes video How do Sophia’s earlier films relate to the story she now footage of the place where her mother was born, bring the feels compelled to tell about her mother? past to life for both Helen and Sophia? • When did she first begin documenting her mother’s life? • How much can photos tell us, beyond offering a visual How old was Sophia when she began this documentary record of people and places? project? Why do you think she abandoned it? • How can historical records, including contemporary maps, • While many writers and filmmakers use their family life to be used to bring a story to life, particularly one that spans make films or to write memoirs, can we ever know how several generations? accurately they reflect the life and relationships of the • How do you think present-day technical tools – such as person who is central to the memoir? Is recreating the past Photoshop etc. – might affect how we view archival foot- inevitably difficult and likely to be contended by other wit- age in the future? nesses to events? Is it important for the author to acknowl- • Have you watched any of the series from both the United edge that some things can never be known? Kingdom and Australia shown on television over the past • Once you’ve identified the over-arching theme, go through few years – Who Do You Think You Are?? Why do you the film and work out how this theme is set up, explored think many of the individuals who choose to explore their and resolved in the story. family history with the help of genealogists find it so re- • For the voiceover narration, Sophia uses a second-person warding to discover the history of their ancestry? device to tell the story. What difference (if any) would it • When I was young I had used your life to learn my skills as have made if Sophia had chosen to tell the story as a third- a storyteller. – Sophia person account? SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013
14 What does Sophia believe she has achieved by the end of this film?
• Outline the ways in which Sophia, in her earlier films has ‘mined her mother’s life, plundered it and masked it as fiction’. How do these different ways she has told her mother’s story lead her to realise that they are all partial and not completely accurate accounts of her mother’s life? • Now, when I think of your stories, I see that they’re my sto- ries. They tell me who I am and I know you now. You’re the woman who was once sent to hell and came out with love in her heart. – Sophia Are all generational stories in families so powerful and emotionally wrenching? • Is either conflict and rejection or complete acceptance a common dynamic in relations between parents and their children, or does the intensity of feelings change and mel- low over time, mediated through maturity, understanding and becoming a parent? At what stages in the lives of parents and their children are relations often quite tense and difficult? Is it usual for children to reject the values of their parents at different stages in their life as they struggle to find their own meanings? • This film is titled Once My Mother. Do you think this title accurately reflects the content of the film? • Write a piece about this documentary that could be pub-
lished in an online ‘What’s on?’ television guide or a piece SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013 for the television pages of a newspaper. Outline the main thrust of the program without giving away too much about how the process of understanding unfolds. Decide who you think is the most likely audience for this film. What do you think is the most interesting aspect of Sophia • I want to acknowledge her life and to pay tribute to those Turkiewicz’ film about her relationship with her mother? hundreds of thousands of other Poles who lived through Share your views with others who have watched Once My this period. – Sophia Mother. 15 Background History A brief overview of Polish history during World War Two
Poland has had a long and troubled history, which can partly be accounted for by its position in Europe, bordered by powerful countries such as Germany and The Soviet Union. Its history is long and complex and the information below only covers the period
Hundreds of thousands of Poles were de- ported en masse to forced-labour camps in Germany, while others, primarily the intel- ligentsia, were executed in an attempt to ex- terminate spiritual and intellectual leadership.
The Jews were to be eliminated completely. At first they were segregated and confined in ghettos, then shipped off to extermination camps scattered around the country. Almost the whole of Poland’s Jewish population
during World War Two, when Helen was a young girl and woman.
See an animated map of the war in Europe from 1939–1945 at
Alternatively, see
World War Two began at dawn on 1 September 1939 with a massive German invasion of Poland. Fighting began in Gdansk (at that time the Free City of Danzig) when German forces encountered a stubborn handful of Polish resisters at Westerplatte. The battle lasted a week. Simultaneously, another German line stormed Warsaw, which SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013 finally surrendered on 28 September. Despite valiant resistance, there was simply no hope of withstanding the numerically overwhelm- ing and well-armed German forces; the last resistance groups were quelled by early October. Hitler’s policy was to eradicate the Polish nation and Germanise the territory. 16 territory. The Poles were granted an ‘amnes- ty’ on the basis that they would form an army to fight Hitler.
A nationwide resistance movement, concen- trated in the cities, had been put in place soon after war broke to operate the Polish educational, judicial and communications systems. Armed squads were set up by the government-in-exile in 1940 and these evolved into the Armia Krajowa (AK; Home Army), which figured prominently in the Warsaw Rising.
Soviet invasion
Before the War started, Stalin and Hitler signed a secret pact (the Molotov– Ribbentrop Pact) to divide Poland between themselves. On 17 September, 1939, six- teen days after the Nazi invasion, the Soviet Union moved into Poland and claimed the country’s eastern half. Thus, Poland was yet again partitioned. Mass arrests, exile and executions followed, and it’s estimated that between one and two million Poles were sent to Siberia, the Soviet Arctic and Kazakhstan
Amazingly, considering the Soviet treatment of Poles, Stalin turned to Poland for help in the war effort against the German forces advancing eastwards towards Moscow. The official Polish army was reformed late in 1941, but was largely under Soviet control.
Hitler’s defeat at Stalingrad in 1943 marked the turning point of the war on the east- ern front, and from then on the Red Army successfully pushed westwards. After the Soviets liberated the Polish city of Lublin, the pro-Communist Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) was installed on 22 July 1944 and assumed the functions of a pro- visional government. A week later, the Red in 1939–1940. Like the Nazis, the Soviets set Army reached the outskirts of Warsaw. in motion a process of intellectual genocide. Warsaw at that time remained under Nazi oc- The course of the war changed dramati- cupation. In a last-ditch attempt to establish cally when Hitler unexpectedly attacked the an independent Polish administration, the AK Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. The Soviets attempted to gain control of the city before were pushed out of eastern Poland by the the arrival of the Soviet troops, with disas- onslaught and all of Poland lay under Nazi trous results. The Red Army continued its control. The Führer set up camp deep in westward advance across Poland and, after
Polish territory and remained there for over a few months, reached Berlin. The Nazi Reich SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013 three years. capitulated on 8 May 1945.
After Hitler’s surprise attack on the Soviet At the end of World War Two, Poland lay in Union (Operation Barbarossa, 22 June, 1941), ruins. Over six million people – about 20 per Stalin was persuaded to release the Poles cent of the pre-war population – lost their from Soviet prison camps because of Hitler’s lives, and out of three million Polish Jews overwhelming success in penetrating Soviet in 1939, only between 80,000 and 90,000 17 survived the war. Its cities were no more than rubble; only 15 per cent of Warsaw’s build- ings survived. Many Poles who had seen out the war in foreign countries opted not to return to the new political order.
At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agreed to leave Poland under Soviet control. They agreed that Poland’s eastern frontier would roughly follow the Nazi–Soviet demarcation line of 1939. Six months later, Allied leaders set Poland’s western boundary along the Odra (Oder) and the Nysa (Neisse) Rivers; in effect, the country returned to its medieval borders.
References and Resources WEBSITES: Keith Sword, Deportation and Exile: Poles in the Soviet Union 1939-48, Read about and watch clips from KRESY-SIBERIA FOUNDATION. This St Martin’s Press, in association Sophia Turkiewicz’ 1977 gradua- organisation was founded in 2001. with School of Slavonic and East tion film from the Australian Film Its objective is to ‘record, research European Studies, University of Radio and Television School, and remember’ the lives of Poles London. referred to in this documentary. who were deported to USSR dur- Norman Davies, Heart of Europe: A http://aso.gov.au/titles/shorts/ ing World War Two. The Kresy- Short History of Poland, Oxford letters-poland/ Siberia Virtual Museum is on this University Press. Information about Sophia Turkiewicz website:
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/ events in the history of immigration to SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2013 poland/history/ Michael Hope, Polish Deportees in the Victoria and its impact upon Australia’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Soviet Union, Veritas Foundation Aboriginal communities. History_of_Poland_(1939-1945) Publication Centre, London, 2005. Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands, Basic There’s also a Migration Museum in Books, 2010. Adelaide:
19