My father was one of 120 survivors of a Prisoner of War camp called Kozielsk from where over 4000 Polish officers, including my grandfather, were taken to be shot in the Katyn Woods by the Soviets, and it was his knowledge of the identity of the perpetrators of this (to this day unpunished) crime that precluded our own return. The United Kingdom graciously invited us, and thousands more in a similar predicament, to make our home in England, and that is how I found myself in London.
The English capital had been severely attacked from the air during the Blitz, and my first memories of the city abound with blackened walls and vast gaps in the long rows of houses full of weeds and rubble, where the bombs had fallen. Many buildings had been cracked opened like eggshells and we could peep inside to see traces of pre-war life in the form of shadows of paintings and furniture which had once been placed against the few standing walls. On one occasion I saw parts of a bed high up on the one, still attached part of a top floor, and even a bathtub hanging from what used to be a bathroom. The war was indeed over, but there were traces of it everywhere.
In my own home the war was even more present: constant gatherings of ex-combatants, constant discussion and re-discussion of battles, constant re-telling of who had not managed to scrape through, who had survived, who had been executed - and by which enemy. At least at enemy level, Poland had, after all, been spoilt for choice!
