Lee Love on wed 16 mar 05
Lee Love wrote:
>
> We forget... and worse, we fail to remind those
> who are coming after us. ..
>
> (see even more information here:
> http://www.cornishceramics.com/pleach.htm )
>
> Mirek Smisek
I was happily surprised to see this name in the long, long
list. This is the New Zealand potter who made the work for the Lord
Of the Rings movie. He escaped from forced labor and the Nazis in
Austria during WWII (and the Communist later.) Below is their
story. If you go to the link, you can read about the Lord Of the Rings
Pottery and see photos of Milos and Mirek:
http://potters.blogspot.com/2004/02/lord-of-rings-pottery-by-mirek-smisek.html
or (if the above is broken):
http://tinyurl.com/4tduf
Milos & Mirek arriving in Sydney, 1948 Milos & Mirek today
They sent us to a forced labour factory in Ternitz, Austria. That was
our great opportunity to escape into Switzerland and, hopefully, into
England. We planned to cross on foot and we spent a whole night in the
snow, at times knee-deep, trying to cross through the Alps. But just
before dawn, we were arrested by German border guards.
We were in prison for three months, being interrogated by the Gestapo.
Then we were transported to a prison camp called Kislau. Kislau was the
worst camp ever; we thought that if we survived this we could survive
anything. It was full of Germans - social democrats, communists,
anti-Nazis; some of them had been there for 10 years. We were issued
shoes with wooden soles that were impossible to bend and straps that cut
into your feet; we were sent out to weed the fields, walking like robots.
For the evening meal we used to get five little potatoes in their
jackets - no butter, no nothing. One day, Mirek said to me: ‘Isn’t it
your birthday today?’ I realised it was my 21st birthday, so later on
during the meal I took two of these potatoes and hid them in my pockets.
I thought, ‘We will celebrate when we get back into the dormitory, we
will have a little party and eat one each.’ That evening Mirek came into
the dormitory and announced, ‘Well, it’s your birthday - we will have a
party,’ and he pulled out of his pocket two potatoes.
Now, we were right on the line of survival - to save one potato, in a
situation where your life might depend on half a potato, you are really
sacrificing your life. That was an act of incredible friendship by
Mirek. So we swapped our potatoes, and ate them in celebration of a
wonderful 21st birthday.”
After surviving his imprisonment in Nazi labour camps, Milos and his
friend Mirek returned home, only to flee communism and emigrate to
Australia in 1948. Today Milos is a retired hydrographer, living in
Sydney with his wife Judy. Mirek is a potter, living in New Zealand.
/This is an excerpt from an article written by Richard Guilliat which
first appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Weekend magazine on
November 6, 1999. Milos Stefanek’s autobiography will be published
shortly. To read a expanded version of his story online, visit
www.kuringgai.net/peace.htm
/
http://potters.blogspot.com/2004/02/lord-of-rings-pottery-by-mirek-smisek.html
or (if the above is broken):
http://tinyurl.com/4tduf
--
Lee in Mashiko, Japan http://mashiko.org
http://potters.blogspot.com/ WEB LOG
http://claycraft.blogspot.com/ Photos!
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