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To bring help to prisoners-of-war held captive by the Germans was a perilous and extremely difficult task. However, there were always brave people whose stories still serve as an example of  unselfish solidarity with soldiers who faced the everyday hardship of camps.

Antonina Grykowa begun helping victims of the war in the concentration camp in Majdanek, where – endangering her life – she brought to illegal correspondence, organized meetings of the camp prisoners with their families, provided food parcels, also containing bread which she made in her own bakery. In 1940, the Gryk family began to received requests for material help from oflags and stalags. Antonina and her daughters, Zofia, Hanna and Wanda, immediately took up the role of ,,war mothers”, and the number of recipients they helped was steadily rising .

A testimony of this enormous commitment is the valuable collection of POW correspondence which has recently been given to us by Andrzej Putz, son of Zofia and grandson of Antonina Grygowa. The collection consists of 243 letters and postcards sent by Polish soldiers detained in five oflags and eight stalags. The senders of the letters mainly asked for help and expressed their gratitude for the received parcels. However, the content of the correspondence proves that it also had a therapeutic function. The isolated soldiers shared in the letters their longings and deep concerns about the fate of their own and their relatives. The donated collection is a valuable historical source which extends our knowledge about the help sent to Polish prisoners-of-war and the role played in it by ,,war mothers”.