Vol. 42, No. 05
05/01/2026
From the Editor | The America That Was and Can Be Again
Michael Geldner had just entered his first year of medical school in Warsaw when Nazi Germany invaded his native Poland from the west on September 1, 1939. Then, just 16 days later, the Soviet Union invaded from the east, the two totalitarian monsters carving up their helpless prey between them. The Warsaw medical school was closed, so Michael went to the Soviet sector hoping still to become a doctor. Instead, he was arrested on the sham charge of anti-Soviet activities and sent to a Siberian labor camp. Five years later, he was released. He somehow made it back to Poland and re-entered medical school. There he met his future wife, Barbara Janiszewska.
Barbara was still in secondary school when Poland was subjugated. She joined the underground resistance, but was arrested by the Nazis in 1943. Though she was Catholic, she was sent to Auschwitz as a political prisoner. She was one of the fortunate few who survived the extermination camp.
Barbara and Michael were both able to complete medical school, and they got married shortly thereafter. However, though the Geldners now had medical degrees, they did not have freedom. They eventually found a way to flee communist tyranny in 1957 by not returning after what was supposed to be a temporary medical assignment in Israel. Five years later they were allowed to emigrate to the United States, where they became proud and grateful American citizens. They later became members of The John Birch Society in order to more effectively warn their fellow Americans about the socialist/communist threat they had experienced firsthand.
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