Reflections of a war hero, From labour camps and battle injuries, to laughter and dance, a polish major details a life well-lived

Posted Feb 16, 2012 By Derek Dunn

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EMC Lifestyle - Major Stanislaw Tarazewicz takes quiet pleasure in watching the trees sleep in the expansive front yard of his Dunrobin country-home. The tiny birds busily searching for food, even the pesky squirrels forever causing mischief, all life thriving in the winter stillness contribute to a small grin he has maintained for more than 90 years now.

It is key to a long and fulfilling life, he says from the living room on a bright and crisp afternoon. To smile, to appreciate beauty in all its forms, to trust in one's God: these are some of the principles that can see a man through repeated arrests, labour camps, multiple war injuries, and finding buddies dead in the field.

Tarazewicz's life all those years ago, in far away countries, fighting the Nazi terror, was different in many external ways. But at heart the teenage boy and old man are the same in many more.

"I talk with a smile, you see? Always. I don't worry about things," said Tarazewicz. "But I have a heart. I have a soul. I am very touchy about some things."

One of those things is fighting for the honour of his country, which he did as a teenage boy in 1939, when he joined the Polish forces in time to see his part of Poland fall to the Soviets. He was arrested, spent 10 months in a Lithuanian internment camp, and then escaped back to Wilno, Poland to join the Polish underground army - which became the largest and most effective underground resistance movement in Europe.

The next year or two he managed to escape capture, but eventually was spotted on the Street by the Soviet secret police and arrested again. He was deported to a labour camp deep in Russia. He learned from a newspaper clipping that a deal was inked to free the prisoners.

"It was only on paper. We had to escape."

He made it back to enlist in the Polish Army. He was only 19, so was forced to lie about his age. The army was eventually evacuated from the USSR - Stalin's paradise, or the "inhumane land" as Poles called it - to Iraq. Intense military training in Iraq and Palestine (now Israel), Lebanon and Egypt, prepared him for the battle ahead in Italy. In the historic battle of Monte Cassino, Tarazewicz displayed exceptional courage and dedication, and was awarded his country's highest honour: the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari Class V.

It was there, after clearing the mines, that he was wounded three times on the first day.

"I was badly traumatized by the death of my closest friend, Mundek Kluczynski, who as killed on the eleventh of May, at the beginning of the battle," Tarazewicz said in his memoir. "He was shot through the head, and I found him the next day, as if he was sitting by a big boulder. I was terribly shocked and saddened and felt a bitter taste of the end that was awaiting us."

On day two his Jeep was ripped apart by a land mine. Lying face down in the huge crater, he realized all limbs were attached but none were moving. Moments later he regained feeling and tended to the wounded driver and his lieutenant.

And yet he found moments of humour on the battlefield, a testament to humanity's ability to endure. An enemy mortar that hit a cesspool managed to spray the unpleasant content in every direction.

"It stank so badly that it was more unpleasant than the German mortars," according to the memoir.

By the end of the war it was clear that Tarazewicz was a national hero. But it was off to Great Britain, not a communist nation, for him and the rest of the Polish Second Corps. There he built camps for civilian Poles until the group was demobilized in 1949.

"There is no reason for war," Tarazewicz declared.

He doesn't wax nostalgic about his war years. Just the facts and horror.

LIFE AFTER WAR

Civilian life suited him. He enjoyed seven years in Manchester as a draftsman, becoming lead dancer in the Polish National Dance Troupe, captain of the Polish Volleyball Team and by enjoying the freedom of youth denied him up to that point.

He met a beautiful Polish girl during those years, Teresa Oczepko, 10 years his junior, but neither appeared ready to settle.

"Everybody knew him. But he was an old man, so who cares," said a laughing Teresa, a tall and elegant woman in her early 80s today. For the most part she sat quietly with perfect posture, languidly smoking a cigarette, fondly recalling a story or two from there 30 years in Montreal.

At one point she leaped to her feet and skipped from the room to retrieve a newspaper with her twenty-something photo on the front page, with a ravenous smile. Other times she would quietly steal into the kitchen and return with even more Polish sweets for all.

But her childhood years were anything but glamorous. When her father was killed, mother and child were sent to Siberia. The trip back was by cattle train. Of the 15 kids on board only herself and another boy survived.

"They just threw them out on the way. It was horrible," she said, then found reason to smile with beautiful twinkling eyes at another post-war memory.

She was separated from her month for about six months. They ended up in Nairobi, Kenya, living in a Polish settlement. In round huts with dirt floors, she called it "primitive" but somehow "a good life." From there it was to Tehran, Persia, before a family member could get them to England.

The couple married in 1955 after she insisted he participate as her equal in a wedding party.

"He was a great man, a real gentleman."

Two years later, in Montreal, their son Richard was born. They wanted a name that was both English and French, and that it was the same as some hockey heroes didn't hurt either.

Their son's name says something about how they feel as immigrants. They are in favour of keeping one's culture, but to assimilate is also important.

Tarazewicz came to Canada on contract with the Shawinigan Water and Power Corporation, and the General Engineering Company, where he specialized in the design and operation of paper-making machines. He also worked in the design of the La Fontaine tunnel, under the St. Lawrence River. It was a design unique in the world at that time. For the last nine years of his working career, he was at Canada Cement Lafarge.

The couple retired to Dunrobin in 1987. Tarazewicz is past chairman of the Polish Combatant's Association, Ottawa chapter.

Teresa is less interested in the quiet life that her husband now enjoys, preferring to entertain like they did during their dazzling days in Montreal. But she is also fond and appreciative of their neighbours.

"The neighbours I have are irreplaceable. They take Stan to Riverside (hospital). Cut the grass. They are so good to us."

"We have a beautiful life," Tarazewicz said. "Even at my 90 years of age. I can look at the trees grow and get mad at the squirrels. It is a good life."




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