Low Down Articles
Artist Profiles - Aleksander Topolski
Article 67 of 73
From the book Artists of the Gatineau Hill by Catherine Joyce. This article first appeared in the "Artist Profiles" column in the December 20, 2007 issue of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
o o o
Writing his Way Home
Alex Topolski is a remarkable man. At 83 he is on the third volume of his memoirs. Many of you will remember his first, Without Vodka, which came out in 1999. The saga of a 16-year-old Polish youth, captured by the Russians on his way to join the Polish Army regrouping in France, the book reads like a thriller.
In Aleks's richly detailed prose, two years struggling to survive and ultimately to escape the Russia gulag becomes a tale of humour and humanity in a world gone mad. The title from the Russian saying -"But it's not for our brains to ponder these things. Without vodka you can't figure it out" - perfectly captures the feel of this wise and rollicking book.
Three subsequent volumes - Without a Roof (during the war in Iran, Iraq, Palestine and Italy) and Without a Penny (making his way in England), - reprise the exploits of this latter-day, picaresque hero on his long odyssey to a new life.
Aleks was born in 1923 in Naklo in northern Poland near the Baltic Sea, where his father soon became the principal of a teachers' college. The youngest of three children, he was gifted and started high school a year early. At 16, he was called up for military service Aug. 24, 1939, just eight days before the Germans invaded Poland. In the photos of this period he looks like a young boy caught playing soldier in his uniform. Who could imagine that by December he would be incarcerated in a Russian prison camp facing months of cold and starvation.
"People always ask me how I can remember so many details 60 years later. When you're young and impressionable, life imprints itself upon you. I have a photographic memory I can see everything in my mind. The stories start rolling like a film and all the memories come crowding in.
"Once I got started, Without Vodka took me one and a half to two years to write. Now that I am on my third, the pace is slowing down. Without the high drama of the war, it is hard to keep that edge of excitement but so much keeps happening to me, I must finish."
Aleks's life has never been dull. As an architect he has worked in England, the States, the Virgin Islands and in Canada. Even now he is still traveling on his own with one small suitcase, usually to Europe at least once a year. He visits Italy regularly where on May 18, 1944, the Polish 2ND Corp, at the cost of 4,000 wounded and 1,000 killed, took Monte Casino. There Aleks takes photographs and talks to people to double-check the accuracy of that time in his memoir.
Much happens to him by serendipity - even coming to Canada. "In the early years after the war you could travel for free as an ex-serviceman. I was on my way from England to a job in Australia, when I came here in 1957 to visit friends. I fell in love with the place and I never left. Every day when I walk my dog by the river I stop to admire the beauty of the hills and water. Here I have found heaven, raised my family and written my stories. This is home."