Finnish wooden houses form idyllic neighbourhood in central Warsaw for 60 years
Cabins intended as temporary respite to postwar housing shortage
By Pilvikki Kause
The ceiling of the kitchen of the Rossa family home bears the word reparacja. The stamp on the pine board is in Russian, and it means "reparation". The Rossas live in a wooden house right in the middle of Warsaw. The building is part of the war reparations that Finland paid to the Soviet Union in 1945.
Dictator Josif Stalin sent more than 400 Finnish reparation packages to Warsaw. The Second World War had left the Polish capital in ruins, and architects, engineers, bricklayers, and other construction professionals flocked to the city from around the country to help in the reconstruction. There was an urgent need to house them.
"Officially the houses were a gift to homeless Warsaw residents from the benevolent Stalin, but everyone knew from the very beginning that they were the work of the Finns", recalls 70-year-old Agata Rossa in her kitchen.
"People thought: Good God, first Stalin crushes the Finns, and now the Russians take away their houses."
About 20 of the "Finnish cabins" remain standing. The last small garden-like community stands in the most valuable area of Warsaw right next to the Polish House of Parliament.
Agata Rossa was a schoolgirl when she moved in with her uncle to attend school in the capital city in 1949. Her uncle was an architect designing a new Warsaw, just like the residents of the neighbouring cottages. Each one had two or three rooms, a kitchen, a small toilet, an attic, and a cellar.
At first, the houses were bulging with people; the serious housing shortage meant that relatives and friends were taken into people's homes in addition to members of the immediate family, Agata Rossa says. She would sleep in a small room next to the kitchen with three relatives.
Her uncle later designed an impressive apartment house, and got a flat for his own family in it. Agata Rossa was allowed to stay in the Finnish cabin after marrying Janusz Rossa in 1961. They had two children who played with the children in the neighbourhood.
"From the very beginning, residents have helped one another. A third generation is living in many cabins. Life here is like in a rural village", says their neighbour, 86-year-old Alicja Karaffa-Korbutt, who has lived in the Uljazdow park area all her life - since before the beginning of the Second World War.
Before the cabins, there was a military hospital in the area, where her father worked as a doctor. It was there where Karaffa-Korbutt helped as a volunteer nurse, caring for the wounded when Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939. The Germans bombed the hospital to the ground at the end of the war.
The Finnish cabins went up on a foundation of crushed bricks next to the mass grave of the defenders of Warsaw.
"The houses were a real luxury. Cold water and electricity came immediately, while everything around them was in ruins. Many were envious of the residents", says Karaffa-Korbutt, who lived nearby before moving into a cabin.
During the shortage years of the communist period, vegetables, pigs, goats and chickens were raised in the back yards of the Finnish houses.
A proud rooster strutted in front of the Karaffa-Korbutts' cabin, defending the house, and frequently attacking the postman. Some of the wooden buildings were torn down in the 1970s to make way for a road.
"Quite often someone had to bring back a goat or pig that had escaped and strayed onto the road."
Social life has been active in the decades that the Finnish cabins have stood. The cabins have attracted nationally famous artists as residents, or just as visitors.
In the 1980s, actors of the famous Piwnica Pod Baranami cabaret theatre from Cracow would have all-night parties at the home of set designer Krzysztof Baumiller and his wife Joanna whenever the troupe was in town.
The actor and satirist Jan Pietrzak, who lived next door, would often join the parties, playing his guitar. At times songs critical of the government were deliberately sung very loud to make sure that the members of the communist militia, patrolling near the Parliament, would hear them.
Living with the Baumillers for a while was the famous lyricist and poet Jonasz Kofta.
"One of Kofta's most popular songs tells of the beauty of the early morning and the songs of birds. Actually, he hated getting up early, and would sleep with the blanket over his head until the afternoon", says Krzysztof Baumiller, 61.
The bird song, carefully maintained gardens and unique atmosphere have been used as a backdrop for a number of films and television programmes. Whereas the houses of the Karaffa-Korbutts and Rossas, and to a certain extent, that of the Baumillers are in nearly in their original state, right down to the Finnish cabinets, doors, keys, and wooden outdoor steps.
Many have refurbished and expanded their cabins. The Starkowskis, the youngest generations of residents, have replaced the coal-fired stove with a fireplace. They built an outdoor terrace as a place where their children can play. The porch brought complaints from the owner, the City of Warsaw, as the residents are tenants, and not owners of the houses.
"Originally the houses were to be temporary housing units. They were to be up there for six years at the most, and now they have been up for more than 60 years", notes Joanna Starkowska, 34.
The city has not done much in the way of maintenance, which has been mainly left to the residents. The telephone company has also refused to lay cables to the houses, which are under constant threat of demolition.
"The old telephone lines crackle", Starkowska notes, with amusements.
The city has also refused to sell the cabins to the residents, and now the value of the land has skyrocketed. Embassies and any number of investors now covet the land situated next to the Parliament.
The new German Embassy is going up next door to the Baumillers. About 20 cabins were pulled down to make room for the embassy, but Germany offered the residents excellent city apartments as compensation.
The wood structures themselves have also found buyers.
The residents themselves and other city dwellers have bought them as summer cottages. Passers-by also constantly ask residents if the cabins are for sale or rent, says Alicja Karaffa-Korbutt.
"The houses are of very strong pine. Even when they have been dismantled, they have smelled of virgin wood. They are a bit drafty when it is windy in the winter, but I wouldn't want to move anywhere from here."
Residents hope that at least some of the houses might be left as a museum, when and if the time comes for the last of the reparation houses to go. Andrzej Baumiller says that he offered to sit on the steps of a museum house, smoking a pipe and wearing a straw hat. He could tell visitors what life used to be like in the cabins.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 18.11.2007
PILVIKKI KAUSE / Helsingin Sanomat
pilvikki@wp.pl
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| 20.11.2007 - THIS WEEK |
 Finnish wooden houses form idyllic neighbourhood in central Warsaw for 60 years |
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