During the first week of freshman orientation at Muskingum College, I felt very alone. Living with the McKunes had given me the naive idea that I knew English well enough to begin studying in college. But when I at last reached college, I discovered that this was because the McKunes always spoke slowly to me, and often used a dictionary to explain difficult words.

I majored in music. Going to class, I experienced a real shock! The instructors were unfamiliar. They spoke English, but it sounded like a different dialect than what the McKunes spoke. I wondered how I would ever be able to understand my new professors. My heart sank. I wasn’t ready for college, I thought. I might as well quit now!

However, that was not what the Lord wanted me to do. After all, He had answered my prayer about going to college in the first place. How could I fail Him when He promised to be with me and help me? Obviously I needed determination to succeed, and I stayed at school. After a while I made some good friends who helped me through the difficult first year of college.

During my second year, I experienced another setback. One day Dr. Montgomery took me aside and said, “I have been talking to some of your last-year teachers, and they all agreed that you could learn English better if you majored in English instead of music,” he said with a sympathetic look. “I am of the same opinion, even though I am aware how much you love music. Would you be willing to change your major to English?”

Not to continue to study music anymore? Not to have any more voice lessons, nor piano lessons? I hadn’t expected this tragedy. I agreed, although he might have changed his mind if he could have seen how my heart was breaking.

Studying English was overshadowed by disappointment, but I signed up for some interesting courses as well, including biology and oil painting. I also had a minor in history, so I was extremely busy.

Then, right at the beginning of my third year of college, something happened that changed everything. On Friday, Sept. 1, 1939, a radio announcer repeated, “Hitler has attacked Poland. He has taken the Polish corridor, Danzig.”

For a moment my mind went blank. Then anxious thoughts entered my heart. I thought of the orphanage and all the innocent ones there. What was ahead of them?

Most of the news came by radio and the newspaper, and only later would I find out in detail the horrible things that happened, and the brutality with which Hitler conducted his plan to conquer Europe. (The source of my information was a Ukrainian book, Daleka Doroga, “A Far Journey,” by Michail Podvorniak. I did not read it until the 1960s. In it, he described his experiences of the war in Poland and working in labor camps in Germany. He also names many of my Polish friends, including John and Pela Barchuk. As I read their story of how they’d suffered in the camps, I frequently was unable to see the print through tears.)

On Sept. 3, 1939, both England and France became involved in a war with Germany. Newspapers everywhere carried this message—“WORLD WAR DECLARED OFFICIAL.” And by the end of September 1939, I was one of the millions of Polish citizens left without a country.

—This is a summary of Nadzia’s years in college, written by Shelley Davis (editorial assistant). It is not an actual letter written by Nadzia. Next issue will have the conclusion to this series.