It was 6.15 am on a deserted railway platform in western Belarus. The early morning sun was shrouded in thick cloud and a light drizzle greeted us as we stepped off the train. There was no sign of the driver who I had been promised would be waiting for us. And then as we started to head for the shelter of the waiting room a short, burly man walked across and waved a greeting to us. He ushered us into his white minibus and soon our group of nine were settled down and listening to the latest Belarusian hit parade.

We had met in Warsaw on the precious evening and caught the night train eastwards. There were nine of us: brothers, cousins and parents. My father was returning to the place of his birth after 68 years and we wanted to be there with him when he finally returned. As our driver left the station and headed northwards, he asked me “Why are you going to Niechniewicze? There is nothing there!” He rarely saw visitors to his homeland, and never from England. For us to travel from far away just to visit an insignificant village in rural Belarus was beyond his understanding.

My father was born in the village of Niechniewicze in 1930. Back then it was part of Poland, and among the mix of Belarusians and Jews was a group of Polish residents, many who were army officers, given land as a reward for military service. My grandfather had moved eastwards to this place following the Polish-Russian war in 1920, and had brought up his family here and lived off the land, selling his harvest in the nearby town of Nowogrodek. It was to Nowogrodek that we now headed, through thick forests on either side of the wide and empty road. We would spend a day here exploring the town, before heading to the village and the plot of land the next day. Having confidently identified where his house has stood using Google Earth, my father was now excited at the prospect of being so close to his first home.

Church in Nowogrodek

It had been a difficult trip to organise. The only way of getting a visa for this totalitarian state was by invitation, and we had stated clearly that our purpose of visiting was tourism. I had even requested a Polish speaking guide to show us around the town of Nowogrodek, before our incidental detour. The visas had taken nearly three months to arrange, and when they finally came they had only given us two days in the country, meaning that our plans had to be condensed into a very short itinerary.

We spent day 1 exploring Nowogrodek, the market town where my father remembered visiting with his father as a young boy. He would ride on the cart and watch with fascination as people went about their business in this, the biggest settlement for many miles. Now, he found several familiar landmarks and it was our turn to hang on to his words as he recalled his adventures there as a young boy. We had heard many of these stories before throughout our childhood. To hear them again but actually “on location” was something special for us all. In the evening we shared a meal and enjoyed a drink, remembering those in the family who had never been able to return here.

Visiting rural Belarus is rather like stepping back in time. Roads are quiet, and many people still use horses to get around. Secret police are everywhere. Even when I took an early morning stroll the next day, I noticed on almost every street corner there was a man reading a newspaper in his car, watching me as I passed. The people we spoke to had been friendly and cheerful, but became immediately uncomfortable if we asked anything that directly or indirectly might lead them to comment on the government, the economy or their standard of life.

On the second day the rain had cleared and we left our guest house in bright sunshine as we boarded the minibus for our trip to Niechniewicze.

My father’s family had been deported from here in February 1940 by the Russians, taken to Siberia where they would stay in a camp in terrible conditions for nearly two years before continuing on a long and tortuous journey across three continents, eventually reaching England in 1947. His father had been arrested five months earlier at the very start of the war, taken eastwards to work as a prisoner and never seen again. For my father to have returned here after 68 years was something he had long thought about but had never imagined would actually happen.

On arrival in the village, we were taken to the local administrator and she came out to greet us and act as our chaperone. By now we expected this attention and accepted it as the way things happened here. We soon drove to the field where my father believed the house had stood and stepped out onto the dirt track. Surrounded by long fields of wheat and with the houses of the village visible around half a mile into the distance, my father led the way along the track with us following eagerly in tow and the local administrator, our guide and our driver standing back, puzzled as to what we were doing here. Leading us past a small clump of trees my father told us how his father had built a cross here to mark the Polish settlement, and how the cross had been a welcome signal on a journey to confirm that they were nearly home. Another hundred yards along the track, and he stopped and declared that this was the spot.

I was surprised, given that he was 9 years old when he last saw this land, that he remembered anything here with confidence. Yet here he was, recalling exactly whose house stood in which spot and where he had played as a child. We stood around him, in this empty field sloping gently upwards from the village to a nearby ridge, and tried to picture the stories that we had heard many times before: of happy times at home with his father, of playing with his older sisters and finally of running for cover as wartime brought almost daily dangers.

All the time our local hosts had stood back, allowing us to hear this old man’s stories and wondering what to make of it. They seemed relaxed enough; clearly we were not looking to claim the land, or seek anything other than a set of memories to take away. My father asked about the cross, and they had said with certainty that no such thing had existed here for at least the last forty years. Yet as we listened to his story, we wondered whether the trees on the corner of the track held any secrets. One of our group went into the little clump and shortly afterwards pulled back the branches of a large old tree to reveal a wooden cross, exactly as our father had described. We were stunned, as were our hitherto indifferent hosts! This relic of the Polish presence in the village had survived through so many years of hardship, where the wood would surely have been used for essential building material.

Our guide seemed to adopt an immediately increased respect for my father, now that there was no doubting the accuracy of his memory and the motives of our visit here. He suggested to us that the cross might now be registered as a monument of national historic importance, and we hope this process has begun.

Maybe if one of us returns here someday there will be a plaque with the story of my grandfather and the other settlers for all to see. That would be fitting tribute to those who had sought to live here in peace and had to endure the worst torments of war. For the family group who came to Belarus it was reward enough to stand in that field, with my father, as he finally returned to the place of his birth.

Belarus and the day when X really did mark the spot is a post from: 501 Places

It’s funny how people with the most amazing stories to tell are often the least vocal in sharing their experiences. This was certainly the case with the driver we hired for our short stay in Belarus.

Yevgeni had met us early one morning at a rainy railway station in western Belarus. We were a group of 9 from the UK and Poland, here with my father to find the place where he and his family had spent the early years of their life before they were deported eastwards in 1940. On that first day, Yevgeni merely dropped us off in the nearest town and left us to explore with the help of a local historian, as had been arranged. He expressed some surprise as to why we wanted to spend time in this place, but seemed friendly enough.

The next day, he was with us for the day. Driving us to the little village where my father was born, and staying back and observing while we explored places that meant a lot to my father, and to the rest of us through our parents’ childhood stories. At first watchful, as it became clear we were just a bunch of visitors wanting to take pictures and memories from otherwise unremarkable places in the Belarussian coutryside, Yevgeni relaxed but still said very little. We had an official escort who could speak Polish, and he did all the talking. Once we said goodbye to our local escort, it was Yevgeni’s job to drop us back at the station in time for the night train.

We were very early, and rather than spend several hours at the deserted station, he invited us to his home to see where he lives and have some food. We were thankful for his hospitality, but reluctant to accept, being a group of 9 and imagining that he lived in a small appartment in the city it would be a big imposition. But he asked again, and we agreed to visit for a drink after we’d got ourselves a snack in the city. So he collected us again, and took us to his home.

It was certainly not a humble appartment. I had assumed he worked as a bus driver, but he actually owned the vehicle, and two others, and was contracted to work by the tourism services when visitors were coming. He was in the middle of renovating the home, and clearly was an accomplished builder and mechanic. As he showed us around, we all shared stories of our lives and work. That’s when he described to us his 20 years of service in the Soviet navy, and how he had reached the post of submarine commander. Indeed, he had been in a submarine that was a sister vessel to the Kursk, which suffered a terrible tragedy several years ago. He and his wife, who met us with the same hospitality and warmth, now fostered a number of children from the south east of the country; children whose families had been devastated by the Chernobyl accident.

Throughout the evening Yevgeni shared his stories and listened to ours, a mix of Russian and Polish sufficient to allow free-flowing conversation. He maintained a humility and quiet dignity about him that demanded respect, and at the same time endeared him to us. He had lived a full life, no doubt packed with adventure and some danger, and now kept up a busy “retirement”, using his pension which was likely a generous one against the low cost of living in that part of the country, to both feed an entrepreneurial spirit and also to help children from the poorer parts of the country.

Life in Belarus is not easy, but meeting Yevgeni and the others we encountered on our short stay in Belarus left us with a very positive impression of the country; if not of the way that the country’s political system has held the people in an economic timewarp, then in the friendliness, warmth and dignity of its people.

Dinner with an ex-Soviet submarine commander is a post from: 501 Places

I have to admit that Belarus is not top of many people’s holiday lists.
My trip too, was not made on the pretext of visiting many of the fascinating historic sites of this sleepy corner of eastern Europe.

I had come here with eight of my family members to find the village where my father had lived the first nine years of his life. He travelled with us, now 78 years old and returning this place for the first time in nearly 70 years. I will save the family account for another post.

What I will mention today, is that Belarus actually has quite a lot to offer the interested visitor. We didn’t go to the capital Minsk, although I hear it is a clean, attractive city with wide boulevards and impressive buildings. The west and centre of the country, where our visit was focussed, is home to a number of old castles and fortresses from the early part of the last Millenium. The town of Nowogrodek (Navahradak), once an important Polish town and now a one-horse town where little seemingly happens (we were the first British visitors there for a long time, we were told) prides itself on its old ruin and a museum dedicated to Mickiewicz, the famous Polish poet.

Our welcome was warm and understated everywhere we went. Food and drink were very cheap, and our accommodation was basic yet adequate. One thing we did notice however was that no-one would answer any questions around how life is for them, or any other topic that could be vaguely inviting to a criticism of the state. And when out walking early in the morning, I don’t think it was a coincidence that on almost every corner I passed a man sitting alone in a car reading a newspaper and surreptitiously observing, in case we were stoking the flames of revolt.

The people in Belarus are not well-off, and it is reminscent of how I recall visiting Poland as a child in the 1970s. For the interested visitor however, I would recommend exploring this fascinating country. Be prepared for a good welcome, service that is polite but that will leave you scratching your head in bewilderment, and most of all for plenty of behind the scenes attention.
That’s enough from me now though.. there may be someone watching….

Belarus – Europe’s last true dictatorship is a post from: 501 Places