The amber Hania never parted with

During a workshop at the Amber Museum, someone brought in a small lump of amber. Dark, heavily weathered, cracked in places. A story came with it.

“I found it while clearing out my late Aunt Hania’s flat,” we heard. After a moment came one more sentence: “Auntie never parted with it.”

On closer inspection, the lump turned out to have features found in amber from the territory of today’s Belarus or Ukraine.

“That could be right, because before the war Aunt Hania lived in Pinsk in Polesia. She was seven when she lost her parents after 17 September 1939. She ended up in an orphanage in Siberia. A few years after the war she returned to Poland and settled in Gdańsk,” said the person who brought the amber.

At moments like this, you still think you are listening to a story about amber. Only later do you realise that the amber matters least here.

We do not know exactly where this lump came from. We do not know when it came into Aunt Hania’s hands. Perhaps it was just a piece of amber. Or perhaps it was something more. Because when a seven-year-old child loses her parents, her home and the whole world she knew, things that remain ordinary to others can take on meaning. Perhaps this lump of amber reminded her of a place. Of people. Of the time before the war. That can no longer be known.

All Souls’ Day reminds us that memory rarely lives in great monuments. Far more often it lives in small things.

In a grandmother’s ring.

In a mother’s bracelet.

In an old photograph tucked between the pages of a book.

Or in a small lump of amber that Hania never parted with throughout her life.

Photo: private archive.