Foreword by Neal Pease
Preface by Author
Part 1: A BETTER DAY HAS NOT COME
1.The Changes came quickly
2.The Camps
3.The Road to Uzbekistan
4.Fergana, Uzbekistan
5.The Meeting
6.The Journey
7.In Pahlavi
8.Teheran
9.Santa Rosa
Part 2: WARTANOWICZ FAMILY VINEYARDS IN PODOLE
10.Eugeniusz Wartanowicz, an Armenian From Dzwiniacz
11.Józef Wartanowicz and his Vineyards
12.Anulka, the daughter of Marian—a Podolan from Johannesburg
13.Seven Surviving Letters
14.Diary of Krystyna Wartanowicz
15.Persia
16.Joasia Born in Zambia
17.When it rained, the Ground Dried Quickly
18.Anna—a Podolan from Krasnica
19.Mieczek—Keys to the Mercedes tied with a Blue Ribbon
Part 3: ANNEX
20.Józef Wartanowicz: Fruit and wine Production of the Warm
Podole
21.Edward Fonferko: Economic Conditions of Warm Podole from the
Viewpoint of Interest of Town Intelligentsia
Part 4: THE FATES OF POLISH FAMILIES: THE KRASICKIS
22.The War of 1939
23.In memoriam of Captain of the Polish Air Force Witold
Krasicki
24.Janusz Krasicki – the Pilot and History friend
25.The Changes
26.The Memorable Flights of Glider Pilots
Part 5:“LET OUR FATE BE A WARNING TO YOU”: WANDA OSSOWSKA
27.The Little One from Neustadt-Glewe
INDEX
Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm is an independent scholar and the author of twenty-three books, including The Roots Are Polish.
Ziolkowska-Boehm brings the reader into the hearts and souls of
four women who have survived bloody massacres, hardships,
deportation, and concentration camps through their oral histories.
. . .A heart- wrenching book that should be read by all.
*Polish American Journal*
Ziolkowska-Boehm’s collection of deeply affecting personal and
family narratives returns us to the level where individuals are
caught up in historical events that changed their lives forever,
and tells us how they experienced them. ... During the war years
Polish women undertook many difficult tasks to preserve both their
families and their nation. Their efforts and perspective are given
exposure here in a way that impresses the reader hitherto
unfamiliar with their achievements. Ms. Ziolkowska-Boehm is to be
congratulated for making their voices heard.
*The Sarmatian Review*
A remarkable and highly personal account of the human suffering the
victims of both Hitlerism and Stalinism had to endure … beyond
comprehension of most Americans.
*Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Compelling, readable, and very moving!"*
In World War II the Poles suffered oppression and murder from both
Nazi Germanyand the USSR , which attacked their country and divided
it between them in September 1939.The Wartanowicz and Michalak
families were deported from former eastern Poland to Soviet labor
camps near Archangel or farms in Kazakhstan. Freed after the German
attack on the USSR, they left in 1942 with the Anders Army for
Persia (Iran) and then scattered all over the world. Reserve
Captain, PilotWitold Krasicki was shot by the Soviets in spring
1940, along with thousands of Polish POWs and other prisoners. His
family survived the German occupation in Warsaw, including the
two-month Polish Home Army uprising against the Germans in 1944.
Wanda Ossowska worked for the Polish resistance, survived brutal
Nazi torture, three Nazi death camps, and risked her life to save a
Jewish girl.In the author's interviews with the survivors and
theirrelatives, theytelltheir poignant stories withvivid, personal
memories of wartime life and death, as well astheir lives in
postwar Communist Poland or elsewhere. We should be grateful to
Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm who has savedthese memories for us.
*Anna M. Cienciala, University of Kansas*
Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm has written on a wide variety of
subjects. But she writes with particular feeling when describing,
as she does in this new book, the heroism and suffering of Poles
during the Second World War. These are stories that must be
told—and she tells them very well, indeed.
*Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson, authors of A Question of Honor: The
Kosciuszko Squadron—Forgotten Heroes of World War II*
These accounts of Polish family life in Russian and German camps
during World War II describe people subsisting on weeds and horse
heads, living sometimes in pig sties. Children watch as fathers and
mothers wither and die amidst “the calm of terror.” Bodies are
thrown out of running trains. Prisoners shiver in the intense cold
of long winters, always hungry, amidst bedbugs that somehow survive
even the coldest nights. Meet Wanda Ossowska, interrogated 57 times
by the Gestapo, tortured “to the limits of her endurance,” refusing
to name names. It’s another time, another world, “the true valleys
of death,” when even hospitals were “houses for dying”—genocide one
by one, or by the thousands (as in the Katyn massacre). These
evocative, descriptive accounts become terrifyingly haunting and
personally intimate.
*Bruce E. Johansen, University of Nebraska at Omaha*
An unforgettable picture of the martyrdom of women and children
sent from Poland behind the Urals. A powerful work of art that
should be read and re-read.
*Karl Maramorosch, Rutgers University*
Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm tells stories that are the substance of
history and of dreams. She tells the stories of individuals who are
both ordinary and heroic... . The book is an easy read in spite of
its spellbinding intensity.
*Ewa Thompson, Rice University*
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