"Wanda Maria Kowalska Ast was my paternal grandmother, my BABCIA (Polish for grandmother). Babcia was born in Germany in 1909 and shortly thereafter her family moved to Poland where she spent the next four decades of her life, where she married and had four children.
"The Ast Family, Wanda, her husband Edmund who was a sculptor, and their four children - Jacek, Marek, Justin, and Krystyna - survived the Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland. They were Catholic, so they were not specifically targeted by the Nazis as were the Jews, Gypsies, and people on the political Left, but this is not to say that the Nazis treated anybody in Poland with respect or benevolence. Everyone was afraid of the Nazis, as they were violent, cruel, and perhaps worst of all, unpredictable...
