Narrative

    "This was the war," Ola Kapustynska, our interviewee would often state in our interview. Surviving in the World War II was hard indeed, but it was almost impossible if you were Jewish. Ola Kapustynska had an amazing story about her survival in World War II. She survived the war without a father and with barely any help from her family. When the war started, she was two, and when the war ended, she was seven. Although Ola was a child during the war and did not understand what was going on around her, she recalls some memories from the wartime. As a child, she was not told very much about her origins and what was happening to her, but as time went on she began to understand the memories from World War II. "It's hard to talk about my family...." We expected that she would not during the interview but Ola has more story in her life than we imagined. She told her story excitedly, pulling us into it. The moral we learned is that you should never give up on life because no matter how terrible her life looked like, she persevered.

    Ola Kapustynska was born in 1937. Ola's father was Polish and her mother was Jewish. Before the war, she lived in a luxurious apartment in a wealthy sector of Warsaw with her parents and 9-year-old brother, Stefan. Ola and her family lived merrily until World War II devastated her family. World War II was a global military conflict that lasted from 1939 to 1945. German Nazi Power, led by Adolf Hitler, invaded more than 2/3 of Europe (including Poland) and carried out extermination actions called the Holocaust against Jewish civilians.

    During WW II, Ola's mother's family members were all killed because they were Jewish. Her grandmother was beaten to death in the Warsaw ghetto. Ola still has one of her photos, taken from the ghetto. "...it still has brown spots on it, probably the blood of my grandmother..." Ola trailed off. Ola still remembers when her uncle took her to the ghetto wall with fake identities and he cried. Later, she realized that her uncle cried because his mother was in the ghetto. All the remaining relatives were on her father's side, and all reluctant to help Ola's family because Ola’s family was Jewish. Since Ola wasn't told anything by her family, she didn't know about her heritage and religion. Her mother and her brother decided to keep her religion and origin secret to protect her.

    When the war started her father insisted that they escape from Warsaw and not go to the ghetto. The family hid in a small village called Zyczyn. While they were in the village, her father was killed "in a terrible way" by a man who wanted to extort money from him. She paused for a moment and didn't go into detail about how he was killed. Instead, she stated that her older brother had witnessed his father's death. From this terrible experience, he never recovered. Since her mother was in grief after the father's death, she could not do anything for a while. As a result, Ola was sent to a convent. She does not remember how long she spent there and how old she was. However, she does remember something interesting from the convent. There was a time when her brother brought a book with him from their old home; Ola thought it was such a beautiful thing that she still remembers the smell of the print, the written luxury.

    Later on, Ola's family came back to Warsaw for a little while because everyone in the village knew who they were, that they were Jews. A family hid them in Warsaw and Ola still went to kindergarten. One day, an SS officer stopped Ola and her friend on the street as a raid alarm warning the people for bombings screamed. He asked where they were going, and Ola told him innocently that they were on their way home, not knowing she was in danger. She claims that she must have been out in the street because her friend's home was far away which was problematic because her friend also had to get away from the bombings fast and safe. She and her friend could have been shot, and the whole time her mother was watching from their apartment window. Thankfully, she had blond hair and blue eyes, so the officer thought that she was Polish. This memory remains in her mind clearly, even though she was a small child at the time. Eventually, she, her mother, and her brother returned to Zyczyn because Warsaw was unsafe as well.

    Her worst experience during the war was when the German army came to the little village where she was hidden. All the men in the village, including Ola's brother, hid in the forest while leaving their children and wives in the village. The women and their children were supposed to meet in the center of the village because it was the order from the German army, but her mother decided to stay at home and not to meet with the others because of Ola's family's facial differences with the other women. When the soldiers inspected every home, a soldier found them. Her mother explained that she did not understand the evacuation and they were asked to go to the center. When they were at the center the soldiers started shooting over their heads so that the men would come from the forest to save them. After recalling this, Ola took a deep breath and announced that this was her worst war experience. The end of the story remained untold.

    When the war was over, she did not feel any anger in particular towards the Nazis because she was seven during the war, and therefore did not understand what was happening. Ola came back to Warsaw with her mother and her brother. Unfortunately, some people were currently living in their old apartment. Ola's mother lied to her and her brother telling them that the apartment had been destroyed. She was very curious that her mother still had the pictures of the apartment, and her mother told Ola that the pictures were one of the few who still survived.

    After they found out that their apartment was taken by others, her mother decided to go to the "Wild West", a territory of Poland taken by Germany at the onset of the war and later returned to Poland. The Germans who lived in the Wild West had a short period of time to leave therefore whole apartments were left without owners and still furnished. Her family went to the police who were currently in charge and they were assigned to an apartment that was owned by an old German woman. When the police came to the apartment and investigated because this was the procedure, they found letters written to the lady to thank her for having such wonderful sons. The letters were signed by Hitler. The letters meant that her sons were working for the SS. When the policemen saw these letters they became furious and started to scream at the woman. Ola's mother protected the elderly lady and luckily she survived. After this incident Ola's mother requested another apartment.

    Their new apartment was in a house filled with old ladies who would later be removed to Germany. Ola's mother became friends with the ladies who helped her during the hard times. Ola at this time wanted to go to school again and her mother encouraged her attend a German piano school. This would mean that she would be learning German and this was something her brother would not allow. Because her brother was more deeply affected by the war, he did not accept anything that had the least to do with Germany. Therefore, she did not attend school in the Wild West. This was not her only experience in the Wild West. After the war there were a lot of people who lost their families and they went on the radio to list their family members’ names in hopes of finding them. One day while listening to this program her brother heard the name of his father's killer. For him hearing this was something that unleashed considerable anger and he immediately wanted to find the man and kill him. The death of his father was even more terrible for her brother because he witnessed the murder.

    Ola's mother worked very hard to return into Warsaw but unfortunately for the family they needed a permit. When Ola's mother was finally able to obtain this permit, Ola and her family moved back to Warsaw. Ola had strong feelings about the war after it had ended. Now she is able to understand what was happening to her and her family during that time. Overall the war was not difficult for her because she thought that it was how life was supposed to be. Because she was so young and had not known another life,  the war wasn't so terrible for her. Ola and brother survived the war, but as Ola was a small child she did not understand what was happening while her brother experienced all the stress of war.

    Ola studied in a university in Pisa, Italy. After her brother and mother died in 1990, Ola researched her heritage because she did not know about her origins at all. She knows a little bit about her family now, but not a lot because all the old documents are in Russian. She has found relatives in different parts of the world such as Scotland, France and Australia, but she considers her real family as the people who helped hide her family during the war. Ola now has a son and a 19-year-old granddaughter. She currently does not follow a particular religion, but this decision was not all the war's fault. Ola suggested that it was partly her education and how she was brought up as a Catholic but was really Jewish.

    Ola is a wonderful woman herself, but she makes sure to give extra credit to her mother. Ola explains how hard she worked just to let Ola and her brother survive even though her father was killed. A fact that impressed us was that Ola's mother actually saved her husband's murderer. After the war, the murderer was found and sentenced to death. However the murderer had children and a wife and Ola's mother didn't want the children to live without a father, so she saved the man's life.

    Ola has lived through a traumatizing and difficult childhood, yet she is an independent, courageous, and intelligent woman. Her war-time story is very touching, and we all feel melancholic for her father's terrible death and difficulties her family had to face. We are thankful for this wonderful experience of meeting Ola Kapustynska and for her telling us an amazing story.