Before reading this story, please read part one in the series to give you some background on this post.

It is said that the invasion of Poland in 1939 precipitated World War II.

My grandparents, newly wed at 17 and 20 years old, were wrenched from their homes by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small German-allied Slovak contingent, hoarded onto trains and placed in a Nazi Concentration camp.

According to research I’ve done, the Soviet Red Army invaded the eastern regions of Poland in cooperation with Germany to overrun Poland. Although the Polish government never surrendered, the home of my ancestors that was once just a small town in Poland is now part of the Ukraine.

Because they weren’t Jewish, the members of my family and extended family weren’t put to death.

They were put to work.

My grandfather on the right

The people of the small town, most who were related, were divided amongst the Germans as slaves and placed in factories and on farms to provide the Nazis with free service in slave-labor conditions.

It’s said that my grandfather helped save the lives of an elderly Jewish grandfather and his grandson from certain death by hiding them on the very farm my grandfather was held captive on.

My family was fortunate to have kind keepers, but living conditions were difficult and health care was nonexistent. No parent should suffer the loss of a child, but my grandfather lost his two oldest sons within the same year, both under two years of age, because conditions at the camp were too difficult for them to survive.

A family Cousin at the DP Camp in Germany

By the time my mother was born, the war was ending and my family was placed in a displaced persons (DP) camp in Ingolstadt, Germany. My mother was born in captivity, and my family was moved from camp to camp for five years before they were placed in America.

With each new camp came a vicious routine.

Captives were lined up and sprayed down consistently with what was described to me as a pesticide commonly used in de-lousing prisoners. Various members of my family that I’ve spoken to about the past said that their strongest memory is one of the fumes and the cold spray hitting their bodies before being lined up for new identification photos and meal tickets.

My mother's DP Camp identification photo, age 2

A familiar tale in my family is the time my mother became seriously ill from an iron deficiency as a toddler.

Desperate to help her, my grandfather escaped the camp in search of a way to help her. He walked for miles, hiding from the Germans in search of something as commonplace as an apple.

Finally discovering an apple, he placed a nail inside of the fruit so it could leech the iron and save my mother. The apple became soft and the iron soaked into the fruit. My grandparents were able to feed it to my mother to help her regain her strength.

A frightening trial for any parent, but a horrifying ordeal for my grandparents who had already suffered the loss of two children.

Time passed, World War II ended and yet my family languished in Germany.

My Great-Aunt and cousins at a DP camp

A few years after the close of World War II, my uncle was born and most of my family escaped Germany to find home in Australia.

Boats were headed to the land “down under” and my family happily reconnected with loved ones. My grandparents and mother were scheduled to travel with them when a sudden illness overtook my uncle, then just a child, preventing my family from leaving the camps and denying them their freedom.

A Polish priest whom my grandparents befriended in the camps was released about a year before my family was, and worked tirelessly to bring them to America.

Finally, in the winter of 1950 – five years after World War II had ended – my family was granted permission to enter the U.S. After nearly a decade suffering in various camps throughout Nazi Germany, it was finally time for my family to realize the freedom they so greatly desired.

They landed in America on Christmas Eve, 1950.

My family finally arrived in America with nothing but eight dollars from the Red Cross and one suitcase that held everything they owned – the combined belongings of my grandparents and their two surviving children, my mother and uncle.

The priest brought them to Upstate NY, where my grandfather found work in the steel factory he worked tirelessly at for 26 years.

He managed to save enough money to buy a house for my family, and over time saved enough to sell the house and purchase the 19-acre farm in Syracuse, New York that my family still resides today.

My grandfather’s impact is as timeless as the lessons that I have learned and have they have forever changed my perspective, as evidenced in part three…

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