The recording was created as part of the project „Preservation, Development, Digitalization, and Promotion of the PIASA Collections – Stage V,” co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
Nagranie powstało w ramach zadania: „Zabezpieczenie, opracowanie, digitalizacja i promocja zbiorów PIASA – etap V”. Dofinansowano ze środków Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej.
Wacek was the youngest political prisoner in the Crematorium III squad at the German Concentration Camp of Birkenau. He was no older than 11, came from the vicinity of Zamość, and despite the beautiful May weather, he constantly sniffled with a runny nose. His father and his sister Irene, who was 16, were also in Birkenau, but the fate of his mother and younger sister, who was about 6, was unknown to him.
Wacek and his family ended up in the concentration camp simply because his father’s farm, along with several other villages, was designated for German settlers. The Germans considered that the best way to pacify the area was to burn the selected villages. Sitting on a bunk after dinner, Wacek started to tell his story, sniffling as he spoke. “It was still night when our village was surrounded by a military cordon and set on fire in several places. The only way out was the nearby forest behind the hill. Some peasants tried to extinguish the fire or save their cattle, but they were shot without mercy. Others were forced to stay inside their homes to burn alive. Those who sought refuge in the forest were killed by crossfire from machine guns. Later, they were buried in a mass grave on the edge of the forest. That night, hell broke loose in our village. I saw a neighbor whose clothes were on fire, but he was trying to put out the flames on his son’s burning body. He threw himself on the ground and tried to cover him with sand, but it was too late. They both died in each other’s embrace. Our village was reduced to ashes, the remains of burned chimneys, the bellowing of homeless cattle, and the howling of orphaned dogs. As for me, I survived because my father and I jumped into a water-filled ditch and waited out the fire.”
After the Germans left, we went looking for my mother and sister, who had been in another village with a sick aunt. But we never reached our destination because we were arrested along the way and added to the hundreds of others who were promised work on the farms in the Germany. It was all a deception to blind us. At the railway ramp in German Concentration Camp of Auschwitz, where the selections were made, my father noticed my sister Irene among the women, whom we hadn’t seen for weeks. None of us knew that she had come with the same transport. We still looked around for our mother and my other sister, but it was in vain. The women were already separated from the men, and we were not allowed to approach them. But my father decided that I should deliver the bread we had saved to Irene, because she was very emaciated. Without thinking, I jumped out of the transport and ran to my sister, who managed to kiss me and hug me tightly. I thought I would never break free from her embrace, and we both cried over each other. Neither of us managed to say a word before I was pulled away, not knowing that an SS man was lurking behind me with a rifle in his hands. He struck me in the chest with the rifle, and in an instinctive attempt to grab it, I was hit harder, knocked to the ground, and beaten with the rifle butt. To this day, I suffer from chronic nosebleeds and can’t get rid of a constant cold. Sometimes the pain subsides, and sometimes it hurts a lot, but people tell me that in the summer, if I warm myself in the sun, it will go away. Though they also say I’ll die here, in this gas chamber…”
After this conversation, Wacek established contact with Irene through a secret “grip” (a coded form of communication). His sister recovered, radiated youth, and had beautiful gray eyes. She was not yet familiar with the cruelties of camp life, so she quickly gained favor with the block supervisor, who put her to work. Irene knew that Wacek was ill. She was tormented by the guilt that she might have been an indirect cause of his illness, so she did everything she could to help her brother and father recover. The biggest challenge for Irene was the lack of medicine for Wacek’s disease. Although she knew that in the men’s camp there was a black market where various medicines could be found, she had neither garlic nor onions to trade. There was also the difficulty that the men’s and women’s camps were separated by barbed wire.
In an attempt to help her brother, Irene used a simple shepherd’s slingshot to send food. She fashioned a slingshot from the sleeve of a blouse she had found, tying it with a long string and using it to carry onions. Wacek and his father were waiting near the hospital block No. 7 when they saw Irene watching the front, where the onion bundle was supposed to fall. They waved to each other from a distance, but without wasting time, Irene swung the slingshot over her head. However, the string broke, and the bundle of onions landed on the electric wires. Her father, powerless, did not want to draw the attention of the SS guards by shouting. Irene, worried, stood for a moment undecided. In her mind, she saw her sick little brother—the same one who had risked his life to deliver her a piece of bread, and whom she had hugged and kissed at the time. For now, the SS man standing at the guard tower did not notice anything suspicious near the wires, which encouraged Irene to act quickly. She jumped over the warning wire to retrieve her package, but it was too high to reach easily. She jumped higher but so recklessly that the electric current from the wire caught her. Wacek and his father saw with horror the bluish smoke rising from her hand as her body fell and shook the wires, causing the SS man to hear the sound. Whether he acted to prove his zeal in service or to end Irene’s suffering, he fired several shots and ended her life.
In the gas chamber of the German crematorium, we were served lunch.
Sickly Wacek sat next to me on the cold concrete of the gas chamber and, as usual, began reminiscing about Irene, often wiping his nose. So many weeks had passed, and I still thought that she was alive in the „women’s” camp. I thought she had only been shocked by the electric wire, and with the right connections, she would recover. The war would soon be over, because that’s what the last transport had said, and we would all return home together. He spoke sadly and convincingly, looking me straight in the eye, waiting for me to confirm what he no longer truly believed. I agreed with him to ease his sadness, but Wacek kept thinking about Block No. 7, where Irene often waved at him from behind the wires. He also mentioned the embrace at the railway ramp, but as he did, his lips trembled and he wiped away the tears he was ashamed of, tears that were flowing from his eyes. He sniffed a couple of times and spat on the dirty cement to comfort himself. Those who saw the bloodstain on the ground shouted, „Tuberculosis… Tuberculosis…” Unfortunately, the kapo – the camp supervisor, heard these words, and since he was terrified of tuberculosis, he reported the supposed open case of tuberculosis to the SS man at the crematorium. This was a death sentence for the poor boy: ” Get this dog out!” – the SS man shouted, and Wacek was already being dragged by the legs across the concrete to the western part of the gas chamber; no one wanted to stand up for the boy or help him, for in Birkenau, this was a common and routine matter, and no one wanted to risk it—everyone was just happy that they themselves were still alive. Wacek was „taken care of” in this way, as the kapo grabbed him by the legs, and the foreman threw a shovel handle around his neck, after which two „specialists,” the kapo and the SS man, stomped on the handle until Wacek’s legs stopped moving. Wacek’s death didn’t end the spectacle. By order of the kapo, a cement sack was placed over Wacek’s head so that he wouldn’t spread germs after his death.
Wacek’s father had such a peculiar way of walking that they called him the circus horse because he lifted his legs as if marching, and those legs became both his good luck and misfortune in Birkenau. He was a man of few words but very sociable. After the tragic death of Irene and Wacek, he became sad and avoided people. He worked for two men, for only in work did he find solace, and he feared getting into trouble, knowing that he wouldn’t survive another beating, just like Wacek didn’t. He wanted to live at all costs, to return to his wife and daughter, about whom he knew nothing. He was ready to make any sacrifices if he thought they would lead to something. He also longed for revenge for the children he had lost in Birkenau, but to take revenge, one had to survive the camp.
The courtyard of Crematorium III was overgrown with forest, which we had to clear, roots and all. It was done in such a way that we placed wire around the crown of a tree, and then the tree was pulled down. The prisoner who had come down from the tree announced that he had seen a new transport. This news piqued the interest of our command, but we didn’t immediately learn who had arrived. Clouds of dust were rising above the transport; the SS men surrounded it with guns ready to shoot, and the exhausted people, despite constant shouting—“ fast, fast”—moved at a snail’s pace, simply because women and children were walking among them. The unknown people from the transport had already reached the main gate of Birkenau, and cries could be heard from the camp: “Camp lock!” Meanwhile, in our command, we were hurried to work so that no one had time to observe the newcomers. The transport had reached the women’s blocks, passed the bathhouse and the camp kitchen, reached the men’s camp (later the women were transferred here), and began to walk toward the road that led directly to Crematorium II and III.
Suddenly, a whistle cut through the air and a wild shout: “Stop! Stop! Stop!” The shouting SS man did not shoot at the small girl who had broken away from the transport, as he didn’t want to make a bad impression on the hundreds of women and children who were being fooled into thinking they were going to the baths. A shot at the child could have caused them to scatter, and it would have been difficult to herd them back into the gas chamber. The girl, whose features could already be distinguished, did not run away outside the patrol’s range, but ran straight toward our command at Crematorium III. Not everyone could see her, as we were forbidden from looking at the transport, but people whispered about it, and the child kept running. She fell into a muddy puddle, stumbled, and, not remembering anything, kept running toward us. Wacek’s father, who had faithfully adhered to the rule of always working and never „getting into trouble,” didn’t know anything, turned around, and then suddenly, a familiar voice: “Daddy! Daddy!” It came from right next to him. Overjoyed, the father embraced his daughter, and she continued chirping:
“We are with mommy, and we’ll be here with you too.”
“But how did you find me?” the father asked. “Who told you?”
The happy child didn’t hide anything: “Daddy, no one told me, but I recognized you by your walk. I saw you pushing that cart, and I knew immediately it was my daddy.”
The distraught father broke down in tears and stood frozen, for he knew that the transport was headed for the gas, but the poor child had no idea about any of it and kept asking, “Daddy, why are you crying? Don’t you like that I’m here with you? Aren’t you happy like I am?” The father couldn’t answer. He cried like a child, and I cried too. I looked around the command… they were all crying. Everyone felt sorry for the child, who thought she was at the height of happiness. The father took his daughter by the hand as the SS man approached to herd the child into the column. The father tried to lift the little girl onto his back, but he didn’t have the strength. He stood there for a moment, trying to extend the child’s life, then looked up at the blue sky of the German concentration camp of Birkenau, covered with thick clouds of burned bodies, raised his hand, said something, but no one understood if he was praying or cursing God.
I saw enough to know that the German soldier struck him with the rifle butt and ordered him to march. He went with his daughter along the same road she had run, but I saw how he reached the little shoes his daughter had lost, picked them up from the mud, and then joined the transport, disappearing into the depths of the gas chamber.
Strangely enough, I saw him once again, but already dead, in a wheelbarrow used to carry soil, and he was brought back to the camp for roll call, as the camp regulations required.
The recording was created as part of the project „Preservation, Development, Digitalization, and Promotion of the PIASA Collections – Stage V,” co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
Nagranie powstało w ramach zadania: „Zabezpieczenie, opracowanie, digitalizacja i promocja zbiorów PIASA – etap V”. Dofinansowano ze środków Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej.