People often mirror the country of their origin. National characteristics, habits and expressions are passed from generation to generation and become embodied deep within the soul of a nation and its people, much like a form of national DNA. Among Florida’s many residents is a woman who mirrors her country of origin–a tiny country that became tough because it had to, resilient because it needed to and resourceful because it was the only means for it to survive. For those who have come to know this woman there can be no doubt that Mary, like her native country Poland is truly tiny but tough!
Nothing could have prepared 12 year old Mary, for the Russian instigated nightmare that was about to unfold.
The story you are about to read is of a young girl, her family, her friends, her neighbors and her country. It is a story of determination, tenacity and hope. There are no heroes–just a common will to survive, to overcome all odds and to make it through another day. It is a story about the existence of life kept alive by fleeting flickers of decency, a shred of hope, a kind word and, most of all, the common will of those without power to live on. It is a story about never giving up when all about you is in chaos, consumed in evil and shrouded in death. It is the story of a 12-year-old girl’s life journey. It is a story of youth not wasted but stolen, of childhood dreams not lived but smashed by an evil dictator. It is a story of a girl not yet a teen who is forced to cope with life and death issues on a daily basis. It is the story of a girl ripped from her home in the middle of the night and shipped with thousands of others in open cattle cars to a Siberian Prison Camp. It is the story of a long trek at the height of World War II through parts of Europe, over mountains that span Russia, into Mongolia and across the remote western parts of China to the border of India. It is the story of a camp system built to house 5,000 Polish orphans donated by several of India’s wealthy Maharajas. It is the story of Mary Ligaj a simple Polish farm girl whose dreams became nightmares. It is a story of innocence; a farm girl who is eager to attend church, believes in a just and forgiving God, and no matter how hard life becomes is certain it is always worth living and something to be thankful for. It is a story of a girl who with the help of god and the Catholic Church found passage on a steamship from India to America. It is the story of a girl who took that opportunity to pick herself up and live out an American dream. It is a Polish story . . . it is an American story . . . and it is Mary’s story.
On August 22, 1939 Hitler issued a statement to his field commanders authorizing them to kill “without pity or mercy, all men, women and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the lebensraum (living space) we need.” Hitler’s flunky, Heinrich Himmler, followed up in a public statement of his own: “All Poles will disappear from the world . . . it is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles.” These were not whims, idol threats or garish displays of bravado it was the prelude to a world disaster where millions of innocent civilians were murdered or used as slaves and permanently displaced.
The fate of Mary as well as the fate of her family, friends and her country would be determined by acts and deeds they had no input to or control over. Two evil dictators Hitler to the west and Stalin to the east of Poland had determined that the Polish citizenry was something less than human and the nation had no right or no need to exist. Together in secret this duplicitous evil duo planned the takeover of Poland and the destruction of its people while simultaneously backing different interest in the Spanish civil war. One of the evil dictators would be condemned and reviled by the end of World War Two and the other while perhaps not the darling of the political left would remain absent of blame for his atrocities at home and across Eastern Europe before, during and for some time after World War Two. But first the world stage would be dominated by drama and circumstances that would bring out the best and the worst of humanity and take decades to sort out and understand. On November 9, 1938 a massive, coordinated attack on Jews throughout the German Reich began–known as Kristallnacht or The Night of Broken Glass. Even Germans were shocked at the violence and brutality of the night. Surely it could be assumed the Fuhrer did not know and would not condone such cruelty toward German citizens–even if they were only Jews. As 1939 came into being Von Ribbentrop was heavily into negotiating the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a secret agreement whose primary goal was the division of Poland after a German-Russian invasion. A prelude of what to expect including an array of strange bed-fellows in the form of allies on both sides had been underway in Spain since 1936. By late 1936 Hitler’s friend Generalissimo Francisco Franco had worked his way to the top of Spain’s Nationalist forces and was in the process of ousting the established Spanish government, ostensibly to rescue the nation from its duly elected Moscow backed Communist regime. Upon commencement of the Spanish civil war in 1936, Franco and his forces known as the Army of Africa were in Morocco in spite of that Franco enjoyed the support of an unusual coalition that included Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Catholic Church and the English government as well as a nonaggression pact signed by the USA. Hitler flexing his military muscle for all, the world to see provided an air-lift for Franco and his troops to the Spanish mainland for the purpose of over-throwing the duly elected leftist government to the subtle cheers of the Western powers. It would be impossible for Germans watching such a coalition in action not to believe in the legitimacy of the Nazi government and their Fuhrer; it seemed that all of the Western European governments supported Germany’s ally Generalissimo Francisco Franco in the fight against Communist expansion. Spain’s duly elected Republican government also had a strange and unusual collection of allies that included the Soviet Union, much of the western press corps, movie moguls, writers, actors and a collection of intellectuals and organized labor workers and leaders including the esteemed author Earnest Hemingway. Hemingway would go on to write the moving novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, a fictionalized account of Spain’s resistance movement based on actual events that took place during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, the insightful account of those actions added fuel to the fire of Germany’s invincibility. The central figure in Hemingway’s story is an American ex-patriot, Robert Jordan, an explosive expert living and working in Spain. He joins the International Brigade, a group of foreigners with intentions of fighting as soldiers for the Moscow-backed Spanish Republican Government. Leftist government forces facing a showdown with the fascist-backed forces of Generalissimo Francisco Franco is the book’s central plot. For Whom the Bell Tolls contains a number of themes including political ideology, bigotry, illusions of war as a romantic endeavor, love, hate and personal conflict. Detailed within the book almost to perfection is the ruthless efficiency of the German war machine. In every conflict outlined in the book as in real life, leftist government forces are no match for German airplanes, tanks and soldiers with automatic weapons and mortars. Time after time and on every occasion when the two sides engage, it is a fascist victory of epic proportions, highlighting the superiority of a well-trained, disciplined German soldier and his equipment–both on the ground and in the air! The seemingly overwhelming capability of the Nazi forces over shadows to a large degree the romance, daring and intrigue that portrays, the leftist government forces in newspaper dispatches, movies and the Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The final results of each military encounter outlined in Hemingway’s epic novel is not lost on the book’s European audience, most of whom are German neighbors, as they sought ways to satisfy Hitler’s increasing demands. Journalist searching for stories that would sell papers and keep them employed in hard-times seemed to fall in love with the Spanish Civil war after all they could spend their nights in Spain’s bars commiserating with other journalist and in the morning commute to the front lines on public transportation in time to witness the day’s action before returning to the bar in time for evening cocktails. Only in Spain circa1930’s revolution would this party time atmosphere exist as 500,000 soldiers and volunteers on both sides of the argument were being slaughtered. Hemingway married a father as well as a consummate party animal and writer left his local barroom haunt Sloppy Joes, along with his wife and kids in Florida in search of a war full of stories and a female reporter for Collier Magazine he had just met by the name of Martha Gellhorn. Martha a very resourceful person just happened to be en-route to the war also. In between words vividly describing a very uncivil war for a, news’s starved public, nightly bouts with booze and the constant proximity of danger, lust and a hotel room Earnest and Martha became very intimate and very public. Americans outside of Spain and its civil war traveling to Europe especially as late 1938 revealed that the communist cause in Spain was all but lost voiced very strong opinions in support of the might and efficiency of the German war machine. Charles Lindbergh, an aviation hero, became convinced that joining forces with Germany would be the future–sentiments also echoed by the Ambassador to England and father of a future president, Joseph Kennedy. With few exceptions, Europeans in power up to the last minute were seeking ways to align, do business with or appease the Nazi regime. One notable exception, Winston Churchill who had become central in a small, well organized and methodical campaign against Hitler’s Nazi Party continued to voice a simple message: appeasing Hitler is impossible; he wants to rule the world!! Most Germans in 1939 as well as many outsiders wanted to and did believe Goebbels’ propaganda machine’s assurance that the British government was so unprepared that it would not go to war over Poland. On September 1, 1939–10 days after Hitler’s chilling vow to kill all the people of Poland, Germany began a crushing three-pronged attack, invading Poland from the West, the North and the South; it was the opening act of World War II in Europe. It appeared for a moment that Hitler may finally have overplayed his hand. Almost immediately Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as England’s new Prime Minister promising “only blood, sweat, toil and tears”– England, Australia, and New Zealand would on September 3, 1939 declare war on Germany, insisting they would provide aid and assistance in Poland’s fight against the Nazi invaders.
The Soviet Union was thought to be ambivalent if not neutral as far as the German invasion of Poland was concerned but it was clear to all that the Communist government had since its inception been both untrustworthy, secret and corrupt making them unreliable and very unpredictable. After the Bolsheviks overthrew the Tsar in the midst of World War I, Russia quickly garnered a reputation as a secretive, not to be trusted nation by its neighbors. An expanding Russia would evolve into a Soviet Union, a nation totally devoid of conscience, style, grace, good character or innovation. As it was then it is now a nation run by thieves and bullies, the last vestiges of decency, equity and equality were crushed by the weight of a revolution that was evil and cruel from the outset. Dr. Zhivago, a fictional story of a man whose sensitive, poetic nature projects a near sense of mysticism, is reminded by a med school professor that “bacteria may be beautiful under the microscope, but it can do ugly things to people.” The fictional Dr. Zhivago, overcome by political events, would come to apply this simple med school logic to the world around him. Zhivago’s idealism and principles as the story goes stand in contrast to the reality of the time and the brutality and horror that took place every day in real time on the streets of St. Petersburg and across the Russian countryside. A fictional character portraying someone caught up in the real life and death Russian Revolution that took place where both the Red Army of the Bolsheviks and the White Army of the Tsar felt free to commit atrocities in the name of the people. The Russian revolution is a struggle wrapped in a world war undertaken in the name of peace, justice and prosperity–and in the end as with all things Russian it produces none of what it promised. The fictional Zhivago’s realization that war can turn reasonable people into unreasonable mobs willing to destroy each other with no regard for the consequences summed up perfectly the three real life accomplishments of the Bolshevik revolution: ABSOLUTE POWER, ABSOLUTE CONTROL and ABSOLUTE CORRUPTION!
The Bolsheviks, during their revolution, would go on to prove that real life can be so much stranger than fiction. The brutality of the Bolshevik Revolution became memorialized in one single act: the disappearance of Anastasia and Alexei, children of the Tsar. The brutal murder and disposal of the bodies of the two children became the hallmark of the Soviet Union’s modus operendi and their disappearance has remained an unsolved mystery. This blend of secrecy, conspiracy, intrigue, revolution, murder and romance, bound together by the execution and disappearance of innocent children, became a harbinger of things to come for opponents of the Soviet Union. The mystery of the missing children led to, a world-wide cottage industry intent on promoting the notion that both children had escaped capture as well as execution and, much like big-foot for the next 50 years or so, sightings of the elusive Anastasia in particular were reported but never confirmed from around the world.
In 1939, much as it is today, Russia was considered a menacing threat to its subjects as well as the countries it borders. Stalin by design quietly remained on the sidelines of the Polish-German conflict like a cat waiting to pounce on a weakened prey, one that Hitler would effectively render defenseless. The ink barely dry on a top secret and treacherous agreement known as the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Partition Agreement, designed to allow two sadistic tyrants Stalin and Hitler a means by which to divide Poland, left Stalin licking his chops in anticipation of receiving a share of the spoils. The cunning Stalin was not as brave or as bold as his crony-in-arms Hitler. Stalin needed to see the results of the German Blitzkrieg on Poland as well as its effect on the court of world opinion before committing troops to the conflict himself. The world did not have long to wait to learn of the treacherous Stalin’s intentions.
When it was clear Western Europe, mainly England and France, were impotent and unable as well as unwilling to honor the treaties supporting their ally in the East, Poland, Stalin unleashed his hoards of Bolshevik thugs, sending them in the middle of the night into the Eastern portion of Poland. Stalin gave his combat leaders tacit permission, and where and when havoc could be maximized, explicated instructions to rape, pillage and plunder the region of Poland not occupied by the Germans–hopefully before Hitler could confiscate and claim the entire Polish nation for himself.
Stalin, like Hitler, despised the Polish people, and he meant to terrorize them not only into submission but into a permanent state of subservience. Bilgoraj, a small farming community in the southern and Eastern part of Poland not far from the Russian border, was home to Andrew Ligaj and his family. Like many of his neighbors Andrew Ligaj was a full time farmer and part time member of the Polish army reserve. As the German menace became apparent, Andrew was activated and sent to the western border of Poland. Everyone knew the Polish army was no match for the Nazi war machine. Polish intentions were to stall the Nazi invasion when it came, until British forces, in accordance with treaty agreements reached just 6 months before, could arrive. For two and a half weeks after the conflict began Poland sent thousands of brave foot soldiers and horsemen carrying small arms and swords in wave after wave of suicide charges into the teeth of the German mechanized army. It was a grisly display of old world armament and military tactics pitting men both on foot and on horseback against 20th century technology and killing efficiency in a futile attempt to slowdown the onslaught of the Nazi Blitzkrieg streaming eastward into Poland. The one-sided slaughter of men and horses was incomprehensible to onlookers as poorly trained, ill-equipped Polish armed forces–no match for the well trained, well equipped battle tested forces of the German Reich–did their best to stem the Nazi tide. As the world watched Poland sacrificing its future, waiting for the promised assistance that would never arrive, the results became a stark and very real message of what was about to unfold in Europe. It was messages that rang loud and clear, sending shock waves of fear reverberating throughout European Capitals. The recent civil war in Spain had given the Nazis time and opportunity to train, test and improve their new and highly mechanized land forces as well as develop tactics for the German Luftwaffe. In Poland the disciplined and well-oiled German war machine was on full display for the first time in a major conflict. It’s brutal, efficiency and array of lethal equipment stunned onlookers who were overwhelmed with the realization that here in the hands of Hitler and his Nazis was the best equipped, most modern and well trained fighting force in the Western world. Stalin, also impressed, was fearful now that his nouveau friend Hitler whose troops were swarming through Poland would in the final analysis leave nothing for him to pillage, plunder and steal. But a world still reeling from the Nazi invasion of Poland was caught off guard once again when on September 17, 1939 Germany’s adversary in the Spanish civil war a war that had not yet grown cold Russia announced it alliance with Nazi Germany and the existence of the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that had been signed just two weeks earlier.
Left with no choice but to take action or concede all of Poland and its bounty to Hitler, Stalin decided to invade. And so it was on September 17, 1939 that Russian troops poured into an already beleaguered, beaten and defenseless Poland to claim a share of the loot for the master of the Soviet Union, Stalin. The September 1939 Western front of Poland became not only a killing field where thousands of Polish troops were slaughtered but also it was a place where many simply ran out of weapons, ammunition, food and supplies. Those in the Polish armed forces who were alive when the battle had moved on were simply overrun by the German invaders and taken prisoners, becoming a valuable source of slave labor for the third Reich. One such soldier taken prisoner was Andrew Ligaj, the farmer from Bilgoraj. Andrew had left a wife, Josephine, three daughters, Lucy, Agnes and Mary as well as a younger son Andrew Jr. to tend to the farm until he returned. Treaties among nations, as Poland would learn the hard way, made in times of strength, are quickly and ruthlessly abandoned in times of weakness. The Western powers had unilaterally disarmed after World War I, believing somehow this would be a recipe for peace. It was not! Andrew Ligaj and the rest of the Polish nation would be the first casualties of that flawed policy, but they would not be the last. Despised by the Germans and the Russians, abandoned by the British and the French, the people of Poland had but one ally it could rely on as World War II began and that was the Catholic Church, Stories of soldiers, civilians, Jews, Poles, gypsies and the many others caught up in the horror known as the Holocaust are numerous. German concentration camps filled with the stench of death and human wreckage are well documented and discussed in great detail as they should be. But the story of the Holocaust, an undertaking begun by Hitler and his Nazi party to rid the world of those he labeled as “undesirable,” has overshadowed another story equally as vicious and hateful, steeped in death and depravity undertaken and operated by an Axis member turned Ally, Joseph Stalin and his Evil Empire, the Soviet Union. Stalin, like Hitler, would set about eliminating an entire nationality using the Soviet prison system known as Gulags. The Russian savagery against the polish nation is a tale of international crimes against humanity committed by a “Big Three” Allied member, that has largely been covered up or just ignored by a complacent, compliant and willing world press corps for political reasons. It is a story of genocide that had its beginning in the tiny country of Poland when a second dictator, Joseph Stalin, launched a campaign of annulation against an unsuspecting and undeserving Polish people. In the end the only difference between the two dictators was that Hitler would be defeated by the Allied nations and his many evil enterprises exposed and made very public as part of the terms of surrender. Joseph Stalin adept in the art of political survival and given no choice after he was attacked by Hitler switched sides joining the West and opened a second front against his former dictator in arms, Hitler. After the war, as part of the victorious allies, the butcher Stalin and his Soviet Union thugs were able to avoid the scrutiny given to Hitler’s Germany. The treatment of the Soviet Union and the cover-up of their atrocities in Poland and other Eastern European countries wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right; it was just pure and plain politics as usual. The Soviet Union, on the backs of its slave labor force as well as the largesse and industrial might of the United States, became a world power almost overnight. The unchecked and overlooked savagery of the Soviet Union against Poland beginning in 1939 is a powerful tale of tragic proportions where kindness among victims became measured in the smallest of acts; and torture, pain, degradation, starvation and death were a daily occurrence as well as the destiny and future of many Gulag inhabitants regardless of the reason they were incarcerated. Russian Gulags, since their inception in the early 1920s, were as evil and foreboding as the German concentration camps of the 1940s. Two million Poles were incarcerated by or in German prison/concentration camps, but what is not common knowledge is that more than 1.5 million Poles were incarcerated in Russian Gulags and forced to provide slave labor to the Soviet Union. Hitler had a dual purpose in mind when he established the concentration camps in 1940: one was to eliminate those considered to be “unworthy” by Hitler’s standards; the other was to secure a slave labor force for his giant war machine. Stalin saw no need for gas chambers and crematories. He and the criminal element surrounding him in the Soviet Government had already transformed the Russian Gulags where, until 1927, the only inmates were convicted thieves, murderers, crooks, rapists and gangsters. Now Gulags were a place where anyone who disagreed with Stalin, the communist party, or was of an ethnic background he disapproved of, could be sent to join his slave labor force. Few who entered the Gulags and survived were ever allowed to return to their home; Stalin did not want a living record of his treatment of prisoners. By 1930 the Soviet Union would forego justice and any semblance of humanity–the Gulags had a clear and definite purpose: to supply slave labor for the many government projects underway throughout the Soviet Union. Lifespan in both the German concentration camps and the Gulags for slave labor was just 30 months. Death from overwork, starvation and beatings was very slow, painful and agonizing–and for many who no longer could stand the existence death was a welcome visitor.
Once you have heard the unmistakable rapid clicking and clanging sounds made by a Russian tank track traveling at a high rate of speed in the middle of the night—it becomes a sound embedded in your psyche that forever-after strikes a sense of fear and terror into your heart–it is a sound wrapped in a cadence that you will never forget. On September 17, 1939 the farmland along the Russian/Polish border rang out with just such a sound as Russia began the invasion of a now defenseless and helpless Poland. The Soviet terror machine began its operations in Poland immediately. They started in the middle of the night by entering homes and arresting leading citizens, civil servants and those within the professional and academic classes. Lists of suspected people, professions, institutions and nationalities had been prepared before the invasion. All “unfavorable elements” were physically removed from the general population once they were identified. The communist party that had become the Soviet government under Stalin had a longer and though hard to believe up to that point a more violent history in the art of administering political terror than their German counterparts who were taking notes and adding to their repertoire of violence. One must consider the numerous purges of the 1930s within the Soviet Union as a period of preparation for the communist party who once they entered Poland spent no time in “wasteful experimentation.”
In the dark of night near the village of Bilgoraj on the 17th of September, 1939 12-year-old Mary Ligaj was shaken out of her sleep by the sounds of Russian soldiers rummaging through her house rousting her mother Josephine, her two sisters Lucy and Agnes, Mary and her younger brother Andrew out of bed. Mary, as well as the rest of her family, was terrified as the unsympathetic Russians, acting more like the thugs and criminals they were and are than the regular soldiers they claimed to be, ordered Mary and her family to leave their house and everything in it. Once outside in the cold of a pitch black night where every sound seemed new, menacing, unreal and frightening, terror overtook them and became their only reality. Russian soldiers prodding the family with gun butts forced them into military vehicles and took them, with no explanation, to the train station. Every emotion, from the moment the Russian gangsters entered their home in the middle of the night, would for the Ligaj family be a first time experience. Nothing growing up or learned even as an adult before this night could have prepared Mary or the thousands of other unsuspecting Polish people for the Russian instigated nightmare that was about to unfold. Left with only the clothes on their backs and each other for what little support could be offered, no one had any idea where they were going or what was going to happen to them. But a second surprise caught everyone off guard when on September 17, 1939 Germany’s adversary in the Spanish civil war Russian announced it alliance with Nazi Germany and it the existence of the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that had been signed just two weeks earlier.
Loaded in the middle of the night into the cattle cars of waiting trains in groups of about 60 per car, they were made to stand, waiting, not knowing their fate. After all the cattle cars were loaded with people, the train began to move at a slow, eerie and foreboding pace. Making its way eastward into the Russian night it was clear this train ride was no place for the sick, the old, or the faint of heart. Toilet facilities were simple: a hole cut in the center of the cattle car floor was shared by the sixty or so people trapped inside as the train loaded with hostages called prisoners rolled along. Unknown to the Ligaj family, before the train was out of sight the Russian thugs were stealing everything of value in their house preparing it to be shipped to Russia where it would be sold. In addition the Russians would convert the now empty home of Mary Ligaj and her siblings, the place where they had grown up, into barracks for use by the Russian invaders and occupiers. Mary and her family, who had gone to sleep that night in their own bed in their own home on their own property, found themselves before morning light would come, loaded like cattle on a train bound for Siberia and the Russian Gulags. The battle for Poland was officially over on October 8, 1939. Special legislation stripped the remaining Polish people of all rights in both the German and the Russian occupied territories. Russians, as did the Germans, confiscated the food supply to feed its legions of occupiers. Rationing was instituted against the Poles allowing for only bare sustenance of food and medicine for the people of Poland. The Germans made no pretenses about their occupation of the western half of Poland. Under Nazi rule, Poland ceased to exist and the western half of Poland became a new German territory. Young Polish men were forcibly drafted into the German army, the Polish language was forbidden–only the German language was to be spoken–and all Polish schools as well as colleges were to be shut down. At the same time, in the eastern portion of Poland, the Soviet Union used a more subtle means to subjugate the people who remained. They were to be incorporated within the adjoining Russian border by special Soviet “elections.” This new border “realignment” conferred Soviet citizenship on the Polish inhabitants but, like the Germans, young Polish men trapped in the eastern part of Poland were now subject to being drafted into the Soviet army. The Russians continued the rape and pillage of Poland as a means to humiliate terrorize and intimidate the local citizens driving them into complete submission. Stalin ordered Polish churches and synagogues to be burned to the ground; his minions arrested priests and rabbis, sending them to Russian Gulags in Siberia. Millions of people without food or medicine died horrible deaths in the confines of the 400 plus network of Soviet Gulags. After 1930 well over half of the prisoners held in the Gulags were guilty of no crime other than being on the wrong side of the Soviet government. After 1939 the majority of Gulag inmates were political prisoners, Polish refugees or both, whose homes and other property were confiscated or stolen by the Russians. But the greedy Soviets wanted more; they wanted the labor as well as the life of those they had falsely imprisoned. Stalin’s expansion of the Gulag system during the 1930s is easy to understand; it gave him a way to get dissenters off the street and a means to provide an on-demand slave labor force. It might be said that Stalin believed this use of the Gulags to stifle dissent and supply forced labor to be the best of both worlds. Christmas was coming to the Siberian Gulags but for 12-year-old Mary Ligaj and her family, plus the thousands of Polish prisoners sent to build a railroad across Siberia, there was little to celebrate. Food was almost nonexistent. People were jammed into overcrowded barracks-type structures with little or no heat, and news received from Poland was for the most part grim. Two days after Christmas 1939 the first mass executions in Europe during World War II took place near Warsaw in a town named Wawer. 107 non-Jewish men were dragged from their homes in the middle of the night and shot. This was the first in a long line of barbaric actions designed to include ethnic cleansings as a gruesome terror tool meant to de-stabilize the Polish population and discourage any new leadership development. And so began the nonstop street roundups and mass executions conducted by the Soviets as well as the Germans they continued throughout the war in Europe. The Soviets took over Polish businesses, and the Polish currency (zloty) was removed from circulation. All Polish banks were closed and savings accounts were blocked. Throughout Poland accurate information in the form of current news was nonexistent. The ranks of the Polish press had been decimated by both the Germans and the Russians. Atrocities were now committed out in the open without regard for public opinion or fear of reprisals. Poland as a nation for all intents and purposes had once again ceased to exist. As difficult as it is to imagine, Poland, a nation that threatened no one with a population of less than 35 million people, had by the end of 1939 over two million citizens in German slave labor camps and more than 1.5 million trapped in Russian slave labor camps, accounting for almost 12% of its pre-September 1939 population. Almost 4 million Polish people had been displaced and enslaved by two maniacs: Hitler and Stalin. If that was not horrendous enough, tens of thousands of Poles were executed on fears that they might be part of, or lead, opposition to the Occupation. Those who were out of the country or able to escape eventually gathered in London and formed a Polish government-in-exile. In the beginning the new government-in-exile did not have a network established to assist the Polish people and it certainly had no leverage over the Russians or the Germans. It was therefore virtually impossible for them to provide aid to those trapped in Poland or in the labor camps of Germany and Russia. There was, however, an organization that did have a network with some ability to get a few very limited things done; it was the Catholic Church. Working with “friends” who were Nazis, some information about locations, names and status of prisoners in German prison camps became known. Catholic officials, working with the Russian Orthodox Church and others, began gathering information about Polish slaves in the Russian prisons also. But for the Polish prisoners in the Gulags a big break came in June 1941 when Hitler, both weary and wary of his Soviet partner Stalin, launched an invasion billed as a preemptive strike into the Soviet Union. Hitler flush with a string of easy victories and having been struck by the seemingly inept Soviet military decided to feed his ego, capture the oil fields in the Caucuses and do away with his counterpart in the Kremlin. Suddenly the Moscow butcher was in need of a “friend,” so to speak, if he were to survive as the head of the Soviet Union. The German invasion was a major shock that caused complete chaos among the Russians, creating panic due to their lack of preparedness. Churchill, who had replaced the hapless Chamberlain as British Prime Minister, was fully in league with the Polish government-in-exile and together they insisted that a resolution to the Polish situation be reached before Stalin could receive any Allied aid or assistance. In a brilliant tactical move, Churchill, in league with the London-based Polish government, acted swiftly and deliberately. A first step was to inform Stalin that he could only do business with the Allies after the London-based Polish Government were recognized by the Kremlin. Second, all Polish prisoners–men, women, children and soldiers–were to be released from the Gulags immediately. Third, Polish military officers were to be given free access to the people of Poland so a Polish army might be established that would fight under British overall command. Left with little choice, Stalin caved in but he did so in classic Soviet style. The Gulag doors were opened and the Polish prisoners set free but they were left to their own devices; no food, no compensation and no assistance was offered or given by the Kremlin bullies. The Polish government-in-exile was recognized by the Russians but Stalin immediately began a secret campaign to undermine it. Finally Polish General Anders was released from the Lubianka prison in Moscow and began organizing a Polish Army in Russia. The British were hungry for manpower in their fight against the Nazi war machine. France had been overrun a year earlier and the British had taken a beating during its week-long withdrawal from Dunkirk in the last few days of May and first four days of June 1940. It would be a year before America would enter the war, and the Polish, who had suffered so much, were anxious to join the fight on the side of their British host. Polish General Sikorski, head of the Polish government-in-exile, began making arrangements for the movement of Polish men and soldiers out of Russia. Polish General Anders, fresh out of Lubianka prison, was sent to Siberia to assemble, prepare and command the movement of Polish forces out of Russia and into Persia (present day Iran). General Wladyslaw Anders had no trouble getting Polish recruits for his army but there were problems he did not expect and could not anticipate. Thousands of Polish women and children freed from the Russian Gulags were on the verge of starvation. General Anders’ conscience, common sense and decency would not allow him to abandon them in the Soviet Union. Over vicious Soviet Union objections, General Anders insisted on taking the women and children with him, cutting the meager rations available to his troops to provide food. Having someone care for them after the cruelty the Polish women and children had endured at the hands of the soviet tyrants was a morale booster for the women and children as well as the troops who willingly had their rations cut and shared. Among the women and children, many of whom the Gulags had turned into orphans, who made their way out of Russia and still were united as a family was 14-year-old Mary Ligaj, her mother Josephine, her two older sisters Lucie and Agnes, and their younger brother Andrew. All had suffered severely. Josephine and Agnes were very sick; medicine and doctors were not available and while the family had finally made its way out of the Russian Gulags, they were a long way from being healthy, safe or in a home of their own. Long after the Russian Gulags purposely and erroneously were declared empty of Polish prisoners, they continued to claim Polish victims in and out of the Gulags. The combination of Russian cruelty, Siberian weather, lack of medical attention and food took its toll on the Ligaj family. Mary’s mother Josephine and an older sister Agnes died shortly after their release from the Russian Gulags. A new definition would describe the circumstances Mary, Lucie and Andrew found themselves in; they were now considered orphans. The Catholic Church was doing its best to identify, track and help re-locate thousands of Polish orphans into a safe environment. It was not an easy undertaking. Temporary Polish refugee camps were set up across the Mediterranean, the Northern coast of Africa and along the Persian Gulf while the search for a new and more permanent home began. The problem was no one wanted to take responsibility for women and children, who for the most part would be a drain on any economy. Young productive men able to work in the mines, factories and the woods were an altogether different story. Polish refugee camps should not be confused with the wretched conditions known to exist in such places as Darfur, Tanzania or other camps associated mostly with third world nations. Polish women and children worked hard to improve their surroundings. They constructed small homes with thatch roofs and, in an effort to become self-sufficient; many had European-style gardens surrounding the houses. The women set up and ran schools and hospitals using money provided by the Polish government-in-exile. Contacts and friendships were explored in an effort to accommodate the increasing number of Polish refugees and particularly those who were now classified as orphans. Ignacy Jan Paderewski was a Polish pianist, composer, diplomat, politician and Poland’s third Prime Minister. During World War I his neighbor in Switzerland was the Maharaja Jonahed of Namangan’s uncle. The story goes that they became friends. 25 years later during World War II the Maharaja, upon hearing the plight of Polish orphans strewn across Russia, Africa and the Persian Gulf, committed himself with the help of other Maharajas to building a camp capable of housing up to 5,000 orphans in India. And so began the journey of Mary Ligaj, her sister Lucy and their younger brother Andrew–orphans all–to a culture, climate and surroundings much different than they had ever known. Poland seemed a long way away now. Once underway all they knew was that their destination would be somewhere in India. The trip would not be easy and there would be both danger and beauty to behold along the way. They began by winding north through the beautiful mountains of Kyrgyzstan and into Kazakhstan continuing north to the Russian border. From there it was on into the Altai region, sometimes described as the most beautiful part of Russia. It was there that they crossed into Mongolia’s western tip. There was never a moment when they could relax their guard. The war had reached its zenith and was raging everywhere. In addition, road bandits and hostiles had to be dealt with. India and the promised big transit camp being built near Karachi as well as the many others were a long way off. Other smaller camps for the orphans, near Balachadi, were also built by the Maharaja Jonahed of Namangan. The camps were to be supported by the Polish government-in-exile as well as by the British government. Mary, her sister Lucy and their brother Andrew spent the next four-and-a-half years in the Valivade, Kolhapur camp located in the Southern part of India. Andrew became separated from Mary and Lucy, being sent to a different camp. Camp administration at Valivade, Kolhapur was handled by the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, in league with others, searched the globe contacting family members when they could be located, attempting to find relatives, friends and others who might be willing or able to help the orphans of Valivade, Kolhapur. As members of her family were located, Mary’s sister Lucy took it upon herself, with Mary’s assistance, to make contact and write letters looking for information about their family. Roosevelt and Churchill had a very warm and personal relationship before the September 1939 attack on Poland by Germany and Russia. After the attack, even though the USA was not yet officially at war, Roosevelt and Churchill stood tall against what was considered a common enemy. When Hitler turned on his evil friend Stalin the dynamics changed, forcing Stalin into the Allied camp. Nothing could get in the way of the Roosevelt-Churchill personal friendship, but a clear rift was developing when it came to postwar policy as the war began to wind down. The disposition of Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, became front and center. The first item on the agenda at Yalta put there by Stalin was in fact the disposition of Poland. Stalin, who had invaded, raped, pillaged and plundered Poland while murdering and enslaving its citizens just five years before, made it clear that he would assume control of the former Polish nation. His rationale although laughable was strikingly simple. He wanted to have a buffer to prevent another invasion of the Soviet Union from the east! The fact that doing so would violate every agreement the western powers had made with the Polish government-in-exile, seemed to escape the President of the United States. Roosevelt unfortunately had a number of advisors with Soviet sympathies; that, in addition to Roosevelt’s poor health, became a lethal combination for Poland as well as the rest of Eastern Europe. Churchill, who saw in Stalin the same qualities possessed by Hitler, was unable to overcome Roosevelt’s alignment with Stalin. Stalin’s cruelty was clearly evident by the choice of meeting places. Sensing that Roosevelt was near death, Stalin insisted that the meeting of the big three: Russia, the USA and Britain, be held in the Crimea on the Black Sea in a place called Yalta. Stalin, never sick a day in his life, cited doctor’s orders that he should not travel as a reason for the meeting to be on his home turf. Churchill, believing Stalin to be a “devil-like” tyrant leading a vile and corrupt system of government, found an ally in U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union William Bullitt. Bullitt prophesied accurately the “flow of Red amoeba into Europe,” In answer to Bullitt and Churchill’s distain for Stalin, Roosevelt said: “I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. . . . I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.” Roosevelt would not live to see how far off the mark he really was. 59 days after the “Big Three” meeting in Yalta, Roosevelt was dead. The notion that Stalin or the Soviet Union possessed a shred of benevolence, honor, decency, respect or fairness–those things thought to be among the ingredients of noblesse oblige–would be buried with Roosevelt. Churchill had been under pressure at Yalta from Roosevelt, leaving him no choice but to acquiesce to the demands of Stalin. Now he was alone and it would be left to him to inform the Polish Government-in-exile that they would no longer be recognized as the official government of Poland. They were to be replaced by Soviet Union stooges. This came at a crucial time for Winston Churchill, as he was entering a dismal political climate at home. 6 months after Yalta, in the midst of the Potsdam Conference, Churchill would be turned out of office by the British people. Although the demise of Poland had already been agreed to, Poland, as well as all of Eastern Europe, would lose its last true friend in the West for some time to come. In the orphan camps of India, word that Poland had once again been sold out by the West to the Russians created distrust and unease among the children as well as their guardians. With the help of the Catholic Church, Mary and her big sister Lucy located relatives. Some were in America, others were still in Poland. From the Polish refugee camp in Valivade, Kolhapur, India, Mary and her sister wrote to their uncle, aunt and cousin in America thanking them for the money sent to them for a trip they had hoped to make to the boys’ orphanage to visit their brother Andrew. In another letter to them they explained that they were unable to make the trip but told them Andrew does write to them often. His letters, they explained, were very short but at least they were able to keep in touch. And so it was that the simplest of tasks was so difficult to accomplish even when everyone concerned had the best of intentions. The government of India, as the war ended, was in the process of breaking away from British control. There would be no place in India for white people when independence was granted; they would all be asked to leave. Finding a place for the children was a priority for everyone involved. In a June 1946 letter to the aunt and uncle in America, Lucy apologized to them for giving a priest who was traveling to America their address so that he might see if they would be able to offer him any assistance. Once again the simplest of things was not simple. To their cousin, in the same June 1946 letter, Lucy writes that she understands that just because her cousin lives in America does not mean that she is rich. Lucy laments that she was never rich in Poland but here in India she says she is poor like everyone else, and many like her who are in India are not orphans–their parents are still stranded in Russia or in the Army someplace and they just have nowhere else to go. Lucy continues by stating that compared to where they have been, the orphanage in India is great. 370 children attend their school run by the Catholic Church and she says they are taught in Polish and are learning a lot; other languages including English are also taught in camp schools. She goes on to tell her cousin that she is both happy and sad about hearing from her father. She is happy that he has been released from the German prison camp but she is saddened by the fact that he is so bad off that he must ask his children, Lucy and Mary, living in an orphanage in India, for help. “The post office here in Valivade, Kolhapur cannot guarantee that any package we put together would reach my father,” she says. Fearful of the Russians she speculates further that her father may have someone with him from the state and nothing they would send would ever reach him. Very few Poles with a choice would opt to return to a Poland now held under the boot heel of the Russian tyrant Stalin. After India received its independence from Britain in 1947, all white people, as predicted, were asked to leave India. Once again Mary was uprooted, but this time, with help from the Catholic Church, she boarded a ship bound for the American territory of Hawaii. Mary was planning to become a Catholic nun. Catholic sisters from America had made arrangements to take in 50 girls from the orphanage in India. It was the opportunity Mary had dreamed of–a chance to come to America. After spending some time in Hawaii, Mary continued by ship to San Francisco and then by train across the U.S. to Stamford, Connecticut. Sisters from Reading, PA again were very helpful. They located her aunt and uncle in Youngstown, Ohio and helped her get settled in with them. Mary, although a devout Catholic, because of the changing circumstances, was unable to become a nun at that time. However, she graduated from Ursuline Catholic High School and went on to pursue a career in medicine. Mary began her studies at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Wheeling, WVA, earned a degree in nursing, then she joined the staff of St. Joseph’s Hospital, where she remained for two years. In 1953 she moved to the Washington DC area and joined the staff of Georgetown University Hospital, where she remained until 1969.
During this time she met Ron Jutila; they married and had two children, John and Cynthia. Mary felt she had to choose between working as a nurse and raising her children, and so it was that she became a full time mom. During the riots in Washington, Mary and Ron decided to move someplace a little “less exciting.” Ron took a job in Tallahassee with Prudential Insurance. His folks lived in Pensacola and the majority of his customers were in Panama City so they packed up once again and in 1975 they moved to Bay Point. Ron and their son John made the golf course their home away from home. Mary, almost 50 years old, decided if she wanted to see either one of them she too would have to become a golfer. The Bay Point Pro at the time was Hal Frazer and he was offering free clinics. After just three clinics he told Mary to get a cart and start playing if she wanted to be a golfer. And play she did! It wasn’t long before she was among the top women golfers in Bay Point. One hole-in-one was not enough, she acquired two! Mary has a few passions; among them are children, church, medicine and golf. Then when her children went off to college she volunteered at Gulf Coast Medical Center where she has received several awards for her tireless efforts, and of course she is never far from her religion–something that has made her strong and served her well while giving her much pleasure. She has been a long time member of the church choir and is still very active there. Mary says she has enjoyed every minute of her life in Bay Point. She is proud of being a charter member of the Women’s Club, an organization that has accomplished so much for the good of the community. And with a smile that can light up the room, she confides, “I have loved Bay Point since the moment I arrived, and I love it and the people here now as much as I did on that first day even with all the changes.” ■