By any stretch of the imagination, Teresa Jaworska was a courageous young woman, and her daughter, longtime Vineyarder Basia Jaworska, writes her true-life tale in “Days of the Owl.” The book’s title refers to Teresa’s wartime pseudonym in the Polish resistance as a teenager fighting the Nazis in her homeland during World War II.
We are dropped into the story immediately, as 15-year-old Teresa is awakened by her cousin, who says, “The Germans bombed Poland. We’re at war!” Rather than fearful, Teresa is resolute. “Now it’s my turn,” she says.
Jaworska continues, “She made her vow to the armies of ancestors who fought off invaders throughout Polish history. She would follow in their footsteps to reclaim their pride and the country, which had seen only 21 years of independence from the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires. The country’s short-lived freedom was gifted to Teresa and her generation after centuries without a nation, and she wasn’t about to let it go without a fight.”
Through Teresa, we learn what daily life was like under the Nazis. The Polish population faced daily assaults, arrests, and death, yet we are swept up in Teresa and her comrades’ resolve as they undertake nerve-racking, brave acts. Teresa, trained as a medic, retrieved wounded and dead soldiers from the rubble and delivered messages and supplies. Tales of her narrowly escaping death read like episodes in suspense novels, but are sobering because they were real.
Teresa’s participation in the Warsaw Uprising is gripping, bringing the Nazi horror home, as well as the betrayal by the Russians, who had promised to drive the invaders out if the Poles helped defend the USSR. Jaworska writes, “Stalin … had other plans for Poland. After joint battles were fought, he quietly had the patriotic Polish fighters murdered, eliminating any possible opposition to his ultimate scheme of annexing Poland into the Soviet Union.”
After the Nazis finally, brutally end the uprising, we follow Teresa through her harrowing experience in a prisoner of war camp. Once freed, Teresa tries to build a life without a country to return to, which takes her to Italy and England before her eventual immigration to America.
The strength of Teresa’s friendships, as well as her various love interests over the years, creates a narrative that is more than a war story, and rather one of a resilient young woman coming of age under extraordinary circumstances.
Interestingly, Jaworska writes in the prologue that she grew up with these tales of both her parents, never considering them unusual: “But as we came to find out, their war experiences were anything but commonplace outside the small New Jersey Polish community where we grew up. It wasn’t until my adult life that I realized how extraordinary they were, and how lucky we were that they not only survived, but chose to share their stories rather than bury them, as many survivors had.”
Jaworska relied on both the recollections she grew up with and various interviews with those interested in her experiences, as well as conversations she had with her mother’s girlfriends, whom Teresa had fought alongside in Poland, at a 50th reunion honoring the Warsaw Uprising.
Speaking about her choice to write the book as what is termed a “creative memoir,” Jaworska says, “I didn’t want it to be a history lesson, but I still wanted to get the message across by embedding the history in a story. Also, [it allowed me] to include dialogue that shows the dynamic between the people, including that which I translated from Polish to English to try to give people a more immersive experience of the culture.”
“Days of the Owl” captures often unknown stories about the Polish resistance, especially women’s role in fighting fascism during the war. Jaworska writes in the preface, “With democracies threatened worldwide, heroic stories of resistance seem more instructive than ever. Polish hasn’t been given a fair shake. I’m very proud of my Polish heritage through my parents; both of them went through such amazing trauma, but turned it into an adventure in an empowering way.”
Having completed her mother’s tale, Jaworska is now at work on her father’s story in “Everything It’s Okay: Surviving Siberia and 20th Century Authoritarians,” which is sure to add another important perspective, reminding us that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
“Days of the Owl” by Basia Jaworska. Available at Edgartown Books, and Bunch of Grapes and Off Main in Vineyard Haven. An interview with Jaworska about her publishing process is available online in the Islanders Write July 10 newsletter: bit.ly/MVT_JaworskaStory.
