New Found Relatives: Nezwek

Since it was recently Anthony Raczkiewicz’s birthday, I wanted to share a little about how I learned more about relationships in his and my family by connecting with people I didn’t know before as I work on the family tree. I previously mentioned Curt Wolf, who is my 4th cousin and knew some of Eileen Raczkiewicz’ relatives. Curt Wolf Niedzwicki in his family tree. There are LOTS of spellings of this last name: Niedezwicki, Niedwicki, Nezwek, Nedwid and many more. I remembered that my cousins Eileen and Yvonne Raczkiewicz had an Uncle Andy with this last name. He married their mother Ceceilia’s sister Martha. It turns out that Curt was in contact with Andy's son Thomas Nezwek who is his first cousin 1x removed for some genealogy information. Thomas Nezwek is also Eileen and Yvonne’s first cousin 1 time removed. How does that all work? The common relatives are Andrzej Kaszucki and Salomea Wiciejewska, my 3x great grandparents. Their son Josef married Paulina Kurkiewicz (and their daughter was Katarzyna--Grandpa Anthony’s mother.) Their daughter Julianna married Grzegorz Niedzwied. They had 11 children: their son Jozef married Paulina Eifler and one of their children was Andrew (“Uncle Andy”) who is the father of Thomas and his siblings. Jozef and his wife also had daughter Zuzanna who is the grandmother of Curt Wolf. Another sibling Alex was a displaced person back in Poland.

Here is information about him from Curt Wolf: “Alex Jr and Anna Medwid Alex Jr was from Pieniany, a village 12 miles northeast of Tomaszow Lubelski. It was closer to what is now the Ukrainian border. (The border formed when Ukraine declared its independence in 1917.) He may have lived in Tomaszow Lubelski also given some of his US documents or this was just referring to the general area he was from. His wife Anna Farysej Medwid was born in another little town literally on the Polish side of today’s Ukrainian border called Korczmyn. If anyone would have more Ukrainian blood in their family, it would be Anna because the Niedzwiedzki side is more Polish. But both of Alex and Anna had a lot of Ukrainian cultural influence by attending a Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic church in Poland and the US. Their lives would be upended during World War 2 when the Germans invaded and took them individually, for they had not met yet, to Germany. It was common for the German army to do this in order to help with work on the home front since so many of their men were out fighting. Towards the end of the war both the Germans and the US Army were marching toward the area where Anna lived. Who would get there first? The owner of the Inn told her, “The German army is coming tomorrow, and they are sending the people from Ukraine to concentration camps. If they come, you must go and hide in a certain place in town. If you get shot, its ok because you will die in the concentration camps anyway!” The next day the Americans got there first. This was kind of a miracle because the Americans had a 25 mile march the day and night before then. If they stopped for the night, the Germans would have gotten there first. Instead, they liberated the town! Hooray! After this, both ended up in what was a called Displaced Person’s Camp about 23 miles from Frankfurt in a camp named after the town Aschaffenburg. http://www.dpcamps.org/aschaffenburg.html These camps were different from a Concentration Camp. Although they had Jews there, they were mainly for the millions of people in Europe that were displaced because of the war. It was the job of the camp to care for basic needs while helping people either get back to their homeland or placed in another country. The camps were self-governed, had schools and other cultural activities. The bright spot in all of this was that Alex and Anna met each other at, got married and had Eugenia or Jean who lives in Spring Lake. Because great grandmother Pauline stayed with Alexander’s family during the time Josef was gone in America with Grandma Susan, she helped Alex Jr and Anna come to America. The Tomaszow area was so ravaged by the war and Communist Russia influence many people in their shoes did not return home.”