Jacek Laszkiewicz

Who would ever think, that my book will end up in the hands of a young reader !

This morning I had an opportunity to meet Mihai Babeanu and his lovely wife Francoise holidaying in Vancouver from Paris. This was our first, in person, get together and another example of how small our planet has become. Back in 2012, after my journal was published my exposure to ex-refugees from Latina has escalated. The big contributor of getting us all ‘connected’ has been Emanuela Gasbarroni, an Italian journalist who through her persistence and hard work built the cyber...space bridge for us all to communicate and get to know each other. Mihai is one of us. He escaped from communist Romania in mid 70’s and eventually immigrated to Paris. Although, Mihai was in the Latina camp a decade earlier our conversation and memories of those days are similar... I’m really happy meeting you guys and, hopefully, see you one day again... #refugees #latinacampo #easteuropeanimmigrants #fallofcommunism

Few years back... ;-) My first and only Easter in a refugee camp.

It is amazing how powerful the social media can be. This week I have met a nice couple in Burnaby, BC. They are from Czech Republic and came to Canada in early 80’s. Anna has contacted me via Facebook expressing her interest in acquiring two copies of my journal. After exchanging contact details I suggested a meeting. She and her husband invited me to their small manufacturing facility (specializing in tool-belts) where we met. We had a great time of exchanging the stories fr...om Latina and spent nearly one hour chatting. At the end I asked her; How did you manage finding about my book? Well, interestingly enough her daughter who was born, back then, in Czechoslovakia heard about the last week earthquakes in Rome. She started to do some research on line to see if beside Rome there was any other areas damaged, including Latina. One mouse click to another directed her to a title of my book We live in a small world :-) See more

A couple of days ago I met a Romanian lady who is managing one of the apartment buildings in Coquitlam. Coincidentally, she spent six months (1981) in the Latina's camp too. She used to be an actress back home. Anyhow, we live in small world now these days.

Here we are! Friday, December 11 at 17,00 at the Faculty of Economics of University La Sapienza in Latina, everybody is invited to an afternoon of emotions, memories, testimonies, readings, photos, videos on the refugee camp in Latina, which hosted some 80,000 refugees fleeing from Eastern European countries. I will present the project of my documentary "From east to west, Refugee Camp Latina" of which I'm finishing the shooting, there will be two witnesses Aurelia Klimkiewicz and Mihai Babeanu , the readings with Clemente Pernarella and Melania Maccaferri, Emilio Drudi who will talk about migrants of yesterday and today, the people of Latina who worked or knew some refugees. I expect you all all, it will be an opportunity to reclaim a piece of recent history of Latina http://www.latina24ore.it//documentario-campo-profughi-la/