Hugo Keschenski celebrates this Father’s Day by reflecting on the most remarkable of lives that includes an escape from a World War II camp, growing up without a father of his own and being reunited with his mother after seven years of searching across Europe.
In his spacious room at TriCare Sunnybank Hills, Hugo begins to recount a story that sounds like it could be straight out of an adventure novel. He clutches a black and white family photo taken in the former Yugoslavia in 1941, showing generations of his family together in a moment of peace as the continent around them descended into turmoil.
It includes his father, also Hugo, who he was told was taken away and sadly killed soon afterwards. And there is his mother Anna, who was also separated from the family as he was left to be raised by his loving and devoted grandparents.
“I am only a baby in this photo so I can only try to put the pieces together from what I have been told,” Hugo said. “But there we are together and possibly for one of the final times before things changed for everyone.”
Hugo can start to put the pieces together from a very young age. He recalls growing up in a camp and his grandfather taking a pair of adult boots and cutting them down to fit his feet, guarding them from the cold weather.
There are other fragments of time; he would find small pieces of wire along the camp fence, offcuts from its construction, and make hair clips that his grandmother would then trade for small parcels of bread and food for the family.
And he can remember the great escape, more than likely he thinks over the border to another country, when a guard told them, “Halt or I’ll shoot!” as they set off over a bridge across a deep gully.
“Half of us took off, the other half got caught by the guard at the border. As I took off, my grandmother had me by the arm and she was pulling me along,” Hugo said.
“Then, my left foot was caught in a crack in this wooden bridge. My grandmother told me to hurry up and undo the lace. That’s what I did and for all I know, that boot is still there today. And then we were free.”
Hugo would eventually settle with his grandparents in the southern Austrian city of Graz. One day, when he was about eight, his grandparents told him somebody had arrived to see him. It was his mother Anna, who had been scouring the continent for years to try and find her son.
“As far as I knew I didn’t have a mother. But there she was. And she told me we were going on a trip. I had no idea that trip would end up taking us to Australia,” Hugo said.
There is another photo on the board of Hugo’s family; a picture of the ship that would transport them halfway across the world to start a new life in Australia. Anna and Hugo would finally settle in Moree in NSW, where he grew up, met the love of his life in his late wife Pam and raised two daughters, Tina and Belinda.
Hugo didn’t have the role model of a father growing up and said he learned about being a good dad along his parenting journey.
“I tried to be the best dad I could, I gave my two girls whatever they could. I love these girls of mine,” Hugo said.
“I learned by myself. All I thought about was my family, my wife, my two kids and my dog.”
He said his daughters would both be in touch on Father’s Day, and he hoped to go for lunch with Belinda, who lives at nearby Forest Lake, while Tina is in America, where she lives and works.
Meanwhile, Hugo is enjoying the round-the-clock care in the elegant surrounds of TriCareSunnybank Hills, which features an in-house chef to prepare restaurant-style meals, an alfresco café and even a cinema room for movie buffs.
There are even monthly cooking classes, which are right up Hugo’s alley given he learned to cook from his mother Anna, who worked in hotels and restaurants to help raise him in Australia.
Hugo doesn’t have to look too far to reminisce this Father’s Day. His light-filled room is full of photos and memories from a life of intrigue, adventure, laughter and love.
To learn about TriCare’s Sunnybank Hills Aged Care Residence, click here.
