The estate of Aureli Topolnicki, resident between 1945 and 1951 in the DP camp in Wildflecken (Durzyn)

On their arrival in the USA Aureli Topolnicki immediately began to look for work. He had several jobs in the 1950s [68], and in 1953/1954 he took a training course in technical drawing at the Laski Institute of Technology in Chicago [69]. His son Otto became a citizen of the USA in 1958 at the age of 20; two years later he did his national service at the air force base in New York [70]. He was already married by the time he was given American citizenship and his son Adam Aurelius was born in December that year, to be followed by two daughters, Evelyn, in 1961 and Teresa in 1962 [71]. Aureli and Irma Topolnicki worked hard and managed to achieve a reasonable standard of living. They visited Poland on two occasions, but never set eyes on the regions where they were born, and that had now been lost. The couple spent the final years of their lives in San Diego/California, where they were in charge of a small old people’s home. Aureli Topolnicki died in 1988, to be followed two years later by his wife, Irma. Both were buried in a mausoleum in San Diego, as was their son Otto, who died on 7. May 2014 [72].

David Skrabania, May 2017