Berlin’s Camryn Bronk-Zdunowski, left, and sister Sydney pose for a photo before a match against Rocky Hill during a CIAC high school girls lacrosse match at Sage Park in Berlin, Conn., Thursday, May 21, 2026.
Dave Zajac/Hearst Connecticut Media
Rocky Hill’s Samantha Bozzi tries to get around Berlin’s Sydney Bronk-Zdunowski during a CIAC high school girls lacrosse match at Sage Park in Berlin, Conn., Thursday, May 21, 2026.
Dave Zajac/Hearst Connecticut Media
BERLIN — The first flight, in November 1981, went from Warsaw to Vienna.
On it was 26-year-old Walter Bronk-Zdunowski, his wife Henryka and their two young children, Justyna and Lou, with another on the way. They had told just about everyone back home in Gdansk, even Henryka’s mother, they were going on vacation.
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The next flight, in June 1982, went from Vienna to Bradley International. On it were Walter and Henryka, now with infant Alicja also in tow, finally cleared to emigrate to the United States seven months after slipping out from behind the Iron Curtain as refugees.
Next Monday, Walter and Henryka will board a flight at Bradley bound for Wroclaw, Poland with Lou and his daughters, Sydney and Camryn.
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The Bronk-Zdunowskis have been back to their native country a number of times to visit the extensive family that still lives there. This isn’t some long-awaited reunion. But it does underscore the fantastic possibilities Walter sensed, but could only guess at, when he sold the family furniture and closed the door in Gdansk and fled communist Poland for America 45 years ago.
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Sydney, a 2026 Berlin grad, was selected to the Polish national team that will compete in the World Lacrosse Division II Women’s Championship in Wroclaw from July 7-19.
Camryn, a rising senior at Berlin, is in Poland’s developmental pipeline, on the U20 team, which will train while the World Championship plays.
The sisters made their respective teams after Sydney came across a social media post on tryouts. She filled out a survey. The coach got in touch, explained the program, and extended an invitation.
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The girls flew to Poland over Thanksgiving, stayed with relatives, and tried out. Upon returning home and learning they’d made the grade, they attained dual citizenship.
That is how these granddaughters of a tool-and-die maker, who went from building boats for the Soviet Bloc to building American aircraft, bring a family saga full circle.
“I’m super-grateful to be selected for the Poland national team, especially because my grandparents really built the foundation for us here, coming over and immigrating and not really having the same opportunities that I have today,” Sydney said. “I grew up with that foundation of just knowing that I’m so blessed to have every opportunity that I have, so I really need to just take advantage of everything I have.”
“My grandparents’ story is very inspiring to me,” said Camryn. “They were very much stuck in Poland and they needed to get out, and I feel like the getting out really put a high level of pride into my family.”
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Berlin’s Camryn Bronk-Zdunowski, right, and teammates prepare for a CIAC high school girls lacrosse match against Rocky Hill at Sage Park in Berlin, Conn., Thursday, May 21, 2026.
Dave Zajac/Hearst Connecticut Media
Gene pool
Sydney and Camryn have sports in the blood. In the 1990s, their father Lou, Walter and Henryka’s middle child, played football at Platt High School in Meriden and then at Wesleyan University in Middletown.
Shortly before entering Platt as a freshman, Lou made his first trip to Poland with his parents. It was an epiphany for a kid who went through elementary and middle school mostly bored in class, with his mind elsewhere.
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“It was definitely a key moment in my life, seeing my family (in Poland), what they live like, the opportunities that we had in the states that I probably took for granted,” said Lou, now an assistant superintendent in the Meriden school system. “It really woke me up. Definitely an inspirational and, I would say, life-changing moment.
“I got to Wesleyan, but I think without that trip that would have never happened.”
At Platt, Lou played for coach Tom Ryan, who happened to have a daughter about the same age named Kelly. In time, Lou became Tom’s son-in-law.
Tom Ryan loves watching his granddaughters play lacrosse, especially “Syd.” She and Tom’s wife Jackie were close. Jackie, a nurse, was in the delivery room the day Sydney was born. She was day care provider when the girls were young and the ride to camp when they started playing sports.
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Sydney paid a final visit as her maternal grandmother lay dying of cancer in early 2022.
“Jackie hadn’t spoken in two days,” Tom said. “Sydney came, went in the bedroom with her and you would have thought a party was going on in there. The laughter, the joy. Two days later, Jackie died.”
Berlin’s Camryn Bronk-Zdunowski, left, and sister Sydney prepare for a CIAC high school girls lacrosse match against Rocky Hill at Sage Park in Berlin, Conn., Thursday, May 21, 2026.
Dave Zajac/Hearst Connecticut Media
Ryan told this story on Berlin lacrosse Senior Night on a late May evening at Sage Park.
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“Coming here is like seeing Jackie,” he said. “Syd’s tough, she’s dedicated. She’s a team player; she plays with passion. It’s like Jackie Ryan re-emerging in front of my eyes.”
Sydney scored more than 200 goals in her high school lacrosse career, the first Berlin girl to do so. She was a four-year starter, three-time All-Conference player and two-time CHSCA All-State Second Team selection.
“She sets the example out here,” said Berlin coach Dan Crowley. “A night like this, Senior Night, she’s making sure that everybody gets goals. She had a couple, if I’m not mistaken, but it’s just typical of the way she plays the game. She does it through example, not with the mouth. She’s going places. She’s ready for the next level.”
True. Sydney will play Division I lacrosse at Iona and major in biology on a physical therapy track.
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Camryn, who aspires to be a social worker like her mom, has already committed to Frostburg State in Maryland and its Division II lax program. First, she’s got one more year to move up the ranks with the Redcoats.
“Not coming up,” Crowley corrected. “She’s here. She’s a force already.”
True. Camryn has more than 100 career goals. She added to that total in Berlin’s 15-9 Senior Night victory over Rocky Hill.
And, yet, perhaps because she is the younger, she lacks the confidence of her older sister, at least when it came to going to Poland and trying out. Sydney, who long dreamed of playing for a Polish national team, be it in soccer or lacrosse, was the one who opened the door and pulled her kid sister through it.
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“She being my little sister, she sometimes can feel a little intimidated,” Sydney said. “I really had to push her and get her out of her comfort zone. I definitely can be kind of hard on her, but at the end of the day I’m her biggest booster and just want her to be successful.”
Before any of that could happen, their grandparents had to get out of a zone that had become increasingly uncomfortable.
Camryn Bronk-Zdunowski (left) and Sydney Bronk-Zdunowski (right) with their paternal grandparents Henryka and Walter, on Berlin girls lacrosse Senior Night at Sage Park on May 21, 2026. Henryka and Walter fled Poland in 1981 while it was still under communist control. Their grand-daughters will be playing in Poland’s women’s lacrosse program this summer.
Bryant Carpenter/Hearst Connecticut Media
Walter’s story
He was 26, living in Gdansk and working in one of the city’s sprawling shipyards on the Baltic Sea.
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The famous labor strikes of the previous summer, led by Lech Walesa, had begun on those very docks. The strikes led to the creation of Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Soviet Bloc and the first ripple in a wave that would bring down the Soviet Union and its satellite states by the end of the decade.
All that was still 10 turbulent years away. Walter Bronk-Zdunowski and his inner circle of friends could tell nothing substantial was going to change, at least not right away, and they started talking about leaving the country.
Most everything produced in Poland was exported to the U.S.S.R., leaving want at home. Goods were rationed. Food was costly and the lines to get it long. For all the gains of Solidarity, discontent and uncertainty remained.
Walter had a decent job. He wasn’t bad off. He had a car. It might not have been worth much, but he had a car. And he knew farmers, knew where to go to get food without having to stand in those interminable lines.
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Still, Walter wanted out. He wanted better for his family, and he was prescient. He got out a month before martial law was declared on Dec. 13, 1981.
Before leaving for Austria, Walter had spread the story about going vacation. Only two people knew the truth: his mother and sister. His mother was in hospital.
“I don’t know when I’m coming back,” Walter told her. “Some day.”
To scrape up money, Walter had quietly sold his furniture, telling buyers to bring the receipts to Henryka’s mother after they left to pick up their goods. That’s how Henryka’s mother found out her daughter wasn’t coming back from vacation.
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Walter’s sister drove the family to Warsaw for the flight to Vienna. Walter had mapped out what he had to do. Touching down in Austria, the Bronk-Zdunowskis took a cab to a refugee camp. It was in an old Army barracks filled with people from Eastern Bloc countries.
After several days at the camp, Walter’s family was relocated to a mountain town outside Vienna and put up in a hotel near a ski area. It was a small village, scenic. Walter found a job. Henryka’ gave birth to Alijca in December.
When martial law was declared in Poland, Walter applied for, and was granted, political asylum. It took nearly seven months to get cleared to go to U.S. Departure could have been quicker if Walter wanted to go to another country. There were job and housing offers from Australia, Sweden and South Africa. But Walter wanted to go to United States, and on June 1, 1982 he and his family joined a burgeoning wave of Polish immigrants to the Hartford area.
Within three days Walter was working at a Hartford shop making helicopter parts sold to Sikorsky. In time, Henryka started working and Walter went to second shift, at Beacon Industries, later at Pratt & Whitney. He moved his family to Middletown, then Meriden. All three kids wound up going to prestigious schools: Justyna to Fordham, Lou to Wesleyan, Alicja to Syracuse.
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Walter will turn 71 this year. He’s still working, at Cambridge Speciality Co. Inc. in Berlin. He downplays his immigration to the U.S. Plenty of people came over, he says. (It’s estimated 1.3 million people left Poland in the 1980s.)
“I can maybe have better opportunities,” he said of his flight. “And, in a way, it was probably going to be easier for the kids … I think I did the right thing.”
On that point, Walter will get no dispute from his son or granddaughters.
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“I always tell people no matter how hard my life could be, it could never be as difficult as theirs,” said Lou. “You’re leaving your homeland and going to another one. You’re starting over.”
“It’s actually kind of crazy to even think about that — that they would have to go through that, especially because I grew up so privileged because of what they had to go through,” Sydney said. “It just makes me have a sense of pride and a sense of accountability to make sure that I’m doing everything I can to make myself successful because they put in the sacrifices.”