Polish immigrant reflects on POW camp, surviving COVID and 70 years of life in Australia

It’s 80 years ago now, but Ryszard ‘Richie’ Ziebicki has clear memories of the last time a crisis threatened the economic, health, social and political order of the whole world.

It was caused by another contagion, of sorts, that spread quickly through Europe and led to the deaths of millions.

But unlike the coronavirus pandemic, there was no vaccine on the horizon to vanquish the anti-Semitism that fuelled World War II.

Now 93, Mr Ziebicki has lived through both crises. And he’ll take lockdown in a Rockhampton nursing home over a German prisoner-of-war camp any day.

But he remembers what it was like to be a teenager in an unsafe world, with an uncertain future.

His daughter Maryanne Muller recalls a conversation with her father at the…