BELCHERTOWN — When Teresa Zucker was growing up, she was haunted by the World War II stories of her mother, Maria Staszczyszyn, who was a 9-year-old living in Poland when the Russian army — having just signed a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany — invaded her village.
The family was deported at bayonet point, managing to grab only wool blankets and a picture of the Virgin Mary before they were sent to labor camps in Siberia. Staszczyszyn’s 2-year-old sister died of starvation and her dad died in one of the cattle cars that transported them between work camps. Eventually, the family was exiled in Iran and then a refugee camp in what is now Tanzania at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro.
So when news broke of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, the sight of fleeing refugees brought back the traumatic images that Zucker, 60, had lived with for so many years through her mother’s stories.
“This really really hit home for me,” she said by phone Tuesday. “I see my mom in the faces of those kids.”
Desperate for some way to help, Zucker, who speaks Polish, originally thought about traveling to Poland. But she has since connected with a cousin in the community of Bochnia and decided to raise money for her family’s efforts to help refugees. To date, Zucker has raised a remarkable amount — nearly $13,000 — to help pay for essential items to aid refugees through the help of the organizations Bochnia and Bochnia Land Lovers Association and the Bochnia Community Association.
“It just feels like such a drop in the bucket,” Zucker said. “But my hope is that there’s someone out there who gets to lie in a bed or gets handed something and can just breathe for the first time in weeks because of this support we are trying to offer.”
In March, that money bought food, diapers, blankets and other goods that were transported into Ukraine. On her GoFundMe site, Zucker posted a video that the Polish Catholic nuns in the Ukrainian city of Chortkiv sent, showing boxes of supplies stacked high. They had just received them.
“We thank you, Bochnia,” the post said in Polish.
Now, the money is being used to convert a building near the Polish border with Ukraine, where some 500 refugees can be housed, and to purchase medicine, clothes, blankets, food and medical supplies to ship to Ukraine. Already the organizers have renovated two such buildings.
Zucker said that she recognizes that the invasion of Ukraine is just one of many conflicts across the world, and that there are many others who are suffering and haven’t received the same kind of attention that Ukraine has received. She said she’s also working hard not to demonize, but to keep an open heart to grieve for all victims of war. As the mother of a U.S. Marine, she said she also thought about the mothers of Russian troops who had no idea where they were being sent or what they were being sent there to do.
“This isn’t just about a fundraiser, it’s about the work of maintaining an open heart,” she said.
Zucker’s mother died in 2006, and as she lay on her deathbed, she asked her daughter to get into bed with her. Zucker said that her mother had begun to relive the horrifying scenes of her deportation at the hands of Russian troops, telling her daughter in a state of delirium: “Don’t look in their eyes because if you do they’ll shoot you.”
Choking back tears, Zucker said she couldn’t help her mother grapple with her trauma while she was alive. She said she just hopes she can now help other refugees in a similar situation now.
“I wake up every day and say, ‘There’s a woman who is 60 years old who had a good life and doesn’t know what the next minute is going to bring,’” she said. “Lives literally blown up.”
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.