Genealogy /
What does Germanised mean? [29]
Lyzko, I consider English my mother tongue, because I was born in America. My ancestor Johann (Jan, John) Warzecha and Margareth (Malgorzata, Margaret) Kuczka came to Texas in 1855, from the village of Biestrzynnik, which was spelled Biestrzinnik back in old Prussia, and Imperial Germany. The name of the village was given the real German name Ringwalde in 1932. My father was half Silesian and half Irish and Scotch/Irish. My mother was all German, but her father was low-German speaking and her mother was High-German speaking from South Bohemia near Honetschlag (Hodnov), then in Austria, now in Czech Republic. My parents only spoke English and I only know a little of the German, Polish, and Silesian languages.
I email this woman in Germany who was born in Upper Silesia and then moved to Germany when she was 13, and she is a distant relative of mine and tells me about Upper Silesia and what happened to my family, since my ancestors left in 1855.
There is a German War memorial in Biestrzynnik with the names of at least three distant relatives of mine on it, Josef Warzecha, Paul Mehlan, and August Mehlan. I would like to know more about Josef Warzecha's service in the German Wehrmacht, like which branch of service he was in, and what was his rank, and where he was killed.
