Free A Company of Heroes by Marcus Brotherton Page A

1939, just before the official start of WWII, and Germany and Russia acted in tandem to simultaneously invade, ransack, and occupy Poland. Germany attacked from the west, Russia attacked from the east. The Polish army didn’t stand a chance, although it fought valiantly. It was vastly outnumbered and fell quickly. Thousands of Poles were arrested, executed, or deported to Siberia. Poland was divided between the Soviets and Germany and occupied by armed fighters.
    Toni had been a child of wealth and privilege up to this point. Her mother was a doctor and her father was an engineer for the Polish government. They lived a cultured lifestyle in a large house on the outskirts of the city but were forced out of their house by the German army, who used it for a command center and officers’ barracks. Toni’s family was abruptly homeless with the war just beginning. A botanist family friend took them in elsewhere in Warsaw.
    My mother was being courted by a young Polish army officer by the last name of Lewandowski. He was a longtime family friend, and they wished to marry soon, but delayed wedding plans because of the war.
    Toni’s father and older brother were part of the Polish army and survived the initial invasion, but were soon murdered by the Russians while on a mission at a dam site.
    In just weeks, Toni had lost her father, brother, and home. She longed for her homeland to return to a place of security and freedom and vowed to do whatever she could do to fight for her dreams—and her survival.

Her First Marriage
    Despite her losses, Toni decided to press forward with her life. She went ahead and married her longtime love, the Polish officer Lewandowski, when she was just eighteen. Almost immediately they had a little blond-haired baby named Richard. It was a horrible time to bring a baby into the world. Toni’s new husband was a quick casualty of war. He died March 5, 1940, during the Katyn Forest massacre when some 22,000 Polish officers, policemen, intellectuals, and civilians were murdered by the Soviets.
    In her grief both for her husband and her country, Toni, along with many other Polish young people her age, joined the Polish resistance. It was tough going for all. Her specific job was to smuggle bread to the Polish fighters at night, the fighters’ only source of food. Being associated with the Polish underground carried risks, but the botanist friend who sheltered Toni, her mother, and young son, Richard, had a secret double basement in his house. For the next year and a half my mother hid in the basement during the day while Nazis searched for her and other re-sisters. Sometimes she could hear the Nazis walk right over her head. She feared for her life every time she heard the familiar click of their heels.
    Her mother looked after baby Richard during daylight hours. Even that task carried peril. Once, while grandmother and baby were outside, a bomb went off and the baby was hit in the stomach by shrapnel. Fortunately, he survived, although with permanent scars. At night, Toni continued to sneak out and take food to the Polish resistance. Each move by any family member was filled with danger.
    Then one day the unthinkable happened. Toni came home and found that her mother and Richard had vanished. Toni had no idea what had happened until she started talking to neighbors and found out they had been picked up by the Nazis, thrown in the back of a truck. Nothing could be done. The grandmother and baby had been taken away to a concentration camp, but Toni didn’t know where. Toni was beside herself. There was absolutely nothing she could do but continue on alone.

Auschwitz
    Toni’s perilous work with the resistance movement continued. It was dangerous, secretive, and sometimes horrible work. One night while on a routine bread run some distance outside of Warsaw, Toni and her cousin Marie encountered an unforeseen Russian roadblock at a crossroads. A Russian colonel heard them from a distance and came out to