Wacława (Januszewska) Lobasz was born in Kielce, Poland, on June 3, 1933. She was the baby of the family, with two older sisters, Marysia and Krystyna. Her mother, Stefania (Horn) Januszewska, owned a small grocery store, while her father, Bolesław Januszewski, was a master machinist.
When she was six years old, Germans invaded her country, World War II began, and her life turned into a nightmare. As the Germans approached, her family joined a sea of refugees leaving the city for the country. Her older sisters were with her father, who was holding a bicycle with their most necessary possessions loaded on top. Wacława, holding on to her mother, carried a pack that was supposed to have her underwear. It turned out that her mother, in her haste and worry, had packed some bed linens instead. Airplanes were dropping bombs ahead of them. Her older sister said it was fireworks.
Eventually they came back to their house. The city was occupied by the German army, but people tried to live as normally as possible. The Nazi authorities wanted them to register as a German family because Wacława's grandfather had been a German citizen. This would have made their life under the occupation much easier. Her parents refused; they were Polish. The cellar below the store became headquarters for the local Polish underground resistance movement. Her older sisters became nurses for the resistance. Still a little girl, Wacława acted as a courier for the resistance, smuggling documents in her underwear.
In August 1944, the Warsaw Uprising occurred. Most of the family on both sides were living in Warsaw before the war. A few came to live with the Januszewskis during the war, but many stayed in Warsaw. One of Wacława's aunts was killed during the Uprising. She was buried under a sidewalk and that area got hit by a bomb as well. There was nothing left to rebury. Wacława's oldest sister, Marysia, lost her fiancé to the Uprising as well. After the Uprising and the destruction of Warsaw, Wacława's mother took her to look for the family that had stayed. It was safer for both of them to be traveling as a mother and her 11-year-old daughter. Wacława told her sons a little about entering the ruins of Warsaw after the Germans had left. They found the rest of the family and brought them back to their home.
After the war, Wacława's family moved further west to Legnica, a city that had previously been part of Germany. There she went to high school and met the man who would become her husband, Zbigniew Lobasz. Zbigniew was originally from Lwów (then a part of Poland, now a part of Ukraine), and served in the Polish Army as a tank driver from the age of 14. They were married two months before she turned 17; he was 20.
Wacława and Zbigniew lost their first son, Waldemar, at birth in 1951. Their son, Mirosław ("Mirek") was born in 1953, and another son, Jerzy ("Jurek" or "George") came along in 1955. They moved to Gdynia, on the Baltic coast, where Zbigniew worked as a dental technician at a naval hospital and Wacława kept house. Post-war Poland was not an easy place to start a family, especially after the Stalinists took power. Most of the country lay in ruins well into the 1950s and '60s, and the Lobaszes shared their three-bedroom apartment in Gdynia with another family and a single woman.
Zbigniew emigrated to the United States in 1959, chiefly because of the housing situation. He was sponsored by his mother, Olga, who had come to the U.S. in 1948 as a displaced person. Wacława and their two sons joined him in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1960. Life was difficult for an immigrant family and anti-Polish sentiment was prevalent, but they worked hard, joined with other Polish immigrants, and made a new life together.
In 1988, Zbigniew and Wacława moved to Jupiter, Florida to be closer to their grandchildren and farther away from the cold weather. In Florida, Wacława was known for her pierogi and other Polish recipes, and for hosting a Christmas Eve dinner at which any and all were welcome. She was "Babcia"—Polish for "Grandmother"—to all. In her later years, she enjoyed sitting by the pool with her morning coffee, watching The Young and the Restless, Hallmark Christmas movies, and Polish satellite television, and freely sharing her opinions about the way the world should be.
Wacława Lobasz took her final breath on September 29, 2022, at the Palm Beach Gardens Hospice and Palliative Care Center. She is survived by her sons, Mirek Lobasz and George (Diane) Lobasz; her grandchildren, Lisa (Jay) Martin, Jennifer Lobasz (Scott Benson), Adam (Valeska) Lobasz, Kris (Kenny) Shubert, and Rebecca (Brian) Coleman; and her great-grandchildren, Kade and Jude Shubert, Skylar and Sienna Martin, and Lyla Coleman. She was preceded in death by her parents, sisters, husband, and first son.
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