Hello, James Holland here on the We Have Ways of Making You Talk Podcast.

Now, I've left our back in England and I'm in the United States and this is a conversation

I had when I was at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans and an extraordinary

place that is too.

If you're ever over there, I really do urge you to go and visit it.

While I was there at the annual conference, I hooked up with an old friend of mine, Alex

Richie, Doctor Alex Richie, I should say.

Now, she's a Canadian historian but actually she's married to a poll and she lives in Warsaw

and teaches there as well and the family story she's inherited is just incredible.

And although it's a little bit longer than usual, I have to say for the whole hour we

were talking, I was sat there completely transphaked.

It is just the most extraordinary story.

I don't want you, some of it is a little bit harrowing but I really do hope you find this

just every bit as utterly fascinating as I did.

I'm in New Orleans and one of the great things about coming here is there's lots of old

friends and a particularly good old friend is Alex Richie and Alex he are and you have

very interesting life because you are Canadian born and bred but you now live just outside

Warsaw and you teach in Poland and you're married to a poll who is incredibly eminent

and prominent in Poland and your father-in-law was one of the great war heroes.

Well, I don't know if that is so much a war hero.

First of all, his name is Vladislav Bartoszewski, and what made him really interesting is

not so much that he was a war hero in military sense but what he did was he was an 18-year-old

...