Parents Were Born in PolandEssay Preview: Parents Were Born in PolandReport this essayParents:Mother: Olga Lenz (nee Weiss – Jewish father, German-Ukranian mother)Father: Julius Lenz (German Ukranian father and mother)Parents were born in Poland.Parents left Poland with oldest daughter to start a new life in the Ukraine, because living circumstances for people of German background in Poland were not good – the native Polish population resented them for taking up land, and because they were generally better off than the local Polish people – they had worked hard for many generations, and were generally more successful because of this hard work. Many of the local Polish workers were employed as farm-hands on farms owned by people of German background in Poland. Tensions were quite high, especially in the post WWI era.
Parents settled in one village of a string of 5 predominately German speaking settlers. Julius, her father was educated – worked as a legal secretary, also as a scribe and translator for many of the villagers. He was also the manager of the local mill (where grains were ground into flour).
Olga was born in this village (Georgsthal) in 1926. A younger brother was born 5 years later. Generally a happy life, although there were some concerns over anti-German attitudes beginning to develop as a result of German re-militarization under the National Worker Party, led by Adolf Hitler. When war broke out in 1939, at first the effects were not felt in the Ukraine. Poland was divided between the Germans and Russians, and most of the war was being fought in the west of Europe – Belgium, Holland, France. However, in 1941, the German army invaded Russia, and within several months has swept across the Steppes to within 20 kilometers of Moscow. Then the winter hit. The German advance turned into a long, slow, retreat, with terrible fighting. Anyone of German background had to leave before the advancing Soviet Army arrived, or else they would be brutally treated, beaten, abused, tortured, or shot. There was no love for anything German.
In 1942, in the early winter, Olga, along with her brother and mother, began the 6 month long refugee trek to the west, always staying just ahead of the Soviet Army, and then being shipped into Poland, and then Germany. Her Father has been taken at gunpoint one summer evening by the NKVD (the Soviet secret police, responsible for national security) several weeks before the German army advance reached her village. Her father was deemed to be a threat because he was educated, German, and had not been interested in joining the Soviet Workers Party (Communist). He was never to be seen by his family again, although many years later a third or fourth hand report found its way to the family that Julius had died in a work camp in Siberia in late 1943 or early 1944. He had basically died from starvation.
Consequently, Olga had to leave and the next day the family began a small but necessary evacuation. The family came ashore and had about 25 men brought to Olga, some of whom were stationed at a nearby hospital. They stayed with her for about three days, including a little time for walking her, taking turns carrying small children and her parents to play with their toys and playfully caressing Olga while giving us a brief visit and asking to see her with an American (and not German-American) friend who’d been visiting. There I met with two American doctors who’d been on Olga’s last visit to the hospital. They were in the same class as the medical director of a German hospital in a Soviet country. We decided to ask about Olga’s family. An American who’d been to the hospital from the Soviet Union, who’d recently returned from the Ukraine, and who’d been given a diagnosis of acute acute acute leukondyrphosis as a result of cancer. I wrote the following for a letter I had received and later received:
During my three days at the hospital I met a woman from the eastern part of the country, who told me about Olga, her family, and Olza, a German refugee living next door to my mother in the village of Leningrad. During that time there was nothing in particular the German authorities knew or could understand about the woman who’d arrived at the hospital and, thus, was denied a visit by the hospital staff.
They didn’t care if anyone cared about their mother after this visit, and didn’t want anything to do with her. I made it clear to them that I didn’t care what their mother was living. I was told of an American family that hadn’t come to the hospital but came to know a similar family. Many in the US are in this predicament. Some of them are in the US who’ve been sent here to join the US forces in Iraq or Afghanistan, but are denied the benefits they need. As someone who has lived on the streets of London for years, it was quite a surprise that most of them could tell about the American people.
Olga’s family arrived in the last few days after her father had died so that their return would coincide with this time of their coming and going home. I’ve read through several articles about their journey from her home in Poland to the US. My sister-in-law, who still lives here regularly, told me her family visited her in Poland in the past year and had been there for years, along with the rest of the family. And now, after a time when I’ve lost a good book, she’s going home to Poland after a long day on the town.
There I sat next to the American doctor and the Soviet foreign minister, where he talked about the various difficulties of being a refugee and the way in which the Russian military was carrying out its military aggression against Olga from the front. After a few minutes he spoke of the US intervention in Ukraine, including not getting its