Inspiration for the Resistance Painter
For years, I had a story running in my head like a recurring dream: the protagonist was a young woman artist who created sculptures for grave sites based on the life-stories of her dying clients. When I finally sat down to write this story, something strange happened. Along with the story of Jo, the grave sculptor, I kept hearing the voice of an older woman – an artist named Irena who turned out to be Jo’s grandmother. I was rather miffed that this other voice kept intruding on my ‘real’ story, and truth be told, I was a little afraid of Irena. But the more I wrote, the more fluidly Irena’s character came to me while I struggled to a get a grip on Jo. When I settled on a dual narrative— contemporary Jo and 1940’s, Irena—early readers said things like, Irena’s voice sounds like you’re writing autobiography.
Janina Zaborowska in the POW camp at Fallingbostel.
I had never lived in Nazi occupied Warsaw, never ferried people through the sewers or suffered through bombings and starvation, but her story came pouring out of me. I thought I knew where this voice came from. My long-time partner, Mark, is of Polish descent and his mother Janina Zaborowska lived through all these nightmares including being captured by the Nazis during the Warsaw Uprising and interned as a military prisoner in Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp. But she had also been an integral part of the Armia Krajowa, the main underground resistance group, rising from Girl Guide leader to the rank of Second Lieutenant as an official in charge of training liaison officers in Warsaw, to leader of a counter-intelligence group called The Brigade of the Anonymous. Later, she was written about in Polish history books and a photo of her, along with fellow sewer guides, hangs in the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising. My mother-in-law had been awarded the Virtuti Militari Fifth class and the Cross of Valour by the Polish government and was undeniably a hero.
Before the war, she’d begun studying medicine in Warsaw, and after she was liberated, she finished her medical studies at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland where she wrote lecture notes phonetically and then transposed them to English. Emigrating to Canada in the 1950’s, she and her husband, Eugene, settled in Oakville, Ontario, where she was one of only two, female family doctors. Later, she began taking painting lessons from artist, Sybil Rampen. By the time I met her in the 1990’s, Janina had had a serious stroke and was aphasic. We communicated mainly through gestures and smoking cigarettes. If you like old movies, you’ll know how much can be conveyed by leaning in for a light or offering your last smoke.
From the start, I felt a great affinity with Janina, but I knew very little about the facts of her life, and it was only years later when I began writing this novel, that I was introduced to her war experiences through autobiographical documents, her own paintings and translations of Polish biographies written by other people. Even then, I did not feel I had the right to tell her story, nor did I want to write biography or history at all.
Photo of Janina Zaborowska on the right having exited from a sewer on Malczewskiego Street in Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising of August, 1944.
In the meantime, I came to know many of the Polish ‘aunts’, friends of my partner’s parents who had also survived Nazi brutality and, as so often happens with migrants who’ve escaped conflict, in the absence of blood family, they had become family. One delightful aunt was Ciocia Ala who lived in Montreal. On several occasions at her dinner table, she talked of her sister, Eva, whose name appears on the memorial wall to victims of the Warsaw Uprising — and who was only nineteen when she was killed in 1944. It shocked me when Ala said sadly, “What a waste of life.” I understood her to mean that her sister should have lived a long, happy life instead of dying so young and needlessly, but a question arose in my mind. Ala’s response sounded so different from the usual one which glorified the sacrifice of people who’d given their lives fighting to free their country. Was capitulation the only alternative to fighting and killing? In such a bleak scenario as the Poles faced during the Nazi occupation of their country, were there other possibilities, or was that a cowardly, traitorous question, or even worse, an evasion of moral choice?
It goes without saying that none of this was clear to me until I was well into my second draft. Clarity grew with the development of characters Irena and Lotka — two sisters who seem to share the common goal of keeping their family and friends alive, yet whose approaches to violent occupation differ widely. Whether you decide to dive into these questions as you read, will be up to you, dear reader.
It seems an obvious thing to say, but years of engagement with geopolitics, both academically and informally have helped me understand that historical wars have repercussions reverberating across the globe, far into the future. How could they not, since wars disrupt families for generations, and every country leader, every soldier or policy maker, every child survivor, is born into some sort of family.
As you might have guessed, I’ve been drawn to write this war story for another, perhaps more personal reason. I was born and grew up in Apartheid era South Africa where I lived as an ethnically mixed person of East Indian, Black African and European descent until my family emigrated to Canada in 1967. Living under apartheid meant bearing witness to a different kind of war. It meant my parents couldn’t vote or choose where to live or leave the country freely, and for me and my siblings, it meant we weren’t allowed to go on the swings at the beach or sit on a bench at the park or read a novel called Black Beauty. It meant I couldn’t sleep at night for fear my parents might be taken by the secret police. That story is currently percolating in my brain, and at this juncture, I can’t predict what form it will take, but I’m certain it won’t leave me.
Book Excerpt
Praise for The Resistance Painter
“An elegant, riveting, dual-timeline novel about betrayals that haunt generations, and the redemptive power of art.”
Genevieve Graham, #1 bestselling author of The Secret Keeper
