Through Hell and Beyond in a Boxcar

It was September 3rd, and raining bombs. The war was three days old now. German planes came over our city and unloaded their noisy cargo. They only managed to disturb the dead, by dropping their destruction on the cemetery and places of no consequence. Then the planes came down over the potato fields, mowing down women, children, and old men harvesting their crops. Fifteen days later, Russian troops, in their Mongolian hats, swarmed all over the city. Dad was killed twice at the front, according to two different eyewitnesses. He appeared three weeks later, unscathed, only to be arrested for being a soldier. He was considered an enemy of the state. The rest of us-myself, my nine-year-old sister, and my pregnant mom-the other 'enemies of the state,' were packed into the cattle train and sent to Siberia. Decimated by hunger and a typhus epidemic, some of us made our way through Iran to freedom. Serendipity manifested itself at every juncture of my life. Prodded by relatives and encouraged by friends, I decided to share this story. It is a small tribute to those who did not survive this journey. It is also a small tribute to Mom, who often jeopardized her life and endured never-ending hardship in order to bring us out of hell.

I was born in 1929 in Poland, which is today known as Belarus. My first 10 years were spent on a military base where Dad served as cavalryman. Poland was ripped appart by Hitler and Stalin in September of 1939. Shortly after that, we were exiled to Siberia as enemies of the state, simply because Dad was a military person. He was arrested and taken away into Russia separately. Eventually, due to the ever-changing fortunes of war, we found our way to Iran, minus one sister, who walked away from a train in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and was lost. She was nine years old. We were reunited a year later. Another sister, who after being born in cold Siberia, came to freedom and died at the age of nine months. Two years later, we were in India. Camped in a desert and housed in tents, we attended high school between malaria attacks. In 1945, by sheer luck, I found myself on a ship heading for the United States thanks to the generosity of Polish Americans. Years later, after serving Uncle Sam in the Marine Corps during the Korean conflict, I was able to finish college, become a manufacturing engineer, get married, raise five children, and eventually retire in sunny Florida to enjoy a happy life with my wife.