How a gypsy camp woman became a knight of the Order of the Renaissance of Poland: "An ordinary grandmother" by Alfreda Markowska

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In Poland, Alfreda Markovskaya is called the gypsy Irene Sendler. And she called herself "an ordinary grandmother." The world learned about the sufferings and deeds of the nomadic gypsy only in the new millennium. Who owes Markov's life? And what prevented her from entering the list of the Righteous Among the Nations?

On January 30, 2021, Alfreda Markovskaya, known as "Aunt Noncha", passed away. During the Second World War, having lost her entire family and miraculously escaped death, she saved about fifty young children from death.

Serene time

According to the documents, she was born on May 10, 1926. But she did not know her real date of birth. She was born in a rich camp near Stanislavów. Nowadays it is Ukrainian Ivano-Frankivsk. Noncha's parents belonged to the "Polish Roma" - nomadic gypsies of Poland.

Men in Alfreda's family played horses, women wondered and ran the household. Markovskaya recalled childhood as a serene time. By the beginning of the war, their camp numbered one hundred people! They lived together and were not afraid of anything.

Noncha married very young, about sixteen years old. She liked Gucho, the future husband, but he had a serious "flaw." He did not drink vodka at all. Which in itself promised a boring life for a non-companion person.

I didn't want to live anymore

In 1939, within the framework of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler and Stalin divided Poland. Fleeing from the Red Army, Nonchi's camp moved to the territory occupied by the Germans. Here, on the lands of present-day Ukraine, the nationalists managed to raise their heads. Pogroms of Jews and Roma became part of everyday life.

1941 year. The camp does not wander, it hides. In the forest camp, everyone tries to be quiet. Noncha with cards set off to “mine”, as is customary among gypsy women. I mapped out distant villages for myself, so as not to push in vain with the comrades and make good money. She was lucky that day. They wanted to guess in every home.

Satisfied Alfreda returned to the camp, bending under the weight of "booty" - simple peasant food, tobacco, moonshine … But on the way she was intercepted by a woman who shouted: "You can't go there, they will kill you!" She hid the girl in the barn, from where she heard the shots …

The next day, on the site of the camp, Noncha discovered ashes. And the bodies in the ditch … Alfreda was the only one who managed to escape death. Only later did it become clear that Gucho was then in Roswaduwa.

Near the town of Biala Podlaska, almost all members of the Nonchi camp were killed by the Nazis. About 80 people, the largest Romani family in Poland. “When my family was killed,” Noncha said, “I no longer wanted to live.” In search of her surviving relatives, she - by train and on foot - went to the places of detention of the Roma, from where she escaped every time.

What's the difference, whose children are these?

Noncha found Gucho. In 1942 they were arrested and sent to the ghetto. They escaped. After all the ordeals, we ended up in Rozwaduwa, where the Germans organized a labor camp for Roma. We settled on the railroad. A work permit - kenkarta - reduced the threat of another arrest. Therefore, many Roma received "leftist" papers for a bribe.

On a piece of iron, Alfreda was met by a train going to Auschwitz. At the station, the carriages were "cleaned". They simply disposed of the bodies of prisoners who had not survived the terrible journey. Noncha began to carry the children out of the carriages. Soon the prisoners found out about her. Desperately, the camp train passengers passed the babies over to her. Noncha, under the cuffs of her clothes, carried them to a safe place.

It is not difficult to imagine what the exposure threatened the girl … Was Noncha afraid as a teenager herself? She did not expect to survive the war. But saving the children became her main goal. Noncha took them off the camp train. Or, having heard about the next "action", I was looking for survivors at the scene of the massacre.

Sometimes I had to shelter a dozen babies at the same time. To feed so many mouths, she begged and stole. I got out fake documents for them. Many of the rescued were returned to their relatives, some were placed in gypsy families, others remained with Noncha. About fifty survived this way. To the strange question why Noncha saved not only Gypsy, but also Jewish, Polish and even German children, she answered: “What difference does it make, Jewish or ours, children all the same”.

My heart is left in the forest

In 1944, the region was liberated by Soviet troops. As the Red Army forced the Roma to join their ranks, Markovskaya, along with her husband and several of the rescued children, fled to the so-called Returned Lands.

Gucho began to earn money as a tinker, led a camp. The couple roamed around Pomerania and Western Poland. But the relative calm did not last long. In the 1960s, the Polish authorities came to grips with the traditional Gypsy way of life. The nomads had to part with their usual life under the threat of a prison term.

In 1964, the Markovskaya family settled near Poznan. After the death of her husband - the work with hydrochloric acid affected - Noncha moved to Gorzow Wielkopolski. But it turned out to be impossible to forget the nomad. "My heart is left in the forest!" - said Alfreda.

She gave me a second life

Noncha did not elaborate on what she suffered during the war. And she no longer remembered exactly how many and when she hid in the gypsy featherbeds. Surrounded by two hundred grandchildren from six relatives and many adopted children, by her new camp, she drove the past away from herself. Perhaps the world would not have known about her feat so much as he had not heard the story of her cousin, who saved children in the same way and took her story to the grave.

Case decided the matter. Roma activists became interested in Nonchai. And among them is the artist Karol "Parno" Gerliński. For him, Nonchi's story was inextricably linked with his own destiny. The fate of a gypsy boy who was once taken off the train bound for Auschwitz. On that day, a couple of seconds were enough for the mother of three-year-old Karol to secretly transfer her son to Noncha.

In the child's clothes, she found a piece of paper with a name and address. An illiterate girl was helped to write a letter. Six months later, the father came for the boy. “Noncha gave me a second life,” said Gerlinsky, who lost almost his entire family during the Nazi genocide.

Roma activists asked for help from the Department of Ethnic Minorities of the Ministry of the Interior. The search began, as a result of which it was possible to collect the memories of fifty people!

Quiet heroine, righteous woman, ordinary grandmother

On October 17, 2006, Lech Kaczynski presented Markovskaya with the Commander's Cross with the Star of the Order of the Renaissance of Poland. Noncha became the first Roma to receive such a high state award. They talked about "an example of quiet human heroism." In 2017, Alfreda was awarded the title of Honorary Resident of Gorzow Wielkopolski. Murals with her portrait appeared on the streets.

Poland is the leader in the number of the so-called Righteous Among the Nations. She has more than six thousand of them. Surprisingly, Noncha was not included in this list. It was not possible to document the Jewish origin of one of the children. It's just that many of the rescued Jewish children grew up and went abroad, and the nomadic Noncha's ties with them were cut off. Others were so small that they do not know to whom they owe their lives!

In the last ten years of her life, Noncha began to lose her memory. She lost her sense of reality. Her past returned to her. Cried all night long. She hid bread in reserve. She arranged sleeping places for long-grown children. She said to the household: "Put the cauldron, cook potato peelings, they will wake up and want to eat." Or she suddenly shuddered from a knock on the door: “This is behind us! We must run!"

Seventy-odd years later, she was still saving children. Just "Aunt Noncha" for everyone who knew her. Human mother. "Dear ones, I am an ordinary grandmother."