Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 18, 1995                   TAG: 9505190026
SECTION: NEIGHBORS                    PAGE: E4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARY JO SHANNON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

HIS MEMORIES OF WAR DON'T GET IN THE WAY OF BUSINESS

Jay, a former prisoner of war, and his wife, Jeanne, research and design coats-of-arms for manufacturers of heraldic jewelry. Jay gets his information on the coats-of-arms from more than 175 volumes he's accumulated over the years. The volumes in his library are mostly printed in Europe and contain recorded family coats-of-arms since the 12th century.

Jeanne Jay's family in Alsace, France, helped them locate many of the books. Others were reprinted especially for the Jays.

John Jay, who is approaching 70, says he put the war behind him by concentrating on his work and family.

He was a 14-year-old Boy Scout living in Ostrow, Poland, near the German border, when the Nazis invaded his homeland. His Scout troop fled east to defend Warsaw.

When Warsaw fell, boys from Western Poland were declared war orphans, taken to East Prussia and given to German farmers as a war bounty. The goal of the Third Reich, Jay said, was to "Germanize" the boys, especially the blond, blue-eyed ones - and at age 18 draft them into the German army.

"I was given to a farmer named Fritz Schleifer who took me to a village on the Baltic Sea coast," Jay recalled. "There I worked in a flour mill [during the week] and on Sundays, on the farm. For the first three months I was locked for the night in a room with iron bars on the window."

Within six months Jay could speak German like a native Prussian. In June 1940, he escaped and found work in a food distributing company in Koenigsberg. He joined a Polish Intelligence unit that operated in East Prussia, acquiring arms and ammunition to smuggle to the Polish underground forces in Warsaw.

After the Germans invaded Russia, Jay said, the Polish underground could attack German transports headed east and seize weapons. He said his unit's mission then changed to sabotage and collecting information on German military installations. When they dynamited an aircraft fuel depot in the spring of 1943 Jay was forced to run.

Later, he attempted to reach England, where he wanted to become an air force pilot. But after crossing all of Germany, he was arrested while trying to cross the Austrian-Swiss border and spent the remainder of the war in prison and concentration camps.

Jay's blue eyes cloud as he recalled the horror of that experience. "When I was freed from the German concentration camp on May 5, 1945, I was 19 years old and weighed 62 pounds."

"It was a horrible experience. If you got sick and could not work, that was the end. The SS Guard would place a shovel handle across your neck, stepping with both feet on it, on both sides of your head, and standing until you died. He was the ultimate master, whether you lived or died."

The prisoners were debriefed by officers of the Polish Second Armored Division and "told to put it all behind us."

"We were told not to talk of our experiences in the concentration camps, especially to children, of what bestiality is man capable toward man. Also we were told not to hate the Germans - it will do you more harm than it will them. I followed that advice. It was like pulling down a blind, leaving the past behind. But now, 50 years later, I can talk about those days."

After the war Jay was able to collect all his German prison and concentration camp records. The yellowed pages are carefully enclosed in plastic protectors inside a binder.

"Fortunately, the Germans are great for keeping records," he chuckled. "I am writing a book about those years. It is my therapy."

Once freed, Jay served with the Polish army in the British Zone of Occupation in Germany. After demobilization in 1947 he returned to Poland to find his homeland again under occupation, this time by the communist regime - "betrayed by the Allies at Yalta," he said. "That is the one thing that hurts the most."

Because of anti-communist activities, he was imprisoned, along with other Poles and German POWs who had attempted to escape. He befriended a German POW, Heinz Gloeckne, and memorized detailed information about him - part of Jay's escape plan. Two escape attempts were unsuccessful, but he was determined.

He devised a plan, pretending to fall down a steep embankment of the Neisse River that separated Poland from East Germany. As he worked clearing brush along the river bank, under the watchful eye of an armed guard, he studied the terrain, mentally determining a daring course of action.

The timing was perfect, planned to coincide with the play period for children in a Catholic school on the East German bank, a flat beach area. He intended to swim toward the school, hoping the guards would hesitate to shoot into a crowd of children and nuns, once they realized his fall was no accident.

The plan worked. Again Jay's fluent German provided protection. Posing as an escaped German POW, he convinced a German miller to assist him. The miller hid him in a flour bin and told the communist guards he saw the escapee, and he "went that way." At midnight, he helped Jay leave.

In clothing laundered by the miller's wife, Jay was soon on his way across Germany to France, after convincing East German police he was an escaped POW. He told them he wished to find the family of Heinz Gloeckne, a fellow prisoner, to tell them the POWs would be released at Christmas. They checked out his story, found Gloeckne was indeed a POW in Krakow, and let him go because the prisoners were to be released in about six months anyway.

Jay found the Gloeckne family, gave them the information about Heinz, then escaped to the British Occupation Zone in West Germany, where he joined the Polish Holy Cross Brigade. When the Brigade was demobilized, he went to France where he concentrated on his personal needs for several years.

Working to support himself as an insurance salesman, he attended college, graduating from the University of Strasbourg with a degree in industrial engineering. In 1950, he married a French girl, Jeanne, whom he met at the university.

Jeanne was several years his junior and had not suffered from the war as he had. Their two sons, John and George, were born in 1951 and 1952.

Rumors that the U.S. Army would have to leave France should Charles DeGaulle become president prompted the Jays' decision to emigrate to the United States.

They were known as "Jaskolski" when they arrived in New York City on Dec. 30, 1957.

"It was difficult for people to pronounce my name correctly," Jay said, "and since everyone called me 'Mr. J', we decided to have our name legally changed when we became U.S. citizens."

Both John and Jeanne worked in banking, first in New York City and later in Hartford, Conn. Their interest in heraldry began when they observed inaccuracies in coats-of-arms on items offered for sale. They decided to establish a research service, HRJ Research, Ltd., to provide accurate information for manufacturers.

Once their sons finished college, John and Jeanne Jay sought a slower pace of life, and moved south, first to Morgantown, W.Va., and three years later to the Roanoke Valley. They have operated their business out of the Blue Ridge Mall for 10 years and have weathered many setbacks, including the flood of 1985.