Anna's Story

Résumé du livre

Turza Mała is a small village about seventy-five miles northwest of Warsaw, Poland. On July 24th 1885Anna Pawłowska was born there as the first child of Józef Pawłowski and Marianna Nowotko.Jeże is another village, just ten miles from Turza Mała. Seven years earlier, Aleksander Sadulski was born asthe second child of Franciszek Sadulski and Katarzyna Kamrowska on January 28th 1878.Aleksander's younger brother, Józef, had left for America around the turn of the century. He was part of the wave of Za Chlebem (For Bread) immigrants, because they were primarily peasant farmers facing starvation and poverty in Russian occupied Poland. Józef found work in the Western Pennsylvania town of Export, home of a large coal mine.When she was 19, Anna married Aleksander on February 26th 1905, and less than a month later, the pair packed their lives in two worn bags and headed for America.Their great hope for a better, more decent life was stronger than all their fears and anxieties. They set out with no possessions other than their health and their family. They were fleeing poverty in a land enslaved by the Russian Empire.For Anna, this was the beginning of a life that continued on for more than seventy years. A life full of joys and tragedies. This is the story of that beginning.