[Halina Vasko's letter to her older sister in Kraków, dated 14 August 1922. The English translation by Irena Nowak.]

Little Warsaw, Port Hume, America Fourteenth of August, the year 1922

Dearest Józefina, my sister,

I write after many weeks. Forgive me that you learn from this letter what you may already have learned from the letter Stefan wrote you on the day after. I have not been able to write until now. I have not been able to do much.

Janusz is dead, sister. He was killed with two other men at the gate of the foundry where he worked. It was the eighteenth day of July, a Tuesday, at half past one in the afternoon. Our Anya had just left the house for the college. Stefan was on the picket line beside his father. I had taken the altar linens to the rectory and was returning by the back of the church. I heard the shots from far away. I did not know they were for him until Mrs. Sobczak came running. I will not write more of that hour. I could not bring myself to say it aloud even to Father Jarzembek.

The newspapers — there are two here in Port Hume, Józefina, as I have written before — tell two stories. One says that the men of the picket killed each other in a rage. The other says that other men with guns fired from a doorway across the street. I know what my husband did not do. My husband did not have a revolver. My husband did not carry any weapon to the gate on any day of the strike. My husband carried to the gate, every day, his thermos of tea and a small piece of cheese from me. They were in his coat pocket when he was brought home.

Father Jarzembek has been very kind. He buried the three of them on the Saturday. He did not preach in a cautious way. Our Stefan has become what I am afraid he has become. He does not drink. He does not fight. He reads. He meets with other young men of the Ward at Café Solange. Mrs. Applegate at the Settlement House has spoken with me about him and has said she will watch that he does not do a foolish thing. Mrs. Applegate is a good woman for an American. She does not pity us. She sits at my kitchen table and drinks tea and speaks.

Zofia Malinowski came two days after. She sat with me. She said in English, "You and I." She has buried her husband ten years ago and has been writing petitions no one reads for most of those ten years. She gave me her calling card — her own card, she had it printed last year — in case I ever needed to come to her. I have not gone. I may yet.

Anya is strong. Anya is quieter than before. Anya will finish her degree in chemistry, she says. I do not understand what her degree in chemistry will do. I have told her I will not interfere. She is Janusz's daughter, and he was the one who would have known what to say.

Stefan I worry about more. He is nineteen. He has the face his father had at nineteen. He is, I think, in love with a Polish girl from the Ward whose name I do not yet know; I have deduced her from the care he takes with his shirts. I do not say anything. I do not know the girl.

I send with this letter a small sum — it is only two dollars at the post office's rate — for a mass to be said at the Church of the Holy Cross for Janusz. Say the mass on the feast of the Holy Cross, if the priest can. I remember you took me there when I was a girl. I remember the paintings on the ceiling. I would like Janusz's name said in that church.

There is nothing more in this letter, sister. I did not have the strength to write more.

Your

Halina

[pencil annotation at the foot of the English translation, in Irena Nowak's hand:]

"Mrs. Vasko asked me to make this translation in March 1923, so that her American neighbors might read it one day. I have corrected none of her sentences. They are hers. — I. Nowak."