Lifelong secret that saved mum from the Nazis

make documents to show his daughter was three years younger than she was.

He hoped it would spare her the horrors of working as forced child labour in factories in then Nazioccupied Poland.

Many who made up the child army of workers – some of whom were just 10 – were worked to death.

“My grandad saved mum’s life,” said Bronislawa’s daughter Basia Palka, 57, from Paisley.

“He must have watched other children being stolen away and did what it took to keep mum safe.

“That meant getting a forged birth certificate to safe her from the Nazis’ clutches.

“We knew mum had grown up in Poland during the Second World War and we often wondered how she survived.

“I assumed it was luck more than anything else.

“But a neighbour told my brother Peter that mum was older than 79 and the story of her amazing escape came tumbling out. “Yet she never told us. “Grandad was buying her time to prevent her being marched off to a brick factory or the like.”

Bronislawa was just 10 when her dad decided to get doctored documents in 1944.

Her family hoped the new paperwork and the fact she was smaller than many kids her age, would ensure her safety.

Basia added: “This saved my mum. It meant she could pass as a seven-year-old.”

Incredibly, it was Bronislawa’s second escape from Hitler’s invading hordes.

Bronislawa and her familiy had been living in Belarus when the Nazis invaded in 1941.

In the midst of the fierce resistance fighting, her home was burned to the ground.

Basia.

■