Donna Nizynski carefully leafs through her albums of photos and memorabilia, and quietly reflects on each page, particularly those of her as a wizened young teen in the 1940s.

There are only a few, and they are not typical photos of a young girl going out with friends to dances or school activities. One is mounted on Prisoner of War identification papers. One is on her Polish Home Army card. Then there is the one of her at 18, taken at the Oberlangen prisoner of war camp, wearing wooden shoes and holding a small container used for heating over a campfire. She would receive only water to drink in the morning, and later on a little more water, a potato and a tiny piece of bread and margarine to last for the rest of the day. For any infraction the Nazi guards would take away one of these food items.

Oberlangen was the third POW camp Donna spent time in during World War II. Previously she had been at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, and before that at Pawiak, the worst of all work camps. So it is not surprising that, during this week of V-E Day's 60th anniversary, Donna's memories run painfully deep. By choice, she did not go to Bergen-Belsen to attend the recent 60th anniversary of the liberation of thousands from the concentration camp.

Just leafing through the pages of her albums on a warm afternoon brings her chills and goose bumps. "Whenever we return to the moment, we are back," says Andrew Nizynski, Donna's husband for 56 years. "And we go through every step of our lives, and we feel the exact same way as it was years ago."

Happier times

There are other photo albums in the Nizynski household that bring happier memories. With pride, Donna shows several photos taken of Pope John Paul II, first as Cardinal-Archbishop Karol Wojtyla of Krakow and then later during his papacy.

One photo taken in August 1976 shows their daughter, Basia, greeting Cardinal Wojtyla, with a bouquet of oranges at Los Angeles International Airport. Donna and Andrew still smile as they recall Cardinal Wojtyla's reaction: "I go around the world and this is a first time to get a bouquet of fresh oranges."

Andrew, in fact, helped organize Cardinal Wojtyla's visit to Our Lady of the Bright Mount Polish Parish in Los Angeles in 1976. Andrew had attended one of the cardinal's Masses at the cathedral in Krakow during a visit to Poland in 1970. He had heard from other Poles in Krakow that Cardinal Wojtyla could look deep inside a person when he met another. Andrew was so taken with the cardinal's message during Mass, his presence and power, that he never forgot the experience.

"He had that unbelievable talent of looking into people's eyes," says Andrew.

When Cardinal Wojtyla visited Los Angeles in 1976, he received the keys to the city, visited St. Vibiana's Cathedral and Los Angeles City Hall, Forest Lawn Memorial Park, and spent time and celebrated Mass with parishioners at Our Lady of the Bright Mount. When he returned to Los Angeles as Pope John Paul II in 1987, Andrew was on the planning committee.

Photos from the papal visit also are in Donna's album, as well as from a private audience he gave in Rome at the time of the canonization of St. Maximilian Kolbe. There were other visits over the years, the last one in 1999 during John Paul's visit to Poland for the dedication of the monument to the Polish Underground. Donna and Andrew were VIPs for the ceremony; afterwards, when Pope John Paul passed by, he paused and looked at them. They made the sign of the cross automatically, and Pope John Paul II blessed them.

Parallel lives

In many ways Donna, Andrew and Karol Wojtyla lived parallel lives. All three were students in Nazi-occupied Poland and between the ages of 18 and 25 during World War II. All faced the same dangers. All somehow managed to survive.

"When we left home in the morning, we never knew if we would return that night," says Andrew. A Nazi soldier could shoot any Pole, on sight, for little or no reason. At the Nuremburg trials following the war, it was reported that six million Poles died during the war. Three million were Catholics and three million were Jews.

The Polish have a saying: "Jestes`my z tej samej gliny" --- "We are from the same clay." "From clay [or gliny] you can mold something," says Andrew. "It is fired and impurities are removed. From clay you make the first element of artistic things."

He pauses. "The Warsaw Uprising was the burning of the clay from what we were. The Uprising got rid of the impurities and what we have now is the good in our hearts."

'To serve God and country'

Donna and Andrew grew up and lived in Warsaw but during that time never met each other. About 250 miles south of Warsaw lived Karol Wojtyla. The same circumstances and dangers were present in all Poland.

Before World War II, the young people of Poland had a rich history of scouting in their country. Polish scouts, both boys and girls, were networked. It was "one big movement to serve God and country," says Andrew. This was reinforced in their daily prayer as scouts. When the war started the scouts were 14 to 16 years old.

The scouts were well trained, highly networked, and easily translated their loyalty, and faith in God and country, to the Polish underground. Donna, Andrew and large numbers of young Poles, including Karol Wojtyla, were students by day or worked in German-run factories during the occupation.

At night their lives were quite different. The young men of the scouts learned military tactics, the girls carried messages from one group to another or served as nurses. Wojtyla, who was a little older, began studies for the priesthood in a secret seminary and he and other seminarians helped to smuggle Jews out of Poland. Fortunately Karol Wojtyla was never captured nor placed in a work or concentration camp.

Atrocities of war

Poland was invaded on Sept. 1, 1939 by Nazi Germany from the west and, 16 days later, from the east the Soviets, who had just signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Nazis. The Western Allies declared war on Germany but offered only moral support. Purges, terror, murder and mass deportations followed Poland's defeat.

On Feb. 10, 1940 during severely cold weather, cattle trains transported 220,000 victims (mostly women and children) to various hostile destinations in the USSR. Deportations continued until June 22, 1941 when Germany attacked the USSR.

By that time close to two million Polish citizens were condemned to the remote areas of the vast USSR; by war's end in 1945, only 25 percent had survived, for thousands had perished during the trips (and were simply tossed out as the "death trains" rolled onward to their destinations). Clergy were not transported; they --- along with officers, professionals and others --- were simply arrested and executed in cold blood.

Once Hitler had turned on the Soviets, Stalin released many Poles from their slave labor camps, but to little avail. Thousands died of cold, disease and malnutrition as they walked in vain across the barren Siberian taigas and steppes, seeking to return home.

Nor did the end of hostilities in Europe in May 1945 end the suffering for Poles, who were then subjected to Soviet Communist rule --- a period whose end began only with Pope John Paul II's June 1979 visit to his native country.

Resistance, struggle and unity

The Polish Home Army in Warsaw capitulated during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising under the rules of the Geneva Convention, and Donna and Andrew were sent to Prisoner of War camps --- Donna to Oberlangen and Andrew to Altengrabow. Following the war, and the liberation of the camps, Donna and Andrew made it to London.

Until this time, however, Donna and Andrew had never met. In London, though, a mutual friend arranged a get-together.

"We met and found out how many common elements there are in our lives," says Andrew. "When I would take her home, I'd hold her hand, and I've been holding that hand for 60 years."

Donna and Andrew married, and came to the United States and Los Angeles to begin a new life in 1951. They joined Our Lady of the Bright Mount Church. Not long after their three children, Jack, Basia and Conrad, were born. "We wanted to raise our children in a country where there was no danger so that they would never have to experience what we did," says Andrew.

When Pope John Paul II returned to Poland for the first time after his election as pope, he told his countrymen that he still remained a Polish patriot, but that he had been called to serve the whole world in addition to Poland as he "stepped into the shoes of Peter" and his life took on a new form. As Andrew Nizynski said of clay, "It is fired and impurities are removed. From clay you make the first element of artistic things."

Editor's note: Historical background was supplied in part by William Chodkiewicz and Janina Muszynski of the Polish Canadian Humanitarian Society of Edmonton, an organization working to alleviate poverty and human suffering.