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Private Walter J. Koscianski of 966 Bulson Street, Camden, served with the 63rd Signal Battalion. Born in Philadelphia in 1905, the oldest son of Polish immigrant parents, he drove a truck for the City of Camden's Highway and Parks Departments for five years before his induction in June 1942, and died on February 6, 1943 while driving a truck in Algiers. He is buried at the North Africa American Cemetery in Carthage, Tunisia.
Private First Class Chester J. Gdowik of 947 Jackson Street, Camden, served with the 6th Armored Infantry Battalion, 1st Armored Division. A South Camden native who worked in the machine shop at New York Shipbuilding before his induction, he was killed in action in Italy on May 25, 1944.
Private Edward Kasper, born Edward Kasperowicz to Vincent and Estella Kasperowicz of Camden's Polish St. Joseph Parish, served as a radio operator with Company I, 324th Infantry Regiment, 44th Infantry Division. He was killed in action in France on October 27, 1944, at the age of 24, and is buried at St. Joseph Cemetery in Gloucester Township, NJ.
Technical Sergeant Benjamin William Dyl of Woodlynne, New Jersey, who grew up at 1524 Mount Ephraim Avenue in Camden's Polish community, served with the 47th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division. Wounded and captured while leading a patrol in January 1945, he died in a German prisoner of war camp on February 5, 1945, after only ten months in the service.
Staff Sergeant Roman Drapinski of 1468 South 10th Street, Camden, served with the 53rd Armored Engineer Battalion, 12th Armored Division, U.S. Army. Born in the United States in 1918 and raised and educated in Poland, he returned to Camden in 1938 and was killed on July 18, 1943 by a premature dynamite explosion while instructing soldiers at Camp Campbell.
Private First Class Louis Bontkowski of 1191 Liberty Street, Camden, NJ served with Company A, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, joined the division in April 1944 in time for the D-Day landings, and died of wounds on September 13, 1944. He is buried at St. Joseph Cemetery, Gloucester Township, NJ.
Private Gustave Dziengowski of 1476 Louis Street, Camden, served with the 469th Flying Training Squadron, U.S. Army Air Forces. A Camden High School athlete who worked twelve years for Public Service before his induction in April 1942, he was killed on January 6, 1943 when his B-24D broke up and crashed near White City, Kansas.
Technician 5th Class Stephen V. Koscianski of 966 Bulson Street, Camden, served with the 31st Signal Construction Company. Born in Philadelphia in 1907 to Polish immigrant parents, he ran an auto salvage and used car business beside the family home before his induction in October 1942, and was lost on November 27, 1943 when the troopship HMT Rohna was sunk in the Mediterranean.
Twelve soldiers from Camden County, NJ died when the troop transport HMT Rohna was struck by a German guided glider bomb and sank off the coast of North Africa on November 26, 1943 — one of the greatest maritime disasters of World War II.
A bronze plaque in the vestibule of St. Joseph Church at 10th and Liberty Streets in Camden, presented by the Catholic War Veterans, St. Joseph's Post 418, and dedicated April 3, 1949, honoring the parish's heroic war dead of World War II.
The Polish Heroes War Memorial at Cooper River Park in Pennsauken, N.J. (Park Drive and Route 130) unites three monuments — to Casimir Pulaski (1936, moved here 1984), Thaddeus Kosciusko (1984), and, since 1995, the members of St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church of South Camden who died in World War II.
The Casimir Pulaski Monument was dedicated in Camden, N.J. on October 11, 1936 at Pulaski Park (Benson Street and Haddon Avenue), the former City Hall site. In 1984 it was moved to Cooper River Park in Pennsauken, where it stands as part of the Polish Heroes War Memorial.
Machinist's Mate First Class Joseph J. Piotrowski of 1167 Chase Street, Camden, served aboard the cruiser USS Helena (CL-50), survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, and was killed in action on July 6, 1943 when the Helena was sunk at the Battle of Kula Gulf. He is memorialized at the Tablets of the Missing, Manila American Cemetery.
St. Joseph's Parish, the Polish Roman Catholic church of Camden's Whitman Park, began in 1891; its Baroque-style church at 10th and Mechanic Streets, designed by George I. Lovatt and consecrated in May 1914, is on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Sites.
Biography of Monsignor Arthur B. Strenski, pastor of St. Joseph Church in Camden who established the parish cemetery, St. Mary's Home for the Aged, and St. Joseph High School.
The Polish American Citizens Club (P.A.C.C.), organized in 1914, provided social and educational resources for the Polish-American community centered around St. Joseph's Church in the Whitman Park section of Camden, NJ.
The St. Joseph's Polish Athletic Association was a Camden athletic and social club affiliated with St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church at South 10th and Liberty Streets, sponsoring sports teams and social events in Camden's Polish community.
Three parish bulletins from St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church (the Polish parish) at 10th & Mechanic Streets in Camden, NJ — dated November 29, 1944; February 7, 1945; and the VE Edition of May 1945.
A personal memoir by Deborah Large Fox about the childhood hours she spent in her grandfather Watson Burdalski's produce store at 1545 Mount Ephraim Avenue, in Camden's Polish neighborhood — a recollection of the sights, sounds, and smells of the shop and his kitchen.
Richard Brodowicz's personal memoir of growing up in South Camden in the 1960s and 1970s, covering Polish family life, St. Joseph's Church and School, neighborhood games, and childhood memories on Tioga and Mechanic Streets.
Korean War veteran Stan Bednarczyk of Audubon remembers his Camden next-door neighbor Chester Gdowik — the big kid who invented "Mr. Muscles", played third base for the Falcons, and was killed in Italy in 1944 — in a Memorial Day column for the Courier-Post.
A December 1970 Camden County Record notice of St. Joseph's parish New Year's Eve party, sponsored by the Holy Name Society in the grade school lower hall at 10th and Liberty Streets, Camden.
A crowd estimated at nearly 3,000 witnessed Camden's Pulaski Day observance in October 1966, featuring 40 bands and floats depicting Polish history, followed by a Pontifical Mass celebrated in Whitman Park by Archbishop Celestine J. Damiano.
Camden Courier-Post - January 1964 Vincent Raczykowski, 78, founder and owner of the Newport Bottling Works, 1101 Morton Street, died Wednesday in West Jersey Hospital.
A December 1957 Camden Courier-Post item about Girl Scout Troop 419 of St. Joseph's School, South Camden, which "adopted" an elderly woman at St. Mary's Home in Haddonfield as their "Grandmother" and threw her a birthday party.
A requiem high Mass for Pfc. Louis Bontkowski of 1191 Liberty Street was set for St. Joseph's R.C. Church, with burial in the veterans plot of St. Joseph's cemetery at Chews Landing and military honors by Laskowski-Wojtkowiak Post 74, American Legion.
The Camden Courier-Post announces a full military funeral for Pvt. Chester J. Gdowik, killed in action in Italy on May 25, 1944, with High Mass at St. Joseph's Church and burial at St. Joseph's cemetery, Chews Landing.
A 1944 Camden Courier-Post feature by Frank Sheridan on St. Joseph's Church (the Polish parish at Tenth and Mechanic Streets), whose 1,154 mothers gave sons and daughters to the war — four killed, two missing, one a prisoner — among them Joseph Piotrowski, lost when the cruiser Helena was sunk at Kula Gulf.
The body of Marine Private John Lozowski, 20, killed in a training-flight plane crash at Atlantic Field, N.C., was returned to Camden for burial from St. Joseph's Church.
A January 1943 Camden Courier-Post notice that Sgt. Gus Dzingoski — the first World War II casualty of St. Joseph's Catholic Church — would be buried with full military honors, with an American Legion ritual in his mother's home and a Solemn High Mass of Requiem at the church.
A June 1939 Camden Courier-Post account of Kobus Twilight League baseball, in which St. Joseph's Polish routed the Polish American Citizens Club, 13 to 1, at Broadway and Everett Street, and Campbell's Soup beat the Twelfth Ward.
More than 5,000 persons — the biggest Polish gathering in Camden's history — attended the October 11, 1936 unveiling of the Casimir Pulaski monument in Pulaski Square, with speeches by Mayor Frederick von Nieda, Monsignor Arthur B. Strenski, Congressman Charles A. Wolverton, and Polish consul Dr. Szygowski.
A February 1936 Camden Courier-Post notice that the Parent-Teachers' Association of St. Joseph's Polish School, Tenth and Liberty Streets, would sponsor a card party.
A February 1936 Camden Courier-Post notice of the marriage of Dorothy Harczynska and John Walker, solemnized at St. Joseph's R.C. Church in Camden with Monsignor Strenski officiating.
A September 1935 Camden Courier-Post notice of the marriage of Leonora Marie Wyzykowski and Albert J. Gawronski at St. Joseph's Polish Catholic Church, Tenth and Liberty Streets, Camden.