2021
Hello ,
Here's why I write this newsletter
and why I've written my eight books:
Some people and events should not be forgotten.
Just by reading, you are helping keep alive important moments in history that offer context and wisdom for the events of today. Thank you for your interest, your insight and your support!
This day, April 9th, used to be remembered as the Fall of Bataan. Very few people ever wanted to remember it because it was a humiliating defeat for US military forces.
But it's a day to remember some extraordinary men and women, their courage, their service to America, and their incredible will to survive. You can read more about the fall of Bataan here...
Or you can pass this story on to the next generation by sharing my book Pure Grit.
Another important day this week was April 7th, the 94th birthday of Wanda Traczyk-Stawska. Who's that you say?
I had to use a translator to research the this girl soldier who fought the Nazis in the Warsaw Uprising. The only information I could find was in Polish.
Asked to Make Coffee
She Wanted to Fight the Nazis
Wanda Traczyk-Stawska was 12-years-old when the German Army invaded Poland in 1939, and a bomb hit a house across the street from where she lived.
"I ran out with this dog in my arms to see where this bomb hit, to possibly cry out for people's help. I saw a woman running out of the rubble of a building with an infant...I saw the Germans shooting this woman, aiming at this infant.
I saw this child fall apart."
"And I was also at that time, first witnessing them throwing out of the house where we lived, my friend a Jew, I saw how they yanked her grandfather, how they pushed him, because he did not know what was going on, did not understand anything, cried, a terrible scene. Then my attitude towards the Germans was
unequivocal."
It was not much later the Germans came and booted Wanda's family out of their apartment. "He pushed me, this officer, because I wasn't very polite."
He also killed her beloved dog. Her father was off fighting. Her mother, Wanda, an older brother and two younger sister had to move into her grandfather's one room. They had no running water or toilet. After her mother died in in January 1942, Wanda was left to care for her younger sisters.
German invasion of Poland, September 1939.
Not until I wrote Irena's Children, did
the horrendous cost the Nazis extracted from Poland. From CommonDreams.org,
"Poland suffered some of the worst horrors of World War II, with nearly six million Poles, close to a quarter of the populace, killed... From the start, the Nazis undertook a campaign of terror against what they deemed the racially inferior Poles.
"At least two million non-Jewish Poles were publicly hung, shot, or killed en masse by gas; another roughly three million Jewish Poles, most of the country's Jews, were also killed, many at Auschwitz and other camps on Polish soil.
The stated German goal, achieved to a chilling degree: "When we finish, nobody is left alive."
This was the context for World War II's largest armed rebellion against German occupation, the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944. On the first day, Wanda, now 17, feared she would not get a chance to take part.
"I was waiting for this uprising. I knew how to do what the boys could do, I could replace them. I imagined how their mothers would suffer after their deaths. I didn't have a mother - I thought I could be a good soldier because nothing would limit me.
"I was ordered to brew coffee. I couldn't do it, but I was able to shoot well. I saw others fighting in the uprising, and I thought I wouldn't do anything - it was supposed to last only three days."
A superior recognized Wanda's potential and she became a messenger delivering death notices to Poles collaborating with the Nazis. Dangerous as this was, she was not armed.
Finally, a boy gave him her his pistol, and she was also allowed to throw grenades. As the battle progressed in different areas of Warsaw, Wanda was finally given a submachine gun.
Aaction to repel the Germans from the ruins of the Main Post Office from p. Warecka. Wanda is in the center. Photo: Afp/Getty Images from the private archive of Wanda Traczyk - Stawska
"We were very young. These friendships that formed in the Uprising are mutual understanding, resulting from the fact that we were very young, we were teenagers. This is a time when ideals are more important than life.
"Maybe it was the naivety...but we thought that we could cope, that insurgent troops would throw the Germans out of Warsaw. We knew that some of us would die, but we decided that we would fight."
The Polish Home Army fought for two months before the Germans crushed their resistance. Wanda was wounded, captured and sent to several prison camps where conditions nearly killed her.
"And they didn't give us food, we didn't have any dressings, and yet they were women. Besides, the worst part was that earlier in the winter it was so cold in the barracks, that there was frost on the hair, there was no mattress, not even straw there was, we slept on the boards. We didn't have blankets yet.
There were very difficult conditions. Sometimes they gave us such food, after which the whole camp was sick. This food was such bugs floating in the soup."
Below: More than 1,700 of the 5,000 women who fought in the uprising were sent to the Oberlangen camp, liberated April 12, 1945.
Below: Wanda Traczyk-Stawska and her plush childhood toy, the only one that survived the war. Interfores, April 2014 (Photo: Ap) Albert Zawada / Agencja Gazeta)
After liberation, Wanda was sent to Palestine, to the School of Junior Volunteers in Nazareth, where she finished high school. She missed Poland and returned in 1947, where she earned a degree in Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of Warsaw. Wanda married, had two children and worked for 30 years at a school for disabled children.
She also carried out another important mission.General Antoni Chruściel ps. "Monter", one of the main commanders of the Warsaw Uprising asked Wanda to help locate those brave soldiers who fell during the uprising and make sure that the place where they will be buried is worthy of their suffering and struggle. But most of all, to have names. Wanda fought for for many years for these
names to be recorded in the Warsaw Insurgent Cemetery.
Wanda's brother, two years older than she, died in the uprising and it took her 28 years to discover where he had been buried.
Some10,000 Polish resistance fighters and 200,000 civilians were killed during the 63 days of the Warsaw Uprising. Thousands were buried in makeshift graves all over Warsaw and thousands more were never identified or given any sort of burial. The huge task of exhuming and re-burying the dead began in 1945.
After World War II when Poland fell under Soviet rule, Polish resistance fighters were considered to be dissidents, not heroes. Not until decades later have they been recognized as patriots struggling for the independence of Poland.
On the 76th anniversary of the uprising's outbreak, Wanda Traczyk-Stawska was recognized as an uprising insurgent and for her work as the leader of the Social Committee for the Warsaw Uprising Cemetery.
https://warszawa.wyborcza.pl/warszawa/1,34862,17246096,wanda-traczyk-stawska-paczek-z-blyskawica.html?
https://histmag.org/dziewczyna-z-blyskawica-11982
https://www.1944.pl/powstancze-biogramy/wanda-traczyk,46254.html
https://www.commondreams.org/further/2019/09/03/village-idiot-offers-congrats-poland-nazi-invasion-decimated-their-country-and
Coincidentally, this week I listened to an audio book set in Poland during World War II. It's historical fiction based very closely on the events of a true story. I highly recommend it.
The Light in Hidden Places by Sharon Cameron is about Polish teenager Stefania Podgorska who hid thirteen Jews in her
attic during World War II. Her bravery, smarts and sacrifice will utterly amaze you. It's another story about the will to do the right thing no matter the consequences. You've Holocaust stories before, but each is different.
From the publisher:
One knock at the door, and Stefania has a choice to make...
It is 1943, and for four years, sixteen-year-old Stefania has been working for the Diamant family in their grocery store in Przemysl, Poland, singing her way into their lives and hearts. She has even made a promise to one of their sons, Izio -- a betrothal they must keep secret since she is Catholic and the Diamants are
Jewish.
But everything changes when the German army invades Przemysl. The Diamants are forced into the ghetto, and Stefania is alone in an occupied city, the only one left to care for Helena, her six-year-old sister. And then comes the knock at the door. Izio's brother Max has jumped from the train headed to a death camp. Stefania and
Helena make the extraordinary decision to hide Max, and eventually twelve more Jews. Then they must wait, every day, for the next knock at the door, the one that will mean death. When the knock finally comes, it is two Nazi officers, requisitioning Stefania's house for the German army.
With two Nazis below, thirteen hidden Jews above, and a little sister by her side, Stefania has one more excruciating choice to make.
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