Jack Dygola collection

Jack (Yitzchak) Dygola (1930-2011) was born in Dobrzyń, Poland. His father died of a heart attack in
1937. Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he was forced into the Strzegowo ghetto with
his mother Eva (Chava) and his brother. In the fall of 1941, they escaped the ghetto though a loose slat
in the wall. They split up, promising to meet again in Dobrzyń after the war. Jack changed his name to
Wacław Dulczewski, bleached his hair, acquired a bible and a cross, and began to memorize Polish
prayers. In early spring 1943 and suffering from illness, he asked a Polish woman for help, and she
nurtured him for nearly six weeks. She sent him to live with a widow nearby who needed help on her
farm, but he needed identification papers first. He sought papers at the local Nazi headquarters claiming
to be an orphan, and recited Catholic prayers when the Nazi officer tested him. In the fall of 1944, a
group of local partisans recruited him, and he stayed with them until the end of the war. After the war,
he learned that his brother had been murdered by firing squad and was told that his mother had also
been murdered. He joined the Zionist kibbutz “Dror” in Łódź, which moved to Landsberg, Germany, in
1946. In 1947 he met Jewish American soldiers from Brooklyn who offered to contact his aunt who lived
there. She urged him to immigrate to the United States, but he was only able to find a route to Canada
with the help of the Jewish Congress of Canada. He was welcomed by the Fogelbaum family of Montreal
and learned the furrier trade and how to speak and write English. In 1949, he learned that a woman
named Eva Chava Dygola living in Milwaukee was looking for any family survivors. Philanthropist Harry
Bragarnick sponsored his immigration to the United States, and Jack was reunited with his mother in
September 1950. Jack married Renee Dygola and had two children Jeffery Dygola and Shawn Dygola.