As a child in Poland in the 1950s, my mother lived squeezed into a single room in the centre of Krakow, with her father, brother, aunt, uncle, cousins and grandparents, down the corridor from a communist party member who would inform on his neighbours.
At the other end of the corridor lived a young man who one afternoon was found by the children dead, hanging from his curtain pole.
Every so often my mother’s father would be put in prison – a barrister and member of the Polish Home Army (AK) who fought the Germans during WWII, he was considered a liability by the authorities. One day, my mother was expelled from her school for singing the national anthem.
