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Clip description
Dana (Basia Bonkowski) arrives home from work to find a letter addressed to her in a handwriting she doesn’t recognise. With apprehension she reads the letter.
Curator’s notes
Dana learns via letter that her husband has another wife in Poland and that at the time he and Dana were married, he was already married to this woman. She learns that they have a ten-year-old child and that her husband will not be joining her in Australia. What’s more, the revelations come from the first wife herself.
The Second World War not only caused tremendous political upheaval in Europe, but tremendous social and family upheaval. Dana’s experience – where her husband had lost contact with his first wife during the War and married Dana soon after the War – was not at all unique. Across Europe and even in places like the USA and Australia, as the postwar dust settled, significant numbers of women found themselves and their children the casualties of bigamous wartime relationships.
