Stories of Service - Marta Graczyk of the Grey Samaritans - Rochester, New York

Excerpted from “Shoulder to Shoulder: Polish Americans in Rochester, NY, by Kathleen Urbanic

Her story is one of courage, service, adventure, and romance, of experiences not anticipated for a young girl growing up in Rochester's Polish neighborhood in the early 1900s.
Marta Graczyk, one of eleven children of Marcin and Marianna Graczyk, signed up for service with the Polish Grey Samaritans in January 1918. She learned about the nursing corps when its founder, Countess Laura de Gozdawa Turczynowicz, visited Rochester to appeal for volunteers. Marta’s fiancé, Tadeusz Gedgowd, had already enlisted with the Polish Army and had left for training at Polish National Alliance College. "My fiancé was the first one in our city to respond to the call of the Polish Army," Marta wrote in her memoirs, "long before the time that he was to be called to the ranks of the American Army." Three of Marta's close friends would also volunteer for service: Wladyslaw Czaban and Jan Pospula, who joined General Haller's "Blue Army," and Anna Badura, who along with Marta entered the Grey Samaritans.
After completing a course in first aid offered at Rochester's Homeopathic Hospital, Marta traveled to New York City where she lived for six months, studying health and hygiene along with other young women from around the country. Taking leave of her father, sisters, and brothers was heart-aching, Marta later recalled, but before long she developed a camaraderie with the other Grey Samaritan trainees, whom she described as "young girls full of life. . , of one nation's descent," who shared a commitment to serving their homeland.
The girls' schedule in New York was full: courses in welfare work, health, and hygiene at the School of Philanthropy and at Columbia University's Teachers' College; field work sponsored by United Charities in hospitals, kindergartens, and orphanages; visits to institutions for handicapped and crippled children; evening study in the Polish and English languages. There was also time for talking, laughing, and playing pranks on each other in the dormitory where the girls lived during their stay in New York. "Those were school days, young days, never to be forgotten," Marta wrote.
In July 1919, after an anxious wait during which the girls were not sure when they would leave for Poland, Marta and nineteen of the "Greys" with whom she had trained sailed for Europe. She served with the nursing corps for the next two years, moving from city to city in Poland on assignments relayed to her by telegram from headquarters in Warsaw. Initially, she assisted in an orphanage near Warsaw, caring for children of refugees fleeing the conflict with the Bolsheviks on Poland's eastern border. Later, on assignment to the American Relief Commission, she supervised the distribution of food and clothing to children and elderly left impoverished by the war. Along with other Grey Samaritans, Marta also instructed Polish women in health care, training girls in each village to continue relief work after the Grey Samaritans departed.
During her duty with the Grey Samaritans, Marta experienced the hardships of life in Poland after World War I: food shortages, rides in horse-drawn carts over rough country roads, nights spent in drafty village inns. Despite often unpleasant conditions, she responded with enthusiasm to her work and found satisfaction in aiding her parents' homeland. Marta's memoirs also relate many joyful experiences: singing Christmas carols with Polish soldiers returning from the front; seeing her fiancé in Warsaw after a separation of two years; and meeting her mother's sister for the first time in a Polish village, finding in her aunt's features the image of her mother who had died when Marta was a child.
Marta also endured a frightening experience in November 1920, while she was serving near the border of Poland and Lithuania. After crossing into Lithuanian territory, she was arrested by government officials and accused of being a Polish spy, apparently because she had been corresponding with Poles who lived in the area. Upon return to the United States, Marta described
the incident with composure to a Rochester reporter: “The fact that I spoke the Polish language and was found within the Lithuanian boundary seemed to be sufficient to warrant my arrest. . . . I was kept under guard for about three days, after which I was given the freedom of the city. However, that freedom consisted chiefly of being constantly shadowed by someone. . . prepared to prevent any attempt of escape. . . . My freedom was finally procured by one of the assistants of the commissioner of Riga and a representative of the American ambassador in Warsaw.”
After her duty with the Grey Samaritans, Marta returned to Rochester where she married Tadeusz Gedgowd. Both were decorated for their service to Poland, and Marta applied her experience abroad to a profession in America, working in social welfare for the rest of her life. She also recorded the experiences of her years as a Grey Samaritan. "In Poland," she later recalled, "there would be no end to mention of happenings there. . . . It seemed that . . . similar tales would be only stories in books."
Copyright 2000, Kathleen Urbanic