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This is Waclaw.
He and I both live in Calgary Alberta.
I'm going to interview him today.
But before I make the hour and a half journey to his home
I've got some groceries to pick up.
Waclaw has been married to my mom for past twelve years.
I'm bringing the groceries for them.
I generally only see Waclaw at major family gatherings like Christmas and Easter.
Waclaw was born in 1925 in a small town of Nieporent near Warsaw,
his parents were farmers.
He was the fourth of five children.
On september first 1939 in the early morning hours the German army crossed into Poland
marking the start of World War Two.
Waclaw was fourteen years old.
During the occupation Waclaw joined the Polish resistance.
His division provide outlying support for Warsaw in preparation for the Warsaw uprising.
On August eighteenth
1944 Waclaw was arrested
and shipped to a labor camp in Germany.
Conditions were harsh.
Nine months later allied forces liberated the camp
but Waclaw didn't return to Poland.
Being a former member of the resistance he was rightfully afraid
of the Russian army occupying his homeland.
I'm a little nervous because I don't talk to him much about his past
so I'm not sure how this interview will go.
Isolated from Poland by the Iron Curtain
Waclaw made a choice to stay in Germany
and began to new life there.
After only one year of marriage
Waclaw's wife died of tuberculosis.
Eventually he made a painful decision to give up his two-year-old son to his parents in Poland.
Waclaw continued his employment
as a steelworker in Germany and remarried.
When that marriage disintegrated
he was given sole custody of his three children which was unprecedented at the time for a man.
Needing a fresh start he emigrated to Canada.
Waclaw arrived in Calgary in September 1965.
He found employment again in the steel industry and remarried.
When he was sixty five he retired
that same year his third wife died.
It would be forty eight years before Waclaw would return to Poland
for highly emotional visit.
Now content in Canada
his favorite activities are gardening
and caring for his yard.
For several hours
Waclaw and I went back and forth through his life.
I'm changed by this experience.
I feel the significance of paying attention,
particularly to the people who are close to us
who make up what we eventually referrer to as history.