Poland

Born in 1993, Kraków, Poland
High School Student

"A farewell to Poland, a farewell to Russia. The history of three Polish-Russian marriages” (2012)

Estera wrote about three Polish-Russian marriages in the 20th century. Czeslaw, a Polish soldier, was imprisoned in 1944. In prison in Moscow he met a young Russian woman who worked on a farm nearby the prison. Larysa, a Russian woman, met her future husband in the 1960s at the party of a friend who had Polish roots. And George, a young doctor in a Russian city where Poles worked in the 1980s, was invited to the house of one of the Polish workers whose daughter he would end up marrying.

Estera herself grew up in a multicultural home, where the air smelled of borderland, where Russian and Polish cuisine were mingled, and where Mickiewicz stood on one shelf with Pushkin. Her parents are one of the couples she wrote about. Due to her personal situation she found the 2011/2012 years’ topic "Poles and Russians in the 20th Century" very compelling. Before writing the story for the “History at Hand” Competition Estera realised that there was very little that she knew about the youth of her parents. She thought that the competition may be a good argument to “push” them to tell her more detailed stories. And they did.

It was truly “History at Hand” because whose story is closer to us than our own? Estera asks. She found the topic of mixed marriages a fascinating topic in itself, and due to the opening of borders, a united Europe and multiculturalism, which is ubiquitous in today’s world, it is an extremely up-to-date topic as well.

Estera won the second prize in the 2011/2012 Polish "History at Hand" competition with the topic: "Poles and Russians in the 20th Century".

To read a synopsis of her work, please visit the Eustory blog.