Cool family history, Ski. I recall you mentioning your Polish heritage but didn't know about your grandfather. He must have had some fascinating stories to tell.
One of my grandfathers was a Wexford man and joined the IRA as a teenager before leaving Ireland for America. It was actually not clear to me whether he simply left...or fled...one step ahead of a Brit posse.
Re your closing paragraph, a fair amount of punishment has already been doled out to the Russians, and they've also been doing a pretty good job of punishing themselves. The problem is how to punish them without punishing ourselves...or the Ukrainians for that matter. There's been a lot of blowback, and I'm very concerned it's going to get worse.
I wish I could have heard those stories, but my grandfather did not have a happy ending. His death came 15 years before I was born. It is a strange feeling coming from an old lineage. When my mother was born my grandfather was almost 49 and I was born when my mother was in her 30's, so I am alive today, but my grandfather was born only 19 years after the end of the US Civil War. It is a similar story on my father's side.
Anyway, after the last partition of Poland in 1795 it ceased to be an independent nation. My grandparents were born under the rule of Austria-Hungary in present day Poland just across from the border with Slovakia. This territory, Galicia, was one of the poorest in Europe.
All 4 of my grandparents came to America a few years after 1900, first going to Chicago and then back east to Pennsylvania. I think it had something to do with Central PA being a lot like the mountainous region of Poland they grew up in. Funny that they would land in Appalachia, so they went from a poor part of Europe to a poor part of America.
My grandfather and his brother ended up in basically a worker's camp in Glen White PA (which no longer exists), near Horseshoe Curve, where they worked on the Gallitzin tunnels. They got married, had kids and he made a living mining while keeping a very small farm.
When WW-I hit, the leadership of Polonia figured that they could get an independent Poland back if they sided with the Allies and provided manpower to fight the war. Recruiting was done in Polish clubs and fraternal organizations across America and thusly my grandfather ended up in Haller's Army. They went off to France in 1918 where they didn't do much and then they were sent by train across Germany to the newly established Poland where they fought off the Russians (in the north) and their Ukrainian allies (in the south) from 1919 to 1921. After a somewhat miraculous victory near Warsaw an independent Poland was assured.
As I mentioned my grandfather returned to America in 1924 and became a citizen in 1927. Like most he eked out a living for his family during the depression. After that WW-II happened. At that point, being in his late 50's going back to Poland to fight was not an option. But he did witness from a distance the Soviet Union sneak attacking a defenseless Poland two weeks after the Germans did. He heard like everyone else about Soviet atrocities in Katyn Forest where 20,000 people from the upper crust of Polish society were murdered. He saw the reports where the Soviets sat back during the battle for Warsaw and let the Germans and Polish Home Army fight it out, destroying 90% of Warsaw, and then the Soviets moved in afterward to set up their puppet Communist government. He like many Poles experienced the loss of family members during the almost 6 years of war only to see the independent Poland he fought for to exist no longer. It was now a Soviet vassal state ruled by the hated (by him) Communists.
My mother said on a Sunday in 1948 he was listening to the news after lunch where they were talking about eastern Europe and the Iron Curtain. I guess he had enough and without saying a word he went downstairs, put a shotgun to his chest and pulled the trigger. Knowing they were Catholics the coroner put down on the death certificate that it was "probably an accident cleaning his gun", but it was suicide. At least that way they would bury him in the part of the cemetery where my grandmother would join him 29 years later.
