Fathers Painting

As I moved to Vienna I had mixed feelings about Austria. Austria and Germany are portrayed in Polish education system mostly as enemies of Poland. History lessons focus on partitions of Poland by Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Monarchy, the following 123 years of their rule and the two world wars. I have often been thinking about my grandfather since I moved to Vienna. He was a Zwangsarbeiter in Germany during the second world war. He was a poor peasant from a village Paterek, where Nazis perpetrated a genocide. Over 200 Poles and Jews were killed and those who could be used as workforce were taken to Germany. As a child, I was fascinated by a white eye of my grandfather. He told me that during his stay in Germany he winked to a German girl. He was a „Polish Untermensch“ destined only for hard labor. German soldiers saw this. „you’ll never wink to a German girl again“ – they told him and they blinded him by putting some lime into his eye. He never got paid for the years of his hard labor nor received any compensation for his mutilation. I often have been thinking about the parallels and continuities of our lives – the immigration, work and the irony of history, that the next generation of Poles provides cheap labor in the land of the former colonizer.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:15.7 W x 15.7 H x 0.4 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.