Krystine Tomaszyk: Essence

Poland, 1941. Krystine Tomaszyk is deported with her mother and brother to Siberia, crowded with other people into the hot, dark confines of cattle trucks. In 1944 she came to New Zealand as a refugee with her family and hundreds of other Poles, mainly children.

This autobiography begins with happy glimpses of pre-war Poland in a privileged family (Tomaszyk's father was a judge), then comes the fear and uncertainty of war and the arrest of her father. The remaining family members were lucky; they spent only four months in Siberia during the summer. They travelled to Uzbekistan, where they were reunited with Krystine's father, and then to Iran, where Krystine's mother was in charge of several homes for Polish women and children, many of whom were orphans, or had been separated from their families.

From there the whole group travelled to New Zealand at the invitation of the Prime Minister, ostensibly for the duration of the war, but many of them (including Krystine's family) ended up staying here.

Short, simple, staccato sentences reflect the experience of a child. Fear, hunger, sickness, death: all are presented matter-of factly, with naivety, curiosity and sadness, pierced by the occasional ray of happiness. The writing is understated, highly evocative of place, action and emotion, and has a slightly ethereal fairytale quality to it. At no stage does Tomaszyk identify exactly how old she is.

On one level this is a highly personal story, but readers will identify with the universal themes. There are other people's stories here too, of those less fortunate, of children who watched their parents die, of abandoned children who were too young to know their surname or where they were from, of children who became frozen stuck to the walls of their huts in Siberia's harsh winter.

Tomaszyk moves smoothly from childhood to the culture shock and loneliness of her adolescence at a Wanganui boarding school, and then to more settled times in Wellington as a psychology student, where she begins to move with confidence between the Polish immigrant community and the New Zealand culture of student life and work in factories and offices.

The book gives us yet another slant on our culture, and is another patch sewn on to the quilt of immigrant cultures in New Zealand.

Tomaszyk's early experiences undoubtedly led her to helping people in her work (including Maori and child welfare), and in the final few pages she documents a more recent trip to Calcutta, where she worked at Mother Teresa's home for the dying.

Throughout the book, the author ponders the big questions of life, of human nature and the essence of being. Sounds cliched? It could be, but she manages the right combination of inner questioning and observer's detachment. The only thing that is overdone is the inclusion of too many similar letters from her fiance.

Overall a moving and thoughtful read.