WW2 is significant to my maternal family history, a story described as the ‘forgotten odyssey’, forcibly removed from Poland (now Ukraine) to the depths of Siberia via inhuman cattle train. The journey lasted over a month travelling through dense pine forests before furthering on by sledge to forced labour camps. An estimated 1,700,000 people were sent, only 500,00 survived the harsh conditions and malnutrition with only 115,000 escaping with General Anders army to Iran. The women and children in my family were to become refugees in the jungles of Uganda for the next 6 years before being shipped as ‘aliens’ to Liverpool on RMS Scythia, a converted Cunard Ocean liner troop ship.
Siberia is one of the worlds coldest inhabited places known for its snowfall and subarctic conditions. Female pinecones protect pine tree seeds, keeping them safe during freezing winter temperatures. Now living in Norfolk, the county where my paternal grandparents met during WW2, I walk through defensive pinewoods, planted to provide shelter and protection.
Pinecones in my work have come to symbolise strength in adversity, female warriors of protection, navigating the harshest of conditions.
“I was twelve-and-a-half-years old, and determined to survive, no matter what. There were many pine trees, so I tried to eat pine buds and sucked on the branches; this seemed to satisfy my hunger. Hunger is the most terrible thing.”
(Anita Pashchwa -Kozicka (Wojciechowska, 2009, p.157)
“I remember we would go to pick up pinecones for heating in the nearby pine forest, which ended just where the potato field belonging to the kolkhoz began. We would gather some pinecones into our sack, then mother would stray into the potato patch and, while I sat on a tree branch as a lookout, fill the middle of the sack with potatoes. We would then fill the upper third of the sack with pinecones”
(Witold Lukaszewski, www.polishexilesofWW2.org)
Crumbs, 2022, Aluminium, Steel, Porcelain
Sisters Home Nest, 2022, Aluminium, Pine Needles