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On 1st September 1939 [27], when the Germans started bombing Warsaw, my first thought was, ‘Hey, I’m not going to school today!’ I should have been starting seventh grade. I walked there two days later, one of the wings had been bombed, and there was no school anymore. I never turned up at Swietojerska again. We lost touch also with the rest of the family, except for spending some time on Wolynska at my maternal aunt’s, I don’t remember her name, she lived in a wooden house. Wolynska was all wooden houses. Two-story wooden houses.
When the war broke out, my brother was in jail, in Kalisz [town ca. 200 km south-west of Warsaw]. They already knew air raids had started, and the guards fled, leaving all documents laid out in the open on the central courtyard. The criminal prisoners started forcing the bars open. When they broke out in one place, they started freeing each other. And they freed themselves. The first thing they did was to pour gasoline on those documents and set them on fire, lest the Germans find them. And the flight from Kalisz began. We didn’t knew what was happening to Josif. Three days after the Germans marched into Warsaw – which was around 30th September [the Germans indeed marched into Warsaw on 30th September, 1939, and on 1st October a military parade was held on the city’s central square, the Pilsudskiego Square] – there was a night curfew, suddenly there’s knocking on the window! We open the door – my brother walks in! Unshaven, scrawny, hands in bandages. As if he had been resurrected from the dead.
We found out they had been negotiating their way towards Warsaw during the whole of September but as long as the Germans stood around the city, they couldn’t enter. On their way, the fugitives split into groups. The criminals did well, and the political ones – everyone pulled in their own direction. There were many Ukrainians, Belarusians, and many Jews – from Lodz, from Warsaw. One day they were surrounded, was it the Poles who had denounced them? They hid in a cabbage field. The Germans picked them out, started interrogating them. Handcuffed them. But they escaped again, it was the front, they weren’t guarded closely. He worked his way, in those handcuffs, to some village, to a blacksmith, who unchained the handcuffs. But they had left bruises on his wrists, hence the bandages. It seemed the danger was over.
After the Germans entered, I traded a little – sold flowers, Germans newspapers, worked as a paperboy.
When the war broke out, my brother was in jail, in Kalisz [town ca. 200 km south-west of Warsaw]. They already knew air raids had started, and the guards fled, leaving all documents laid out in the open on the central courtyard. The criminal prisoners started forcing the bars open. When they broke out in one place, they started freeing each other. And they freed themselves. The first thing they did was to pour gasoline on those documents and set them on fire, lest the Germans find them. And the flight from Kalisz began. We didn’t knew what was happening to Josif. Three days after the Germans marched into Warsaw – which was around 30th September [the Germans indeed marched into Warsaw on 30th September, 1939, and on 1st October a military parade was held on the city’s central square, the Pilsudskiego Square] – there was a night curfew, suddenly there’s knocking on the window! We open the door – my brother walks in! Unshaven, scrawny, hands in bandages. As if he had been resurrected from the dead.
We found out they had been negotiating their way towards Warsaw during the whole of September but as long as the Germans stood around the city, they couldn’t enter. On their way, the fugitives split into groups. The criminals did well, and the political ones – everyone pulled in their own direction. There were many Ukrainians, Belarusians, and many Jews – from Lodz, from Warsaw. One day they were surrounded, was it the Poles who had denounced them? They hid in a cabbage field. The Germans picked them out, started interrogating them. Handcuffed them. But they escaped again, it was the front, they weren’t guarded closely. He worked his way, in those handcuffs, to some village, to a blacksmith, who unchained the handcuffs. But they had left bruises on his wrists, hence the bandages. It seemed the danger was over.
After the Germans entered, I traded a little – sold flowers, Germans newspapers, worked as a paperboy.
Period
Year
1939
Location
Poland
Interview
Feliks Nieznanowski