Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Polish fighter who survived Nazis to see family again after 64 years - Times (London)
The last time Aleks Szustakiewicz saw his sister and brothers it was his 15th birthday and he was being dragged off by the Nazis to a slave-labour camp.
Remarkably, he survived the labour camp and, as the Germans retreated, was able to walk to France, where he joined the Polish Free Forces. At the end of the war he found himself with the Polish fighters in Italy, one of the millions of dispossessed people spread across Europe.
With the feared Russians now in control of his homeland, and no information about his family, Mr Szustakiewicz took up the offer to move to England. Now, 64 years later, he has been reunited with relatives he thought he would never see again and is preparing to fly home to Cracow.
Mr Szustakiewicz, 79, was told that his family had survived, in a telephone call from his sister Anna, 74, who had been trying to trace her brother at the same time that he was looking for her. There are also two surviving brothers, Vojtek, who was just a toddler when Mr Szustakiewicz last saw him, and Jaroszek, who had not then been born.
...
He said he remembers clearly the birthday when the German soldiers came to separate him from his family. He said: “I hugged my mum and dad and they hugged me. We were all crying and I didn’t know where I was going or if I’d see them again.”
“They had come for my sister, but she wasn’t there, so they took me. ...
The last time Aleks Szustakiewicz saw his sister and brothers it was his 15th birthday and he was being dragged off by the Nazis to a slave-labour camp.
Remarkably, he survived the labour camp and, as the Germans retreated, was able to walk to France, where he joined the Polish Free Forces. At the end of the war he found himself with the Polish fighters in Italy, one of the millions of dispossessed people spread across Europe.
With the feared Russians now in control of his homeland, and no information about his family, Mr Szustakiewicz took up the offer to move to England. Now, 64 years later, he has been reunited with relatives he thought he would never see again and is preparing to fly home to Cracow.
Mr Szustakiewicz, 79, was told that his family had survived, in a telephone call from his sister Anna, 74, who had been trying to trace her brother at the same time that he was looking for her. There are also two surviving brothers, Vojtek, who was just a toddler when Mr Szustakiewicz last saw him, and Jaroszek, who had not then been born.
...
He said he remembers clearly the birthday when the German soldiers came to separate him from his family. He said: “I hugged my mum and dad and they hugged me. We were all crying and I didn’t know where I was going or if I’d see them again.”
“They had come for my sister, but she wasn’t there, so they took me. ...
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