A life well lived

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 ‘Aids is a scourge that will sweep across Africa. I am emigrating to the United States next month’

Writing an account of your own life, you’d better hope your story is compelling. Your tale must be interesting enough to keep readers entertained. Jan Glazewski, the author of Blood and Silver, needn’t worry about this. His life is a vividly colourful one.

Blood and Silver: A Memoir is, as the cover of the book makes clear, “a true story of surviving and a son’s search for his family treasure”. Environmental lawyer and academic, Glazewski weaves a complex, riveting tale. It’s a story about his family fleeing Europe and making a life for themselves on the southern tip of Africa, and it’s about his own struggles with haemophilia and HIV. Then there’s his involvement with drafting the South African Constitution, and his quest to locate a hoard of silver buried in Ukraine. 

The narrative begins with his forebears, as they flee war-ravaged Europe and, specifically, the arrival of the Russians in eastern Poland (now Ukraine) in 1939. They escape to Palestine and eventually make their way to Africa. As a wealthy landowner in Poland, and because he held a master’s in agriculture, Glazewski’s father’s arrival in Natal in 1947 was newsworthy enough to make the Natal Witness.

Nevertheless, after the family’s arrival in the Cape, Glazewski’s father became a farm manager and the family settled on a dusty farm near Durbanville – a clear step down from their somewhat luxurious Polish lives.

I struggled, initially, to get into this part of the book. Perhaps it was the introduction of a plethora of characters – within a short span of time – from the immigrant polish community. But I stuck with it and soon became immersed in this small group striving to make a new life for themselves, far from home.

You meet a cast of interesting personalities, including Glazewski’s godmother, Ciocia (aunt) Tychna. As a PhD graduate, she joined the Polish underground during World War II, ending up in Auschwitz after being betrayed by a colleague. Even on the hottest days in the Cape, she would wear long sleeves to cover up the concentration camp’s identification digits tattooed above her wrist. Her survival there was frightening and unbelievable, as she met, and eventually worked for Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor responsible for the torture and deaths of countless people. A fact she understandably never spoke about.

And this is what makes Blood and Silver so interesting. Not only does the author tell his own story but also seems to have a knack for meeting people with their own intriguing accounts along the way. Many of them had front seats to some of history’s most significant events. 

But it’s Glazewki’s enlightening and harrowing account of his severe haemophilia that will fascinate. The disorder, carried by his mother and passed on to the male line, was responsible for his infant brother Adam’s death.

Always fearful of uncontrollable bleeding, haemophilia is a cloud that hung over Glazewski’s childhood, preventing him from playing sports. Treatment for it had limitations and side effects, resulting in numerous health issues, which the writer is still plagued by decades later.

The diagnosis

In January 1985, Glazewski’s life changed when, after hearing about a new disease called Aids, he decided to go for a blood test. At this early stage it was insensitively, and of course incorrectly, touted to only affect the three Hs – “homosexuals, Haitians and haemophiliacs” with the fourth category of “heroin addicts” being added later. In the case of haemophiliacs, Aids transmission came with receiving infected, lifesaving blood products.

Glazewski’s results came back positive, and with little known about the virus, the doctor’s handling of the diagnosis is terrifying. He announces callously, “Aids is a scourge that will sweep across Africa. I am emigrating to the United States next month.”  

A short while later, another doctor refused to operate on him due to fear surrounding the diagnosis. Given four years to live and scared of the stigma, Glazewki kept the diagnosis a secret till later. Nevertheless, he’d witness key struggles in the fight against HIV and Aids – especially in South Africa. 

He talks of watching 11-year-old Nkosi Johnson addressing a large crowd and openly sharing his positive status. He writes of Judge Edwin Cameron’s impassioned account at a conference, declaring that he was only alive because he could afford antiretroviral drugs. Cameron disclosing his status impacted Glazewski deeply – he became a hero of sorts to the author. 

Glazewski would play his own role in this epidemic when he joined a Groote Schuur Hospital ethics committee. The group, guided in part by his legal knowledge, put forth the hospital’s first protocol for needlestick injuries and the transmission of HIV, as well as the use of gloves.

His own struggle with and acceptance of HIV, as well as the early struggle against the virus in the 1980s and 1990s in South Africa is fascinating. Not just from a health and stigma perspective, but also in terms of policy and practice. 

While facing these personal issues, the author continued to build a career as a lawyer – first at the receiver of revenue in Pretoria. Of course, it wasn’t a great fit for anyone with liberal leanings during the height of apartheid.

Later, Glazewski makes his way back to academia, studying for a master’s degree in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Cape Town. This knowledge and passion was key during the birth of environmental law in South Africa, post 1994. 

The treasure

Who would not be compelled by their ailing father saying, “on the border of the forest, among the trees, you must look for our silver and my hunting guns”?

That’s exactly what Glazewski sets about doing, post-retirement, with scant information and a vague hand-drawn map. 

He arrives in what is essentially a foreign land, despite it being his ancestral home. The closest city to his family estate is Lviv, now in Ukraine. It was formally Polish and has a fascinating, tumultuous history.

And what a riveting part of the story this hunt makes; full of shady characters, excitement, and a sprinkling of extortion. All, I imagine, are part and parcel of any good treasure hunt. Does he find the treasure? Well, you will just have to read the book to find out.

Of course, any mention of Ukraine is incredibly topical but what this book does so well is illustrate what a contested space it has always been – suffering atrocities “under successive waves of invaders and the holocaust”. Glazewski ends what he calls an unfinished memoir with his thoughts on Ukraine and specifically Lviv, a recent target of Russian missiles. 

Cameron and writer Philippe Sands write the blurbs that feature on the cover of Blood and Silver. Cameron calls it “a richly-layered exploration of what it means to be human” as well as “engrossing and topical”. Sands, author of the award-winning best seller East West Street, itself set in Lviv, describes Glazewski’s memoir as “deeply personal” and “deeply affecting”.

This praise from such heavyweights is certainly founded. Jan Glazewski’s life is enthralling, full of challenges, tragedy, rich characters and much adventure. His has been a life well lived, destined to be written down and shared. How many of us can say we have traversed continents to find a long-lost family treasure?

Blood and Silver by Jan Glazewski is published by Tafelberg Publishers, R320