T H E H I S T O R Y O F K R E S Y
Osady - Military Settlements 1921-1940
Translation from the book
Z Kresów Wschodnich R.P. Wspomnienia z Osad Wojskowych 1921-1940
(From: The Eastern Borderlands of Poland, Memories of Military Settlements 1921-1940)
Pub: Ognisko Rodzin Osadników Kresowych (OROK)
(Association of the Families of the Borderland Settlers)
London, UK. 1992 and 1998 (out of print)
ISBN 1 872286 33 X
Province (Województwo) WOŁYŃ
GENOWEFA LACKA (NOSEK)
OSADA BAJONÓWKA
Community (Gmina) Tuczyn
District (Powiat) Równe
I was born two months after my father’s death, in the small town of Dudwipol in the Wołyń region, where my mother was from. After some time, my mother and her two small children went to live with her brother Marcel Dymarski in the settlement Bajonówka, and there, she married a military settler, Stanisław Nosek.
There was nothing on the plot, only four border posts. The first years were extremely difficult. My parents worked in the fields and began to build, acquiring the basic materials with great difficulty, while at the same time establishing family life. There were seven of us children. Slowly, our life improved, and just before the war, in 1939, the living conditions in the settlement were quite reasonable.
I have very fond memories of a happy and peaceful childhood with a loving family atmosphere. I helped my mother a lot in bringing up my younger siblings. We ran delightfully through the fields, picking our favourite flowers: clover, columbine, and blackthorn. We had a large fruit garden and three flower beds around it, which we had to look after ourselves, this was our house chore. We would get prizes for our flowers from the Village Housewives Association, to which our mother belonged. We helped our parents with all the housework and in the fields. In our free time, we rode horses and bicycles along the paths of our field, with two dogs running after us. The third one, a big Azor, very angry and dangerous, faithfully guarded our house, he did not let anyone into the yard. He was always tied up and ran only on a chain from a stable to a barn. Such was the life of a good and faithful dog.
With regret I must mention that of my Nosek family no one survived the hard life in exile in Russia. All of them were left behind - dead. I myself dug graves for several younger siblings, burying them with my own hands. They were buried without coffins and without any cross. From such a big family I am the only one left. I frequently cry after them all. Such difficult experiences and dreams do not allow you to live a peaceful life.
The Bajonówka settlement was inhabited by 38 settlers: S. Nosek, M. Dymarski, Żygadło, Pulka, Bagiński, F. Bojko, Wiśniewski, Chyży, Kargol, Rup, W. Kapuściński, F. Berdych, Czerniszewicz, Głodowski, Rzepka, Łaniewski, Swirski, Dobrzański, Bogusz, Wawro, Aberbuch, P. Wojciechowski, Rydzyński, Grządkowski, Marcinkowski, Z. Florek, Rydlewski, Żygadło, R. Jagodziński, Czuba, F. Kłusek, Fijołek, W. Piotrowski, F. Byczek, Kucharski, B. Żarno, Cz. Tabor, Walczak.
Unfortunately, I do not remember them all, neither their names, nor military ranks. On average there were from two to seven children in the family. Only three children went to the middle school in Równe, and two girls to the agricultural and commercial school in Horyngród nad Horyniem.
In the settlement Bajonówka there was a 4-class school but no church. There was a library with newspapers and agricultural magazines. There was also the Village Housewives Association, which organised competitions, exhibitions, and dances. There was a youth sports club, our life was very active. There were events - national and religious celebrations, as well as May-June celebrations. Frequent gatherings of settlers enabled a cultural and social life. The wives of the settlers were mostly from Wołyń.
I have drawn from my far, far away memories of my Siberian hunting experiences, when I was playing with a rifle, wandering through the taiga. For the hunter the time of twilights is important. They occur when the sun is about to set and when the sun is out. There are morning and evening twilights. How many of these twilights my mind had awaited impatiently, how many of them I have experienced, running through the distant Siberian forests. Strange are the mirages, strange are the illusions, in the play of lights and shadows, which appear when the sun disappears and when it rises. And so similar are these evening and morning twilights, so the play of lights speaks alike, so the play of shadows whispers alike. The illusion of evening twilights, the illusion of morning twilights. The world looks different then. More mysterious. And there is no certainty whether it is the evening twilight going out or the morning twilight rising. The same phenomena in nature, the same lights, the same shadows. The sky is burning, and there is no life-giving sun. The lights are burning scarlet and purple. Nature whispers about new dawns, which will come. As if there was the same truth in the evening and in the morning twilights... And I remembered our fathers and grandfathers who passed their springtime in the twilights, and wanted to believe that the twilights, which turned out to be a sunset, were a dawn...
They spent their great spring of life, just like we did, when without light, without the life-giving sun, we ran into the August days into the illusion of twilight, which for us, too, could only have been the evening twilight, although it turned out later to be the morning one.
8 August 1926, Kielce.
Speech at the Congress of Legionaries
[Ed. note: ] Speech by Marszałęk Piłsudski at the Congress of the Polish Legionnaires’ Union on August 8, 1926, the main celebrations of the 5th Congress of the Polish Legionnaires' Union took place in Kielce. The celebration was honoured by the arrival of Marshal Józef Piłsudski and his wife Aleksandra. He attended the field mass celebrated by the chaplain, Colonel Stanisław Cieśliński. After the mass, there was a parade and solemn dedication of the banner of the Kielce Rifle Association.
Genowefa Łaska has written about her families deportation in 1940.
Krystyna Ostrowska (Chyży) has has also written about life in osada Bajonówka.