The first days in Sweden
The first days in Sweden – A refugee
At the age of 51, Modrzewska arrived in Sweden as a refugee, suddenly reduced from an established academic to a person waiting for the authorities to decide her future. Learning Swedish, finding work and navigating a new society became the first steps towards rebuilding her life.
Her account of her arrival in Sweden is among the most concrete records of migration in her writing. After leaving Poland, she arrived in Ystad. She had two suitcases and little money. She was taken to a refugee centre, where she was registered by the Swedish authorities.
Modrzewska described this change in status in striking terms:
I became another number, another entry in the register of stateless refugees, a new file on the shelf of the Immigration Office, a case to be dealt with in the drawer of someone’s desk.
Krystyna Modrzewska, Czas przedostatni, Lublin 1992, p. 9.
This experience contrasted sharply with her previous life. She arrived in Sweden as a woman in her early fifties, with a doctorate, academic experience and many years of university work behind her. In her new country, however, she was no longer a professor or head of a department. She was a refugee waiting for the authorities to decide her future.
Emigration also meant entering another world of social categories that determined who one could be and how one could be perceived. Modrzewska had already experienced concealing her Jewish identity during the war and living with a sense of incongruity between herself and the gender assigned to her. Now she had to find her place as a Polish and Jewish emigrant in Sweden.
From the first days of her emigration, she concentrated on learning Swedish. Together with other refugees, she attended language classes. She described the initial experience of the language as one of complete helplessness: she could not understand the words, could not reproduce them, and the sounds of the new language seemed entirely unfamiliar.
At the same time, one question occupied the refugees in the camp: what would happen next?
Modrzewska wrote about uncertainty over employment and where she would eventually live. Among the refugees, reports circulated about hostility towards foreigners and concerns about jobs and housing.
This was the beginning of another stage in her life: first she had to learn the language, then find work, and finally rebuild the professional position she had spent decades establishing in Poland.