The Mazovia Legacy

by Michael E. Rose

  It seemed to Natalia as if he had waited a long time to be able to say this to someone who wanted to listen.

  “We knew they would come in 1939, your uncle and I,” Zbigniew continued. “We were soldiers, Air Force officers, and we knew that when they came, they would be animals and try to destroy our country totally, to wipe it from the map. And when they came it was like that. Worse than that.”

  He looked at her, as if wondering whether anyone young or old could ever know how to reply to a description of the events of 1939.

  “Your uncle was one of the lucky ones, really. He became aide-de-camp to Raczkiewicz when Raczkiewicz was made president in Romania after their group escaped. Stanislaw had gotten out right away and then he got out of Romania right away too, into France with the government-in-exile. Some of us had to creep away and live like animals in the forest before we could get to France or Britain to regroup.” Zbigniew paused.

  “Did he ever tell you about our squadron? The Mazovia Squadron in Scotland?” he asked.

  “A little,” Natalia said. “He didn’t really like to talk about the war.”

  “A wise policy,” Zbigniew said. “But you knew about our squadron, how we flew Wellingtons together to bomb Berlin and Mannheim and Essen and Dortmund and other places many of us had been to, places we actually knew? Poles bombing their own Europe.”

  “I knew some of it.”

  “But did he ever tell you about his little secret, about how he was assigned before any of our adventures on Wellington bombers together to travel with the treasures of our country from Wawel Castle, to bring these to safety before the Nazis could steal them or destroy them? Did he tell you that Hitler was not just a madman with people, that he was a madman with art, that he wanted to destroy all of what he called decadent art in Europe and bring the rest back to Germany for his super museums, his über museums, in Berlin and Linz? Did he ever tell you, Natalia, about what the Nazis were trying to do to the art of Europe?”

  Zbigniew did not wait for Natalia to reply because he had long ago decided there was no adequate reply.

  “Your uncle was one of the lucky ones, Natalia. He was given the important task of trying to save our country’s treasures before he was asked to try to destroy the Germans from an aircraft. He told me a great deal about his adventures with those art treasures, my dear, on the back roads of Romania in trucks, and on boats to Malta, and then France and then England and Canada. Your country now. He was entrusted with a great secret, Natalia, he and some others, and he, at least, never betrayed that trust. Even until he died. He was a soldier. I watched him in the fighting and he was not one who would give up or betray.”

  Natalia said nothing. Today she would listen more than she would talk.

  “We were betrayed, of course, Natalia,” Zbigniew continued. “All of us. And you and your generation of Poles, too, when you consider it. At Yalta, when the so-called great powers betrayed us all to the Communists and recognized their bad joke of a government, their outrage of an illegitimate government in Warsaw and withdrew recognition of the government-in-exile, it felt to all of us as though our fighting had been for nothing, that we had fought for years and still lost our beloved country to those who had been our enemies. And in the end it was through the betrayal of those who had been our friends. The Allies, so-called.

  “So, you see, those trunks and crates hidden in Canada were worth more than gold and silver to us, Natalia. Those treasures were something we had snatched from the Nazis and then the Russians and, yes, even from Churchill and Roosevelt, and they were made safe in your country until we could win back our own country from those who took it from us.

  “After the war, your uncle thought it was his duty to carry on looking after those precious things he had helped bring to Canada. So he went there to live and be close to the comrades he had worked with on that secret mission and to wait for the right moment.”

  Zbigniew looked intently at Natalia now, waiting for some sign she was understanding the significance of all this.

  “Why didn’t you go to Canada as well, Zbigniew?” Natalia asked.

  “Because I am a European, Natalia. Because I had no duty to go. Because I felt that it was too far, too new, too cold.” He laughed a little at this. “Paris was my choice, my dear. I love this city and I always felt that when things changed I could simply get on a train and go back to Warsaw. But of course I never did. And now, even though there is no impediment to my going back, I cannot. I have lost my Warsaw, Natalia, and I am at home here now. But for your uncle it was different.”

  Zbigniew began to pull packets of letters apart and extract aging sheets from envelopes before continuing.

  “Your uncle used to write to me, of course. He was a great writer of letters, your uncle. Perhaps too many letters. Perhaps, as it turns out, some letters to the wrong people, telling them too much.”

  Zbigniew selected a letter from a small pile he had assembled. He handed it to Natalia. It was on old, drying, flimsy paper. It was headed “Montreal, September 1945” and written in Polish. Natalia could immediately recognize her uncle’s spidery handwriting:

  “My dear Zbigniew:

  I am so sorry for the delay in writing to you, my friend, but I have been busy these days trying to get the treasures into a safer place. The Communists are coming, my friend. They have named a new man for the embassy in Ottawa, Florkiewicz, and Krukowska is out. But Krukowska has ordered that Zdunek and Kozlowski move the goods from the Experimental Farm to somewhere safer, before they can be stolen from us.

  What a ridiculous place to have hidden them anyway, Zbigniew. A ridiculous farm in the suburbs, with no decent locks and dozens of scientists and civil servants in and out every day. I was the driver, the pilot, once again, and now we think the goods are safe. But we needed you for a navigator that night, Zbigniew, I can tell you. Two trunks, with some of the most rare items, are in the Bank of Montreal in Ottawa, in their vault. Only Zdunek and Kozlowski can sign jointly to have them removed from there. And the rest, many cases, are in a convent in Ottawa and another in Quebec, at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré. Thank goodness for the Quebec Catholics.They are on our side in this fight, you may be sure of that. And passwords, Zbigniew. We have passwords . . .”

  Natalia looked up, enthralled by what she had read.

  “He sounds like an excited schoolboy,” she said.

  “He was, what, perhaps thirty-two then, Natalia. Not a schoolboy, a soldier, and a bomber pilot, who knew his duty to Poland.” Zbigniew handed her another letter.

  “Montreal 23

  August 1946

  My dear friend:

  Oh the intrigue, Zbigniew. The intrigue. It is like Romania in 1939 all over again. I hardly know where to begin. Zdunek has been co-opted by the Communists, the swine. He will tell them where we have hidden things, if he has not already. So again I was the driver. Kozlowski and Krukowska and I rented a large truck and went to the convents brandishing our little receipts and mouthing passwords, and the treasures are still ours.

  ‘The Holy Virgin of Czestochowa’ — that is all the nuns needed to hear, my friend, and they would have given us the Pope’s ring if they had it. When you come, and you must come to visit me here one day, I will take you to these places and tell you the story properly. The Ottawa Convent of the Precious Blood, Zbigniew — only the French Canadians still have convent names like that — then a long night drive to Quebec City, to the Redemptorist Fathers at Sainte-Anne-deBeaupré. The password was magic for them as well, and now the crates are well hidden once again.

  Zdunek can never know where they are again. Perhaps it is best if I do not tell you either, my friend. Perhaps best for you not to know. But thank God for the Quebec Catholics, Zbigniew. And for Duplessis. He doesn’t want the Communists to get them any more than we do.

  Our major problem now is that it is still only Zdunek and Kozlowski who together can ge
t the other two trunks from the bank in Ottawa.They will clearly not be able to agree on a course of action anymore . . .”

  Zbigniew handed Natalia a small sheaf of clippings from Ottawa and Montreal newspapers that Stanislaw had obviously sent his friend over the years. The articles reported that the movement of the treasures was being called theft by the new Polish ambassador to Canada. He and his colleagues had arrived only hours later than Stanislaw and his co-conspirators, and found the crates removed. They had spent hours combing the back roads of Quebec looking for the rented truck, one newspaper account said. Florkiewicz was demanding action: from the Canadian government, the Quebec government, the Catholic Church, the RCMP, from anyone who would listen.

  The Canadian prime minister, however, clearly did not wish to be pulled into a diplomatic battle between the Communists in Warsaw and the Polish government-in-exile in London. Even less, the reports said, did he want to take on Premier Maurice Duplessis in Quebec in what could be another major jurisdictional battle. It was a matter for the courts to decide, the prime minister said, but he would as a courtesy allow the RCMP to try to trace the missing crates, if this would be of any assistance to the embassy of Poland.

  Zbigniew had lit a dark Sobranie cigarette, and smoked quietly as Natalia read.

  “Your uncle was in the thick of it in those years, my dear,” he said.

  Natalia suspected that Zbigniew knew every one of the letters by heart and every twist and turn of the story his old comrade had told him in such detail. It would have been a duty to his old friend to know and remember this story in case he was ever needed.

  “The Communists would have killed him, and the others, if they dared do so in Canada,” Zbigniew said.

  “But of course they couldn’t until they knew where the treasures were as well,” Natalia said.

  “Precisely. But that became a somewhat academic point, you see, because Maurice Duplessis stepped in a couple of years after that. He was angry that the RCMP had been investigating on Quebec soil and apparently going in to convents and questioning Mothers Superior and so on, you see, and he saw this as a way to assert himself against Ottawa and consolidate his position with the Quebec Catholics as a fighter of Communism. So he took the treasures himself.”

  “He took them?”

  “Not for himself, my dear,” Zbigniew said with a slight smile. “He took them from the Hôtel Dieu Convent in Quebec City where they were in a sort of cavern in the cellars and he locked them up in vaults in the basement of the provincial museum. And he made sure he embarrassed the federal government as much as he could in doing so. The RCMP were supposed to be standing guard outside of the Hôtel Dieu, but he sent the chief of the Quebec police and some other officers in plain clothes and they lifted the crates right from under the noses of the federal police. Using food delivery vans. And, my dear, Duplessis said he would never, ever release the treasures to the godless Communists. Can you imagine how that would have been received at the Polish Embassy in Ottawa? In 1948? Imagine that if you can.”

  “And he never did release them, did he?” Natalia said.

  “No. Not in his lifetime.”

  Zbigniew handed her some more newspaper clippings. One was a news agency dispatch from March 1948:

  “‘When it is a question of the Communist and atheist government of Poland, satellite of Stalin, the federal government communicates with this government through the intermediary of an ambassador and with all the protocol and respectful consideration which these proceedings involve,’ Premier Duplessis told a press conference in Quebec City.

  “‘When it is a question of one of our most noble religious communities, Mr. St. Laurent and the federal authorities communicate with them through the intermediary of the federal mounted police, whose mission it is to seek and arrest criminals in the domain of federal jurisdiction,’ the premier said.”

  Zbigniew re-read the clipping himself, chuckling quietly, before continuing.

  “Kozlowski was allowed to visit the vaults at the museum in Quebec City every six months or so to see that the goods were all right and to air the tapestries and so on, but they were never to be removed or sent back until the Communists had been ousted from Poland,” he said. “Your uncle would be the one to drive Kozlowski to Quebec City sometimes for this. He and Kozlowski got to know Duplessis very well, and some of his senior police and officials, as of course they would. Because they were partners in a big joke on Canada and on the Communists. A deadly serious diplomatic joke.”

  “It’s a very long time to keep a joke going,” Natalia said.

  “I agree. A very long time. And some people are not able to keep faith with comrades forever. Your uncle was one of the rare ones who could. But Kozlowski, I’m afraid, could not.”

  “He gave up?” Natalia asked.

  “Yes,” Zbigniew said. “He came under intense pressure over the years to give the treasures back. From Poland, from some factions in the government-in-exile — for there were factions, Natalia, many factions — and eventually from the Catholic Church as well. There was a loosening of things in Poland in the late 1950s, a sort of loosening. The worst of the Stalinists were removed and the Catholic Church there thought it politic to try to cooperate with the regime for a time.

  “And of course Kozlowski was getting old. He was about seventy or so by then. Krukowska was dead;

  Zdunek was dead. But Zdunek had said in his will that he thought the treasures should go back.

  Kozlowski was working in his little delicatessen in Ottawa by then, a strange fate for an architect who had moved treasures from Wawel Castle. And he was, Stanislaw said, becoming worried about the condition of some of the things that had been hidden.

  “Kozlowski said that if he got word from the government-in-exile, he would gladly sign the papers and allow the treasures in the Ottawa bank to go. But he said he had given an oath and he felt he should keep it until he received an official signal. The decision about the Quebec treasures, of course, was no longer his to make.”

  “I know some of this story,” Natalia said. “My uncle told us once about how the Ottawa treasures went back.”

  “Yes, they went back. Poland sent a new man to be joint custodian with Kozlowski, and a faction in the government-in-exile used go-betweens, prominent people, émigrés, to work on him over the years. Even Malcuzynski, the pianist, became involved. As a sort of envoy, from Switzerland, where he lived after the war. Eventually Kozlowski agreed to sign. He gave in to the pressure and the two Ottawa trunks went back. This was in 1959. Your uncle was outraged. I have a letter of his here from that time. He could simply not believe that Kozlowski would betray this trust.”

  Zbigniew began looking for the letter to show her.

  “All those years,” Natalia said. “I would have been just a girl when all of this started to happen. A baby. I was born in 1958. Stanislaw never talked very much about this when I had grown up.”

  “Well, he would not have had much to say to you about it, my dear. There were many things he could not dare to say after that. Because matters became even more complex, Natalia. Even more dangerous, I would say.”

  Zbigniew handed her another letter, this one clumsily typewritten. Natalia could imagine her uncle hunched over his beloved Remington Noiseless in his snug house on Chesterfield Street, writing this secret letter to his oldest friend.

  “Montreal

  13 March 1959

  Dear friend:

  Zbigniew, I am writing to entrust to you a most important secret. I no longer know whom to trust here anymore but I know that I can trust you as always.

  Kozlowski is behaving erratically now. The pressure is getting to be too much for him, it seems. Sometimes he says he had no choice but to sign the papers for the Ottawa treasures. Sometimes he regrets it so much that I fear for him. I really do. But I myself have taken action to safeguard the treasures left in Quebec from any
further betrayals, my friend, and I am going to tell you how. And then it will be only you and me who know this new secret, Zbigniew. I know that you would never reveal it to the wrong people or at the wrong time.

  I have been to see Duplessis. I felt that I must go to discuss what is happening with Kozlowski. And Duplessis, my friend, was in a rage that the Ottawa trunks went back. He shouted in French for a long time about that and about what was happening with Kozlowski. But I knew that he was angry also because he could see the end was in sight. He is not well, Zbigniew, and he also knows that the Catholic Church is no longer on his side in this. And if that is so in Rome, then it is so in Quebec, because the Quebec Church does the Vatican’s bidding, as it must.

  Eventually, the Quebec treasures will go back and the premier knows this. He is an expert politician, Zbigniew, an expert. He sees things clearly and he knows when it is time to act. Or, in some cases, when to let others act. And so there have been some changes made.

  I had devised a little plot of my own that would safeguard at least some of what we had been entrusted with. I told Duplessis about my fears and that I had a plan. But he did not want to hear details of my plan, Zbigniew. He is too astute a politician for that. Sometimes people do things on behalf of powerful men and these men know to turn the other way while it is being done. They know when it is better not to know all that is being done for them. Each for his own reasons, my friend, but that is often how it is with such important matters. So be very careful with this information, Zbigniew. Because no one will know it but you and me. But someone must know it in case I die.

  Duplessis agreed to let me have access to the treasures alone for a time for an “inspection.” He arranged this and he assigned his personal bodyguard, a policeman named Tessier, to accompany me to the vaults in the museum and to help me in any way required. And then Duplessis simply went on about his business and never asked me about any of it again. I was left to do my duty as I saw it.