Deportations of Poles from the uprising Warsaw to Auschwitz

Transcript of the podcast

In August and September 1944, after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, almost 13,000 inhabitants of the occupied capital city and surrounding towns men, women, the elderly, children and even infants were deported to Auschwitz by the German authorities. Dr. Wanda Witek-Malicka of the Auschwitz Museum Research Center talks about their fate in the camp.

Why did the civilians expelled from insurgent Warsaw were deported in Auschwitz?

In fact, when we analyse the composition of the transports to Auschwitz, it largely reflects the decisions made for the population of Warsaw immediately after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising and in the following days. At the very beginning, the original order, as we remember, was to kill every resident of Warsaw, including women and children. An order not to take prisoners, an order to raze Warsaw to the ground so that it would create a deterrent example for all of Europe. And indeed, in the first days of the uprising, the occupier’s policy towards the civilian population of Warsaw was of an exterminatory nature, as we can see in the example of the Wola massacre, where about 40,000 people were murdered, as well as in the massacre in Ursus, where about 5,000 people were killed in one day. So, in fact, in the first days here, civilians were not to be expelled, they were not to be taken prisoner, they were to be simply liquidated. On August 5, the appointed commander of all German formations fighting in Warsaw, Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski arrived in Warsaw, and from that moment on, this extermination order began to be somewhat relaxed, namely, murdering of women and children was ceased and it was decided that the civilian population of Warsaw will be expelled and sent to concentration and forced labour camps. And here we have the order of August 26, which said that numerous women and men able to work would be used to work in concentration camps. In principle, only women with small children would be accepted as Polish workers by the main representative for the mobilization of labour forces. Then there was another relaxation, because from that moment on, the accounts of people expelled from Warsaw clearly show that at some point the expelled population, hiding in shelters, basements and driven from their homes, was segregated by gender. Men were separated from women and taken to another place, while women were sent to Pruszków. However, in September, these orders were again relaxed to some extent, and men who had actively fought or who – as the order said - were to be included in such a group were sent to concentration camps. Those who surrendered voluntarily, together with their women and children, were ordered to be sent to work in Germany. When we analyse the Warsaw transports that arrived at Auschwitz after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, their camp composition indeed largely reflects how these orders were implemented. Here it is also necessary to mention the camp established in Pruszków because it played a very important role and all those deported to Auschwitz passed through this camp. The camp in Pruszków - the so-called Durchgangslager 121, or Dulag 121 for short, was organized on the premises of former railway rolling stock repair workshops and it operated only for 2 months, from August 7 to October 10. And at that time, about 650,000 people came through this camp, of which 550,000 were residents of Warsaw, and 100,000 were residents of towns near Warsaw. Of this number, the vast majority were deported to various towns in the General Government and were basically left to fend for themselves. About 150,000 were deported from the camp in Pruszków to forced labour camps, and over 50,000 to concentration camps, of which 13,000 were sent to Auschwitz. Another 100,000 people were released or illegally removed from the camp. The camp in Pruszków was also supposed to function as a place of concentration for Warsaw residents and to facilitate their segregation, depending on what fate these people would face. The first groups of people who came to Pruszków were survivors of the Wola and Ochota massacres. Approximately 3,000 people from St. Adalbert’s Church. Later, more columns were led there and in the afternoon transports by suburban railway began. The scale of Pruszków’s operations, as well as the dynamics of dealing with the civilian population, is perfectly demonstrated by the fact that the very next day, the day after the first transports arrived in Pruszków, on August 8, there were approximately 40,000 people in the camp. Pruszków was a transit station for Warsaw residents, who were then sent to Auschwitz.

So let us systematize how many transports there were to Auschwitz and how they differed?

In total, almost 13,000 Warsaw residents were transported from the camp in Pruszków to the Auschwitz camp. And here I think it is worth mentioning that among the Polish prisoners deported to Auschwitz, the largest group were those deported from the Warsaw district who arrived there through the camp in Pruszków and the Pawiak prison. In total, there were 26,000 people, of which 13,000, approximately 13,000, came from Pawiak between the fall of 1940 and the summer of 1944, while another 13,000 arrived within 2 months after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. The first transports were sent in mid-August. They left the camp in Pruszków on August 10, and most likely there were two transports, one of which arrived at Auschwitz in the afternoon of the 11th, and the other in the late evening. Here we have a slight problem with dates because in the literature we find information about transports arriving on both August 11 and 12. This is because these transports arrived at the camp at night and were registered only the next day. It is also worth mentioning that due to the large number of these transports, approximately 6,000 people were brought to Auschwitz in August. It is obvious that they could not be registered in a short time. The registration process took several days, so the date of arrival is not the same as the date of registration in the camp. So we are basically talking about the transports of August 12, 1944 as the transports of the first Warsaw residents who came to Auschwitz from the uprising. However, it must be taken into account that they arrived at the camp a day earlier. In these August transports, the vast majority were women, because of the 6,000 deportees, less than 2,000 were men and less than 4,000 were women. It should also be said here that approximately one thousand of these people were minors under the age of 18. Further transports arrived in early September. On September 4, probably two transports of over 3,000 people arrived. But here the proportion changes, there are just over 1,000 women and less than 2,000 men. There were also minors there, but in smaller numbers. The next transport on September 13, numbering 929 men, including at least 39 under the age of 18, and the last transport on September 17, numbering over 3,000 people, included only three women, the rest were men. So here we see that the number of women initially sent to the concentration camp, including pregnant women, is decreasing. Over time, men were sent to concentration camps and women were sent to forced labour camps. It must also be said that the Warsaw transports included representatives of virtually all social classes and social strata. Merchants, teachers, academic professors, intellectual elites and completely ordinary people. These were people of all ages, from newborns to 80-year-olds and over. So here the social cross-section of Warsaw was, in a sense, complete. These August transports included mainly residents of Ochota and Wola. With the youngest children among them: among the girls it was Władysława Lutek, who was only a few weeks old, and among the boys, Lesław Nordzyński, who was only 23 days old at the time of the deportation to Auschwitz. Of course, these children had very little chance of survival in the camp and both perished in Auschwitz. Among those who arrived in Warsaw transports there were also Jews hiding under Aryan papers, which means hiding on the Aryan side with documents stating that they are not Jews. An example here is Julek Goldman, registered in the camp as Staniszewski, who from 1942 was hiding with his nanny Celina Ceglewska. Entire families were also deported to Auschwitz from Warsaw. Here, nine-year-old Henryk Duszyk arrived at Auschwitz together with his father, Marian, his older sister, Apolonia, and his stepmother, Genowefa. His father and sister died in the camp; he managed to find his stepmother only in the 1950s. So it can actually be said that he lost his entire family in the camp. Those people who arrived in the August transports were initially, after leaving the wagons, directed to the vicinity of the so-called new sauna. Some of them were placed in two barracks, the rest had to spend the night outdoors while waiting for the registration process. Then, after registering them, the men were quarantined in sector B II a (B 2 A), that is, when we are standing in Birkenau at the Gate of Death, with the railway ramp in front of us, that is the sector on the right. However, women were placed in sector BIa, the sector on the left. Initially, women and children were placed in block 17, but later the children were moved to block 16, and after another few days, the boys, approximately 9 years old, were isolated from their mothers and transferred to the men’s camp. The September transports were received slightly differently. I mean, the moment they arrived at the ramp and were admitted to the camp was much more brutal. The men who arrived by transport on September 13, 1944, the train was diverted to a railway siding and there they survived the bombing that took place that day. After the bombing, they were sent to the camp and registered there. I mentioned that on September 17, three women also arrived in a transport with 3,000 men. Here I think it is worth mentioning something about them. Well, these were women who were included in this transport as a punishment. We know the names of two of them, Kazimiera Drescher and Janina Jakubowska. They belonged to the nursing staff in the camp in Pruszków, and were sentenced to come to Auschwitz, sent to Auschwitz as a punishment, as I mentioned, because they were active in the Home Army, but also helped people - prisoners of the camp in Pruszków to leave this camp illegally and for this they were sent to the camp and ended up in Birkenau. Both survived their stay in the camp. As I mentioned, the September transports received a much more brutal welcome in the camp. Here, especially the last transport, on September 17, these people were sent not as before to the camp sauna for registration, but they were first sent to the quarantine section and there the officers attacked them, shouting, calling them Polish bandits, Polnishe Banditen. They started punching and beating them, and when some of the Warsaw residents started running towards the barbed wire, the SS men opened fire. That day, 10 newly arrived were shot, one of them fatally. Only later were these people sent to the baths and underwent the normal admission procedure, the same as all Auschwitz prisoners.

Was the camp situation of civilians expelled from Warsaw different from the situation of other prisoners?

Yes and no. That is, first of all, it should be noted that at the formal level, these people were registered under a separate category: Zivil – Häftlinge which you can translate as a civilian prisoner. And such entries can be found in some of the preserved personal registration cards. But did it make any practical difference? Well, this is a very controversial issue. These people, like all other prisoners, went through the registration process. The process of becoming a prisoner was no different, all their personal belongings were taken from them. These items were packed into bags and placed in the camp depository. Of course, valuable items were stolen in the meantime and this appears in many accounts. Mothers and fathers here tried to hide some wedding rings and necklaces, at least in the clothes they were depositing. Well, unfortunately, later, when they were leaving the camp and this deposit was returned to them, they no longer found these valuable items. They went through the camp bathhouse in the same way, they had to strip naked, which was a particularly difficult experience for women and children, because, as I mentioned, women were sent to the same part of the camp with their daughters, but also with their sons, including boys around ten-year-old, twelve-year-old, and for them the requirement to undress - mothers in the presence of their sons, or for sons seeing their mothers in such a humiliating situation. Well, it is a very difficult experience that resonates strongly in the memories of these people. After the shower, they were subjected to further procedures. Of course, they were shaved, although again the accounts are ambiguous. Some people remember this moment, indeed all women were shaved to the skin, others mentions some people were allowed to keep their hair, or at least some of it. So it’s hard to say whether there was any rule regarding this or it was just a matter of chance. They received civilian clothing marked in such a way that a piece of material was cut out on the back of the clothing and there was an opening there - a piece of striped material. Civilian clothing was also marked with a red stripe painted with oil paint in the back, which was intended to facilitate the possible identification of a prisoner in the event of an escape. As for children, as I mentioned, they were sent to the camp, including the youngest ones, who received their clothes and had to have them disinfected. However, the camp was not prepared to accept a large group of children. Of course, they did not have enough striped uniforms in appropriate sizes, so these children received their own clothes and when they recalled their stay in the camp, or when we read their accounts, many of them say that the clothes they wore when they entered the camp served them for most of their stay, if not until the very end. It should also be noted that these people were expelled from their homes in August. Not everyone had the time or opportunity to take some warmer, more appropriate clothing, so some of these children arrived in summer clothes, shorts, and light dresses. And they wore these clothes until autumn. Clothes that were dirty, worn out and did not protect them against weather conditions. Importantly, when it comes to the registration process, civilians coming from Warsaw were not given numbers and this is one of the most important differences when it comes to their fate in the camp. They only received their numbers inked on a piece of material, which they were obliged to sew to their clothes. Next to the number on this piece of material, there was also a red triangle, denoting a political prisoner with the letter “P” painted inside, which denoted a prisoner of Polish nationality. This moment of admission to the camp was also for many of them their first contact with camp realities. In Warsaw in 1944, of course, it was already known what Auschwitz was. Various illegal, underground publications informed about what was happening in the camp, but of course, not everyone had access to such information. Some of these people had information about Auschwitz from their relatives who, for example, had been released, or from other sources. But it was completely different to know the camp from other people and to experience it personally. One of the minor prisoners recalls that when her mother in the wagon heard that they were going to Auschwitz and they realized the direction in which the train was heading, she started banging her head against the wall of the wagon out of despair and fell into complete hysteria because she was so afraid of this place. The moment of entry, this moment of personal contact with camp realities, was indeed very difficult and traumatic for them. Like for most prisoners. Elżbieta Sobczyńska, who was 10 years old at the time, recalls that for her, entering the camp was the moment when her world collapsed, because until then she was a child very close to her mother. She recalled her mother - she described it vividly - leaning against a wall, and suddenly, when she arrived at the camp, she realized that someone could hit her mother and there would be no consequences. They may do this for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Suddenly it turned out that her mother was forced to undress and that she herself had to undress. And her mother cannot guarantee her safety. Elżbieta Sobczyńska took the shaving of her head very hard, she believed that it was a great injustice, that she had no lice, there was no reason to shave her head and she fought fiercely to keep her braids. And indeed, hearing this argument, hearing this child’s cry, one of the officers waved his hand and said that there was no need to shave her hair so she was left alone. Thanks to this, she kept her hair. But I am saying that she came out of this experience with the conviction that her mother, who had been the guarantor of their safety so far, could do nothing here, was in no way able to protect them, was unable to protect herself against this brutality and against the lawlessness they experienced there. The conditions in the camp experienced by prisoners from the Pruszków transports were no different from those other prisoners experienced. So we know what the barracks looked like, we know what the brick and wooden blocks looked like in Birkenau, and we know more or less what the daily schedule looked like, so there was no difference for Warsaw residents. What distinguished the Warsaw transports was that they arrived at the camp in the second half of 1944. It was a time when the camp was slowly being evacuated. Prisoners were transported to camps deep inside the Reich, expecting that the events of the war might not go according to the Germans’ wishes, that the front might be approaching here, so the camp was slowly undergoing a preliminary evacuation. And indeed, of the less than 13,000 people deported from the Warsaw Uprising, over 12,000 were quickly deported to camps deep within the Reich. When I say in a short time, I mean sometimes even a few days, sometimes a few weeks. Many of these people actually stayed in Auschwitz for a week, sometimes a month, and after that period they were deported. Women mainly to Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen. Men to Mauthausen, to Flossenbürg, or Buchenwald. Children were also deported. A group of 50 boys was transported in November 1944 to the Gross-Rosen camp, where they were employed in a ball-bearing factory. Here too, perhaps we can point to a certain distinction between the fate of Warsaw residents and those prisoners who arrived much earlier and had to spend a longer time in Auschwitz. Nevertheless, let us remember that children were not generally sent to work, so many of them stayed in the camp until January 1945.

It was from insurgent Warsaw that almost half of the Polish children imprisoned in KL Auschwitz were deported.

So, out of about 3,000 Polish children and Polish minor political prisoners, about 1,400 were deported to Auschwitz in 1944 after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. And this is really visible in the accounts of Survivors. It was a large group. It was a noticeable group. It was also a group that carried knowledge: the prisoners had information about the uprising and what was happening in Warsaw, so the appearance of Warsaw residents in the camp caused a stir. As we know from the accounts, also from the Warsaw residents themselves, they were actually welcomed in the camp by other prisoners, in a sense, prisoners went out to meet them in order to find out what was happening outside the camp wires, in order to sometimes gain information about their families who lived in Warsaw. But it was this group of camp children who was remembered by Survivors in their accounts. Especially in those accounts that come from the first post-war years, if we find information about children, it is very often information about children from Warsaw. Some survivors, even writing their memoirs, wrote that these were the first children to appear in the camp. This is, of course, untrue, because minor prisoners stayed in the camp practically from the beginning of its existence. Well, the fact that it was such a large group meant that these children were noticed and remembered by others. These were children practically from newborns to eighteen years of age. Some children were also born in the camp, children of mothers who arrived after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. As I mentioned, these children were placed in a separate barracks. Initially, together with their mothers. And it was a time for them in camp realities, well, I don’t want to say the best, because this word is certainly inadequate, but these children recall that the moment of their separation after a very short time, only a few days, the moment of their separation and transfer to another block, was dramatic. For them, it was the end of the world. Suddenly they were separated from their mothers, who were still able to spread a protective umbrella over them. Here, these children were condemned to cope with this reality completely on their own. We know from the accounts of the survivors themselves, including the children, that there were cases where siblings, older and younger, came to the camp. And these tiny children were actually from that moment on only under the care of their older sisters, and these girls, sometimes teenagers, had to take care of two or three-year-old babies in the camp, which was extremely difficult and actually this could only come down to some kind of care, as they were unable to protect these children from camp realities. As I mentioned, the children were placed in block 16a. There, prisoner Romana Ciesielska became a block leader. She was also recorded ambiguously in the prisoners’ memories. That is, there are some accounts from both children and their mothers that clearly prove that she showed some brutality towards these children, that she treated them in a vulgar manner, and that she beat these children. She is remembered as a simply evil person. The mothers also recall that she prevented them from approaching the children’s barracks and made contact with their children difficult in every way. On the other hand, there is a group of children who kept in touch with Romana Ciesielska after the war, met with her regularly in the circle of Survivors, and she, in a sense, gathered them around her and created a community of former camp children. This, however, proves that not everyone remembered her as unequivocally evil, because if this was the case, they would not maintain contact with her, so this person is very ambiguous when it comes to assessing her behaviour. The children’s barrack was a brick barrack with three-story bunks. Children had exactly the same living conditions as adult prisoners. I mean, several children slept on these hard wooden bunks, they received camp blankets, often dirty, often damaged. What was unique about the fate of these Warsaw children was that, of course, they did not go outside the barracks to work. Some prisoners recall that at first they went out with the block leader and were led to the camp toilets, but it quickly turned out that controlling such a large group of children was very difficult, or even impossible, and then they started taking them outside the barracks so that they could fulfill their physiological needs. There were buckets placed in the block and this was actually the only option for them, the only toilet, however inappropriate it may sound. Children did not have the opportunity to change their clothes regularly or wash themselves regularly. Some of them mention that it would be difficult for them to remember now whether they had the opportunity to wash themselves properly or take a shower at least once during their entire stay in the camp. So, of course, in these conditions, all sorts of diseases spread among the children. Insects were also rampant. Here, Janina Rekłajtis, who was in Auschwitz when she was nine years old, recalled that bedbugs were almost dripping from the ceiling and that for her it was such a disgusting and traumatic experience that to this day, whenever she remembers it, she immediately feels itching all over her body. So these insects spread, diseases spread, and children began to be sent to the camp hospital. The camp hospital, of course, did not provide the treatment conditions necessary or required for these children to recover. However, in this camp hospital, Polish prisoners who worked there as doctors or as staff tried to help these children in some way as much as possible. As I mentioned, the children caused some commotion in the camp and the fact that there was a large number of them and that they were locked in this barracks and separated, evoked in the prisoners, some of them, of course, women prisoners, a desire to help them. One of the minor prisoners recalls that it was thanks to the intervention of older prisoners that children were no longer sent to the front of the block for roll calls when autumn came, when the autumn-winter cold began and the weather was truly unfavorable, then the roll call for children was held in the barracks and it is attributed to the intervention of older prisoners. It is difficult to say what it was like in reality because these are issues that we know only from accounts, so we can only rely on the interpretations of survivors. As I said, children separated from their mothers had to cope on their own and they faced camp realities, camp hunger, terrible conditions and brutalization, being completely defenceless against them. Such brutalization of both language and everyday functioning was something very difficult for children to understand and difficult to get used to. Jadwiga Sztanka recalls that she was less than 3 years old when she got to Auschwitz, she was placed in the children’s block, where she was with her sister, and she remembers the first moment when she entered the camp block with her mother and the image, which she remembered only fragmentarily, but it scared her: it was dark, it smelled unpleasant, and then she grabbed her mother’s hand and asked: let’s go home, mom, I want to go home. One of the prisoners already in this block said that the only way out of there was through the chimney. To which Jadwiga responded to her mother with horror: Mom, I can’t climb chimneys. This, it seems to me, perfectly illustrates how great a collision it was for the children to find themselves in such a reality, how unready the children were for what was to happen to them in the camp. Jerzy Fiołek, who was 8 years old in the camp, said that he was very sick because the camp food did not serve him well at all. He said that he was severely poisoned, and in order to save him, his mother sneaked under the barracks and exchanged things with him, that is, she took the camp soup from him, which was so harmful to him, and in return, she gave him her camp bread, which she tried to - when she had the option - toast on a stove somewhere, char to cure him in some way. Well, these were the only medicines available in the camp. And he remembers that the boys were lying on those camp bunks, mothering each other. He says that you couldn’t call your mother because you knew she wouldn’t come. You couldn’t turn to anyone for help, so the boys - Jerzy literally said it - hugged each other, stroked each other’s heads, calmed each other down and that was the only tenderness and care they could count on in these camp conditions. Children faced virtually the same brutal treatment as adult prisoners. It doesn’t mean that they were treated more gently here, well, not necessarily. Henryk Duszyk says that when winter came, he went outside the barracks and wanted to slide about. It probably must have been a slightly larger puddle covered with ice. And when he was sliding on this puddle and it was just a bit of fun for him, he was noticed by an SS man and beaten unconscious. When his block mates saw this, they dragged him back to the block and tried to take care of him in some way. Here, children’s memories are exceptionally dramatic. As I mentioned, boys and girls initially stayed together in block sixteen. However, after a few days, the boys were separated and moved to a men’s camp, where they were completely deprived of any support or care from their loved ones. They had no contact with their mothers at all. Men brought by Warsaw transports were quickly transferred to other camps deep within the Reich, so the boys also lost contact with their fathers and uncles and were deprived of this support. However, a very common recollection that appears in their accounts is that boys were used to work on the so-called rolwaga. A rolwaga was a large, heavy, wooden wagon that was used in the camp to transport various things, including removing garbage or transporting food for prisoners. And it happened that these boys were being harnessed - as they say - to such a wagon, and despite the fact that many of them were weakened, despite the fact that they suffered from hunger, that they were also sick, many of them volunteered for this difficult job. This was because for them it was the only opportunity to go with this work unit to the women’s camp and meet their mothers. These mothers sometimes knew in advance that the boys would be on the premises, so they waited somewhere near the barracks to at least be able to see each other, to at least exchange glances, because so little at the same time constituted very important information that the mother was still alive. These boys sometimes recall that when they saw their mothers, sometimes after not seeing them for a long time, they had trouble recognizing them. The mothers were emaciated, already destroyed by camp diseases, so of course they were very worried about them, but the information that their mother was still alive was very comforting and uplifting for them. In mid-November 1944, due to the slow liquidation of the camp, the women’s camp was moved from sectors B I that is those located on the left side of the ramp, to sectors B II e where women unable to work were transferred, and B II b, where women able to work were placed. And this meant that the boys suddenly found themselves near their mothers again. This was the moment when they could see each other, and here again, many people remember that they approached the barbed wires dividing these individual sectors of the camp. Sometimes, if there was such an opportunity, they would exchange some items, throw each other some bread or other necessary things, but most of all it was about the contact itself, about being able to see each other. Urszula Koperska recalls that when she saw her brother through the barbed wire for the first time, after she was transferred to sector B II, when she saw him for the first time, she was very proud of him because it turned out that he had managed to organize a warm hat for himself. And he was also pleased with himself that he was such an adult, so big, able to take care of himself, and when she recalled it, it was such a clash, as I say - such a big, big, independent boy. She was then, if I’m not mistaken 10 years old, he was 2 years older than her. And here, in fact, the need to grow up faster, to take care of themselves, was something that the camp children experienced and which in some way made it difficult for them to function after the war. When they left the camp and returned to their community, they were treated like children again, but they often no longer felt like children at all. They remembered how many times they had been beaten with a stick, they remembered how they had to fight for their own survival, they remembered how they had to try and take care of their own needs, and they no longer felt like children at all. Children in the camp, of course, experienced hunger, and in general, prisoners in the camp, those from the Warsaw transports, experienced hunger to the same extent as prisoners of other transports. These food rations were clearly insufficient. Janina Rekłajtis recalls that once her friend got extremely lucky - she found a piece of bread lying on the ground in front of the barracks. And she says that her camp dream was to find such a piece of bread, that when she walked somewhere near the barracks, she looked at the ground with such great hope that she would also manage to find at least a crust of bread. Well, it never happened, but this crust of bread became something very, very symbolic, a camp dream.

It seems that compared to other Polish political prisoners, returning home was particularly difficult for Warsaw residents.

Yes, here we must start with the fact that, as I mentioned, out of these 13,000 deportees, over 12,000 - 12,300 people were deported in a very short time to camps deep inside the Reich and many of them died there. In the period from January 10 to 17, 1945, five transports were formed in which mothers who came from the Warsaw Uprising were united with their children in the camp. There were about 100 boys, with mothers over 500 women and girls. They were grouped together and sent to Berlin, where they had to work in various sub-camps of Sachsenhausen. They mainly worked on clearing the rubble from Berlin, which was another traumatic memory and indeed a very difficult chapter of their history. These are the people who survived the Warsaw Uprising, who survived Auschwitz, and then they had to go through the air raids on Berlin, the crossing of the front and the constant feeling of threat to their lives there. These prisoners recall that, apart from the fact that they worked hard clearing rubble, it was physical and demanding work, and that they were not protected in any way during the air raids. The Germans could hide in the shelters. For them, shelters were unavailable, so they sometimes hid in the basements of demolished buildings, sometimes they simply lay down on the ground somewhere, protecting their heads. Jerzy Fiołek, recalls that when these carpet bombings took place, it was such a terrifying experience for him that he dreamed that the bomb would finally fall on him, because he was fed up with this fear and this waiting for it to finally happen. In what condition a man must be to dream of a bomb finally falling on him, because he no longer had the strength to experience the fear again and again? The prisoners arriving in transports from the Warsaw Uprising who had not previously been deported to camps deep in Germany, some of them took part in the so-called death marches. However, in Auschwitz, at least 400 people from Warsaw transports survived the liberation, including at least 160 women and 125 children, including 19 born in the camp. Some of them actually did not have the opportunity to enjoy this freedom for very long, because in February and March, less than 2 months after the liberation, 45 people from Warsaw transports died in Polish Red Cross hospitals, including five infants. Unfortunately, we do not have accurate statistics of Warsaw transports, we do not know exactly how many of these people survived and how many of them died. This is because we have no data on about 2,500 people and we do not know what their fate was after they got to Auschwitz. Some of the Warsaw residents deported to Auschwitz after the outbreak of the uprising lived to experience freedom in Germany. Their return was so difficult because, in fact, this distance was often covered on foot, because in the conditions of war there was no possibility of organizing any transport, so these people went on foot or by some ad hoc organized transport for short distances, heading towards Poland. And they returned to Warsaw not knowing what they would actually find there. Those who were liberated from Auschwitz, some but not all were able to receive some information about what happened in Warsaw. And when they returned to the city, what they found there was truly shocking. As a result of the uprising, a significant part of Warsaw suffered, of course, but statistics say that about 25% of the city’s buildings were destroyed as a result of the uprising, but later over 75% of the city’s buildings were destroyed, as a result of German actions aimed at razing Warsaw to the ground in retaliation for the outbreak of the uprising. So these people were leaving Warsaw, which was still a city after all, and they were coming back, and many of them remember that when they arrived by train, the central station, of course, still had not operated at that time, and it was impossible to get to the centre of Warsaw. So when they were on the outskirts of Warsaw, they were suddenly faced with this sea of rubble. One of the prisoners describes that it took her a few hours to walk just a few hundred meters because she had to find her way through the rubble to her house, not knowing whether the house was even still there. So, in fact, the very moment of contact with the image of Warsaw that they found upon their return was traumatic for them. Fear of what their home looked like and whether they actually have anything to return to. Most of them no longer found their houses. Many of them, when they came to the place where they lived before the war or before the outbreak of the uprising, found only rubble. And a specific characteristic of the landscape of post-war Warsaw, an image often used in films, were notes stuck on the wall. Henryk Duszyk recalls that when he returned to his home, and he was completely alone, he was liberated in Auschwitz, he spent a few days in a hospital, but when he felt better, he decided that he had to go home. Henryk was 10 years old at that time. He and his friends were planning to come to Warsaw, but when he had to get up early in the morning to catch the train, he recalls that his friends overslept, so he just got ready by himself and went to the station. Unfortunately, he didn’t manage to get on the train, but a stationmaster took him to his room. There he fed him something and helped him board the next train. So when he came to Warsaw, as a ten-year-old boy, he, of course, went first towards his house and he says that he found only ruined walls, only rubble. He said that he had already heard from people who returned and from people he met along the way that he needed to look for pieces of paper, that those who survived and came to Warsaw left information for those who came next. So he said that he was looking for a piece of paper, but he didn’t find anything, he didn’t find any information, and suddenly he realized that he was completely alone, that he had nothing, no home, no family, because he didn’t know if his family survived, whether any of his relatives survived, and as a ten-year-old child, he stood at a crossroad and actually had no idea what he could do with himself, which direction to go, how he could help himself. He said that a uniformed officer on patrol saw him, took him by the hand and led him to an orphanage. In fact, first to a point where children were gathered, then from there he was transported to an orphanage and he remained in this orphanage until he was eighteen, having nothing of his own after returning from the camp. It was only years later that he learned that both his father and sister had died in the camp, only his stepmother survived, but she did not look for him after the war. So he was on his own. Here, the accounts of the returnees are very dramatic. Jerzy Fiołek said that when he arrived with his mother, returning from the camp, from Germany, they went to the Old Town to the place where their tenement house was and he saw his bed. He said that he had a metal bed that was hanging by a leg somewhere on a piece of rubble, and that’s when he realized that there was no house, that they didn’t know where they would sleep that night. Janina Rekłajtis recalls that when she returned to Warsaw with her mother, they managed to find their family who had an apartment, but it was a small two-room apartment in which 20 people lived. Of course, they were still accepted because it was obvious that they had nowhere to go. The living conditions were such that everyone would lie down wherever they could find a place for the night. If someone had a blanket, they would lie down on the blanket, if someone had an overcoat, they would lie on it, if they had nothing, they would just lie down in their clothes, and that’s what their nights were like: they slept in a row wherever they could. She recalls that when she returned to school after some time and went to visit her friend, she thought it was an incredible luxury that her friend had a desk where she could sit and do her homework. Because in the apartment where she lived at that time, there was not even room to put a desk, she did not have a piece of table at which she could sit to write anything down in her notebook or do her homework. And the desk seemed to her like the pinnacle of comfort one could have. She said that, of course, they couldn’t stay in that small apartment forever with their family, so her mother found an apartment and rented a room. A room in which there were no windows, the windows were broken, so they could live in this room for the summer, but when autumn came, when it started to get cold, they had to leave the apartment because it turned out that the blankets hung in place of the windows don’t provide any heat, they didn’t protect them anymore, so this apartment was uninhabitable. Maria Stroińska was in the camp on her own, without her parents, and when she returned to Warsaw after the war, when she was walking through the rubble, she was completely resigned, and in fact, knowing what was happening around her, she did not really believe that anyone managed to survive. And when at one point she saw a guard from her tenement house where she lived before the outbreak of the uprising, the guard didn’t recognize her at first, but when he finally realized it was her and told her that her mother was waiting for her there, these were the most beautiful words she could hear. She ran to the place he indicated. Of course, the tenement house no longer existed, but there was a small extension that had not previously served as a residential building, but had been adapted. She said that life was very difficult, and this extension did not ensure any living conditions. Water dripped from the roof when it rained, so their living conditions were difficult, but at least they had some space of their own. After the war, after the uprising, her mother was very sick, in fact bedridden, so Maria had to find a way to take care of her family, to take care of herself and her mother’s well-being. And this was again an element of experience very typical for the people of Warsaw, especially for Warsaw children. When they returned to Warsaw, to these rubbles, to these ruins and life had to be organized completely anew, it turned out that many family members did not return. Fathers did not return, mothers and children were sick after the war or after being in the camp, even more so. And it turned out that these children could not just return to their lives. They couldn’t go back to school because it took time before schools even started. First of all, they could not continue their education full-time because it turned out that they had to contribute in some way to supporting their families. This meant that they had to take up some kind of job, even a part-time job, because without it the family would not have anything to eat, the family would not have anything to wear. So their fate here was indeed exceptionally difficult. After the war trauma, after the trauma of the camp, they returned to a place where they actually had to build everything from scratch, having nothing. So in this respect, the experiences of Warsaw residents were certainly different and for them this trauma, already post-war, had a different dimension and brought additional challenges. An important issue in these families who had experienced staying in a concentration camp was that the camp stories sometimes became somewhat taboo. First of all, as the survivors themselves recall, after the war, when life somehow had to return to normal, few people wanted to hear about what happened during the war. Everyone carried their own wounds, everyone carried their own traumas, and everyone wanted to look to the future. Everyone wanted to focus on building a safe reality from scratch. So people didn’t necessarily want to hear about war or camp experiences. Many of the children recall that no one ever asked them about what they experienced in the camp, as if no one was interested. When talking about their camp experiences, some of them experienced some additional kindness from people, but these were rarer cases, they more often experienced indifference. Moreover, it happened that these children, traumatized by their stay in the camp, were in some sense emotionally unstable, nervous, and prone to hysterical behaviour. After what they went through in the camp, it is of course understandable, but often these reactions were not fully understood by those around them. Elżbieta Sobczyńska said that when, after returning from the camp, she was faced with an emotionally difficult situation, in a situation that required seriousness, for example a funeral, she was overcome with hysterical laughter that she was unable to control. That laughter was the reason her aunt thought she was crazy. Her aunt called her an idiot because she didn’t understand this reaction. This meant that in Elżbieta’s family, with her mother and her brother, they decided that the subject of the camp would be taboo and that they would not talk about it, precisely to avoid certain stigma. As those, especially children, who have come from something like this and after such an experience cannot be normal. So for years, the topic of the camp was taboo for them, it was an unresolved trauma. Such resolution could only take place much later, when, as an adult, Elżbieta entered the circle of survivors. She also met other camp children and this community became a circle in which they supported each other and in which they could discuss this trauma, they could talk through their experience, they could find understanding for their experiences and they could somehow deal with it themselves. Another surivivor, who was also in the camp, said that when she came back after the war, her parents died in the camp, and she went to live with her aunt, and when she told her aunt about what happened to her in the camp, her aunt said it was impossible, that it is not true, that such a thing is not possible, that she must have imagined it, that she must be exaggerating. So this is again another dimension of the lack of understanding of the camp experiences that not only children faced. Adult prisoners very often encountered such a lack of understanding, because for a person who had not experienced a stay in the camp, even a short one, because if we are talking about prisoners who came from the Warsaw Uprising, their stay in Auschwitz compared to those who arrived in 1940, was relatively short. But despite everything, it was a time that could have contributed to various types of traumas, and it was certainly a time of experience that could not be expressed in words. And these people very often encountered such a lack of understanding, and sometimes even in extreme cases, a lack of belief in what they were saying.