Between Poland and America

My parents were Henryk Dembinski from Przysucha in central Poland and Maria born Gołuchowska, whose family comes from eastern Polish territories, incorporated by the Ukraine as the result of WW II. The story begins before the Second World War in Lvov where I was born in 1938. The city then belonged to Poland, but as the result of post-war agreements between the victorious powers (Russia, the United Kingdom and the US), it was given to the Ukraine and so was the adjacent territory. Polish people from those areas were forced to relocate mainly to the western part of the country, which, also as the result of the war, was taken away from the defeated Germany. German people were told to leave without delay. Poland unfortunately had nothing to say about all these arrangements; the western powers left Poland, as well as other countries in the so called Eastern Europe within the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union. Before any truly democratic government could emerge in Poland, Joseph Stalin sent Moscow trained communists of Polish origin into Poland. They immediately seized power and crushed any opposition. This situation lasted until 1989 when communist regimes started to crumble in the entire eastern bloc.