Henry Mikols grew up in Poland as a Catholic. His father worked with silent movies. As a child, Henry was very interested with America because of Woodrow Wilson and Charlie Chaplin, who both had big influences in his life. Henry and his father discovered the war was escalating by watching the planes fly overhead. One day, after the Germans moved in, Henry went to pick up bread for his family. On his way there he was stopped by a German officer and it was the last time he ever saw his parents. The officer took Henry to a train station to Germany to work in German farms. While on the farm, he worked for no pay and was fed very poorly. He was eventually arrested for talking bad about the German government (anti-nazi propaganda) and was sent to the work concentration camp "Brukenvar". There, he was placed in an experimental group and given pills and potatoe salad filled with typhoid. His friends all died from typhoid fever, but he survived due to taking a different pill he was offered by a German scientist. When the war ended, the allies had freed him from the camp and he immediately moved to England, eager to pursue his dream to live in America. It was there that he wrote letters to New York and was sponsored to come to America by a free trip and tell his story to American college students. He still had nightmares from the concentration camp, but was able to move on with his life and live happily afterwards, living with his wife and daughter in New Hampshire. He worked as a carpenter and eventually moved his way up to becoming an architect.
"I joked with my friend, I hope they serve it to Adolf on a platter." - Henry Mikols when speaking of the Germans taking their feces and sending it to Berlin when sick with Typhoid fever.
"I don't know why I lived today. Maybe because I'm one of the chosen ones and need to tell my story to all of the world." - Henry Mikols
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