Guarded by angels

Relates the story of Elsner's father, Eugene, born in Odessa in 1918, and his uncle, Mark, born in Nowy Sącz in 1923. They grew up in Nowy Sącz and fled to Soviet-occupied Lvov when the Germans invaded. They and their cousin, Henek, were sent to a gulag in the north and then evacuated to Soviet Central Asia. When Stalin made a pact with the Polish government-in-exile and Polish prisoners in the USSR were amnestied, the brothers were about to joined Anders' army, but encountered antisemitism among the recruits. They found temporary refuge in Nezlobnaya in the Caucasus until the Germans arrived. After adopting the Slavic family name Olesiuk, Gene became a translator for the Germans but also helped the resistance. The brothers then joined another "Polish" army, the Soviet Kosciusko Division. While fighting against German forces, the brothers were temporarily separated, then reunited 30 miles from the German border. Gene had been severely wounded and presumed dead. He encountered Polish antisemitism again, among POWs, just before the end of the war. Their younger brother had been killed in the Nowy Sącz ghetto and their parents in Bełżec. The author visited this site with his father and, disturbed at the lack of a monument there, worked to remedy the situation.