Jozef Raszpla was born in 1924 in the small village of Hucisko Jawornickie in Subcarpathia, today called Prykarpattia. His father had a small piece of land with some livestock and in the winter he worked as a carpenter. His mother was a housewife.

Mr. Raszpla finished his six-year elementary school in 1939 and wanted to continue his education. He was already registered to be educated as an engineer. The start of the war nullified these plans. His father's agriculture business was ruined by requisitions of the German Army (Wehrmacht).

Mr. Raszpla had to build fortifications for the Wehrmacht, which were constructed throughout the area. On October 2nd, 1942, he was forcibly deported to labor in Austria. He was transported in cattle cars via several transit camps (including Przeworsk and Krakow) to Kitzbühl (Tyrol), and after a short stay there, onwards to Brixen. Here he was assigned to the farmer Martin Aschhaber (“Schusterbauer”), where he spent a year working.

In 1943 he was denounced because he had allegedly talked with another forced laborers about “grenades,” although they had actually only talked aboutfood.

For this he was sent to the Reichenau Labor and Re-education Camp (AEL) near Innsbruck. There he was assigned to the external commando for waterworks, which was assigned to do maintenance and installation services in the area.

Besides working in various armament factories (Messerschmitt, underground production), he was mostly assigned to transportation and logistics work, as well asto bomb-clearing crews in various German cities.

Once he received a flogging from SS guards and was beaten to unconsciousness. He was dismissed from Reichenau AEL unexpectedly in 1944, and transferred to the the employment office for “redeployment.” He was assigned to a “meat shipper” (slaughterhouse) in St. Johann, where the people treated him decently.

Till the end of the war he was an attendant on animal transports and could move unattended by train through Germany with the written permission of the Gauleiter (regional leader).

When the war ended, he joined the Polish Army, first at an officers' camp in Murnau, and from there he went to Italy.

In 1946 he went to England, which was giving emigration preference to Polish military personnel. He then had a career in army administration that he continued to practice until the mid-1950s.

He met his wife near Cirencester and settled down with her in Swindon, where there was a Polish exile community of about 3,000 people, and where they both found work in a factory. In the early 1960s they moved into the house in which they still lived together when the interview was conducted. They have two children, a son and a daughter.