Waiting for Mama: Second Edition

By Bozenna Urbanowicz Gilbride and Stephen Gilbride

The love for her children and yearning to see them again allowed "Mama" to survive true evil. This is a vivid story of a woman's journey, enduring the incomprehensible atrocities of war, concentration camps, and oppressive Communist rule.
We must learn from history so that we can make correct decisions for the future.
Aldona Wos, M.D.
Former Ambassador to Estonia
Daughter of Paul Wos, Flossenburg Concentration Camp Prisoner #23504
As an educator with over 18 years in the classroom, I am honored to have had the opportunity to educate students on the tragedies of the Holocaust. Boenna Urbanowicz Gilbride’s “Waiting for Mama” is the highly anticipated follow up to her initial autobiography “Children of Terror”, which has become a staple of curriculum since 2011. It includes drama suitable for a movie adaptation and displays the strength and courage of a Holocaust survivor that yearns to be reunited with her family. The twists and turns of the story take readers on a journey explained through a “Mama’s” love.
Danielle Lyon
Miami, Florida
Boenna Urbanowicz Gilbride is no novice to the subject of totalitarian rule, having suffered under Hitler. That makes her the right person to offer this true and devastating story of a courageous woman, her “Mama” who survived concentration camps; terrorized by both the Nazi’s and the Stalinists, she was undeterred in her quest to reunite with her children. This is a riveting account of evil and how one person managed to survive and ultimately triumph.
Bill Donohue, Ph. D.
President
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532082320

Bozenna Urbanowicz Gilbride

Following the success of her first book “Children of Terror”, Bozenna Urbanowicz Gilbride brings her own story of war, family separation, and the struggles for family reunification to “Waiting for Mama”. Bozenna has been married to Richard Gilbride since 1957 and they raised their four children in New York. Bozenna’s reflections on her personal history as a Polish Catholic holocaust survivor through World War II, and the struggles following the war has always captivated her son Stephen. In this, second edition of “Waiting for Mama”, Stephen has collaborated with his mother to include more details, and more historical references beyond the first edition. Bozenna’s wish is for this book to reach as many young adult readers as possible to enlighten them on the devastations of truly difficult times and the miracles of moving past them.

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 Bożenna Urbanowicz Gilbride.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Author Credits: Stephen Gilbride

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-8231-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-8232-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019913530

iUniverse rev. date:   02/07/2020

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Prologue

Waiting for Mama

The Taking of Leonówka

Allies and Enemies

Life in The Chemnitz

Labor Camp

The Gestapo First

Came for my Father

The Gestapo Then

Came for Mama

Becoming Little Mama

Allies Preparing for

the Consequences

of Winning

Spring 1945 – Liberation

Life in America

Phone Call from Poland

Mama’s Story

After Mama’s arrest in

1944, Chemnitz, Germany

The Revier

A Front is Approaching

The Soviets Arrive

Secret Underground

Escape at Night

Visa Troubles

My Life is Moving On

Legal Progress

Wedding Day

Putting the Pieces

Back Together

Mama’s Final Wish

Epilogue

Appendix A

‘Emblem of Good Will’: A Polish

Declaration of Admiration

and Friendship for the

United States of America

A Child’s Lament

Why did you leave me, Mama?

I waited for you to come back

I am all alone and looking for you

I am so scared to be alone

Why did you leave me, Mama?

Am I now an orphan?

Or you just can’t find me?

I’ll be waiting for you, Mama

Until you find me again and

Tell me you always loved me

And stay with me forever

- Bożenna Urbanowicz, age 10

DEDICATION

I DEDICATE THIS book to my children, Richard T., Timothy J., Stephen G., Christine K., and my grandchildren Gregory, Trevor, and Richard J. My wish for them and all the children and their mothers is to have peace on earth, good will to all, and an overabundance of love.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

MY DEEP APPRECIATION goes to the Polish government for their search of my mother’s prison record of 1948, while Poland was Communist occupied.

I also want to thank the Ravensbrück Memorial Site Foundation, Strasse der Nationen for their quick response to my request as to my mother’s stay there in 1944-1945. They informed me that 60% of the prison records were destroyed by the retreating Nazi’s.

My thank you also goes to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum for finding my mother’s archival footsteps, including some of my father’s and us 4 children.

And to my husband Richard, as always, who took over the kitchen duties, including cooking and washing dishes, to allow me as much time as I needed to write this book.

I also want to thank my son Stephen for showing such great interest in his maternal grandmother’s life story during the Holocaust and WWII and his pursuit of more details from me and historical resources. Stephen, I am so proud of you. Thank you.

Much thanks go to Blaine and Kathryn Phelps for their patience, understanding and encouragement. They were the wind beneath my wings. Without their belief in me, this book would still be laying in the bottom of the drawer, waiting to someday be published. Thank you, Blaine, for your patient proof reading, when I was ready to quit and leave it all in the drawer. Thank you, Kathryn, for all you did for me. Your generosity of spirit will never be forgotten.

I also wish to thank Anthony LaBruna of Madison Lohrius copy and blueprint Centers in Hampton Bays, NY for helping me with pictures for this book.

My final Thank you goes to the teachers and students who never stopped asking When are you going to write your mother’s story? Since the publication of my personal story in Children of Terror in 2009 with my friend Inge Auerbacher, and traveling to schools across the country and Europe, telling my story of survival in hopes you will learn what hate did, does and will continue to do unless we change.

FOREWORD

by Stephen Gilbride

Son of a Polish Catholic Holocaust Survivor

I AM PROUD to be able to contribute to this incredible true story of the personal impact of war on my mother and her family. The story told by my mother, Bożenna Urbanowicz Gilbride, Waiting for Mama is a painful peek into lives during and after a war that most of today’s adults and children have been shielded from.

When I first read my mother’s book Waiting for Mama, I was overwhelmed with emotions I had not visited in years. In my youth growing up on Long Island, I was not fully aware of the details of what my mother and her family had gone through. I felt exactly like every other kid who had parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins that we were close to. As a family we celebrated holidays with our Polish side of family often. Uncle Chester, with his wife and two sons, lived closest to us and worked for New York Telephone. He would play Polish songs on his accordion at holiday parties and we would enjoy homemade kielbasa he made. Aunt Irene, her husband, and four children lived a little further away from us. My memories of holiday parties at Aunt Irene’s are fond. Christmas and Easter were the most important events for our families to get together for. We celebrated with Mass and traditional Polish foods and customs. In the summer, it was always fun to go to Aunt Irene’s because they had a pool and my cousins around my age. Aunt Christine was the youngest of my Polish aunts and would sometimes join us with a boyfriend at family events. I was fortunate to have spent time with my Aunt Christine before she passed away in her forties. I do not have many recollections of my Polish grandpa (Papuga) as he had passed away when I was around six years old. I do have memories of my Polish grandmother, Janina, who we would visit in Brooklyn, and she would often visit with us on Long Island. Grandma (Babcia) would teach me words in Polish and sometimes played Polish songs on her guitar. Up until the time she passed away when I was sixteen years old, I never spoke directly with her about her experiences during the war. These are the primary memories I have of growing up within our Polish immigrant family. I did not fully understand or appreciate that I was the son of a Holocaust survivor until I was in my latter teens. We were not raised in the shadow or pity of the sufferings of the war our Polish family had endured. We were raised looking forward and taught to believe we could become anything we choose to be if we worked for it.

I took on a deeper interest in our family history as I was entering high school and made a point of asking my mother and relatives from our ‘Polish side of the family’ many questions and even trying my best to learn some of the Polish language. Ultimately, I thought that a summer of study at the