Henriette Stefanczyk Echord Bond

Henriette Stefanczyk Echord Bond, died Sunday, June 5, 2011 at the age of 82 following a short illness, She was a World War II Polish Underground combatant (1939-44) and Mauthausen Concentration Camp survivor (1944-45). In her youth, Henriette and her family suffered the poignant and harrowing experiences of war as her Polish homeland unsuccessfully defended itself against the Nazi German invasion of September 1939. She was only 10 years old. Henriette's family became Polish partisans and fought the Nazis until their group was betrayed and captured in 1944. During the following year, she lost her parents and all but one sibling to the horrors of Auschwitz and Majdanek, while she herself was at Mauthausen. Liberated by the Western Allies near the end of the war, she joined other surviving relatives in Paris, France. While in Paris she trained as a nurse and later joined the medical contingent of the “International Brigade” which was forming in England. From England, the group was assigned to Southeast Asia where they augmented allied medical units in the region. In 1946 she returned to Paris where she by chance encountered an American volunteer to the Canadian Royal Air Force who had been rescued by her father’s partisan unit five years before. In 1941, using a network of contacts, forged transit papers provided by the Stefanczyk underground unit, and deceiving German authorities by behaving as a mute foreign worker, this Allied pilot successfully made his way by train across Poland, through Germany, to France. With fore knowledge of his possible arrival, Henriette’s uncle successfully intercepted him along the Franco-German border, whisking him north to the English Channel. With the help of fishermen in the French underground, he was successfully returned to England. This unexpected 1946 reunion with Captain Norman Ralph Echord (USAAF) resulted in their marriage in 1947. Sadly, Norman was killed in a plane crash in 1957. In 1964, she married William Joseph Bond (USAF Retired), former columnist for The Lake Sentinel who died in 1995. Henriette is survived by her son Jess Gregory Echord (USAF, Retired) of Adel, Georgia and her daughter Rachell Bond Cary along with her two grandchildren William Anthony and Georgia Augusta, all of Stafford, Virginia. Her mass will be held at St. Mary of the Lakes Catholic Church, Eustis on Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 9:30 AM. Online Guestbook available at www.hardenpauli.com Arrangements by Harden/Pauli Funeral Home, Eustis.