FAMILY SILVER: BURIED SEPTEMBER 1939; RETRIEVED OCTOBER 2019
Emeritus Professor Jan Glazewski, University of Cape Town
Wednesday 11 January
1.00 pm
COURSE FEES R110
Jan Glazewski’s forbears came from a pre-World War II landowning family in then eastern Poland, now in Ukraine. His father’s and grandfather’s hometown was Lviv, but the latter owned a farm in the country near the then Russian border. Jan’s father, Gustaw, was farming the land when war broke out. Before leaving, Gustaw buried the family silver in a forest near his father’s manor house. Jan heard the story of the buried silver in faraway USSR, later Ukraine, throughout his growing-up years and became consumed with the idea that one day he must find it. Against all odds, with the help of sketch map drawn by his father, his niece, and a Ukrainian citizen with a metal detector, he unearthed the family silver in October 2019, virtually eighty years to the day after it was buried. The area in question, including Lviv, was incorporated into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) at Yalta in 1945 and is today in Ukraine.
Recommended reading
Glazewski, J. 2022. Blood and Silver. Cape Town: Tafelberg.
https://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/personal-essay/my-fathers-map