The Footstool

ISBN-13: 9781516897049 / Angielski / Miękka / 2013 / 26 str.

A. Book by Me; Alanna Rumler; Jennifer Barks

Opis

My grandfather, Jozef Kodyra, was born July 7, 1913, in New York. His birth in America made him a U.S. citizen. In 1921, when he was still a young child, his family moved to Poland to build and grow their family farm. My grandmother, Helena Sudol, was born February 2, 1917 in Wiltschawola, Poland, where she too lived on her family farm. They married in 1937 and lived in several towns in Ukraine and Poland. They finally settled in Malynsk. My grandparents had five children. Three of them, Gene, Chester, and Josephine, were born before World War II. My grandfather worked with his father on their farm and also, worked for the Polish Embassy. In 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland and took the entire family to a holding camp (ghetto) outside of Pobiedziska. They were taken, not because they were Jews, but because they were Polish. From the ghetto they were forcibly sent on a two-week journey in an overcrowded railcar to Burghausen, Germany. When the train stopped, they found themselves at a concentration camp called Dachau. My grandfather was forced to work cleaning up garbage in the streets, and my grandmother had to work at a cemetery. Their children were sent to "daycare" and not allowed to be with them. Just a few days after arriving at the labor camp, my grandmother was handed a note by a Nazi guard stating that her daughter Josephine had died of tuberculosis. My grandparents were never allowed to see her body. They believed the Nazis took her to keep as their own since she was Aryan looking (Nazi's racist idea that blond-haired and blue-eyed people were superior). My grandparents and their children were in the Dachau camp for eighteen months until they were liberated in 1945. From there they were transferred to a Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Augsburg, Germany, where they stayed for three years. While they were in the DP camp, another child, Theresa, was born. Since their home had been destroyed in the war and my grandfather had US citizenship, they waited with other DPs to gain work sponsorship, which would allow them to come to the United States. On February 2, 1949, they boarded the ship SS General Sturgis to make their way to the United States. My grandfather's sponsorship brought them to Keota, Iowa. There, my grandfather worked as a farmer. They later moved to Kewanee, Illinois, where he worked at a factory and built their family home. There, in 1951, they had their last child, John, who is my father. My grandfather searched for Josephine until he passed away in 1986. He believed whole-heartedly that the Nazis had taken his daughter, and he would not give up hope that someday she would be found. I continue to search for answers to her true fate. My grandmother never spoke of these events, as they were just too painful for her. My grandfather entrusted me with the stories of these horrific events they had endured all those years ago. Nearly every day I would eagerly run to his house after school to hear the next story. I'm truly blessed to have learned so much from him, and feel it's my path in life to make sure my family's story is told and never forgotten. Without my grandparents' will to survive, I would not be here today to tell their story to my children and to you.