Ladny, Kazimir.

Born on July 9, 1914 in Kakolewnica, Poland, in the Lublin province. Mr. Ladny discusses being raised by his paternal grandfather during the early years of the Polish republic following WW I, as well as his service with the nascent Polish Army from the time of his draft in 1936. He received his training as an enlisted man in the Signal Corps, and also clandestinely as a counter-intelligence officer due to his knowledge of the Russian language. He describes the German attack on Sept. 1, 1939, his flight eastward, an attempt to flee to Rumania, and his eventual capture by Russians in southeast Poland. He soon was shipped eastward to a POW camp at Oranki, in western Siberia. After 3 months, he was exchanged along with other western Poles to the Germans for eastern Poles. He then was moved to a POW camp in northeastern Germany. Over the next year he was assigned to a series of farms and estates as a laborer, attempted escape two times, and endured several months in a "correction" camp where he was beaten severely. He was then released and assigned to work at the Henkel farm. For the next three years his treatment was humane, but he was nevertheless essentially a slave laborer, with his freedoms severely restricted. Mr. Ladny spent the last year of the war working in a factory in the Rhine valley in western Germany. As the Americans approached the Rhine River, he again escaped, and while waiting for liberation, met Adele Lib, a local German war widow, Adele (Lambertz) Libertus, who soon became his wife upon his own liberation. During the years following liberation Ladny survived by scrounging on the black market, and by menial factory work. He applied to emigrate to the United States, and came to Springfield, Ill. in 1951 to start his new life.