Free Homeland by Clare Francis

then of course I began to wonder if there might be – what are we to say? – special obstacles. But what does all this matter now? The miracle has happened. You have survived.
    This prompts an anxious thought – that you might not have received my first hasty note. In this I relayed the simple desolate fact that you and I, with Janina, are all that is left of
     our beloved family. Father and Mother, Aleks and Krysia, little Enzio – all are gone. I wish I could tell you that their deaths were unavoidable, I wish I could pretend that each met a
     peaceful untroubled end, but that would be to deny the truth, and in this devious new world where everything is distorted and obscured, truth is all we have left. We must never forget, Helenka.
     And we must do everything in our power to make sure no one else forgets either.
    In recounting what happened, I should say at the outset that I cannot hope to do justice to the love, selflessness and nobility of spirit shown by each and every one of our family in the
     most desperate of circumstances. They endured so much, Helenka, and with such bravery and forbearance, only for their lives to be destroyed at the whim of madmen not worthy of bowing down at
     their feet. If God has His reasons, I’m no longer interested in what they might be.
    Did you ever get any of our letters during the winter of ’39/’40? I have often wondered. Mother wrote regularly during the early autumn, and then I wrote, first to tell you of
     Father’s death, and again in December with the news that Aleks was a prisoner of war. I sent my letters to the medical school, thinking there was a better chance of finding you there, but
     perhaps they never got through. The last letter we received from you was on, I think, November 14th, and you made no mention of having received anything from us. In a way this was a good thing,
     because then I could persuade Mother that your subsequent silence was due to nothing more sinister than the breakdown of the postal service.
    We heard from Aleks in December. Before then, we had no idea if he was dead or alive. He sent a card: just three lines in Russian to say he was alive and well and ‘based in
     Starobielsk’ in the Ukraine. Mother cried with joy at the news. Although he was clearly a prisoner of war, she thought that as a soldier he would be well treated. This – with the
     belief that you had survived – was a great comfort to her in the terrible months to come. It is a blessing she never knew the truth.
    We will probably never know when Aleks was murdered – the late spring or early summer of 1940 seems most likely – but sadly his fate cannot be in doubt, nor the monstrous nature
     of it. I wish I could tell you otherwise.
    I hold a particular memory close to my heart. It is of Aleks’s farewell dinner, not only because it was the last time we saw him, but because it was the last time we were gathered
     together as a family. The end, effectively, of our life at Podjaworka. I remember everything so clearly – everyone’s expressions, what they were wearing, what they said –
     because there was a moment when I thought, will we ever be together again? When I realised I must retain every detail and cherish it. And I did. I sat quietly and watched everyone in turn,
     hoarding the memories against the dangerous times ahead. The strange thing – though not strange at all – was that I saw Aleks doing the same, looking slowly round the table,
     absorbing each face, marking it on his memory. He too was taking his last farewell. I feel sure that when he came to stare death in the face it was this picture he carried in his mind, of our
     family sitting round the table at Podjaworka, in that last sweet summer of peace.
    If there is one crumb of consolation, it is that Aleks achieved his ambition to serve his country and his beloved brigade. Did you ever read his letters from his first posting at Lidzbark? I
     read them when I got home that July, and he was never