"But between March and June we had to go to court in Poland as well. And I remember standing in front of the judge, who asked me what I wanted to do; if I wanted to go with the new family or if I wanted to stay in that Poland. And I was twelve years old at the time, and ought to have made a decision for the rest of your life to go abroad with a stranger not speaking the language, not knowing anyting... I've been told all my life that America is disgusting and evil, and I'm probably going to get murdered and raped and horrible things done there pretty quickly. So that was a big moment. And of course I had a younger sister at the time, so my fear was bigger than that sister. And I decided, yeah, I'm going to go for it. And at the same time, I somehow had to settle in my head that I was no longer 100% Polish and I would never be 100% American."
"Luckily they were nice to me because it was a big thing in America. They normally 'marketed' us a lot – there was an amazing propaganda to adopt children from communist countries. There were newspaper articles about us and our images were on the covers. So, when I went to the store, I saw my picture everywhere. And of course we lived around Chicago at the time, where there's a big Polish community there. And they were like 'wow.'
"It happened completely by chance. At that time I met, or my teacher at school introduced me to people who were from America. At that time it was rather unusual. In Poland, I think there were twenty people from America altogether. They worked for embassy. Moreover, two of them—their names were Donald and Pat—came over there for a year to teach American history. Which was such a big exception. And they decided to adopt my sister and me completely by accident."
Biography
Agnieszka Critchlow was born on March 7, 1976 in Warsaw, Poland. At the age of 11, she was orphaned together with her younger sister. Thanks to her teacher, however, she came into contact with an American couple who worked at the embassy and who decided to adopt both girls - in June 1989, the sisters went to America with them. Agnieszka graduated from university in America and in 2001 took advantage of an offer to go to the Czech Republic and teach at Charles University. In 2022, she lived in Prague.
Agnieszka and her sister a few days before the flying o the USA; the photo shows the entrance to the university, where the adoptive father of the witness worked
Agnieszka and her sister a few days before the flying o the USA; the photo shows the entrance to the university, where the adoptive father of the witness worked
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