Barbara Gołajewska-Chudzikiewicz, Świat, którego już nie ma

Abstract

The biographical account of Barbara Gołajewska-Chudzikiewicz was recorded in 2007 as a part of the documentary project “The Forgotten Witnesses to the 20th century” run by the KARTA Centre and the History Meeting House. The narrator tells the story of her life, as well as the story of her family, starting in 1918. As the material is very extensive, in this publication only the fragments regarding the years 1918–1945 are presented. The narrative, in a manner typical for landed gentry of the Kielce region, contains a description of Ms Gołajewska-Chudzikiewicz’s childhood and family life in a small landed estate of Bieganów in the times of the Second Polish Republic. It gives insight into the course of her education, upbringing of children and young people in a landowning family, relations between the servants and the landowners, everyday life in the manor house, along with civilization difficulties, celebrating of holidays, the manor-village relations, and finally the general way the landed family functioned between the countryside and the city. The next important part of the narrative starts with the outbreak of WWII and conveys the everyday life of the manor under German occupation in the General-Government. The narrator describes the functions of the Polish manor in occupation conditions: helping and giving shelter to those displaced from the territories incorporated to the Third Reich, helping the Warsaw Uprising fugitive fighters, active participation in the Home Army structures, and relations with the German invader, as well as food and clothes extortions run by armed groups of unknown provenance, and confrontation with the Soviet army entering from the East.