Eugenia Wasilewska

Eugenia Wasilewska (* 1922 in Saborol, Rovno district , Galicia ) is a survivor of the deportations to Kazakhstan during the Second World War and is one of the contemporary witnesses through her publication.

Life

Family; Youth in Saborol

Eugenia Wasilewska , a daughter of Heinrich Gustav Laessig (* 1895 at Zaborol Castle in Galicia ; † 1982 on loan yesterday in the Federal Republic of Germany) and his first wife Helene, née Niewodrinska (* 1900), who died early , is the paternal granddaughter of the Gustav Laessig couple ( 1857–1936), owner of Zaborol castle and estate, and Wilhelmine Ladislawa Koszyc (Kosietz) (* 1857 Tuchov (Roman Catholic parish) in Galicia, † 1938 Zaborol, Rovno district), buried in the crypt chapel of Zaborol . She is a daughter of the couple Wenzeslaus Koszyc (Koschitz, Kosietz) (* 1813 Nieder-Bludowitz / Oberschlesien, Evangelisches Pfarramt AB, † 1877 in Saybusch / Galizien), head of the local tax office and Appolonia Stecka , died after 1875 in Styszawa (parish office Saybusch), and his first divorced marriage was Hermann Gabriel Ebenhöch (1848–1916), Revident of Archduke Albrecht von Habsburg's domain Saybusch ( Żywiec ) in Galicia, then Prince Schwarzenberg's fund administrator in Krumau.

Four Ebenhöch children came from this marriage and temporarily lived with their half-siblings Laessig at Zaborol Castle.

• Hermine Ebenhöch (* 1877 Saybusch, † 1934 Gut Zaborol, buried in his crypt chapel), unmarried;
• Richard Johann Ademar Ebenhöch (* 1882 Orzew; District Rowno, † 1950 Schwäbisch Gmünd), KuK governor, married to Maria Anna Margarethe Mahal (1887–1958)
• Rudolf Wilhelm Wladislaw Ebenhöch (* 1886 Orzew, † 1945 Vienna), graduate engineer for chemistry in Landeck / Tyrol, married to his cousin Olga Ebenhöh (1892–1983)
• Olga Ebenhöch (* 1889, † 1912), married to the Imperial Russian officer Leonid Novitzki (* 1885, fallen 1918), died with the first child at his birth, buried in the crypt chapel in Zaborol

Four Laessig children, half-siblings of the Ebenhöch children, lived at Schloss Zaborol until 1939:

• Adolf Laessig (* 1894, † 1913 Zaborol, in a hunting accident), presumably shot by rebel farmers
• Heinrich Gustav Laessig (* 1895, † 1982 loan yesterday from Gießen, Federal Republic of Germany); probably remarried
• Maria Laessig (* 1896), declared dead on December 31, 1945 ( District Court of Giessen )
• Wilhelmine Laessig (* 1899), declared dead on December 31, 1945 ( District Court of Gießen ), Perini married since 1919 (* ...)

Zaborol Castle and Manor in Galicia were the center of life for Eugenia Wasilewska and her family until 1939 . Eugenia is the niece of the writer Maria Scholz .

Deportation to Kazakhstan

At the beginning of the Second World War, when the German-Soviet non-aggression pact came into force on August 23, 1939, German troop units attacked western Poland on September 1, 1939, and Soviet troops occupied eastern Poland ( Kresy ) on September 17, 1939 , Heinrich Gustav Laessig won Soviet authorities arrested as large landowners and expropriated his property - around 20,000 acres of arable and forest land. The mansion (Schloss Zaborol) burned down after the looting and was later leveled. In February 1940, Eugenia Laessig, her older brother Jurek (Jasiek, Henryk) Laessig (* 1919, † 1971 in Kedzierzyn or Canada) and family members survived the deportation to New Suchotino in Kazakhstan in a train.

Marriage and escape to the west

At the age of eighteen, in July 1940, Eugenia Laessig married Kazik Wasilewski in Petropawlowsk ( Petropawl ) , a young member of the Polish army from Korets on the Polish-Russian border, now in Ukraine, who had been deported to New Sukhotino . Having become pregnant, she dared to flee to Poland. She came on the war front of the German and Soviet troop units that had been fighting for land ownership and administrative sovereignty in Central and Eastern Europe since June 22, 1941 (outbreak of the German-Soviet War ). In Litzmannstadt, as the Polish city of Łódź was called under German administration from 1939 to 1945, she met her father Heinrich Gustav Laessig, who had been released from prison. In December 1941 Eugenia Wasilewska gave birth to her daughter Margarethe in Lodz.

At the end of the Second World War in 1945 - the Soviet Army had conquered western Poland and was advancing towards eastern Germany - the family fled to western Germany, spent some time on loan yesterday , where their father settled. Then Eugenia Wasilewska lived in Bad Nauheim in her third marriage and gave birth to her son Georg (* 1946). She went to London and the daughter received a school education in England. They then moved to Canada , where she now lives in Port Coquitlam , her fourth marriage . As a contemporary witness, Wasilewska published writings about her deportation by Soviet authorities to Kazakhstan and the flight to the west.

publication

• The Silver Madonna or The Odyssey of Eugenia Wasilewska. George Allen and Unwin, London 1970, ISBN 0-04-920029-1 .
  • The silver Madonna - story of an odyssey. German by Isabella Nadolny . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1971, ISBN 3-455-08008-1 . (The title of the book goes back to a medallion with a picture of the Blessed Mother Mary, which accompanied her through the years.)

literature

• German Gender Book Volume 172 (45th General Volume). CA Starke Verlag , Limburg an der Lahn 1975, family line Ebenhöch , Ebenhöh , Ebenhoch von Hocheneben from Hohenfels in the Upper Palatinate, pp. 233–288; Text passage on the Laessig at Zaborol Castle, pp. 254–255.
• German Gender Book Volume 220 (60th General Volume), CA Starke Verlag , Limburg an der Lahn, 2009, extension of the family tree Ebenhöch, Ebenhöh, Ebenhoch von Hocheneben in Volume 172/1975, ISBN 978-3-7980-0220-3 . Text passage on the Laessig at Zaborol Castle, Rowno district, pages 297 and 300