An amazing story of wartime bravery and Cold War tragedy involving Canberrans has come to light because of a 40-year-old letter.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
In the winter of 1944, Leo Weizen and his family in Poland saved two Australians from death by hiding them when they escaped from the Nazis and now he wants to make contact.
He did try 40 years ago when he wrote a letter to The Canberra Times but it never reached us, probably because the communist authorities blocked it.
But Mr Weizen kept the letter he wrote all those years ago on January 5, 1979 - and he re-sent it recently.
The heroism of his family has stayed with him for 85 years and he wasn't going to let the mystery go without trying to solve it.
Can you help him?
It all relates an amazing story of bravery on the part of his family when they hid two escaped Australian prisoners who had fled from a Nazi camp near their home as Nazi Germany was crashing to ashes and oblivion..
Mr Weizen knows the two men only as Roy and Victor but thinks they came from Canberra.
He, his two brothers and his mother and father lived in a small town in what was then Germany but is now Poland - Koenigshuette under German rule but renamed as Chorzow in Polish.
His father came to know the two Australian prisoners when they were forced to work in the local nitrogen factory.
As the Russians advanced, and the gun-fire got louder and closer, the Nazis decided to march the prisoners back towards Germany - a march the captives were unlikely to survive.
So the two Australians decided to escape and turned up in the garden of Leo's home.
"My father wanted to help them get back to their homeland, Australia, so he decided to hide them," Leo wrote in a letter to The Canberra Times.
"In the darkness of the night, the flight began and they came to our garden which was covered in hay."
But the temperature outside was minus 21 degrees - cold enough to kill them.
"So as quickly as possible, they had to be brought inside. We could hear, ever-louder, how the Red Army came nearer and nearer came."
The father decided to hide Victor and Roy in a cupboard.
There were two dangers: German soldiers in retreat and Red Army soldiers on the advance.
"The danger for my parents was enormous because the German army looked for empty homes and rooms to stay in overnight and the Red Army sought after enemy soldiers.
"Roy and Victor hid in the closet first and my mother with my two brothers hid in the cellar with the worst fears. They prayed that nothing happened.
"My father and I stayed in the home and also prayed that the two wouldn't be discovered if German troops stormed the bedroom with their heavy weapons and grenades. A false movement or a sneeze would mean the end for all of us."
The prisoners were discovered when the Red Army over-ran the town and its soldiers came to the house. The Soviet soldiers accused the two Australians of being German and were about to shoot them.
"The Russian soldiers came while our friends, Roy and Victor, were in bed, sleeping.
"These Russian soldiers were very brutal to our friends (Roy and Victor). They dragged them out of the bed and shouted they were German soldiers and they should be shot."
But by an amazing chance, at that moment two Ukrainian factory workers appeared and vouched for the Australians. An officer then came and ordered his soldiers not to shoot.
"A Russian officer came in and immediately calmed everybody down. We were very lucky," Leo wrote.
The two Australians survived the war. For a few years, the family who had risked their lives to save the escapees kept in touch. The pair, Leo thinks, were in Canberra.
But then in 1949, all contact stopped when the newly installed communist government in Poland blocked contact with the West.
Shortly afterwards, the Polish secret police searched every inch of their home. All contact with the Australians stopped.
Now, Leo wants to find out what happened. "I would love to see that they have had happy lives and got married as they wished when they left."
But he is 86 and the two soldiers would be about 20 years older so the chances of them being still alive are slim. Leo wonders if their families are still in Canberra.
He remembers one as a pilot and the other as the son of a farmer.
"At the time, I was 12 years old and now I am 86 and hope that Roy and Victor can be found or at least their families so that I can tell them why we never came and what happened over these years.
"So please help me find their surnames or to find Roy and Victor themselves."
And he signs off: "NO MORE WAR, Leo Weizen-Przeniczny."