SigMT

SiG MT 55 "In 1942, my family was removed from their farm by the German Nazis and watched the Germans slaughter their livestock and burn the farm as Germans retreated from the Russians," he said. "e Germans did not want to leave anything behind that the Russians could use. My parents and older siblings along with thousands of Poles were shipped out of Poland to southern Germany by train in cale cars to Nazi slave labor camps." His father and older brothers, 12 and 13 in 1942, were sent on work details as farm, construction, and even mining workers. His mother sewed clothing for the Nazis. "Food was limited to dry bread and at best a thin broth, usually of broccoli or turnips. For the rest of his life my father was not fond of broccoli and turnips," Kunz said. He was born in a barracks in that camp in 1944. ere were no doctors, so his older sister Emelia, 10, assisted at his birth. "She cared for me aer, while my mother worked. Because of lack of food, my mother was not able to nurse me. ey found another lady in the barracks that could. We all survived!" While Kunz does not remember the concentration camp, he does recall the DP camp, especially the gypsies, their horses and wagons, campfires, mandolins and fiddles. "It was a great place for a kid to be." e conditions had been so bad in the refugee camp that when he reached Fairfield he fell ill, lapsed into a coma suffering from malnutrition and parasites and had to be nursed back to health in a Great Falls hospital. ey stayed in Fairfield for a year because his mother, Agnes, cooked for the arriving Polish immigrants there. She died in 2003. One of her proudest experiences, Kunz said, came in 1976 when she cooked Polish food for then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the archbishop of Krakow, Poland, who was visiting Msgr. Joseph Gluszek in Geyser, Montana before Wojtyla was elected Pope John Paul II. Gluszek, who died at age 91 in 2002, had survived six years in the Dachau concentration camp. John Sr., who died in 1993, found work at the new Great Falls Central Catholic High School (1951-71), and was the school's first maintenance worker. He also did freelance carpentry: remodeling, cabinets, and additions. "Both of my parents lived a long full life in Great Falls aer surviving the nightmare of World War II and the Nazi Concentration Camp," said Kunz. e family lived on the lower North Side of Great Falls near St. Ann's Cathedral and he graduated from Central Catholic High in 1962. He did a hitch in the Marines, lived in Newark, NJ, where his brothers had seled, and came back to Great Falls in 1972. He worked in automobile sales and management for about 25 years and began a new career in real estate in 1995 eventually buying Coldwell Banker Cogswell, renaming it Coldwell Banker e Falls. He sold the business in 2016. He and his wife, the former Colleen Kranzler, retired senior vice- president of First Interstate Bank Great Falls, live in Great Falls and part-time near Bigfork. In 1974 Kunz went to Poland with his mother and younger sister. ey found two of his mother's surviving sisters. "I was able to tell my father that seeing how my surviving family in Poland were living, that I truly appreciated being in the USA. He had made the right decision (by not going back to Poland aer the war as his mother wanted)." On a second visit in 2019 he found that Poland had been rebuilt and to be "quite beautiful." He plans to visit Germany, including Ramensthal, this year. Kunz is the only surviving member of his family still in Montana. "In my heart, this will always be home. e many friends and relationships that I acquired over the years are priceless," he said. Tom Kotynski is a retired Great Falls Tribune associate editor S MT 1945 Ramsenthal, Germany Slave Labor Camp: L – R Kasimir, sister Amelia, and brother Thomas in front of barracks in the concentration camp 1945. L to Rt sister Stella, John, sister Helena. Girls in Traditional Polish dresses sewn by John's mother in refugee camp 1948. 1948 refugee camp - John Kunz Sr. and son John.

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