The two women pictured were 2 of the 18 people from the United States, Canada and Thailand who made up the group that we joined for the Orbis tour of Warsaw, Zakopane, Czestochowa, Auschwitz, and Krakow. Each member of the group had an interesting story as to why they were there, some had been to Poland before, some, like us, were on their first visit.
Lisa, the woman on the right, is from California, works for Toyota American Headquarters in the Public Relations Department. Her boss is Polish and got her so interested in the Poles that she made an addition on to her trip to Prague to come and see the main sites of Poland. She had a terrific time; especially enjoyed the food and anything that got the group participating, such as Polish dancing and turning the salt mine lift wheel. She endured much harassment about the plight of Toyota and spotted the Toyota dealerships we passed. She was one of the many that made the trip delightful.
The woman on the left is from Northern Canada and has an amazing story. During World War II, when the Nazis occupied Poland, it was not only the Jews that they had special plans for. The Jews were to be immediately exterminated; the Poles were to be literally worked to death. Furthermore, Poles were sent to Germany to work as slave labor in German factories. Germans moved into the vacated houses and land as each group was eliminated, part of Hitler's "Libensraum" (Livingspace) Program.
One especially onerous part of these programs was that children of Poles who had blond hair and blue eyes were sent to Germany to be raised by German families as one of their own. This woman's mother was one of the children.
In December 1939 her 9 year old mother was told that she was being sent to a nice camp for a while. She was given one hour to say goodbye to her parents and pack one small bag of things she wanted to take with her. She was not told for how long she would be gone. Only that she was to be at the Warsaw train station in one hour.
She joined with one of her best friends for the train journey, which lasted several days. Stops were made along the way. At one of those stops her friend disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. She does not know what happened to her friend; she believes she ended in a concentration camp. No record has ever been found.
Meanwhile, this woman's mother continued on the train to Berlin where she was met by a German couple who took her to their home outside the city. For 6 years she was raised as German.
At the end of the war, the Allies gathered such children and others who had been displaced by the Germans. Some of the children did not want to return to Poland; they did not know Poland, they had been raised from very young as German and had no memory of their Polish parents. Others, such as this woman's mother had no parents to go back to. They had disappeared into the German slave system, never to be known of again. So, for nearly 5 years she lived in a Displacement Camp in Poland. While in the camp, she, now 18, met and married a young man with a similar experience. They had a child, this woman, while in the camp.
Their desire became to get to America; but, first to get out of the Displaced Persons Camp. So when their turn came to be sent somewhere out of the camp, it was Canada. They seized the opportunity to leave even though it was to Canada, a place they knew nothing about.
This women was on this visit to Poland to see if she could learn something about her grandparents, the ones who had their daughter sent to Germany to be raised by "Good Nazi" Germans, who were removed from their farm, who were sent to Germany to work as slave labor in a factory, and most probably died from undernourishment while working in the Nazi war factories.
What was most amazing was her sunny disposition. She passed out sweets to each of us as we traveled; always had a smile and always greeted everyone with a cheery heavily Polish accented "Good morning!"
