Maria Anna Prokopik made her First Communion in 1936, three years before Stalin’s army marched into her town of Slonim in eastern Poland and took control of the area.

By Gerald Korson
Voice correspondent

Ten-year-old Maria Anna Prokopik peered into the darkening sky over eastern Poland, searching for that first star so that her family’s Christmas Eve wigilia could begin. Although she did not know it that most holy night of 1939, it would be years before she could celebrate Christmas according to Polish traditions again.

Life was changing rapidly for the Prokopik family. After Germany invaded western Poland on Sept. 1, Maria’s father figured the Russians would arrive next, eager to retake regions of eastern Poland they had lost in previous wars. Feeling sure that he, a police official, would be imprisoned by the Soviets, Piotr Prokopik tearfully kissed his wife and two daughters goodbye and told his girls he was joining the Polish army. In reality, he was heading for the relative safety of Lithuania in hopes of reuniting with his family later.

Within days, Piotr’s instincts were confirmed. The Red Army marched into their town of Slonim and took control of the disputed territories just as Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and German chancellor Adolf Hitler had secretly arranged. On that bittersweet wigilia of 1939, Maria’s mother, Stanislawa, knew not her husband’s whereabouts; rumor had it he was already in prison.

All Maria and her sister knew was that their father was not there at wigilia to carry into the house the traditional sheaf of grain, a symbol of their Guardian Angel, whom they would need so desperately during the trying times ahead.

With the occupation came food shortages, suppression of the Polish language and the secularization of Catholic schools. In February, the deportation of Polish citizens to Siberia by train began. By mid-April, it was the Prokopiks’ turn, and they were herded into a tightly-packed boxcar with many of their neighbors, including Maria’s grandmother.

Maria (left) and her sister Irena posed for this photo in 1941, shortly after they were given the freedom to leave Siberia.

“It was very sad,” wrote 80-year-old Moraga resident Mary (Prokopik) Scherer in her memoirs of that ordeal. “The people started singing an old Polish song, ‘We Will Not Abandon Our Soil,’ but we were forced to leave. Many were crying.”

That train made few stops along its two-week trek to its destination in present-day Kazakhstan. From there, the deportees were trucked to Zeleznoje, where the Pro-kopiks were to share a one-room house with a Russian widow and her son.

“We were actually lucky,” Scherer told The Catholic Voice in a recent interview. “In the collective farm, we worked along with our mother. I sometimes drove a team of oxen that responded only to Russian swear words! It was very fertile soil, and Zeleznoje grew enough wheat to supply all of Russia, I think.”

The harsh conditions, poor diet and lack of medical care took a toll and Maria’s grandmother died that same year. Meanwhile, Maria’s family made contact with her father, who had been arrested after the Soviets took Lithuania and was then in a distant Russian prison.

Scherer remembers her mother as “very resourceful.” Through the sale of wild strawberries, she and a friend purchased a “little sod house” for their families. Their household was like most others, comprising only mothers and children because most men had been imprisoned.

Christmas in Siberia was a meager affair. “We didn’t have the traditional foods or anything special, or the hay under the tablecloth to symbolize the stable where Christ was born,” Scherer recalled. “But my mother’s sister sent us an oplatek” — a thin wafer that is broken and shared among family and sent to loved ones across the miles as a symbol of unity.

Faith and prayer sustained the family. “I don’t know where my mother and the Polish ladies in Siberia found the little booklet of prayers to the Blessed Mother, but all the prayers sounded like they pertained to us,” she said. “It was our faith that gave us hope that all this was going to pass.”

After Hitler attacked Russia in June 1941, things began to change. Piotr was released from prison and enlisted in the Polish army in southern Russia. The Prokopiks eventually left Zeleznoje, but by the time they headed south, Piotr’s unit had been transferred to Tehran.

Settling for a time in Guzar in southern Russia, the Prokopiks had something they lacked in Siberia: a resident Catholic priest. “I remember the long line of people going to confession,” Scherer said. For the family Christmas, they again had no special foods to prepare, but joined in prayer, carols, and the oplatek.

In Guzar, Maria and her sister attended a Polish military academy. In August 1942, they were transferred to Iran, where they and their mother hoped to reunite with Piotr. Sadly, before arriving, they learned that Piotr had died of typhoid fever in a Tehran hospital.

Maria’s family marked two Christmases in Tehran. “There was no church, so everything was like a field Mass,” Scherer remembered. “Some Polish priests who came out of the prisons joined us in Tehran, so it was a little bit more traditional — but we still didn’t have all the stuff. I don’t even remember having oplatek.”

When the military school relocated to Nazareth, Maria went along in the care of some friends. “My religion really picked up once I got to Nazareth,” she said. “The Church of the Nativity was across the street from where I stayed. . . . One Good Friday, I was part of a group of girls that walked the Via Dolorosa, which led to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. . . . It felt like we were in paradise.”

Maria returned to Tehran in 1945, and she and her mother would celebrate a makeshift Christmas that year in Ahwaz, Iran, en route to Baghdad, Iraq, where many Poles had relocated. They spent over a year there, long enough for Maria to complete her diploma from an area Polish high school.

By May 1947, Mary — her first name was Americanized in immigration records — and her mother joined her now-married sister in San Francisco. In the land of the free, they would celebrate their Polish traditions once again.

Maria married her husband, Jack, in 1949, and together they raised three children. The kids have grown, and Jack passed away five years ago — but Mary keeps the Polish Christmas wigilia traditions alive among her grandchildren.

“I don’t have it like my mother — she used to make 12 different dishes, to represent the 12 apostles. But my granddaughters just love it,” Scherer said. Perhaps they enjoy it as much as she did as a young girl in Slonim, scanning the dusky heavens for the night’s first star.

“We usually go to church first, and after church, we have oplatek,” she added. “I have a friend in Chicago, and she always sends me an oplatek.”

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