Andrzejewski, Halina
(1925 - Mar. 28, 2008)
Polish refugeeThere is hardly one area or another of the country where displaced persons from Poland haven't lived. The story behind Halina Andrzejewski moved me to include it in the Pinkowski Files.
She was born Halina (July 1 was her feast day) Cerech in Nieswiez, Poland, now in Belarus, the daughter of Andrzej Cerech and Stefania Weraskowski. Many heroines in Polish literature bear the same first name. No person in Poland today is named Cerech. She stayed in Nieswiez, where she graduated from the gymnasium, until German troops invaded the village, separated the older children from their families, and sent them to forced labor in Germany. After the war, she met Gregory Andrzejewski. The two were casualties of the Second World War. They were caught in a horrible position. They couldn't go back to their old homes and the displaced persons camp in Belgium, where they were married, was no place to raise a family.
The National Catholic Welfare Conference arranged for the family to come to the United States. On November 19, 1951, Grzegorz, 39 years old, Halina, 26, George, 4, and Wladyslaw Andrzejewski, 3, as their names appeared in the ship's manifest, boarded the USMS General M.B. Stewart in Bremen, Germany. The passage to New York over the Atlantic took eleven days. Up to 3,000 men, women and children were crammed on the seven-year-old ship. The ocean liner, 523 feet in length and 71 feet wide, made 24 round voyages between Germany and the United States with displaced persons between 1949 and 1952. The displaced families spread across the country.
The Andrzejewski family landed in Haverhill, a city of about 47,000 persons 36 miles north of Boston, Massachusetts, on the New Hampshire border. It was the shoe industry that built the city. In 1890, the shoe factories employed 11,000 people. As the city grew along the winding Merrimac River, the most dominant groups in Haverhill, led in most cases by someone from the Old World, each built its own church, and contributed an important element to the life of the city. For example, St. Joseph's Catholic Church was started by French Canadians, St. Michael's by Poles, St. George's by Lithuanians, and St. Rita's by Italians. Jews were also numerous in Haverhill and built two synagogues.
Halina Andrzejewski never thought that St. Michael's, which the family joined in 1951, would close before she died. She buried her spouse of 29 years from the Polish church in January of 1974. It was one of 67 parishes that the Archbishop of Boston closed in 1998 and mixed the French Canadians, Italians, Lithuanians, and Poles together in a new parish, All Saints, in Haverhill, whether they liked it or not. Halina Andrzejewski then attended All Saints Catholic Church, even when she moved to Atkinson, New Hampshire, in January 2004 to live with her daughter, Elizabeth, and son-in- law, Dennis. Another daughter, Helen, who was also born in Haverhill, and son-in-law, John Page, lived at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her funeral, with a Mass of Christian Burial, was held at All Saints, and burial at St. Patrick's Cemetery, both in Haverhill.
Gone, too, was the shoe factory where the Polish refugee worked during her early years. Her son, Walter, the last one in the family to bear the Andrzejewski name shortened it to Andrews and moved to Salem, New Hamsphire. Although Andrzejewski was the 79th most popular surname in the world, one of Halina's sons changed his last name and the other didn't. Only in America!
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)