Ciaston, Leopold
(August 29, 1929 - October 15, 2007)

Exactly how many Polish families were left in the city of Luck, now in northwestern Ukraine, after the ethnic cleansing of the Second World War is hard to determine. Founded in the 7th century on a bend of the Styr River, Luck, also known as Lutsk, was part of Poland until it was annexed by Russia in 1795. Between the two world wars it was again part of Poland and the capital of Wolyn province. In 1930, approximately 10,000 inhabitants of the city, mostly Polish, were loaded like cattle on railroad cars and hauled to Kazakhstan, where in the previous decade 22 percent of the population either fled or died of starvation and violence. Most of the Jews in Luck, who outnumbered the Poles, were rounded up and murdered. The Soviet labor camps in Kazakhstan were filled with prisoners of war.

Among the exiles sent to the outer reaches of the Soviet Union were Wladyslaw and Stefania Ciaston and their children, including Leopold, who was born August 29, 1929, in Luck, and thereafter the boy spent the war years in India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico. In 1945, he fell under the wing of the Polish priests at Orchard Lake, Michigan, where he graduated from high school in 1947. He received a degree in mechanical engineering from Alliance College in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, now defunct, and his goal of working in the tool industry was delayed by military service in the Korean war.

He was married twice, first in 1957 to Christine Jasinski of Detroit, Michigan, with whom he had four children -- Jan, Maria, Edward, and Irena -- and in 1984 to Wanda Jasczolt, who had three children by a previous marriage.

From the 1950s to his death, he was active in the Polish National Alliance, the largest organization of its kind in his ethnic group, and served as president of a Detroit council, No. 122, in the 1960s and '70s. In 1975, he was elected Vice Censor of the national organization and served in that post until 1983. He made a big difference in the life of the Polish fraternal organization. The fresh blood that came from Poland resulted in keeping the PNA, as the group was known, as fresh as a flowerbed, With the support of PNA, victims of natural disasters received much needed help, young people were able to go to college, families buy homes, and churches in Poland were treasured like babies.

Working in the tool industry until his retirement in 2004, in one factory or other, proved highly successful. He helped other Polish immigrants to obtain work and learn his trade. His hobby was to work in his garden at his home in Warren, Michigan.

From: Edward Pinkowski (2008)