How Languages Saved Me:
A Polish Story of Survival
by Tadeusz Haska and Stefanie Naumann
Copyright 2019 Tadeusz Haska and tefanie Naumann
ISBN 978-1-63393-923-3
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.
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Preface
M y grandfather, Tadeusz Haska, was born in 1919 in Mikoajki, Poland. He was one of two siblings of six to survive childhood. He and his brother Antoni lived alone after losing both parents by the age of thirteen. Tadeusz used his knowledge of nine languages to survive World War II by translating German newspapers to farmers and job instructions to French prisoners of war and impersonating a German on occasion. After the war, Tad escaped jail by the Soviet Secret Police, fled to Sweden and eventually reunited with his wife, Jadwiga, by smuggling her in a coffin on a ship. This book is Tads extraordinary account of how his knowledge of languages helped him survive before, during, and after World War II.
After immigrating to the U.S., Tadeusz earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley in Linguistics in his ninth languageEnglish. He taught, and served as chairman, in the Polish Department at the Defense Language Institute for thirty-five years. My grandfather was a great and relentless teacher. He never gave up on people, and he made them see their own promise even when they insisted they were incapable of learning. Many of his students continued to visit and correspond with him long after graduation and their own retirements.
He was dedicated to the mission of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center and believed that its impact was instrumental for our nations security. He was an eternal student of history, culture, and language. Many conversations ended with his documenting his evidence that there were two centers of the universethe United States and Poland! Because of that, we tucked a bit of Polish soil in his pocket after he passed away.
In addition to his career accomplishments, he was one of the kindest, most patient, and most tolerant men in the world. His gentle kindness and generous spirit touched everyone he knew. His family served as the center of his life. He and Jadwiga celebrated their 50 th anniversary with a private audience with Saint John Paul II in Rome surrounded by their family.
I got to hear many of his life stories growing up that provided invaluable reference points about what is truly important and right. My grandparents faced unspeakable adversity, and they taught me what the courage of conviction means. They came to the United States because my grandfather fiercely believed in independence and the voice of the people being heard in government. My grandmother just wanted to get far away from the people who would have rather imprisoned my grandfather.
Everyone who knew my grandfather knew that he was dignified and kind. Until about the time he was eighty, he still put on a jacket to answer the front door. He would greet an older lady friend by kissing her hand. He always had time to listen to peoples storieseven when there didnt seem to be time for him to tell his own. He set an example of integrity and faith that benefitted everyone around him.
He made a difference in this world in several ways. First, he was a wonderful family patriarch. He never raised his voice to any of us, and he always had time for us. He never told us what to do, but when he could not get people to see what they should do themselves, he did take a more direct approach. A couple of decades ago, we were having Christmas Eve dinner in the Polish tradition, which includes the opatekthe communion host. The patriarch of the family breaks off a piece and gives it to each family member present with a wish for the future. Usually, its health and happiness or something like that. But this one year, my grandfather broke off a piece and gave it to my husband, David. He said, You have been married for six years. I wish for you to have a baby before I am dead! We all just about fell off our chairs. David stammered and said Yes, yes, Dziadziawe will have a baby right away! And we didEmily came the following year, and our son Alex a few years later. Both children were born on my birthday, through no sort of planning, but happy surprises. They were my grandfathers pride and joy.
He also made a difference because he never held a grudge. He said that the single most wonderful thing about America is that you always got a second chance. In so many countriesto whom you are born, whether you grew up in a city or farm, or the bank account of your parents indelibly marked your future. Not so in America. And he embodied that spirit by never holding a grudge against anyone and always giving second chances.
He did not tolerate intolerance or prejudice or hatred. When I was a young girl and asked him the meaning of some epithet, he told me that it was unimportant what it meant in the literal sensethat it was more important to know that those words were part of a language of ignorant people. He went on to explain that nations always begin calling people in opposing nations demeaning names as a first step in dehumanizing them and making them easier to oppress. He would have none of it.
If I had to pick the one thing my grandfather was passionate aboutit was life itself. Because of what he saw and experienced in Poland during the war and Nazi occupation, he was fiercely protective of human life. He was opposed to any jeopardy of human life, and he was passionate about the celebration of the human spirit wherever he saw it. And he saw the best of that spirit in his family first and foremost.
My grandfather wore a large, heavy wedding bandthe band that my grandmothers mother brought from Poland when she came to live with them in 1955. It was a blended ring from her fathers wedding band and her husbands. She took my grandfathers wedding band to a jeweler and had that gold blended with the one she brought from Poland. That ring represents my grandfathers passion for life and his honoring of the lives blended into it.
The last thing I would like you to know about my grandfather is that I was the apple of his eye. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world to be his only granddaughter. Every summer when I was a child, I would visit him and my grandmother (Dziadzia and Babcia , in Polish) and they would rearrange their lives around my visit. Every morning they would ask me what I wanted to do that day, and thats what we would do. They gave me the gift of timeplaying games, going for a picnic, to the Viennese bakery, Dennis the Menace Park, Thrifty drugstore to get fifteen-cent ice cream, walks in the forest or the beach. We would go on such long walks that my mom would worry something had happened to us. I am so grateful to have all these wonderful memories to carry with me for the rest of my life. He always made me feel like I was the most important thing to him. He never asked for my hugs first, but my first hugs were always for him. He never pushed me academically, but he applauded the loudest. He was the first generation in our family to earn a Ph.D., and, because of him, I was the third.
