When we left off last week Aniela Plonka had arrived in England in January of 1944 and taken training as an RAF flight mechanic working on Lancaster bombers. They were the bombers that played such a critical role in subduing the German war machine. Aniela and Czeslaw (Chester) were married in England in February of 1945 and it was there, in Edinburgh, Scotland, that Aniela had the first of her six children. He was born July 30, 1945 and was named Jerzy Czeslaw Plonka, but we here in the Pass know him as George aka Doctor Cool.
In telling her story Aniela goes on to say, “When the war was over, my husband’s mother wrote us and told us not to come back home. “Stay where you are. If you come back, you will be sent back to Siberia,” she wrote. She also told us my mother was alive and had been ordered by the Russians to leave her home and go onto the Polish side of the border because her house was in newly acquired Russian territory. She also said in her letter that my brother was taken by the Russians, beaten and sent to a prison somewhere in Siberia. My two younger sisters were also taken to Germany for hard labour. When I heard the news I cried so much I thought my heart would break.”