Dudzinski, John
(Oct. 20, 1918 - Apr. 3, 2004)
Polish refugeeAlthough Polish refugees of World War II have not received much attention from historians, John Dudzinski, who came on October 29, 1951, from Germany, where he was a prisoner of war, was a valuable American citizen. Early in the war, while he was a corporal in the Polish Army, he was captured by Nazi soldiers and taken to a labor camp in Germany. His life was spared because he took care of horses on a farm belonging to a German soldier. He was freed in 1945 when the war ended.
During his years of captivity, he met Antonina, a prisoner of war from the Ukraine, whom he married in the labor camp, and following the war they had three sons - Henry, Zygmunt, and Richard - in Germany, where they were held in a displaced persons camp. The resettlement of these Polish families caught the attention of many nations, and, as is evident in data from 1947 to 1951, the International Refugee Organization sent 110,566 out of 357,635 Polish refugees to the United States; Australia, 60,308; Israel, 54,904; Canada, 46,961; and the rest to 43 other countries.
No one up to this point has tracked down the 110,000 Polish refugees in the United States, where they settled, what they did for a living, and how much of a bounce the Polish community in the United States got from their presence. Dr. Anna D. Jaroszynska - Kirchmann, who herself came to the United States in 1986 from Lublin, Poland, has made a good start in The Exile Mission. In the case of John Dudzinski, he worked in New York and Jersey City as a carpenter, a machinist, and a stevedore. He saved enough money to buy a butcher shop in Jersey City and closed it every year to march in the Pulaski parade across the Hudson River in New York. He wore his old army uniform and played an accordion.
It proved once again that the refugee relief program was worth it.
In 1984, due to the crime in Jersey City, he looked for a more peaceful place to raise his family, first in Lakehurst, New Jersey, and then Matamoras, a borough of 2312 in Pike County, Pennsylvania, across the Delaware River from Port Jervis, New York, and Montague, New Jersey. The borough, incorporated on January 18, 1905, was named during the Mexican War after the American army captured the Mexican town of Matamoras.
When he died in the Poconos at a rehabilitation center, his family, mostly grandsons, brought his body back to St. Anthony of Padua Polish Church, Jersey City, for funeral services and burial.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)