A Life Well Harvested

THERE'S nothing eighty-five year old Roman Goralski doesn’t know about farming. That was his background in his native Poland before the Second World War turned his world upside down.

Joining the Polish army as a Corporal, Roman Goralski was captured by Russian troops in 1939. Forced to march as a prisoner of war from Piaski to Siberia, he knew the doomed fate that awaited him. Scoping the approach to the city of Lwow - still in Poland - Goralski viewed a field of loose haystacks. Then he dashed. Dodging one stack after another, he dove into a small one, figuring that his captors would search among the larger piles. His decision paid off. And there he crouched until the Russian army was long gone.

At nightfall, Corporal Goralski headed for Warsaw, some 150 kilometres away. The woods were quiet until he came upon soldiers on horseback.

Woh gehen Sie? they asked. Goralski answered in German, leading the enemy to assume he was one of them. And with that saving grace, he escaped a second time.

Arriving in Warsaw, Goralski attempted to contact his brother who lived across a heavily guarded bridge. He sent a note through a messenger, reading: "bring civilian clothes".

Hours later, a borrowed suitcase arrived. Goralski exchanged its contents with his military uniform. And that is how private citizen Goralski returned home to his family’s farm, his brother's suitcase in hand. In it was a military uniform of the Polish army.

Months later, German forces seized all properties in the area. By decree, Polish citizens now had to work for the expanded German state. As a result, Goralski ended up in the industrialized region of Westphalia, where he worked in a German factory. But not for long.

One day, he escaped, largely by foot, to end up in the south of France. From there, he took a boat to Algiers.

It was in that North African country where he joined a group of fellow Poles. Befriended by the British, they became the Polish unit of the Royal Air Force. Upon their transfer to England, unit members were asked to change their surnames so as to mislead any spies. That is how Corporal Goralski became Corporal Krajewski for the remainder of the war, and during the re-construction period that followed.

The new name was how he was introduced to his English wife-to-be, with whom he later emigrated to Canada.

Life as an immigrant with a foreign accent was not easy in the Toronto of 1952. Mr. Goralski, now with a family of five, had mouths to feed. Yet through the struggles, and with his wife’s support, he fought the good fight and survived.

By retirement in 1981, Roman Goralski had been employed for twenty years as a nurse at Sunnybrook Hospital. In the years following, he has tended to the vegetables and flowers in his garden much the way he did with the sick. The results have been nothing short of admirable.

With "twenty years of compost and leaves," Goralski has transformed the clay soil in his backyard, into earth so rich and dark, it is atypical of the area.

"Any chemicals used?" I asked.

“No," he replied, "only a spray of soapy water to keep the bugs away.”

The photos above and following are a testament to the man and his harvest after a growing season of considerable challenges. For during that summer, snail armies devoured without mercy, the many stalks and leaves throughout the neighbourhood. That is, except in the garden of Roman Goralski, who had again escaped the enemy.

Sydney Hedderich

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