66-year-old handwritten love letter in a bottle found among WWII-era beach ruins in Poland, sparking a lost love mystery

Time of India

28-05-2025

Source: YouTube
On the windswept coast of Gdańsk, Poland, a scene of childhood play turned into a moment of historical romance. Amid the decaying concrete and rusted remnants of World War II-era forts along Stogi Beach, two ten-year-old boys, Eryk and Kuba, made an extraordinary discovery.
As they explored the deserted fortifications—haunted vestiges of wartime—they stumbled upon a weathered glass bottle partially buried in the sand. What they took for mere beach rubbish soon turned out to be far more intriguing: a fine, handwritten note sealed inside the flask, kept intact by time and water for more than six decades.
Two boys find 1959
letter in a glass bottle
in Poland along Stogi Beach
The letter, written in 1959, was in flowing, rather antiquated cursive script, hard for the boys to decipher.
Although time had worn off the ink, the script remained readable. Intrigued and enthralled, the boys consulted the internet. Their tale found its way onto the local Polish news website Trojmiasto.pl, where an internet detective was able to decipher the text, which was a sincere love letter penned by a woman named Rysia.
The emotional significance of the letter was self-evident. Rysia, identified as a summer student in the southern Polish town of Tarnów—approximately 432 miles from Gdańsk—wrote to a man she referred to as "my beloved Bunny."
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Using this endearing pet name and the open vulnerability of the message, the public began to become engaged, transforming this humble note into a historic mystery and a testimonial to unrelenting love.
Letter penned revealing Rysia's silent struggles in love
Rysia's letter is like a diary entry done at a time of yearning. She exposes her emotional isolation and admits that she deeply misses the man the letter is intended for. Even though the note revolves around her thoughts and emotions, it clearly demonstrates that Bunny is in her mind all the time.
My darling, I'm a worse egoist than you think, I write only of myself, but you are the one I think constantly," she tells him.
She recounts from her humble dormitory room in Tarnów how the background sounds of daily life—motorbikes, especially—send her mind racing back to her missing lover. The sensory specifics give emotional depth to the letter and stimulate a sense of place and atmosphere. "Each motorbike roar (and there are plenty of them here) brings memories of you into view through the window to the park laid out in front of me."
Her prose oscillates between romantic yearning and melancholy melancholy. It emerges that although Rysia is committed, she is also quietly angry at being alone and possibly at the course of their relationship. She records the amount of free time she has, juxtaposed with his more apparent liberty.
"You could go wherever you want, but I sit alone."
Her statement is a delicate balance of reassurance and introspection, between longing and resignation.
She longs not for excitement or diversion, but only to go home to familiarity, routine, and the man she misses most.
"I do not want fun or strolls," she says simply. "No one is known here."
The untouched letter for 66 years sparks a mystery of love lost to time
The fact that this letter sat sealed in a bottle for 66 years until it was found lends it the almost mythic status. Who was Rysia? Who was Bunny? Were they lovers torn asunder by circumstance, distance, or responsibility of postwar Poland? Did they ever meet again? Or did the letter—never opened, never read—happen to be one last go at love that could never quite arrive?
These queries have bred internet rumor and amateur sleuthing.
Most readers are intensely interested in the fate of the couple, hoping some record of them—or their heirs—remains. Emotional engagement with the letter has created a sense of distance from this being a historical document and more as a personal connection through the ages.
Two boys trying to track down the origin of the letter
Ever since the discovery, Eryk and Kuba have allegedly contacted a museum in Tarnów hoping to track down the origins of the letter and possibly find out who Rysia or Bunny were—or their families.
Their childlike curiosity has turned into a community search mixing romance, nostalgia, and history.
For some, the letter is a testament to the timeless power of the word. It is not just a personal moment between two individuals, but an isolated piece of 20th-century emotional history, kept alive against the odds. In an era where instant messages evaporate in an instant, the physical durability of a letter trapped in a bottle is an enduring symbol of love's resilience—and vulnerability.
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