First to Immigrate from Poland to the United States: Maternal Side
During World War II, my grandfather Kazimierz Wojtal was serving in the Polish Army. My grandmother Helena Wojtal nee Werbicka felt as though there was nothing left for her in Poland. Helena and her two sisters decided to flee Poland. Helena took along her 4 children. They were captured in the German concentration camp Dakau. Fortunately for them it was towards the end of the war when the United States Army liberated Dakau. Later Helena and her children were placed in the German settlement camp Altenstadt. Helena’s sisters decided to settle in France. They married Frenchmen. Currently several Polish-French cousins are now living in France as a result.
Helena divorced her husband Kazimierz who stayed in Poland because of another woman. Helean believed there was nothing to go back to in Poland. She heard that “The streets of America were paved with gold.”. She found a sponsor in the United States and in 1952 took her children across the torturous Atlantic Ocean to Ellis Island, New York aboard the USS Stewart.
When they arrived in New York harbor they learned the sponsor no longer needed workers, but my determined grandmother with the help of charitable organizations at the time, found another sponsor in the state of Pennsylvania. There Helena and her children worked on a farm. After a year of work, the farmer handed them some bus fair and said they no longer could work there. He informed them that there’s a Polish community in Buffalo, New York.
David Newman
First to Immigrate from Poland to the United States: Maternal Side
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