By Fern Smiley
I bolted upright from dreamy sleep last night at 2:45 am with the realization that I never sent my uncle Phillip an invitation to read my new weblog. Then, slowly, the panic morphed into the dull and sore realization of his recent death. It finally dispersed and I relented to go back sleep but with a determination to write about him when I awoke.
Phillip, my mother’s only brother (he is on the right of the picture), was modern in spirit, charismatic with unbounded joie de vivre. He had a cosmopolitan view, was a man of great humour, intellect, and a life long learner. He was a ‘far away’ uncle and he brought a youthful, refreshing wind of hedonism whenever he visited us in Toronto.
He visited for special occasions as he lived with his family on a remote, tropical island. It was really unique to have family on an exotic Caribbean Island in the 50’s and 60’s, as Curacao was unfamiliar to everyone - except for the fancy liqueur of the same name.
Phillip Polosieci was able to recover from the war with my mother and as adolescents, in 1948, they came to Canada. Sponsored by relatives in Toronto who were able to help resettle them, they came as the orphaned remnants of a common ancestor, Yechiel Mechel (Moshe) Greenwald. They were their European family relations many of whom had been decimated in Poland during the Holocaust.
His death, January 31, 2007 was sadly unexpected and premature. It came within two months of Annette, his sister, my mother.
Certainly, his early life and the fearful years of war, work camps, and starvation affected his development as he was just a child of seven when the Germans attacked Poland and his life changed forever. But he overcame the past assaults and lived the rest of his life with genuine love for all people, chasidut and generosity beyond belief towards my mother.
