My grandmother is one of the most interesting people I have had the pleasure to know. (Most of the story below is from my brother Ryans book, Cook Like a Grandma) “Paula’s father owned a flour mill in Lvov, which was then in Poland and now is in the Ukraine. Growing up somewhat affluent, Paula’s early childhood was comfortable. She was enrolled in private school, had a pony, went skiing in the winter, and enjoyed regular exposure to the arts. That all changed when the Germans seized Lvov. She has told us of walking home from school, age 14, when the bombs started to drop and chaos rippled over the streets. The war immediately took over everybody’s lives as factories closed, schools were boarded up, and food supplies diminished. Soldiers appropriated Paula’s family flour mill and transformed it into an ammunition factory. Her father, Bernard Richter, was taken into the Polish Army as an officer, but was never seen again. Then, in 1942, Paula herself was apprehended by the Nazi police and forced into a crowded boxcar. Luckily, her mother had sewn a small pair of scissors into the lining of her overcoat. Some men in the boxcar used those scissors to unlatch a bolt from the door and she leaped out of the moving train and into five feet of snow. She saw a mother jump out of that same car, but only after throwing her two babies out first. The soldiers shot at anything that moved but Grandma Paula continued her escape, climbing through snow that was piled up to her face. She saw a light in the distance and finally made her way to a home where a Ukrainian family was celebrating Russian Christmas. They took her inside and warmed her frozen hands and feet in water, but warned that she could not stay with them. If she were found, they feared that their entire family would be killed. Instead, they let her sleep in the barn. The next day, Grandma made her way into the closest town and asked for help. One man pretended that he wanted to help her but then threatened to turn her back into the Nazis. She bribed him with the last of her money and made her way to the train station. There she met a group of schoolgirls who paid for her fare and allowed her to mix in with them. She arrived home safely. Three months after her first abduction, Paula was on her way home from school when she was captured again and was this time put onto a passenger train and shipped to Austria to be used as a worker. She would never again see her mother. The Austrians quickly recognized that Paula was highly educated and spoke six languages fluently. They put her to work as a teacher and interpreter. She became friends with the local Count who managed the district’s farming operations and munitions plant. He gave her a new position with real authority and a large private apartment in a historic downtown building. In one of her assignments as an interpreter at a law firm, she accompanied a lawyer to court and returned to find that the allies had bombed their office building and that the two of them were the only surviving employees. When she first arrived in Austria, Paula had to wear an insignia with a visible “P” that marked her as Polish. This identifier restricted her travel and other rights, so she persuaded the Count to alter her paperwork. He also gave her a bike, a raincoat, food coupons and passes for travel. She rode away with far more than she had asked for, but quickly rode her new bike into a ditch, wrecking the bike and deciding then and there to never to ride a bike again. In 1945, it quickly became clear that the Americans and other Allied Forces were approaching and would soon liberate the area. Paula and a friend made their move and left for the west, towards Allied lines. They hiked, hitched rides, and rode the train. On one train, the cars hit a break in the tracks and all of the passengers were forced to throw their luggage overboard to eliminate weight. On another, low flying German planes attacked them. When she reached Switzerland, Grandma met with American soldiers and joined the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), doing translation work and underground investigation. She told me stories about going into the forest with American and other Allied Generals to meet with German and Soviet Generals. Her job was to translate as they negotiated the end of the war. She also worked as an interpreter during the opening and liberation of the concentration camps. Like everybody else, she was taken by surprise to see the unfathomable number of people that were inside the barbed wire fences. She was also shocked to see how weak and sickly the prisoners were. Given her language skills, Paula was responsible for recording where the newly released captives had lived before internment. She had a typewriter on a crate and would sit across from each freed prisoner, doing her best to identify and ask questions in their native language. If they were strong enough to sit, then they spoke from a chair. More often, however, they had to be lowered into a garbage bin that supported their spine and legs enough to allow them to sit upright.” (from Cook Like a Grandma) It was during this time that Paula met a charming and handsome tank driver named Tony Kazmierski. Tony could not read the letters his mother would write in Polish so when he met Paula, she helped him to translate them. The two fell in love and eventually settled in Rochester, New York to raise a family. Many memories of my grandmother are food-related. She baked my birthday cakes. She made amazing chicken noodle soup. At Christmas she would send our family large assortments of cookies she had spent weeks preparing. She was always baking pies, zucchini bread and banana bread, and she often snuck me sips of her coffee telling me, “you have to try it… it’s sooo good.” She was an encyclopedia of recipes, and I grew up eating many of her creations with my mother’s cooking. Paula always made everyone take second and third helpings of whatever food she had prepared. I’ve often wondered if perhaps this was a reaction to the days she spent hungry on the run during World War II. In fact, I’ve often wondered about a number of things regarding my grandmother’s past. What happened to her parents? Is there any chance she actually Jewish before the war? What else happened during the war that she never told us about. Last year I went to L’viv hoping to answer some of these questions. L’viv is a stunning city with old cobbled roads and tight alleyways. Though the majority of residents are now Ukrainian, a Polish history still dominates. I researched town records and local cemeteries but left L’viv with no answers, and truth be told, I’m not sure that my Grandmother would have wanted these questions answered anyway. My grandmother had a positive impact on everyone she met and she was always a guiding factor for my parents, my brothers and me. She died last month at the age of 89 after a difficult struggle with Alzheimer’s. I share this story with you all both to memorialize this amazing woman and to tell the tale of one survivor who suffered more loss and pain than many of us ever will yet managed to live a life of remarkable compassion and selflessness.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 03:34:00 +0000
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