The sun rose. It was Thursday.
We were on completely open ground. It was risky crossing it in daylight. We found a large bush where we spent the whole day, unable to fall asleep, since the ground was wet and it was hard to sleep sitting on a stone or the branches of a bush.
In the evening, when the sun had gone down but it was still light enough to see, Jasiek went off on a reconnaissance along our line of march. He appeared shortly with the news that the Vistula lay nearby to the right and, if we did not want to abandon our heading, we would have to get across here. There were boats and a ferryman who could take us to the other side.
We decided to cross on the ferryman’s boat. We left our bush and approached the river. The ferryman eyed us. We got on the ferry. The boat cast off. We safely disembarked on the far bank. When we paid him in marks, the ferryman looked at us even more oddly.
Before us lay III [the spires of the Benedictine Monastery at Tyniec] and the town of IV [Tyniec] itself.
We followed the main road through the town. People were returning home after work. Some tardy cows were hurrying back to their pens. Local people, standing by their front doors, looked at us curiously.
We were very hungry and equally thirsty for something hot. The nights were cold. I had last slept on Sunday night in the Auschwitz hospital, but we were not yet ready to go up to people’s homes.
At the end of the town an older man was standing on the left by his front door looking at us. He appeared so friendly, that I told Edek to ask him for some milk.
Edek went up to him and asked if he could buy some milk. The man began to beckon us and invite us in saying: “Come in, come in... I’ll get you some milk...”
There was something about his words which had nothing to do with milk, but he looked so honest that we decided to venture into his house.
When we went in and he had introduced his family to us, his wife and children, he then stopped in front of us and said: “I’m not going to ask you a thing... but you can’t walk around looking like that!”
He then explained that he had seen much in the Great War and that he wanted to know nothing. He fed us hot milk, noodles, eggs, bread, and suggested that we spend the night in the barn where he would lock us in. “I realize,” he said, “that you don’t know me and that you might have reservations, so I won’t insist, but if you trust me, stay and don’t worry.”
His face and eyes and all of him were so transparently honest that I decided to stay.
We spent the night locked in the barn, once again under lock and key, and yet we slept peacefully on a real pillow— something we had not seen in years.
Thus ended Thursday, the 29th of April.
In the morning our host unlocked us alone, without the police. He fed us and watered us. We had a good talk. We changed some money. He was an honest, decent, patriotic Pole.
There are such people... He was called 175 [Piotr Mazurkiewicz]. His whole family had welcomed us warmly. We told them where we were coming from. We wrote some more letters to our families. It goes without saying that they were not to addresses known to the authorities in Auschwitz.
After breakfast, we continued over the fields and through the woods passing V [unidentified location] and VI [unidentified location] to our left. We were heading for VII [Wieliczka].
We spent Friday night in a hut standing on its own in a field, where a young married couple and their children were living. We arrived late and we left before they rose. We paid and went on our way.
We skirted VII [Wieliczka] and headed for the forest VIII [the Niepołomnicka Forest].
It was Saturday the 1st of May as we entered the forest smelling of resin. The weather was beautiful and the sun cast its golden rays through the tree trunks onto the cone-strewn ground. Squirrels were clambering up, deer ran by.
Jasio and I took turns leading the way; Edek brought up the rear.
The day had so far passed without incident. We were hungry. At 14:00 in the afternoon Jasio was leading. We came out onto a wide road which led in the right direction. Jasio led us along the road. About 16:00 we reached a somewhat wider stream with a bridge over it. Beyond the bridge were some buildings: on the left a forester’s house and a few sheds, and on the right some other buildings.
Jasio advanced quite boldly towards the bridge and the forester’s house. Things had been going our way for so long that we had stopped being cautious. We were lulled by the fact that we saw no movement, no people, and the green shutters of the forester’s house were all closed.
Walking past the house, we looked into the yard behind it leading to the sheds. A German soldier, quite possibly from the field police and carrying a rifle, was in the yard heading towards the road and towards us. We made no outward reaction at all in order to keep walking as far as possible and we were about ten paces beyond the house. Our reactions were all internal. However, the policeman reacted outwardly.
“Halt!”
We walk on, pretending not to hear.
“Halt,” rings out again behind us and we hear the sound of a rifle being cocked. We all calmly stop, a smile on our faces. The soldier is on the other side of the yard wall about 30–35 meters away. Another soldier quickly comes out of a hut about 60 meters away. So we say:
“Ja, ja. Alles gut...,” and calmly turn towards them.
Seeing how calm we are the first soldier, who had been prepared to fire, lowered his weapon. Seeing that, I say calmly:
“Lads, run for it!” and we all take off in different directions. Jasiek to the right at right angles to our heading, Edek along the road we were following, and I head between them to the right at a slant.
Once again I have to emphasize that it is difficult to describe how we ran. Each one of us ran as best he could. I leapt over tree trunks, a nursery fence, bushes.
A great many shots rang out. Some of them whistled past my ear.
I suddenly felt, perhaps in my spinal cord, that someone was aiming at me.
Something hit my right shoulder. “Bastard!” I thought, “he’s got me.” But I felt no pain. I ran on, drawing rapidly away.
I could see Edek far off to my left. I shouted out to him. He spotted me and we began to converge running in the same direction. We were a good 400 meters from the forester’s house and they were still firing at us. Since they could no longer see us, I assumed that they were firing at Jasiek, perhaps they had killed him.
Meanwhile, Edek and I sat down on a fallen tree.
I had to tend to my bleeding wound. My right shoulder had been shot through, but the bone was untouched. My clothes too had been harmlessly shot through several times. My pants and windbreaker had altogether four holes. After wrapping a handkerchief around my wound, Edek and I set off heading east.
Edek suggested we stay in a hollow by the tree, but I felt that we needed to get out of the area as quickly as possible, since the Germans might get on the telephone and organize a larger sweep.
I felt that Jasiek might be in trouble, for the firing continued, but not in our direction.
An hour later, we arrived at some village where, without beating about the bush, we said: “We’re the lads from the forest,” that there had been three of us, but now we were two. They had heard shots and maybe our colleague had been killed...
These honest folk gave us milk and bread and a guide who led us to a ferry. We crossed a small river on the ferry and found ourselves in some larger village with a church. Here we encountered German soldiers, but they were searching the village for food and paid us no attention, taking us for locals.
Finally, after leaving this village we saw in the distance the town of IX [Bochnia]—our initial destination. However, since 164’s [Edmund Zabawski’s] family’s house was on the other side of town, and it was already 7:30 in the evening (curfew was at 8:00), I did not want to go through town given our appearance, so Edek and I spent the night in some fellow’s attic whose house we had reached by skirting the town to the east and north.
On the
morning of Sunday the 2nd of May, we set off on the short journey to Mr. and Mrs. 176 [the Oboras].
We approached their house and on the porch we saw an elderly couple who were 164’s [Edmund Zabawski’s] parents-in-law, a young lady who was his wife, and their little daughter Marysia.
The couple smiled, greeted us politely and, asking no questions, invited us in. Inside we introduced ourselves as friends of 164 [Edmund Zabawski]. We were invited further inside and on opening the door to the last room, we saw Jasio sleeping soundly on a bed.
We woke him up and embraced warmly.
Jasio, well dressed, had walked through the town the previous evening and had turned up at the house. That was the reason why our hosts, warned by him of our impending arrival, had smilingly invited us in, saying nothing.
Jasio’s clothes and the bundle he had been carrying under his arm had been shot through in several places. He himself was unhurt.
My wound was not serious. We had all managed to get away.
The 176s [the Oboras] and Mrs. 177 [Helena Zabawska] showed us the kind of goodwill and hospitality that one finds only in one’s own family and in one’s own home after a long absence.
At this juncture we should have repeated several times a day that... there are still good people on this earth.
They listened with great interest and with obvious kindly sincerity as we described our experiences in Auschwitz with our friend and their loved one 164 [Edmund Zabawski].
After we had got to know each other, had developed a degree of trust and exchanged the agreed passwords, I asked them to put me in touch with someone from the military underground. A few hours later I was talking to Leon 178 [Leon Wandasiewicz]; after exchanging passwords, I asked him to put me in touch with the local commander.
Leon presented me with the option of speaking to one of two gentlemen: the first from northern district IX [Bochnia], the other from southern district, who lived about 7 kilometers away in the little town of X [Nowy Wiśnicz]. I said that it was all the same to me. Leon suggested that we go to see the commander in the town of X [Nowy Wiśnicz], since they were friends.
I stayed with Mr. and Mrs. 176 [Obora] on Sunday and Monday (the 2nd and 3rd of May). On Tuesday morning, dressed in some decent clothes belonging to Leon, I set off alongside him to X [Nowy Wiśnicz]. Jasio and Edek stayed behind as guests of Mr. and Mrs. 176 [Obora].
It was a beautiful sunny day. We walked along, cheerfully chatting. Leon was pushing a bicycle which he would use to get home, since he expected that the local commander would put me up.
As I walked, I reflected on how many experiences I had had over the course of the last few years and that now they had come to an end. Yet fate had again prepared an extraordinary surprise for me.
More or less halfway there, in a little wood, we sat down on some tree stumps to rest.
I asked Leon out of curiosity the name of the commander we were going to see, since I was shortly to meet him.
Leon replied in two words: a Christian name and surname... two words which would have meant nothing to anyone else, but which for me were exceptional... and represented an extraordinary and strange coincidence.
The local commander had the same name that I had had in Auschwitz...
So I had spent all those days in hell under his name... and he had been completely unaware of it.
And now my steps were leading me to... the owner of that name.
Was it fate? Blind fate? If indeed it was fate, it was surely not blind!
I gulped and fell silent and Leon asked:
“Why so quiet?”
“It’s nothing, I’m just a bit tired.”
I was calculating how many days I had spent in Auschwitz.
In that hell behind the wire there had been 947 of them. Almost 1,000...
“Let’s go a little faster,” I said “I have an unusual surprise for you and the commander. Come on, let’s go.”
We drew near to the lovely town of X [Nowy Wiśnicz], spreading over valleys and hills and with a fine castle on a hill.
Walking along I thought, well, yes, I was supposed to have been born in IX [Bochnia]. It was here that 158 [Zygmunt Ważyński] had come to take care of business for me with Father 160 [Kuc].
A man was sitting with his wife and daughters on the veranda of a small house surrounded by a garden. We went up to them. Leon whispered to me that I could talk openly.
I introduced myself with the name I had used in Auschwitz. He replied:
“I’m also Tomasz.”
“But I’m Tomasz.”
“I’m also Tomasz,” he said in surprise.
Leon listened to this exchange in astonishment, as did the man’s wife.
“But I was born here.” I now proceeded to name the day, year and month, which I had repeated so many times in Auschwitz at every change of block or kommando, and for the lists drawn up by the kapos.
The man almost leapt from his chair:
“What’s going on here? Those are my personal details.”
“Yes, they are, but they have gone through far more with me than with you.” And I told him that I had been in Auschwitz for two years and seven months and that now I had escaped.
There was no knowing how anyone might react to this. My namesake and the owner of the name which had seemed to be my own for a thousand years opened his arms. We embraced warmly and became instant friends.
“But how did this happen?” he asked.
I asked whether he knew Dr. 83 [Helena Pawłowska] in Warsaw. Yes, he did and had stayed there. Yes, false identity papers had been made for him there; he had left before they were ready. I had then used them as one of several fake sets I had had at the time.
I stayed three and half months with the 179s [the Serafińskis].
We sent word through friends to Father 160 [Kuc] that he should erase in the parish register the information written in pencil next to my name, which had once been so vital for me.
From here I formed a detachment, helped by 84 [Tomasz Serafiński] and 180 [Andrzej Możdżeń], with a view, if Warsaw accepted my plan, to attacking Auschwitz after coordinating with the lads inside.
I and 180 [Andrzej Możdżeń] had some German weapons and uniforms. I wrote a letter to my family and to my friend 25 [Stefan Bielecki], who had escaped from Auschwitz with a report and who was now in Warsaw and working in one of the [Home Army] High Command’s sections.
I wrote a letter to 44 [Wincenty Gawron] in XI [Warsaw], who had also escaped from Auschwitz with a report, wanting to make contact and continue our work.
On the 1st of June, my friend 25 [Stefan Bielecki] flew in from Warsaw as if on wings, bringing me the valuable information that Mrs. E.O. [Eleonora Ostrowska], to whom I had been writing letters from Auschwitz, was still living peacefully. The Gestapo threatened only families with collective responsibility. They had no need or interest in getting involved with someone who in their eyes was only a friend. They had no trace of my family and did not know its name.
My friend 25 [Stefan Bielecki] also brought me some papers and money.
I discussed the matter with him, telling him that for the time being I was not about to go to Warsaw while I still had some hope that they would let me attack Auschwitz from the outside. Only if I received a direct order to desist, then I would go to Warsaw.
My friend, saddened that he would have to return alone despite having promised my family to bring me back with him, left for Warsaw.
On the 5th of June, the local Gestapo man and an SS man from Auschwitz appeared, first of all at Tomek’s (my name-sake’s) mother’s house asking about her son’s whereabouts. She replied that he had been living nearby for years.
They went round to Tomek’s.
At that moment I was not far away.
The SS man must have been already briefed by the local Gestapo man that 84 [Tomasz Serafiński] had been living there a long time. He took one look at his face and at the piece of paper in his hand (he was probably comparing him to my pic
ture with the puffed-out cheeks).
He asked whether there would be a good fruit crop in the autumn and left.
Working in X [Nowy Wiśnicz] I met some first-rate people and fine Poles; in addition to Mr. and Mrs. 179 [the Serafińskis], there was also Mr. 181 [Józef Roman].
Then 25 [Stefan Bielecki] sent from Warsaw a parcel containing some of the latest methods for dealing with the occupying forces and a letter, in which he wrote that Warsaw was very favorably disposed to...(reading this a frisson of pleasure ran through me, assuming it to be the attack on Auschwitz)... but then followed the words... awarding me a decoration for my work in Auschwitz. However, he still held out hope that the operation would be equally successful.
However, in July I received a letter with the tragic news that General Grot [Stefan Rowecki]69 had been arrested.
Given the current somewhat tense situation in Warsaw, I realized that I could not expect an answer to the Auschwitz question, so I decided to go to Warsaw.
By the 23rd of August I was in Warsaw. Jasio arrived in September and Edek in December.
In Warsaw, I worked in one of High Command’s cells.
I kept presenting in the appropriate quarters the issue of the lads still in Auschwitz and the need to set up a proper organization there.
I learned that 161 [Bolesław Kuczbara], while in the Pawiak, had “shopped” the leadership of the Auschwitz organization and that he had agreed to work for the Germans.
He was released from the Pawiak and walked around Warsaw with a pistol in his pocket; he was shortly thereafter liquidated on Napoleon Square.
I exchanged letters with the lads in Auschwitz through their families on the outside. I kept up their spirits, but I felt that this was not enough.
Then came the news that several of the lads in Auschwitz from the leadership of our organization had been shot (perhaps as a result of 161’s [Bolesław Kuczbara’s] testimony).
The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery Page 27