Polish WWII POW fought in resistance
Walter B. Ostrowski traveled back to his native Poland many times, but a trip he made in 2005 remains the most memorable.
For the first time, he was able to bring his entire family to see the place of his birth, where his father had worked as a shoemaker and his mother as a seamstress, before life as he knew it was shattered by the German occupation and the Warsaw uprising.
"It was very powerful for him to relive it all again," says his daughter, Danette Schulz of Libertyville.
Mr. Ostrowski passed away on Friday after an extended illness. The 45-year resident of Lake Zurich, was 83.
As an 18-year old, Mr. Ostrowski had enlisted in the Polish Home Army, and in 1944 he fought with the resistance forces to liberate Warsaw from German Occupation.
While Mr. Ostrowski survived the uprising -- which took the lives of 18,000 Polish soldiers and wounded another 25,000 -- he was captured and spent nine months as a prisoner of war in a camp in Minden, Germany, located in the state of North Rhine Westphalia.
"Somehow, he got through it," his daughter says. "He was 19 years old and he was able to withstand it."
During the winter of 1945, Mr. Ostrowski joined several other prisoners and made a daring escape at night. They fled and eventually took cover with an American National Guard unit based in nearby Bremerhaven, Germany.
Family members say that since Mr. Ostrowski had fought with the resistance, he could not return to his home in occupied Poland; consequently he joined the National Guard unit.
It would take nearly five years, but through connections he made with a Catholic priest there, he obtained a sponsorship to come to the United States, through the Polish National Alliance in Chicago.
"He had his choice of going to Australia or the United States," his daughter adds, "and he chose the United States."
After arriving at Ellis Island in 1950, Mr. Ostrowski boarded a train for Chicago. Contacts with the Polish National Alliance helped him enroll in classes at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and later find work as a tool and die maker with CM Products.
When the company moved to Lake Zurich, Mr. Ostrowski and his wife, Theresa, whom he had met in Chicago, moved with it. There they started a family and put down roots.
Mr. Ostrowski's dramatic story of fighting with the Polish resistance and escaping from a German prisoner of war camp has been preserved for his family's future generations. His granddaughters interviewed him for school genealogy projects and filmed his first-hand account of his fight for freedom.
Besides his daughter, Mr. Ostrowski is survived by his wife, Theresa, as well as his children Leonard (Kathleen) of Chicago, Regina Polys of Oakbrook and Barbara (Gregory) Ziols of Wheaton, as well as five grandchildren.
A funeral Mass will take place at 10 a.m. today at St. Francis de Sales Church, 11 S. Buesching Road in Lake Zurich.