Sylt

Antoni Bernacki, on the tombstone wrongly named Bornacki

* 5.5.1886

† 31.3.1946 Westerland, buried in plot L, grave number 13

The six-member family of Antoni and Weronika Bernacki was deported for forced labour in July 1943 from Lutsk, Volyn, where they escaped from their hometown of Wólka Kotowska, Ołyka district, before the massacre of the Polish population by Ukrainian nationalists from OUN-UPA. The Bernackis were first kept in labour camps in Reisdorf. Weronika Bernacka and her elder daughter Pelagia worked in the kitchen in a military casino. Antoni Bernacki and his elder son Medard worked in Kiel (e.g., at the unloading of wagons), the younger son Henryk was employed by a property owner, and the youngest Amelia stayed in the camp. After the liberation, the whole family was placed on the island of Sylt, where after almost a year of illness Antoni Bernacki died. His wife was transferred to the Displaced Persons camp in Lübeck, and in the autumn of 1946, she was sent further to Flensburg-Mürwik. Bernacka died in a hospital in Flensburg a year after her husband's death. In July 1947, the orphaned children returned to Poland, which was already under a different regime and whose borders had changed.