Edith Jucker was only 2 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland, triggering the start of World War II on Sept. 1, 1939. However, she still vividly remembers when her 26-year-old mother decided to leave everything behind and run for their lives with two of her uncles and their families.
"My world changed overnight. My father was immediately drafted into the Polish Army," Jucker said. "We were running with hundreds of others through the forest covered with leaves and underbrush.
I couldn't run as I was too little to keep up, so my mother carried me. She essentially gave me life twice." During the dangerous trek, they separated from the rest of their family in the forest once they reached the river and jumped into different boats.
However, Russian soldiers surrounded them, thinking they were German spies, and took them to a gulag labor camp for political prisoners in Siberia. Jucker and her mom stayed there for three years in what she described as deplorable conditions. "There was a lack of food and medicine.
There was no electricity, so we used kerosene lamps. No running water or toilet. Only an outhouse outside in the yard serving the families in the barracks," she recalled.
"Siberia was a wasteland with malaria and flies. In the summer, I was covered in mosquito bites. The winter was extremely harsh and about -94 degrees.
" They were finally freed after the Nazis invaded Russia and forced its soldiers to divert their attention to the battlefield. After living with Jucker's unc.