Refugee who feared execution in communist Poland says 'suffering is optional'

Australia Broadcast Center

18-05-2025

It's midnight on a cold evening in communist Poland in 1981.
Elizabeth Szczepanska, then 30, is at her home in Sosnowiec when government authorities burst in.
She has been part of the anti-government movement, and police arrest her and take her to an oval.
"It was one of the scariest moments in my life and I believed that I was going to die," Ms Szczepanska said.
"It was freezing cold … we had Polish soldiers with German shepherds and machine guns targeted at us.
"I was thinking, 'They are just digging up a mass grave. We all will be executed.'
"I was thinking … if this is my last moment of my life but, if I survive this, I'm going to change my life."
She lived to see the morning and followed through on her promise.
Poland was under communist rule from the end of World War II until 1989.
Throughout that period there was open social unrest and the regime introduced martial law.
When Ms Szczepanska was 13, she was told to stand along a wall in the school gym.
It was part of a test to see who would make the best athletes for a sports program.
She passed, and it started a sporting passion that would last more than six decades.
Shot-put, discus and javelin became Ms Szczepanska's speciality. As she trained, being part of the sports program brought in extra food, clothing and money.
"I had an academic scholarship and sports scholarship, and I earned more money than my mum working 56 hours a week," she said.
"I felt like a billionaire. I had money, I supported my family. It was very important."
Ms Szczepanska continued competing as she went to university and became a clinical psychologist.
But her discontent with the government was growing.
"It was really challenging to live in a country that you don't have a freedom of movement, choice and thinking," she said.
She joined the anti-government movement and became a "rebel".
"We met each other in these gatherings and started plotting and scheming how to overturn this government," she said.
Her actions did not go unnoticed. Ms Szczepanska was charged with organising anti-Soviet demonstrations and arrested more than a dozen times, including that terrifying night at the oval.
Even when she was not detained, she was still followed.
"For five years I had two secret police officers standing in front of my door and I had to report myself at the local police station at 7am, 1pm and 7pm," she said.
"Even [when] I'd be standing in a long queue to buy toilet paper … they would be standing behind my back.
"They make this visible. They didn't even pretend that they were not following."
Eventually, the government came to her with a proposition.
"The secret police said, 'We have enough on you to keep you in prison for another 10 years, or you can choose leaving [the] country,'" Ms Szczepanska said.
"I'm thinking I'm leaving everything behind, my whole life, and I'm going to a country that I cannot speak the language, I don't have any experiences here.
"I've been so hurt by what happened in my political and personal life that I want to run, I want to simply escape this.
"It wasn't easy."
When she was 36, Ms Szczepanska chose to come to Australia — a country she had never been to and had no connections with.
When she and her three-year-old daughter arrived in Melbourne in December 1987, she hid her tears so her daughter couldn't see her crying.
Four years later, she was handed a flyer for the Masters Games — an international sporting event for people aged 30 and over.
That same day, Ms Szczepanska bought two discuses and started throwing again for the first time since she had left Poland.
She has not stopped throwing since.
"If I'm going on an athletics track or oval and doing my throwing, my brain is 18.
"You have this feeling, 'I belong here, this is part of me.'"
Ms Szczepanska, now 74, recently retired after working as a psychologist for 50 years.
She won many medals throughout her sporting career — 191, to be exact. She still has most of them, but not all.
"I've been giving my medals to my clients, the people I've been working with, as a sign of achievement when they change behaviour and habits."
She has another two medals that she will not be giving away.
In 2010, Ms Szczepanska was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, given to those who have contributed greatly to Poland, and the Cross of Freedom and Solidarity, which honours those who were punished by the communist government and fought against it.
Ms Szczepanskahas only returned to Poland once, when her mother passed away, but she will not go there again.
"I put Poland and my past behind me … and I'm done," she said.
"I still cannot be fully accepted, and I cannot be honest with them, so this is the reason I am deciding not to go."
However, she is thankful for that day in the school gym.
"I think that someone looked after me and sent me there, gave me this opportunity to equip me with skills so I can cope better with challenges in life," she said.
Ms Szczepanska now lives in Geraldton, a sunny town on the Midwest coast of Western Australia.
Even with everything that has happened to her, she said she had no regrets.
"I don't have any. Not at all," she said.
"I think that I did everything that I could according to the resources that I had to create a good life for myself and for my daughter.
"I am still the same open-minded, compassionate and kind human."
Her experiences have also given her a truly unique perspective on life.
"I'm not giving up. I can be defeated, but I won't surrender. I will do everything I could 100 per cent so I won't have regrets," she said.