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The World War Two vet who I want to highlight in particular is my Great-Granduncle Bernard Stanley "Bernie" Czarnecki (of blessed memory). There were other family members whom served, though none of them endured what Great-Granduncle Bernie did. Being the youngest brother of my father's paternal grandfather, he was not yet even 21 when he first signed up to serve in the U.S. Army—he was born on March 15, 1917 and signed up on February 17, 1941—and all this after his parents and my great-grandfather came to the U.S. to escape the pogroms and live as Crypto Jews to avoid further Anti Semitism! He honestly had no obligation to go to the continent from which his parents and brother Tony escaped. There he went, though; and he was discharged from the Army on December 12, 1945 due to shrapnel in his head and a botched operation that he underwent to remove it. The botched operation left his brain damaged, him permanently childlike, etc.; and he died at the age of 43 in the Lebanon, PA Veterans' Affairs' Home due to Schizophrenia and a Coronary Occlusion. Great-Granduncle Bernie never even got a Purple Heart, either.
The mother who I want to highlight is Great-Grandaunt Alexandria Alice Czarnecki Dombroski—the one who set up Great-Granduncle Bernie's Social Security account and got swindled by "Jankie" and "Susi" when Great-Granduncle Bernie died. As I have mentioned before, "Jankie" and "Susi" (real mensches! >:-/) took advantage of their childlike brother by affecting him to sign off his Social Security benefits to them for when he died; and they thus swindled Great-Grandaunt Alice in the process.
Great-Grandaunt Alice already took care of Great-Great-Grandma when she was dying, headed up the house after Great-Great-Grandma died, and took on the role of a widowed mother when she could have (quite honestly) sent her son to live with relatives after her husband died. She did not have to help her brother—and she did, anyway.
"It's a shame what they[, Jankie and Susi,] did to Bernie," as Granduncle Tony overheard at the funeral home. It's also a shame what Jankie and Susi did to Great-Grandaunt Alice, and that few to none recognize Great-Granduncle Bernie and Great-Grandaunt Alice to this day.
