Escaping WWII: Telling the Tale, Teaching Others to Tell Their Own

Telling A Good Story

Julian Padowicz has trouble reading and paying attention. His combined ADD and dyslexia tend to cause issues with things like that. In May, he will be attending the Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association's 10th Annual Conference for Writers, Publishers and Marketers along with a myriad of other notable authors as a speaker for the event.

"When I was younger, [those diseases] were unheard of," he said, sitting with a cup of instant coffee in his homey country kitchen, surrounded by cows. They adorn artwork along the walls and the stove mantle in ceramic form. It feels welcoming and warm and it is easy to get lost in his storytelling.

"I was labeled as not-too-bright and damn lazy," he said. "I realized I was not going to be able to go to engineering school, medical school or law school—any of those things. One thing I was good at was telling a story. I knew from the go writing would be my future."

His ADD and dyslexia never interfered with his writing, and it was a benefit to humanity, for he had quite a story to tell. Padowicz has lived in Stamford for 26 years, most recently with his wife Donna, whom he married at 55. He penned his first memoir, Mother and Me: Escape from Warsaw 1939, in 2008. It recounts the story of his daring escape from Warsaw at the age of 7, fleeing into Soviet-occupied southern Poland, with his mother. The tale is followed up by A Ship in the Harbor and Loves of Yulian, furthering the pair's story.

Finding The Write Stuff

But he didn't start off writing best sellers immediately. In fact, he didn't even publish his memoirs until 2008. It took him quite some time to get back to the craft he knew he loved and find the voice to tell his story. After going to college and joining the ROTC during the Korean conflict, Padowicz made a four-and-a-half year commitment with the Airforce.

"I got out and was very fortunate to meet a lady who was as agent to a lot of well-known authors. She was Harper Lee's agent, John Steinbeck's agent. she agreed to look at some of my short stories and tell me if she saw any potential  talent there. She did see some talent and she asked me to write a novel."

In his twenties, Padowicz said he didn't feel like he had a novel in him but he gave it a shot. He spent a year hammering out a tale of fiction.

"She said it wasn't sellable."

So got out of the game and entered the documentary film world, where he successfully navigated his way to his own production studio over the course of 35 years.

"In 2000, I got out of the business. With video coming into the picture, every kid with a video camera was a filmmaker. I got out because I'm not a salesman. Everyone was competing with me," Padowicz said. "I said to hell with it."

Religiously Writing

He parlayed his love of telling stories into a successful audiobook endeavor that included titles like 100 Minutes to Better Photography and 60 Minutes to Computer Literacy, a title in particular he said was only successful because of his own ignorance and his wife at the time's expertise.

"At that point, I saw a niche for myself. I realized I could self-publish in an audio medium, duplicating cassettes on my home stereo," he said. "They started getting great reviews, and I could just record everything in the basement here... Then I decided to write my first memoir—because we belong to a Unitarian Church."

The minister one day assigned his congregation a project. With Unitarian religion just gaining footing, few are born into the belief system. It is something to which many have found their way over the course of what his minister called an "odyssey."

"I wrote down my story, that went from when I was seven to how I got to ehe Unitarian church," he said. "I was born Jewish, I had a Catholic nanny who believed only Catholics were going to heaven. So she taught me the Our Father,  Hail Mary, how to pray the rosaries so I could go to heaven. That only confused me thoroughly. So I told them about my childhood and escape from occupied Poland. It was all I had originally planned to write."

Revisiting The Past

Padowicz penned the book over three years while working on audio books and it took another three years to find a publisher. He said he received many rejection letters that praised the work but declined the ability to publish the book due to lack of a proper market niche within the company.

"I wasn't discouraged. I knew someone would come along."

Someone did come along. In 2008, Mother and Me found success. And in that success and the process of telling his life tale, Padowicz found himself bitten by the bug. He wrote a sequel. Then another. In total, the stories detailed his escaped and followed him and his mother all the way to their eventual arrival in the United States in 1941.

"I wrote them in a humorous vein," he said. "They're serious subject matter, but it was nothing I hadn't mulled over before. I tried to keep it light. One critic called it, 'the merriest holocaust account,' she'd ever read. Another called it 'part Anne Frank, part Great Escape, part Marx Brothers.' The tone just came naturally."

Sharing With Others About Sharing His Story

Now, Padowicz will join the ranks of literary agents, markets, publishers and authors who will speak at the CAPA-U's 10th annual conference titled "Just Write" on May 11 at the Hartford Steam Boiler Conference Center where the keynote speaker will be Hallie Ephron.

"Frankly, I have not met many budding authors," he said. "When I speak, most are just interested in my holocaust escape story. The questions are typically about me and not about my writing process. This will be my first time in a room with budding or wannabe authors. I'm approaching it with a little bit of trepidation."

Padowicz said he'll just do what he usually does, tell a good story and hope what he offers will find its way to the ears that need to hear his words.

"I hope they find what I have to say responds to their needs," he said, and gave away what he hopes will be his key advice. "I will talk to them about my father-in-law, who grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere in Iowa and the ways his story is worth telling for his grandchildren—not for publication but for his family. I'll tell them about a second memoir not for publication but for family where the author made a big mistake recounting facts but not talking about his feelings. If it's all fact, it's not that interesting. Writing a memoir, whether for publication of not, can be a very worthwhile experience."