Monday, May 30, 2011

It's good; it's over (Bärwalde)

     Bad Polzin, Pommern, in 1902. In those days, the town was German. It seemed to specialize in sanitariums. Still does.

     Here's a pic of the Hotel Marta Spa in Bad Polzin (nowadays, Połczyn Zdrój) in West Pommern (northwestern Poland). It's very European, very quaint. Near the park, which is fabulous.

     When my mother was ten (in 1943), she suffered some sort of appendicitis. She was taken to the hospital in Bad Polzin, where she received various treatments for two weeks or so. Then she was sent home, but, after a few weeks, she took a turn for the worse and was brought again to the hospital, where surgery was performed, removing her appendix. (Oddly, her sister, Ilsa, came down with the same problem and received surgery at the same time.) Mom remembers recuperating in the hospital and occasionally walking through the well-known park nearby.
     That park was fabulous then and it is fabulous now. I don't think I've ever seen a nicer park. Everything is blooming, and the smell is overpowering.

     18 kilometers from Bad Polzin is my mom's actual hometown of Bärwalde. Today, we took mom to this town that she hasn't seen since 1945, when she, her "mother," and her sister escaped from the Russian advance. All they took was what they could carry in a child's wagon.
     I'm afraid that, today, she found things to be disturbingly different than they had been. Her home had been destroyed. Some of her relatives' homes were unrecognizable. 
     She couldn't find any of her relatives at the cemetery. Not her beloved step-father, no one. Evidently, a photo of her had been etched onto his gravestone. But none of the old German graves remained.
     "Well, now I know that the town of my childhood no longer exists," she said. "It's good. It's over."

     We returned to Bad Polzin for dinner. The downtown area is very old, very quaint. Not many restaurants, though.

     We went to a restaurant that was happy to have any customers at all, even German/Americans. The cook made a special pizza for us. Nice people.


Mom's family, on her father's side, circa 1912. That's father Hermann at far right and Aunt Marthe at far left. Marthe and her sister (far right) worked at the time for the Berlin Opera

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good stuff--truly poignant.

Anonymous said...

There is something sad and beautiful about this visit home. You capture all so subtly and kindly.

Anonymous said...

It's a humbling and bracing thing, the way things change, fade, and disappear. I hope that your Mom isn't too sad about it.

MAH

Roy Bauer said...

Mom seems to be doing fine, MAH

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...