During the Easy Company reunion in Phoenix (2002) I met Gary Carson (l), the son of Gordon Carson and the Polish blond (book Band of Brothers). He has a very moving story about his mother's family that he want's to share with you so many years after world war II.
.
Gary's
grandmother Irena Puchalski is buried in Saalfeldon (Austria). She died in
1946 of dysentery like so many other prisoners of the German concentration
camps.
His mother, after being in Warsaw in 1939 and surviving there till 1942, when
she was caught after curfew at 10PM by 5 minutes at 10:05PM by the Nazi SS,
she was put on a prisoner cattle car to Auschwitz then displaced to a slave
labor camp in Austria where she did slave labor carrying railroad spikes to
repair bombed railroad rails. By the grace of God she was able to speak German
and had blonde hair and blue eyes.
His brother Richard was born in 1942 just before Gary's mother was caught
in Warsaw by the SS. He somehow remained with his grandmother in Warsaw
and later ended up in the same prison camp in Austria where his mother
was sent. Gary's mother was married to a Polish captain of the Polish
army at the time. He was murdered by the Russians as were all other eighteen
family members including his Uncle and Grandfather who were taken to the
Katyn
woods and murdered. Gary's uncle was also an officer in
the Polish army and his Grandfather was an engineering official of the
Polish Government. The Nazis murdered all of Gary's family on his mothers
side. As Gary wrote: this is one of the reasons he will always be European
besides being born in Austria and always will be. There is so much more
to this story and Gary promised me to tell more with time because it makes
him sad his mother's story hasn't been told to the world yet. Joe Lesnieuwski
from Easy (The Pole) knows some of it because he spoke Polish and would
talk to Gary's mother when the 506th was in Austria. The Poles had to
deal with the brutality and inhumane treatment of the Russians and the
Nazis.
Gary will also tell you more about her
involvement with the Polish underground later.
Gordon Carson
He was one of the witnesses when Speirs hit a drunk trooper who just had killed Grant and two other troopers and later tried to rape an Austrian girl. It also was his father who used Hermann Goering's car in Berchtesgaden and who, together with some other Easy members, tried to empty the 10.000 bottles in Goering's wine cellar.
Text from the book Band of Brothers with kind permission of the author
Antonia T. Puchalski-Carson.
"The Polish blond." from the book Band of Brothers. Gordon Carson's wife and mother of Gary.
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