At the age of eight, my mother Teresa was robbed of her childhood.

Asleep in the predawn hours of September 1, 1939, she was clutching a beloved stuffed fox when the fearsome thunderstorm of a German air assault announced the outbreak of World War II.

Fifteen days later, the war arrived in her front yard as Polish soldiers dug foxholes in the family garden. Germans advancing on Warsaw fired artillery on Młociny, the picturesque village where her family lived, eight miles northwest of the capital. Horses galloped through the meadow as a Polish cavalry regiment joined the defense. Germans ambushed and “killed them—just like that,” my mother recalls, snapping her fingers.

Artillery shells destroyed the roof of her home, punctured a wall