Love Triumphed Over Nazi Racism
Though Nazi law forbade Germans from having relationships with Poles, Julian Noga and Frieda Greinegger would not be kept apart. Their love endured threats, beatings, and imprisonment.
After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Julian, an 18-year-old Catholic Pole, was arrested and sent to work as a civilian forced laborer on a farm in Austria, which had been annexed by Germany. While the Holocaust targeted Europe’s Jews with annihilation, Nazi ideology also defined other groups as racially inferior, including Poles, leading to their persecution.
Julian fell in love with the wealthy farmer’s daughter, Frieda, 19. As an Austrian, Frieda was considered German, and was forbidden from having a romantic relationship with a Pole. As the two became close, she helped him learn German and let him listen to a radio for news about Poland. “He was the friendly type,” Frieda recalled in her oral history. “He was really easy to get along with.” Their relationship endangered them both because under Nazi “race defilement” laws, they could be severely punished.
Worried for his family’s security, Frieda’s father insisted she and Julian separate, so Frieda moved to another farm. Julian and Frieda met secretly after that. Someone reported them to the Gestapo, and they were arrested, questioned for days, and released to work on separate farms with warnings not to see each other.
They ran into each other at the train depot on the way to their new farms and planned a rendezvous, though Julian had been warned he would be executed. In his oral history, Julian recalled Frieda telling him, “I can’t live without you.” When he reminded her that being together could mean a death sentence, she said, “To me, it’s worth it.”
Frieda’s employer reported the illicit couple and the Gestapo arrested them again in 1941, sending Julian to prison and Frieda to Ravensbrück concentration camp. In 1942, Julian was sent to Flossenbürg concentration camp and forced to do backbreaking work at a quarry.
Released from Ravensbrück in 1942 and sent home, Frieda learned from another Polish laborer that Julian was interned at Flossenbürg. She bribed the laborer to mail Julian a letter and a box she carefully packed with apples, pears, and onions. “It was a big chance to take,” she said.
In April 1945, on a death march to Dachau, Julian was liberated by US soldiers. A few weeks after Germany’s surrender, Julian traveled by bicycle and found Frieda at her parents’ home. “Frieda, I’m still alive and I still love you,” he told her.
Her father gave his blessing and they married in spring 1946. Their daughter was born later that year. In 1948, the Nogas immigrated to the United States, settling near Julian’s father in Utica, New York. They had a son in 1951. They both died at age 93 in 2014.
