During Veterans Homecoming Week, it was a privilege to meet Katherine Ritchie, who attended several events with copies of her book, a memoir of her POW father, Jozef Bednarz. Ritchie also shared her father’s story with a local Christian Women’s Connection club.
My Name Is Jozef Bednarz starts with 17-year-old Jozef standing in his parents’ living room in Poland, hearing angry Nazi soldiers planning to take his father away to a forced labor camp in Germany during World War II, when men 18 and older were forcibly conscripted to do menial tasks for the Nazis. Knowing his aging father will likely not survive imprisonment, he tells the men to take him instead, which they do, leaving his horrified mother to wonder what will be the fate of her oldest child.
From her father’s stories and memories, Ritchie has crafted the story of inhumane, degrading treatment he suffered at the hands of the Nazi Gestapo while seeing bombs explode near him and lives lost before his eyes. Before the ordeal ended, he was even sent as a human shield at the front lines for the Nazi soldiers who treated him so cruelly.
Prayers to God are what sustained young Jozef through the hardest days imaginable, until one day his dream of being free and moving to America could finally become reality.
Reading this book will inspire renewed appreciation for what innocent civilians suffered and what World War II soldiers did to protect freedom and defeat evil. Get your copy today by emailing Katharyn56@yahoo.com, or from the Apple or GooglePlay store or major online book retailers.
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