BROOKLYN, NY…With the passing of 2016 and our hopes in a new year, I reflect on my father’s 95th birthday on January 28, 2017, the passage of time, humanity, and his legacy as a Polish Catholic Holocaust survivor. It is nothing short of extraordinarily good fortune and his deep faith in God that spared my father’s life during 5 years of unthinkable Nazi brutality.
Waclaw Kolodziejek was arrested in August 1940 in Warsaw as a teenager. His crime: being Polish. And he was Catholic. It took many days in a crowded standing room only cattle car train before he was unloaded in Auschwitz concentration camp. He found himself in the company of hundreds of thousands of other Catholic Poles just like him. Auschwitz was not yet completed, so my father was forced to finish this Nazi order.
- Friday, January 13, 2017