Digging for family roots – a journey to Uzbekistan

(for Polish version published in the leading UK daily Polish language newspaper, Dziennik Polski, click here)

It was only recently that my parents discovered the resting place of their fathers. When his family had been deported from their homes in eastern Poland in 1940, my dad was only 9 years old. He saw his father for the last time in his home village of Niechniewicze (now in Belarus) when he had been taken into custody by Soviet forces and transported to Siberia. Since then, no record of his father’s whereabouts had come to light, and he had lived the majority of his life in the UK assuming that his father had perished early in the war.

Three years ago my dad learned through the Ministry of Defence archives that in fact his father had died a free man, and was trying desperately to locate his family while enlisting in the newly forming Polish army in central Asia. Sadly neither his enrollment nor his quest for his wife and children were to prove successful, as he succumbed to typhoid, as so many did, in 1942. His final resting place was the military cemetery of Kermine Station, now a town by the name of Navoi in central Uzbekistan.

And so on a warm Sunday morning my wife and I set out from Bukhara station for the town of Navoi. We had enjoyed the wonders of Bukhara the day before; the narrow lanes, the madrassahs, the ornate mosques dressed in beautiful majolica tiles and the agreeable buzz of a place that has occupied an important strategic place for many centuries and is now a sleepy town, welcoming to all who make their way to admire its well preserved treasures.

We had a map of sorts, provided by Polish archivists in London. We didn’t hold too much faith in the map however, as it had been hand drawn in 1942 by someone who had been stationed at the camp. It was certain that most of the landmarks listed would have been long gone. The only useful point of reference was the nearby railway line and a Russian cemetery adjacent to the location. We had set off early, in full anticipation of a day of hard work, searching, asking, retracting our steps, and with no certainty of a positive outcome.

The journey to Navoi took an hour, and as we neared Navoi I scanned the landscape for any signs that might help us. Around a kilometre out of the town, we passed a Russian cemetery, and I wondered whether this could be the one on the map. A heavily industrialised Uzbek town, there is no reason to expect it to have more than one or two Russian cemeteries, after all.

We disembarked to some suspicious glances. A number of Westerners used the train, mainly to travel between the two popular cities of Samarkand and Bukhara. None of them got off at Navoi however. In a country where the state makes it their business to know the whereabouts of every visitor (and likely every native) we were not following expected behaviour and as such attracted a degree of interest from those at the station.

Navoi is a small city that was developed largely in the 1960s and was an important military production site in the latter years of the Soviet Union. It remained closed to visitors until the mid 1990s, and even now holds little of interest to break the journey between the famous historic cities that sit 100km on either side of it.

Our first plan was to retrace the road back to the Russian cemetery that we had seen from the train. It wasn’t far, and would be a good place to start our wild goose chase. We followed the road for around 5 minutes, and then turned down what seemed to be a deserted street that led towards the tracks.

It was still only around 9.15 and there was no-one in sight. As we rounded the corner at the end of the lane, my heart skipped a beat. We could see in the distance what appeared to be small walled enclave. I had read another account of a visit to an Uzbek cemetery and this looked familiar.

We approached with a mix of excitement and disbelief – surely this search that we had fully expected to take a whole day couldn’t be over in last than 15 minutes? I had received messages of support and encouragement on the previous day from my brother and my dad, who pinned their hopes on the success of our quest but realised how difficult it would be to complete.

The plaque on the wall by the entrance gate confirmed that we had struck lucky at the first attempt!

I stood for a while taking in what we had found. Was it really here that my grandfather had been laid to rest? The grandfather I had never known, who my father had only known for 9 years of his childhood. It was a peaceful place. Maybe the calm of early morning added to the tranquillity of our surroundings, but even two young boys playing on their bikes couldn’t shatter the ethereal serenity of this small plot, which held the remains of over 400 Polish military and civilian casualties. These souls had not died in the torment of the battlefield, but had succumbed to a deadly combination of typhoid, dysentry, heat and malnutrition.

We started to investigate the name boards, which were listed alphabetically. I looked along the board where I wanted to find my grandfather’s name with some excitement, and it was a feeling of relief and satisfaction that I found it there. We had succeeded in our quest!

One of the most useful documents that my dad had received was a plot reference for his father’s resting place. Although I now know that the remains of those deceased may have been moved after 1942, I did use this to locate a point in the cemetery where we worked out he is likely to have been buried. Each grave contained over 70 bodies, so attempting to pinpoint an exact place was a largely futile exercise. However, I did stop at a point and stood for a while, lost in my thoughts for my grandfather, who had lain here for 66 years and had finally received his first visitor. And for my dad, who finally knew where his father had been laid to rest. He would take comfort from the care and dedication that had been taken in preserving this special place, so that the brave men, women and children who had suffered so much at that time would not be forgotten.

Before we set off back along the lane to hitch a ride back to Bukhara, I did complete one special task. I took out a packet of soil and scattered it onto the barren desert earth that covered the graves. The soil had been gathered three months earlier when we had visited Belarus and found the plot of land that my grandfather had cultivated, and on which he had lovingly raised his family until the war had cruelly taken everything away from him. But that is another story….

(Aug 2008)