Page 137 - South Mississippi Living - July, 2015

GOD BLESS
AMERICA
A local family’s journey to the United States
story by Katherine Blessey photos by James Edward Bates and courtesy of Katherine Blessey
Unless we treasure and protect democracy,
it doesn’t work. Democracy requires sacrifice, service, hard work and a sense of
gratitude for the blessings of a free society. Because I’m part of a family that survived and escaped the horrors and brutality of the totalitarian dictatorships of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, I am deeply aware of our system of government.
My family’s love for America began long before I was born. Both of my grandfathers came to this country
to work in coal mines in the early 20th Century. Sadly, one died in a mine explosion, but my maternal grandfather worked and saved his money, returned to the Ukraine, and bought one of the largest farms in the Kopatta Mountains near the Polish border. My mother was born into a happy, prosperous life which came
to a brutal end in 1934 when Russia occupied the Ukraine and confiscated all private lands.
Millions of Ukrainians died of starvation during the Russian occupation. My family survived because of mother’s courage. She was trained to go deep into the forest where an uncle tied strings of dried
fruit and nuts around her body under her slip/dress to smuggle back to the family, an act that would result in death if caught. In later years, she did not remember being frightened. It was her responsibility.
My parents were married in 1937 and had just begun building their life together when Germany invaded an area of Ukraine that is now Poland. My father was captured and forced
to work as a blacksmith constructing bridges for the German march toward Russia.
Mother didn’t hear from him for three years, so she decided to search for him. She reasoned that if she
were in the camp system, she would have a better chance of finding him. She had her father bribe a German official to let her take the place of her 14-year-old sister who was to be sent to a labor camp in Germany. Mother’s parents begged her to leave her daughter with them, but she knew she would never see her child again if she did so.
At 19 years old, my mother left by train through Poland to Stuttgart in box cars and cattle cars crammed with refugees with no food or water; many died on the way. When the tracks were bombed, they were forced to march through the cold in constant gunfire.
Mother carried her child, afraid to look back as laggards and slower children were shot.
When they finally reached Stuttgart, she was mistaken for a prisoner, not
a laborer, because her papers sewn in the lining of her coat were written in Ukrainian and she spoke no German. Her head was shaved and her child was taken from her. It was days before the mistake was miraculously discovered by a Ukrainian interpreter and they were re-united. The child cried when she saw her mother with no hair!
My parents were re-united in Germany and worked on farms 15 miles apart. They were allowed some visitation, but mother was so badly abused that they attempted an escape which failed. However, the German authorities took pity on them and sent them to a forced labor camp together where they remained until after the war.
When the camp was liberated by the American army, mother was pregnant with me, and they were all malnourished having survived on grass and berries for four months.
Over the next three years, they were moved to three different Displaced Person Camps where shelter, basic food and a few necessities were >>
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July 2015 • SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living 137