By Marilyn May
Hedwige Babak Kuepper
The year was 1939, and Poland was soon to be remembered as the country that was “first to fight.” Hedwige Babak, now Hedwige Babak Kuepper, was 9 at the time when her family got a telegram from her father that likely saved her life and the lives of her sister and mother.
Babak Kuepper was born of Polish parents in Paris where her father worked. She, her sister, and mother were on a holiday visiting relatives in Poland when they received a telegram from her father telling them to return to Paris immediately, because war was imminent. They got on one of the last trains out of Krakow.
Babak Kuepper will tell her story at the next meeting of the Milford Historical Society on Monday, March 20 at 7 p.m. at the Mary Taylor Memorial United Methodist Church. The program is free and open to the public. At 92, she is one of a dwindling number of primary sources who today can tell her personal story of wartime.
The train the family was traveling on went through Berlin. There she saw posters in the train station. Not knowing who Adolf Hitler was, she was staring at the posters when a woman on the train came up to her and said, “Isn’t he handsome?” Babak Kuepper, who would ultimately master five languages, mixed up her words and ended up saying something like “Yes, he is fat.”
The second leg of the train trip went smoothly, but when the family disembarked in Paris, she saw newspaper headlines: “Germany Bombs Poland.” It was at that moment that she began to understand.
A nightmare that was to change the world forever had begun, and her story of growing up in occupied France was also just beginning.
For more information, visit milfordhistoricalsociety.org or call 203-874-2664. The meeting room is accessible to the handicapped, and there is ample parking in the back church lot, located at 168-172 South Broad St.
Marilyn May is a lifelong resident of Milford and on the Board of the Milford Historical Society.