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.
Before I found myself on the death train, I was properly arrested on May 3, 1943, and then transported by the Germans to Miechów. There, I was interrogated under torture—beatings and the „pole” method. Since I was tough, the infamous sadist known as Ivan the Terrible and the deputy head of the Gestapo, Retinger, personally tried to break me. During the investigation, they proved that I had escaped three times from my previous arrests.
As a specialist in escaping, I was transported to the heavily guarded prison in Kraków on Montelupih Street. After a week of torture, my health was so ruined that I was passing blood instead of urine. No one treated me, and in this state, I arrived in German Concentration Camp of Auschwitz on June 17, 1943. At first, life in the camp was bearable because an influential prisoner, whom I knew from before, took care of me. However, after a month, the camp Gestapo found information about my three escapes in my records. One day, they pulled me from the labor unit, brought me back to the camp, sewed a red escapee circle onto my striped uniform, and permanently assigned me to the Penal Company.
I hoped that being transferred to another camp would free me from this ordeal, but when I was transported to Neuengamme, I was also placed in the Penal Company there. In the autumn of 1944, all prisoners with red escapee circles from various camps were gathered in Buchenwald and forced into an underground aircraft factory in Langenstein. Because the factory was deep underground, frequent bombings did not damage it, but the gases from the explosions often knocked down entire work units.
Although the food consisted of starvation rations, there was at least the relief that the work was indoors, and by the end of the war, the SS terror had slightly eased. On April 1, 1945 (Easter Sunday), the factory was shut down, supposedly due to the approaching front. That day, without kapos – the supervisors or block leaders, we were driven on a forced march to Buchenwald. Each of us received a quarter loaf of bread and a single blanket. We spent one night, surrounded by dogs and SS men, in an open field. The second night, due to rain, we were allowed to stay in a church. The next morning, the first victims fell—several Russians who had hidden in the church tower were found and immediately executed by the SS.
Upon reaching Buchenwald, we spent the night in barracks. Around 10 a.m. on April 5, we were driven out of our blocks, and an exceptionally brutal gang of SS men took us into their clutches. The direction of our march led towards the crematorium, with the path marked by numerous corpses of previously murdered prisoners. The Germans yelling made it clear that something terrible was about to happen. Sensing that death was near, the column began to pray in Polish and in various other languages. The closer we got to the crematorium, the more fervent the prayers became.
As the leading fives were directed to the right towards the crematorium, a sigh of relief swept through our long column. „So it’s not death yet,” everyone thought. We marched tightly packed, as even a slight deviation to the side meant being shot. No one doubted it—there was proof before our eyes. Among the greening grass, white and yellow flowers, fresh red blood stood out starkly, and the bodies of murdered prisoners lay in various positions along the march route.
The sight was grim, and to avoid looking at it, we walked briskly. After seven kilometers, we reached the station in Weimar, where a train with cattle cars was waiting for us. Amidst the SS men’s shouts, a hundred people were crammed into each car, forced into a sitting position with knees under their chins, forming a tangled mass of human bodies. Standing was forbidden. Two SS men sat on benches in the middle, rifles loaded and ready to shoot anyone who dared to rise.
Each prisoner received a quarter loaf of bread, but there was no water. Only at stops were two prisoners from each wagon allowed to fetch water. Using the toilet depended on the whims of the SS men—sometimes a hundred from one wagon were let out at once.
During the journey, gunshots rang out from different wagons. Every time the doors were opened, corpses of shot prisoners were removed and placed in the last wagon, which had been turned into a morgue.
Our train was headed towards Austria. I was fortunate in that I had no appetite when given my bread, so I crumbled it and put it in my pocket—it became my primary sustenance for the first week of the journey. Another valuable possession was a bucket, which I used to draw water from streams for my fellow prisoners. The SS escorts changed along the way, but they must have had strict orders concerning us, as there were still several deaths in each wagon daily—both from shootings and exhaustion.
As the weather warmed, the corpses began to decompose, so under a large, beautiful forest, a stop was ordered to bury them. Hunger grew, and strength faded. After about a week of travel, we learned we were in Austria. There, not only was the escort changed, but also the closed train cars were swapped for open ones. We suffered from both cold and unimaginable hunger. Already emaciated before, as the journey dragged on, we turned into skeletal specters—skin stretched over protruding bones. Those with strength looked at the green landscapes passing by, but hunger and immobility brought a general numbness, interrupted only by the groans and rattles of the dying.
Before long, the new morgue filled with corpses of those who, desperate for food, ate grass and leaves, only to die of intestinal blockage. Bodily functions had nearly ceased—most prisoners could urinate, but their stomachs had nothing to digest.
After about ten days, our transport arrived in a large city. It was around seven in the morning when conductors shouted, “Pilsen! Pilsen!” as a crowd of Czech workers spilled out of the stopped train.
“Oh God! Jesus, Mary!” voices cried out at the sight of our transport—half-alive skeletons. Whoever could, threw us pieces of bread and whatever meager factory rations they had. The SS violently suppressed this outpouring of Czech generosity, but some of us managed to grab food. I was among the lucky ones. However, I couldn’t keep much—my neighbors, starving, reached out with desperate hands, so I shared as best I could and managed to eat a little. For the moment, I was saved from starvation.
As our train remained at the station, we, dazed and barely alive, did not understand what was happening. But something extraordinary was taking place—an act of humanity worthy of being recorded in golden letters in history.
The Czechs who had been stopped by the Germans did not give up. They quickly devised a brilliant plan. Not just workers but likely railwaymen too played a role. They took a train to a nearby station, rallied others who had not yet seen us, and returned to Pilsen in another train, urging new passengers to help us. As the train passed us, it showered us with bread and whatever food people had. The SS plan to starve us had been undermined. Though not everyone got food, this act of Czech compassion lifted our spirits—it was proof that good, selfless people still existed. Everyone blessed them.
After this event, our transport quickly left the station. For now, I thanked God that I was still alive. But what was happening around me was a hell created by our SS tormentors. They kept us in our cramped positions, shooting anyone who tried to move.
A man next to me—once a journalist from Grudziądz—lost his mind from the horror and started babbling nonsense. Another prisoner, Henryk Piasecki from Warsaw, and I, though barely alive ourselves, covered his mouth so the SS wouldn’t notice—because in the camps, the insane were killed.
At one point, I reflexively stood up due to unbearable pain in my bones. An SS man screamed “Sit!” and aimed his rifle at me. Unable to sit back down, I made the sign of the cross and whispered, ” Ready.” A shot rang out.
I was sure I was dead.
But when morning came and I saw trees, flowers, and grass outside, I muttered, „Dear God… is this the afterlife?” Slowly, I realized I was alive. Joy and gratitude overwhelmed my hunger and pain.
But the journey was far from over. Death continued its harvest.
One day, at the end of April, the train stopped at a station unknown to us. The weather was pleasant, and to our surprise, the SS guards left the wagons, leaving us alone. After some time, we saw prisoners in striped uniforms, and from them, we learned that we had arrived in Dachau. The prisoners of that camp took care of us as best they could. Most of us were too weak to move on our own, so some were carried out of the wagons on stretchers, while others were helped down to the ground. Since everyone was severely weakened, many of us clung together and supported each other as we made our way toward the camp. This was how I managed to get out of the wagon. I stretched my legs with relief, but I did not get far before collapsing onto the grass beside others who were barely alive.
It must be said that the Dachau prisoners also thought to feed us with the camp’s watery soup, which was our first meal since Pilsen. We were so weak that they had to feed us like infants. For the time being, we simply lay there, happy to give our bones some relief. Thanks to the good weather, we spent the entire day and night on the camp’s grounds. The next day, we witnessed the arrival of the Americans, who took over the guard posts at the gate and on the watchtowers.
Then the rain began to fall. Finding some kind of shelter became an urgent matter, but it was only in the evening that we were placed in a barrack previously used for typhus patients. There was so little space that four people had to share one bed. I do not know why, but neither the camp’s doctors nor the American ones came to take care of us. To make matters worse, one of the Americans distributed a can of German meat ration to each of us. This thoughtless act soon wreaked havoc among us, as not everyone knew the dangers of eating meat after such extreme starvation. Some, more cautious, refrained from eating it, but others consumed everything immediately and soon suffered from severe diarrhea, while some died from intestinal torsion. The only latrine in the barrack was constantly overcrowded and gradually turned into a filthy cesspool. Over the next two days, people kept dying, so the healthier and stronger prisoners took it upon themselves to remove the bodies, which piled up into a large heap in front of the barrack.
It was only after two days that a team of doctors and nurses finally arrived. They cut off our lice-infested underwear, then thoroughly scrubbed and disinfected us in the bathhouse. The final stage of our recovery took place in a hospital outside the camp, where we lay in clean beds, received a proper diet, and were given medicine. Slowly, we began to recover…
Later calculations showed that out of the three thousand prisoners taken onto the train in Weimar by Germans, only about seven hundred survived the death train. The plan to exterminate us in this transport was largely successful, and today, few remain of those who endured this ordeal.
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.