[agitator]

My family is from Warsaw Poland. There are so many ways in which the war affected my family.

On one side of my mom's family, I had a great grandmother who was a covert operative for the Polish underground resistance. She carried information and communications during the war. She told us stories of being ambushed by german soldiers, once they learned of their communication routes. She hid in a secret hiding spot in a well to escape. Had friends die in her arms. She had to marry another operative in order to fake documents for a mission. She ended up falling in love with him, but was separated during part of the war and couldn't find him. She ended up re-marrying, and then later on in life when she was much older, spotted the man on a trolley but decided not to say anything since so much time had passed.

I have really fond memories of sitting in her living room when visiting Poland when I was younger. She was telling us stories of the war as we ate ice cream on a hot summer day. She was an incredible woman. She passed away a few years ago.

On the other side of my mom's family, my grandmother's dad and brother went missing during the war. They went out one night and never came back. Another time when we visited Poland, we went to the Auschwitz memorial. They have a massive book there with all of the names of people who were in the nazi records for having been prisoners at the camp. No one in my family knew what happened to the two brothers, but my mother, decided to look up their names. And their names were in the book. Since then, we contacted the international red cross tracing service. They mailed us copies of hand written documentation from the nazi. Both brothers were participating in an uprising, and were captured as political prisoners. One died in Auschwitz and the other was transffered to Birkenau where he died of Tuberculosis.