Paraphrased
VANESSA GERA,
AP
VANESSA GERA,
AP
MIESZKOWICE, Poland (Oct. 3) - For five decades, she kept his picture in her wallet — a black-and-white snapshot of a handsome young Polish man with brooding eyes.
The German woman and Polish man fell in love at the end of World War II but were torn apart when Germans were expelled from Poland. But their love never died.
When they first met, the once privileged daughter of a factory owner had become a stick figure weighing just 75 pounds. Her family was having to beg for bread and milk. One day, she knocked on Mackiewicz's door. His family was kind to her.
When Mackiewicz, then 25, first saw her his first emotion was enormous pity.
Their love for one another grew over time, but it was their decision to marry that ended their relationship.
When they went to the town hall seeking permission to wed, the authorities discovered her father was a German capitalist. They ordered the Profe family to leave town.
As they said their goodbyes in front of her father's factory, they exchanged photographs.
He kept hers for several years until he married another woman in 1960 giving the photo to his father for safekeeping.
She kept his in her wallet — and never forgot him.
She never married.
She devoted her energies to a new family factory in Germany and worked with handicapped children in Berlin.
On Nov. 10, 1989, after hearing the Berlin Wall started coming down, Profe knew that she could now 'go home' and look for her lost love.
She eventually found a cousin of Mackiewiczh who said he lived in a town in northern Poland where he had been running a repair shop for farm equipment.
She wrote to him. He wrote back. And they agreed to meet.
In 1995 they were reunited in the parking lot of a Polish train station — and immediately reconnected across the decades.
By then he was 75, and she was 70.
They flung their arms around each other's necks and it was if those 50 years just melted away.
Today they are married, sharing a tidy, white home they built for themselves in the town where they first met.
"Love will last until the end of your life, if that love is real," Mackiewicz said during an interview at their home.
Sitting at a table in a dining nook, Mackiewicz, now 89, broke into tears recalling his pity for the girl from an enemy country that had killed millions of his compatriots, who had knocked on his door asking for food.
Profe, 83, who had stepped away to get coffee, rushed over and caressed his cheek.
Their love speaks in other small gestures: they hold hands as they walk through their yard, she places her hand softly on his knee during a drive to her family's old factory.
Like many husbands, he has trouble remembering their wedding anniversary. But he insists it's not important anyway.
What matters to him is the day in 1947 when he sought permission at town hall to marry her.
And what he remembers is this:
"Even though they said no, Elvira told me, 'it doesn't matter because I will never stop loving you."
