It is known that the menu for the Christmas Eve meal, the Wigilia supper, varied in Poland depending on the region, family customs and individual taste.  After that, tradition dictated that twelve dishes appear on the table(or as many as a family could afford)  and that the dishes be prepared from the bounty of the land – such as grains and cereals, poppy seeds, honey, mushrooms, etc.

     The Wigilia meal was eaten with great abundance and variety, not to mention splendor, at the tables of kings and magnates who dined on silver plates with food prepared by personal chefs and served by a retinue of servants. In rural cottages, the inhabitants were more likely to eat out of  wooden bowls with food planted, harvested and prepared by their own hands. The common denominator, however, between the tables of the rich and famous and that of the poor and humble was that meat was absent from the table and the meal always began by sharing the opłatek, the thin wafer symbolic of bread and brotherly love.  After that, the differences could be enormous, except for the one other commonality shared between the two distinct classes on Christmas Eve – the presence of nuts at the table, and more specifically, of walnuts.

     In Polish, the walnut (Juglans regia) is called orzech włoski. When translated it means “Italian nut” but its name identifies the way it came to Poland – via Central Asia to Europe to Italy and then to Poland in the 12th and 13 centuries. Juglans regia properly refers to the English walnut and has been around for thousands of years.  When we pay close attention to the customs and traditions of Christmas, the fruit of the walnut tree appears very often, in various ways. The walnut, along with the apple, was one of the oldest forms of decorating the podłaźnik, the earliest form of evergreen branch hung in the home that was the centuries old precursor to the Christmas tree. Decorating the podłaźnik with walnuts was not accidental but associated with the beliefs of the times. The walnut shells were seen as containing something precious and magical, a gift from the gods. Walnuts became a symbol of fertility and reproduction, not just in nature, causing bountiful harvests in fields and orchards, but also among people.

     Believed to bring about marriages and generate love, they were given or exchanged among young adults during Christmas and New Year season. We see it again later playing a role in wedding customs hanging on the róga weselna, the wedding branch, which was decorated with apples and nuts also as a symbol of fertility and reproduction.

      In ancient times it was believed that at this time of the year of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and the longest night, the dead come back to their family home to take a seat at the table. It was at one time a meal honoring the dead. The dead ancestors were seen as powerful forces that linked heaven and earth, bridging this world with the next, and were seen as the patrons of abundance, fertility and a bountiful harvest. At a time when the world around them had gone cold and dead, the ancients offered their deceased ancestors special foods, believing that in doing so, they would bring life back to a cold, dead earth. A venerable place included among those foods were walnuts with their secret interior.

     With the passage of thousands of years and the advent of Christianity, that night of the ancestors continues to be a special meal shared by family. In Poland it is called Wigilia and we can still see remnants of those very distant times when we look at the traditional foods served that night.  Among the twelve dishes of Wigilia, a bowl of kutia (sometimes spelled kucya, or kucia), made with walnuts, honey, wheat grains and poppy seeds (all foodstuffs revered by the ancients), harkens back to these distant times. It was, and still is, a ritual dish in many parts of Poland, especially in the Eastern borderlands, the Kresy Wschodnie, at the Christmas Eve table.  This sweet dish is generally served last. Among poorer households, if kutia was not served, the end of the Christmas Eve meal required at least cracking a handful of nuts, and peering inside to search their luck believing that the coming year will be like the first split nuts. A whole one portended health and happiness in the coming year. Broken ones were ominous signs that suggested illness or death in the family.

    Walnuts are mentioned regularly in the records of Zygmunt (Sigismund) I, who reigned in the years 1506-1548. Five hundred years later, they can still be found on Christmas Eve tables in Poland and in Polonia today, having withstood the test of time. 

Photo by Sophie Hodorowicz Knab

     On October 26, 1939 , Hans Frank, Governor of the General Government in occupied Poland, required all Poles from 18-60 years of age to be employed.

     That edict, issued by the Labor Department and its leader, Hans Frank, which was called arbeitspflict or “work obligation” is more commonly known as the Forced Labor Decree. It marks the day of the beginning of mass deportation of Polish men and women to Germany to work in the armaments industry, as agricultural laborers or wherever the German authorities dictated how the laborers were to be employed to maintain the German war economy. It began the massive enslavement of Polish men, women and children for involuntary forced labor. Among the almost two million Poles sent to Germany, more than half a million were women with their average age around 20.
   
     By December 14 of that same year  the required age for forced labor was changed to that of 14 and it is a known fact that children even younger than that were often forced to work side by side with adults.
   
    By March 7, 1940 Hans Frank noted in his diary: 24,000 Polish women had been sent for agricultural work to the Reich.

   On October 26, 1939 , Hans Frank, Governor of the General Government in occupied Poland, required all Poles from 18-60 years of age to be employed.

     That edict, issued by the Labor Department and its leader, Hans Frank, which was called arbeitspflict or “work obligation” is more commonly known as the Forced Labor Decree. It marks the day of the beginning of mass deportation of Polish men and women to Germany to work in the armaments industry, as agricultural laborers or wherever the German authorities dictated how the laborers were to be employed to maintain the German war economy. It began the massive enslavement of Polish men, women and children for involuntary forced labor. Among the almost two million Poles sent to Germany, more than half a million were women with their average age around 20.
By December 14 of that same year  the required age for forced labor was changed to that of 14 and it is a known fact that children even younger than that were often forced to work side by side with adults.
     
    By March 7, 1940 Hans Frank noted in his diary: 24,000 Polish women had been sent for agricultural work to the Reich.

​    By May 10, 1940 Hans Frank writes: “It has now been decreed that compulsion may be exercised.”   

    The people of Poland were subjected to constant surveillance by the racist bureaucratic and policing apparatus of the Wehrmacht, labor office, SS and Gestapo. They were rounded up on the streets, coming out of church or boarding a bus or train, placed in temporary holding centers and sent to Germany against their will. While in Germany, all Poles were required to wear a patch on their clothes with the letter P.

    According to Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression Office of the United States Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Volume I Chapter 10…the basic elements of the Nazi foreign labor policy consisted of mass deportation and mass enslavement. It was a policy of underfeeding and overworking foreign laborers, of subjecting them to every form of degradation and brutality. It was a policy which compelled foreign workers and prisoners of war to manufacture armaments and to engage in other operations of war directed against their own countries. It was, in short, a policy which constituted a flagrant violation of the laws of war and the laws of humanity.

   You can read a summary of the activities of Hans Frank at: Trial Brief of Hans Frank. Cornell University Law Library P.13 and 14
http://reader.library.cornell.edu/docviewer/digital?id=nur:00957#page/17/mode/1up
​
​​Photo of Polish slave laborer and his family liberated by the 1st US Army near Meggan Germany. Photo credit: Still Picture Branch National Archives in College Park, Maryland. More about the issue of forced labor can be found in: Wearing the Letter P: Polish women as Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany 1939-1945 by Sophie Hodorowicz Knab. Hippocrene Books, Inc.

This is just an excerpt and color photo from one of the new entries in my revised and updated edition of Polish Herbs, Flowers and Folk Medicine: Allspice.  It is with much happiness that I can say that I have finished editing the new and revised edition of Polish Herbs, Flowers and Folk Medicine. There are still some tasks to be completed such as preparing the index and finalizing the front and back design of the book before being sent to print. Originally slated to be released in October, Hippocrene Books, Inc. has worked really hard to overcome time lost due to Covid and to make sure the book will be available by the middle of November. Thank you Hippocrene Books! 

 
​       September 23, 1939 marks the first transport of Polish women to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany during World War II. On this day, let us honor the memory of the 40,000 Polish women, young girls and children who were prisoners of the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

     It is an established fact that they comprised the single largest numbers of prisoners at Ravensbruck. Sixteen thousand Polish women alone were sent to the camp after the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Thousands died of starvation, succumbed to worked beyond their endurance and sent to the gas chambers. Two hundred of the women were shot. Seventy-four underwent illegal and unethical medical experiments.  Eight thousand lived to see liberation.  

      In her account of life in Ravensbrück, Halina Charaszewska-Brückman mentions that although it was strictly forbidden, whenever it was possible, the women held group prayer services. “Every day, when the lights were out, we prayed together in our rooms. One of the prayers constantly recited by all Polish female prisoners was the litany I composed during my work in the factory, during the period of the greatest persecution and stress.”   The following is an excerpt of that litany:

Holy Lord, Holy [and]Mighty, Holy [and]
     Immortal - have mercy on us
From [pestilential] air, hunger, fire and war - protect us Lord
From sudden, unexpected death, lameness
     and hostile intrigue - deliver us Lord
To survive slavery with honor – assist us Lord
Support the weak and frail of body and soul,
      heal the sick – we ask of you Lord
Unity, courage and sober thought be our
     strength – teach us Lord
Enlighten the heart and mind of our enemies – we ask of you Lord
From the winds of war, camps and jails – extricate us Lord
Inspire our conscience with fairness and justice – we ask of you Lord
May the blood of innocents
      never stain our hands – fulfill this Lord
But in righteous grievances, support us
     give us strength and courage – we ask of you Lord
From fratricidal war and domestic feuds – protect us Lord
Through your holy mercy, peace and freedom – return to us Lord
To the land of our fathers, beneath our family roof or the
     open sky, with our families – connect us Lord
For new creative work in health and the strength to stand – allow us Lord
People of good will walking the path of truth and love – bless Almighty God
Sinners who have recognized their faults – be loving Lord
For the souls killed in action and died for the holy cause
     of an independent Fatherland – shine upon them dear God
And if you decree us a swift death, grant us a useful death – we beg of you Lord  
But Almighty God in the unity of the Holy Trinity
pass your judgements –
That we may leave this frightening dark labyrinth of slavery and step into the light of true freedom....

Cześć ich pamięci. Let us honor their memory


Author translation. From the book by Zbigniew Stanuch. Ravensbrück. Historia nie do zapomnienia. Perspektywa-polska. Szczecin 2020  Digital pdf version can be found at:
ipn.gov.pl/pl/publikacje/ksiazki/96255,Ravensbrück-Historia-nie-do-zapomnienia-Perspektywa-polska.html

Every year, come the fall season, my mother would make great batches of thick plum jam that she called powidło  for sandwiches and for making her special spiral sweet bread with jam at Christmas and Easter. Her plum of choice for making the jam was węgierki, that is, Hungarian plums (Prunus domestica-photo).

 This variety of plum, known in Poland for over 700 years, is believed to have come to Poland from Hungary (Węgry)via Asia Minor. According to Polish etymologists, the word “powidło,” meaning jam, appearing in the Polish language at the end of the 15th century, comes from the tool used to stir the fruit mass during the slow cooking. Another name for the “Hungarian” plum is śliwka domowa or home plum. Many a Polish manor house had its own orchard, including the plum tree whose fruit could be eaten raw, baked, fried or stewed and gained wide use in the kitchen in making compote, sweet breads, dumplings called knedle, preserves and liqueurs and, of course, plum jam.  

Here is an excerpt from the diary of Marianna Malinowska Jasiecka at a time when Poland was partitioned by Prussia, Russia and Austria and Poland as a country ceased to exist on the maps of Europe.  Marianna was considered gentry, married to a man of considerable property, had servants and enough free time to keep a diary. She lived in a manor house in Polwica in Wielkopolska(Greater Poland) that was under Prussian rule at the time of her writing.

Polwica, September 1892

“Plum jam is cooked in large white enamel kettles, not in the kitchen but out in the open air, in the orchard. The three-legged trivets I have from Pakosław(where she used to live) and I can still use them.  The caretaker will be responsible for the fire beneath the kettles and the jam will cook under a slow fire. One of the kettles can hold up to 60 pounds of plums with the pits having been removed earlier. Cooking the plums takes three days and is fairly tiring work. But this year I have the cook, the parlor maids…three women over three kettles have to continuously stir the fruit with large wooden paddles being careful not to let the plums burn over the fire. I don’t use any sugar at all in the jam. When the jam is ready, it is poured into crocks, placed in a bread oven to bake in order for it to completely dry, then covered with parchment paper and placed in a cool dry pantry. Well-cooked plum jam keeps its splendid flavor until the next year.”

From the book titled Marianna i Róże (Marianna and Roses).

​

In Władysław Reymont’s Noble Prize-winning book Chłopi(The Peasants: Summer)one of the central female characters named Hanka says “I have vowed to go to Częstochowa for Our Lady of the Angels.”
 
 The gospel gives several connections between angels and the Blessed Virgin Mary such as  the Annunciation when Mary is told she would become the mother of Jesus; the appearance of angels to the shepherds at the birth of Jesus; the angel informing Joseph that he is to flee with God’s child into Egypt. Reference is also made in the much-loved Litany of Loreto (Litania Loretanska, in Polish) which intones “Queen of Angels, pray for us.” (Królowa Aniołow, modł sie za nami) but as a feast day, I was unfamiliar with Our Lady of the Angels. Hanka (or rather her creator, Władysław Reymont) was referring to The Feast Day of Our Lady of the Angels also known as the Portiuncula (Porcjunkuli, in Polish), observed on August 2nd.
 
The story begins in Assisi, Italy and with St. Francis of Assisi. 
​During the first centuries of the Christian era, pilgrims returning from the Holy Land built a small chapel at the foot of the mountain on which Assisi, Italy is situated. This chapel together with a small plot of land was later given to St Benedict in the 6th century and given the name Portiuncula, meaning, Little Portion.
 
In 1209, St. Francis obtained from the Benedictines the use of the Portiuncula, for which he apparently paid the sum total of a basket of fish. He set about restoring what had become a dilapidated chapel, was joined by others, gave it the name Our Lady of the Angels and is considered to be the cradle, the beginning of the Franciscan order: the Order of Friars Minor (O.F.M).
 
One night, while praying in the chapel, St. Francis saw our Lord and His holy mother surrounded by angels and heard the voice of the Lord saying He would grant St. Francis some special request. After a few moments of reflection, St. Francis asked that anyone visiting his little sanctuary, who were contrite and having confessed their sins, receive a plenary indulgence, that is, a pardon, a forgiveness of their sins. 

(The Miracle of the Porziuncola. Painting by Antonio de Oliveria Bernardes(1698) Cathedral of Evora, Portugal)

St. Francis petitioned the pope to be able to offer this spiritual boon to the faithful. It was granted with the restriction that the indulgence could be gained on that one day of the year, on 2nd of August, that being the anniversary of the little chapel's dedication. It became a holiday celebrated by all Franciscans around the world as the patronal feast day of the Franciscan church and monasteries.
 
 The conditions for forgiveness included: confession of sins, attending mass, receiving holy communion,  the recitation of the Lord's Prayer or some reaffirmation of one’s Christian beliefs. From that time on, the Portiuncula, the little chapel also called Our Lady of the Angels, became the site of numerous pilgrimages by devout individuals seeking pardon for their sins. It became known as the Pardon of Assisi and was later extended throughout the universal Church and not limited just to the pilgrimage site in Assisi.  Anyone participating in a pilgrimage or attending their parish church on this day could unburden their sins and receive forgiveness. 
 
Władysław Reymont lived, observed and wrote in the little village of Lipce where the setting for Chłopi (The Peasants) take place. He began writing in 1897.  The fourth and last book in the sequence, “Summer”, was first published in the Polish language in 1909 making it clear that over a hundred years ago, the feast day of Our Lady of the Angels was an important part of the spiritual practices of the Łowicz region in Poland.
 
Struggling to manage the house and farm singlehandedly while her husband was in jail, fears of her losing her husband’s affection, and troubled by her feelings of hurt and anger and inadequacy, the character Hanka sought refuge, solace and forgiveness, by taking a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey to a sacred space on that special feast day. In Poland, that most sacred space was (and still is) Częstochowa. She sought comfort for what ailed her heart and soul… in her faith… on the feast day of Our Lady of the Angels on August 2nd.

On June 25, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. The act assisted in the resettlement of thousands of European refugees at the end of World War II. This included people like my mother and father who had been forced by the Nazi’s to leave Poland and work for the Third Reich as forced laborers in an ammunition factory. The millions of people who found themselves outside their home countries as a result of the war were called “displaced people (DP)” The law authorized the entry of 200,000 displaced persons over the next two years. In 1950 it increased displaced-person admissions to 415,000. It also gave preference to relatives of American citizens and insisted that all applicants must present guarantees by sponsors that housing was waiting for them and they would not displace American workers.
 
 On October 21,1948, the first group of displaced people sailed to the U.S. from Bremerhaven, Germany on the General Black, a U.S. Army transport. The largest group of individuals were Poles, followed by Lithuanians, Czechs, Latvians and Ukrainians, Hungarians and others listed as stateless. Tens of thousands of refugees poured into the U.S. My parents waited three years after their application to obtain the necessary visas for all of us. We arrived on U.S. soil on April 28, 1954, supported financially by the National Catholic Welfare Council. We wore buttons on our coats with the letters N.C.W.C. which I have kept to this day. We lived with my mother’s uncle and his wife for a short time. When my father got a job working in a radiator factory, we moved into a Polish American neighborhood in rooms over an abandoned bakery where the pipes froze in winter and bees made nests between the walls in summer. It lacked a proper bathtub. Saturday night baths were in a round zinc tub, which I’ve also kept to this day. We were enrolled in school. We learned English. We lived with the stigma of being called DP’s or “dipisi” in a derogatory way. We became legal, naturalized citizens of the United States of America. We worked and contributed to this American society.
 
 It was President Truman who called upon and urged Congress to enact legislation to allow some of the refugees of World War II to enter the United States. The year he signed the Displaced Person’s Act I was born in a refugee camp in Hanover, Germany. It was a total of nine years of refugee camps for my parents and their children but the Displaced Person’s Act gave them their final home, their refuge, their place of shelter and safety.