This Polish woman can’t forget how she survived the Second World War

How many times I remember going on a train, each time you just lay down and those wheels of the train, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I could still hear this. I couldn't get rid of it. It's been 87 years since the Second World War began. But for Danuta Łukomski, it's as if it happened yesterday. She was seven years old, living in Poland with her parents and three sisters. When a knock at the door changed everything, Russian soldiers stood at the doorway with guns, ordering the family to leave their home. And then they said, you have two hours to pack. You take food and warm clothes. If you don't, you're going to die like a dog on the street. There were so many people in the wagon already. It was full. There was no room for us. So we just sit on the floor with our bags and then they lock the door and put the bulb on it so nobody would escape. We've been traveling like this. For four or five weeks, we didn't know where they were taking us. They ended up nearly 30 hours north of Poland, forced to work for food and live in a warehouse. And we stayed there for three years like this. We've been starving to death, and the lice was on us, eating us alive. Polish veterans and Poles displaced by the war, like Łukomski, were honored over the weekend in Regina with this monument. Łukomski herself helped to unveil it. Now 94, she says seeing generations of her own family at the monument's unveiling was a reminder that these stories must live on. Her message to young people is simple. I lost my house in Poland and everything else, but the education. Nobody can take it away from you.