Polish-American Kinston residents recall Holocaust in trip to Poland

KINSTON, NC (WITN) For two Polish-American holocaust survivors in their 80s, visiting their respective places of birth isn't and hasn't ever been possible -- not since the day they were forced to leave their homeland during World War II.

Kinston residents Mike and Maria Lindner have returned to present-day Poland once before, more than fifty years ago and they visited once more, for the last time, this summer.

The trip almost didn't happen; when The Lindner's were invited to family wedding in Poland, the couple of 63 years weren't sure they could or should go.

At 87 and 85 years old, both holocaust survivors have seen more horror than most people want to imagine.

They were taken from their homeland to Nazi work camps in Germany when they were 12 and 10 years old. Mike, an American war veteran himself, knows from present day aerial imaging that nothing stands where his hometown once was.

"Before I left, I saw my house was burned up, my house and everything, barns... the whole thing," he said.

"Of course, we could not go back to the place where I was born, because ... I want to go so bad, I know there's nothing there, everything burned, none of our houses or nothing like that, I'd just still like to see the place," Maria said.

Maria's birthplace is not only gone, but inaccessible because it is geographically located in what's now the Ukraine, where the U.S. State Department has issued harsh travel warnings and where U.S. commercial flights do not go.

For those reasons -- for all they've seen -- they weren't sure they wanted to make the trip; but one thing urged them towards the airport, the desire to show their home country to their daughter.

The Kinston residents who describe themselves as "Proud Americans" wanted their daughter, Angie Weldin, to see firsthand where her family comes from and what her parents endured in their youth.

"You can talk and you can tell and you can read but it's nothing like you go in and experience, you see it all," Maria said.

The family traveled around Poland for more than two weeks this summer, from June 28th to July 14th. They enjoyed the family wedding, toured the mountainside and experienced the language and culture once again.

They also came back face to face with what some people might call the unthinkable.

"What really hit home with me, and my parents... growing up, hearing the stories my whole life of them being in concentration camps, it didn't really hit home to me until I visited Auschwitz," Weldin said.

Angie Weldin toured Auschwitz, the notorious German concentration camp in Poland, alone.

Mike and Maria waited for her outside the gates.

Through tears Maria said, "I just didn't want to go [in] because I knew if I go I'd just be crying all the time so..."

Mike says he knew his memories would come flooding back to him.

"Things came to my mind, all the punishment that they give to me for nothing," he said, remembering a time when he took too long using the bathroom and was placed into a chlorine tank to clean it for three full days. Mike Lindner says he nearly died. "You know, you go to shower and you might as well say your prayers because you might not come back."

He recalls a young friend who was denied medical treatment after sustaining a hand injury.

"...he died in my arms," Mike said.

Mike and Maria were both taken directly from Poland to Germany as children -- they were held at camps they describe as being very similar to Auschwitz.

"The area, the way they do it, all of them look alike, they've got all of the wire real high up and stuff like this and the big gate that you go through," Maria said.

Angie toured the entire camp.

She went inside the gas chambers and took photos of the execution walls. She saw piles and piles of personal possessions that had been taken away from people before their execution.

"The things I saw at that place are still with me today, it's hard for me to talk about it, because I cannot believe that people could be so cruel and that my parents went through something like that..." she said.

One of the most disturbing things she saw was in the barracks.

"In one building ... filled up to the ceiling from the floor was the hair and ponytails of women and girls who were being executed, they would cut their hair off before that would happen and that just really, it was just such a personal thing, it just hit me really hard," she said.

"When I came out of that gate, I was in tears and I just grabbed my Mom and Dad and hugged them so tight ..."

Mike and Maria say that was the moment they finally knew she understood.

Of course, to Mike and Maria the stories and the place itself are not unthinkable because they and millions of others endured it and many did not survive.

As they continue to walk through this life together, that's what they want their daughter and all young Americans to know -- that this happened, because as the sign outside the gates of Auschwitz reads "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

WITN first introduced Mike and Maria Lindner in February, in a special report on their lives and perspective. You can find read that story below.

Previous Story:

Incredible stories of survival from one of the world's greatest tragedies are being told right here in the east.

Kinston residents Mike and Maria Lindner are World War II Holocaust survivors, who both spent several years in concentration camps.

At 87-years-old, Mike Lindner says America is the greatest country in the world. He says, "I owe my life to America."

Linder remembers the day he was freed from a German concentration camp by American forces -- the day he swore he'd become an American solider to pay forward his returned right to freedom.

Linder says, "You have to respect freedom with your heart, mind and soul and tell others about it."

For decades, he and his wife of 63-years have struggled to tell their life stories.

Both holocaust survivors, they endured incomparable hardship as children growing up in Poland, being forced from their homes into German concentration camps and eventually emigrating to the United States.

Mike says, "It was things that you would not believe, that people can do some things to other people."

From the Russian occupation of Poland Mike remembers, "They were closing churches. They took my priest and killed him and hanged him on the front door of our church. There was no freedom, it was a very, very sad life."

After German forces took over, he and his older brother Joe, thought they'd be killed long before they were taken from their homeland to the camps. At one point, he says German soldiers forced the pair to dig two shallow graves.

Mike says, "So we were digging these holes and talking last words to one another and suddenly they brought two Jewish women and each had a baby on their arms, and they shot them like a dog and tell us to put the dirt on them. So we got out with life, but those two women and kids have never gotten out of my mind and my heart."

Maria doesn't talk about the things she's seen. She says, "I knew it was real, but when I start talking and thinking, and I say that people could not do things like this, they could not treat people like this, you know, so I just don't talk about it."

She prefers instead to tell the story of hope and love that developed when she and Mike met in Kinston at a Christmas party, held several years after the war ended and their families obtained sponsorships to emigrate to North Carolina.

Maria says, "And I just looked when he came in through the door and I said, 'He's gonna be my husband!'"

The only reason the Lindners tell their stories, including the book Mike published several years ago, is to ensure that younger generations never forget the atrocities committed against millions of people in western Europe during the late 1930s and early 1940s.

In their Kinston home they have stacks of letters and essays written to them by more than 9,000 students they've spoken to over the years who promise them, they'll never forget.

Mike's book is called 'Leaving Terror Behind - a boy's journey to painting over the past.'

Lindner worked at Kinston's Dupont plant for 32-years while painting and sketching on the side.

The couple has one daughter, two grandchildren and one great-grandchild.