Stanley Opalka
Stanley, or Mr. Opalka, as we knew him at Oriskany Central School, in New York, was born in Poland and later, with his family, survived a most horrific life a little boy might ever imagine. Survival is the key word in this authors life. We are researching to find out exactly what town he called home in the Mohawk Valley.
Escape from Russia: A story of a boy who is deported from Poland to Siberia, by the Soviet Secret Police in 1940. The boy and his family were arrested and sent north toward the Arctic Circle, to live out their lives in the Soviet labor camp. After 1941 during the Soviet - German War, the family dared leave Siberia. They traveled south to Uzbekistan, where they settled on a collective farm. The boy endured Communist oppression, the bitter cold of Russia, hunger, sickness and death. Three members of the family die of Typhus and with the three remaining children, the mother continues the fathers plan to leave Russia!