GRYNIEWICZ, WALTER (Sept. 3, 1921 -- May 28, 1992)Cabinet and violin maker. Unlike the first Polish immigrants who were scorned for working long hours and low wages in the textile industry, Walter Gryniewicz, a victim of Nazi persecution, received an outpouring of good will when he arrived in Lawrence, in the northeastern corner of Massachusetts, with his wife, Nina, and two children, John and Vera. Welcome signs, the flags of Poland and the United States, and words of encouragement were posted all over the city.
Life had already hit bottom for the family when President Harry Truman urged General Dwight Eisenhower to take better care of the displaced persons in the camps the Allies established in Germany. "As matters now stand," Truman wrote to Eisenhower on Sept. 29, 1945, "we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except we do not exterminate them." The reason that Truman didn't mention other victims from Poland was that Jews were singled out in the Potsdam conference.
Gryniewicz, who was born in a small Polish town near the German border, thought he was as stateless as the Jews. When the Displaced Persons Act was passed in 1948, Congress recognized his right not to go back to Poland because of fear of persecution based on race, religion, or political opinion. He brought his family to the United States in 1949. With nowhere else to turn, the family moved in with Nina's sister in Lawrence. His first job was making television cabinets for a company in Washington Mills. Little by little, from one company to another, he got back on his feet. His best days were still ahead of him, building kitchen cabinets and custom furniture for George Fisher Construction Company in Lawrence. When Fisher retired, Gryniewicz rented the equipment from him and continued to work for himself until he was able to buy the shop. After it was forced out by an urban renewal project, Gryniewicz moved the machinery to a garage behind his home in North Andover, to which the family moved in 1958, and changed the name to Walter's Woodworking. He got bigger jobs to do, including chests and grandfather clocks, and made a showpiece bar for Whittier Inn at Haverhill.
In 1983, when he started to repair violins, he got a blueprint of a violin made by the immortal Antonio Stradivarius and hung it on a wall in the basement of his home. He was unable to repair a violin to make it sound like a Stradivarius violin and decided to make his own violin, as he always wanted to do, and it still didn't sound better. It took him about 100 hours to assemble each violin and made two a year. If you figure it out, no matter how much it cost, each violin owes its value to its scarcity.
He worked at his own pace until he died at Lawrence General Hospital. His wife, Nina (Strecin), whom he married May 15, 1941, died September 25, 2003, at St. Joseph's Hospital in Nashua, N. H.
Funeral services were held for each at St. George Orthodox Church, Lawrence, and both were buried at Bellevue Cemetery, also in Lawrence.
One wonders whether a Gryniewicz violin is still in existence. Only eleven were made.Author: Edward Pinkowski - email: [email protected] - (2009 - modified 2011)