Ahwatukee author’s book wins more accolades | News

Like old soldiers, good books never die. But unlike them, good books don’t fade away.

Consider Ahwatukee author Katrina Shawver’s non-fiction book, “Henry: A Polish Swimmer’s True Story of Friendship from Auschwitz.”

She published the true account of the late Ahwatukee resident Henry Zguda’s inspiring life in 2017 winning a number of national and international awards.

Seven years later, her account of Zguda’s escape from not one but two Nazis hellholes and his circuitous route to life in Ahwatukee is still winning recognition.

This time, Shawver’s impressively researched book has been named the Book of the Decade in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards competition in the United Kingdom.

The award is based a review of the competition’s award winners over the last 10 years. “Henry” won first place for adult nonfiction in 2017, beating out hundreds of other entries.

An experienced writer and public speaker, Shawver went to extraordinary lengths to document not only the story of a neighbor she had come to know but also the broader story of the Nazis’ systematic persecution of Poles simply because they were Polish.

Before his death on Thanksgiving Day 2003, Zguda was a well-known figure around the Ahwatukee Recreation Center, but also an accomplished athlete throughout virtually his whole life.

“At one point he worked at the reception desk and knew everyone,” Shawver said at the time her book was published. “He was in the bocce league. He swam near daily and played a lot of tennis. He was also very active in Arizona Senior Olympics – I believe in swimming – and also in seniors tennis. His office contained a whole bookshelf of tennis trophies and medals earned over the years, all while in Arizona.”

In his youth, he was a champion swimmer – but that was interrupted in May 1942 by his internment in two Nazis concentration camps, Auschwitz and Buchenwald, as a Polish political prisoner.

He “survived nearly three years in German concentration camps by his wits, humor, friends, and luck,” said Shawver, and defected from Communist Poland in 1956 with the help of friends he met in Buchenwald,.

Zguda and his late wife Nancy moved to Ahwatukee in 1980, and lived in the same house near 48th Street and Warner Road until their deaths.

Shawver met the then-85-year-old Zguda in 2002 and became enthralled by his story.

“Truly, there was no one else to care about or capture what instinct told me was an incredible story,” she recalled.

Though personal issues and the need to research original Nazis and other documents in Germany and Poland prolonged her project for 15 years, Shawver was determined to finish her book.

She explained in an interview in 2017, “I knew in my heart of hearts I could not live with myself until I finished and held the book in my hands.”

“So many stories and details came into focus and even greater historical significance than I first understood in 2002,” she said.

In the 2017 interview, Shawver recalled: “When I began, I had never interviewed a concentration camp survivor, nor was I Polish, Jewish or Catholic. I knew very little about Poland. I needed to comprehend the social fabric and cultural biases of a pre-war Poland, and a country at war.”

She spent hours reading memoirs and biographies as well as the history of Poland and the Holocaust, then combed websites and university libraries for more documentation.

“While in Auschwitz and Buchenwald I met with the lead archivists to verify facts and stories, and walk the steps Henry did,” she recalled. “There I learned things I could only have learned by being there. There is no substitute for visiting a concentration camp in person. None.

“An unexpected find came in 2014, when I discovered 130 documents with Henry’s name on file with the International Tracing Service. I think many people use the service to locate deceased relatives. For me, I found verification of stories told to me personally by someone who was there. It was a WOW moment to locate those documents.”

Shawver’s work earned the 2018 Polish Heritage Award from the Polish American Congress of Arizona for its documentation of the ordeal Poles endured under Nazis rule during the Holocaust.

The book also has won first place for published nonfiction in the 2018 Arizona Authors Association Literary Contest.

Her other awards for the book include: the 2018 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award – Silver for Biography; 2017 The Wishing Shelf Book Awards (UK) – Gold for Adult Non-Fiction; and four 2018 Reader Views Literary Awards that include first place for biography and regional book, best nonfiction and best regional book. She also has won a Feathered Quill Award in the historical category and a “Best of 2017” award from Advice Books in Italy.

Information on her and the book is at katrinashawver.com.