The Marenych abandoned House
We received photos from a traveler and compiled a historical summary.
Here is a tour of an abandoned house: the Marenych house. It is named after a 33 rpm record lying on the floor, by the Marenych Trio. We do not locate this house precisely in the documentary; it is completely destroyed, but in short, for the neighborhood, there is no need to add to the misery.
This is the former home of Michel and his brother Jean. We have few reliable sources of information about their parents. Théodore (1932-1998) married Monique (1938-2012). They had three children: Michel, born in 1955, Jean, born in 1957, and Stéphane, born in 1963. Michel died in 2008 at the age of 52. Jean died in 2016 at the age of 59. Stéphane died in 1987 at the age of 24.
The parents are Slavic. The mother is Polish, originally from the Lublin Voivodeship. The father is Ukrainian by nationality, Polish by language. The Soviet-Polish War of 1919-1921 led to a mass exodus of Poles who were located in the oblasts of the Volhynia Voivodeship and the Lwów Voivodeship; Monique comes from there. Her father's background is the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in the early 1940s, which led to the mass deportation of Poles to Siberia and other eastern regions of the USSR, as well as a systematic ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by the UPA, the Ukrainian insurgent army.
As a child in the early 1940s, possibly 8 years old, Father Theodore fled the repression and ferocious massacres. He ended up in Ujkowice, a stone's throw across the border, in a region that had been annexed by the USSR. There he met Monique, a Polish woman whose real name was Monika. (Théodore is called Teodor in Ukrainian).
In 1942, fleeing Aktion Reinhard in Lublin, they arrived in the Cévennes. What do you do when you are an immigrant, don't speak French, and find yourself in dire need? You work in the coal mine. Three children were born from the union: Michel, Jean, and Stéphane. The latter left home very early on.
The Marenych house is reminiscent of a small nest egg that had been saved up. Teodor most likely lived in barracks, at least in the period following World War II. The need for reconstruction was very urgent. Then, little by little, the couple was able to build this house, which, as can be seen, is made up of additions, particularly because the floor levels are not the same on the upper floor. The dark bedroom overlooks an added garage annex.
What was pointed out to me: there is no toilet or bathroom. Was it in the tiny “nothing at all annex” attached to the pseudo-garage? As the house was built in stages, it is entirely plausible that the bathroom was added – who knows when – in 1970, for example. In any case, today there is no trace of it.
Overall, the house is of poor, even very poor, architectural design. When the children grow up, the parents move about fifteen kilometers away, to a place where many of the former Polish miners live. It is curious that it is they who leave, but in any case, it is a fact that the parents and youngest son die there.
Jean moves a few hundred meters away, while Michel stays. We can guess at a modest life, given the large number—almost systematic—of unpaid bills. One from France Telecom, for 14 francs. And what about this curious habit of storing water in bottles, in a certain quantity? I would have died of heat, too poorly equipped. I admit I thought about drinking it, but seriously, I refrained!
Michel worked as a laborer in a medical analysis laboratory. Life must not have been rosy every day, as there are traces of numerous letters from the ANPE (French National Employment Agency) and job applications. He wrote well and had a good command of language. There is a single photo of him at the La Bastiane campsite in Puget-sur-Argens in the Var.
Michel loved 33 rpm records of guinguette and musette music, including a surprising number of records identical to those owned by Jeannine, from the former house in Les Nains. What an era!
He married Victoire, about whom we have no biographical information, simply because she (most likely) never married; we suspect she died in the late 1990s. We can imagine that Jean left home when Michel got married, to make room for the couple. The old middle school classrooms from the 1980s belonged to Stéphane, the youngest of the siblings; they are so precious—they have nothing, so they are kept.
Michel passed away prematurely, without us knowing why. The house was vacant in 2008, although we assume that Jean probably kept an eye on it from time to time. The house was abandoned in 2016 when Jean died. We assume that there were no children and therefore no heirs, sending the heirs to the far reaches of Poland and Ukraine. We understand each other.
As the house has no real neighbors, it has been subjected to fierce vandalism. Everything has been looted. A track has been laid in front of it to replace the pylons, but everything remains in a state of total abandonment and oblivion, a closed book on the bitter fate of these people.
