04/08/2026
Heroes at Home
Wanda Filipczuk was 80 years old in 2002, when a team of volunteers from House of Heroes showed up one morning to make repairs on her 46-year-old home in south Columbus. A faulty roofing job that went too long undetected had caused major structural damage to beams and walls. Her insurance company filed bankruptcy and couldn’t cover the cost of repairs. Neither could Wanda. The widowed Holocaust survivor lived meagerly off Social Security and VA benefits.
“You buy food and pay your bills, and there’s nothing left,” she told a local reporter.
Wanda was born and raised in Poland, where she was separated from her family in 1940 and imprisoned in a German concentration camp for five years. There she was forced to work in a German airplane factory until she was injured. After that she was assigned to kitchen and sewing duties. She didn’t like to talk about those years.
“Memories come back – bad memories,” she said.
Edward Filipczuk, whose Polish parents immigrated to the U.S. and settled in Michigan, was one of the Soldiers who helped liberate the camp – and Wanda – in 1945. They married eight weeks later. Edward went to war again in Korea. Wanda became an American citizen in 1953.
The couple settled in Columbus when Edward was assigned to Fort Benning in 1956. He was only 39 when he died in 1963, less than one month after retiring with twenty years of active duty to his credit. Wanda never remarried.
“For a long time, I still set a plate for him,” she said. “You think I’m silly, but sometimes I still look for him. I know he’s not coming back.”
Nearly five decades after Edward’s death, their humble house had fallen into serious disrepair when House of Heroes stepped in. They made extensive repairs, replaced flooring, installed insulation in the attic and painted.
“Today, I feel like a rich woman,” said Wanda, as she sat watching her ‘new’ house take shape, a recent fall having confined her to a chair. She was decked out from head to toe in purple. She wore a purple watch and a purple ring. By the end of the day, her bedroom would be purple, too.
Purple is the color of royalty, she said, and she felt like a queen.
“You know, when your home's not nice, you sometimes feel like not coming home. Now it's like new. It's clean and pretty. It makes me feel better, you know,” she said. “I’m a very rich lady.”
Wanda enjoyed her new house only three months before her death on the last day of 2002. She is buried with Edward in Fort Benning’s Main Post Cemetery.
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