Leonard Zawacki

Interviewer: Can you tell me your full name and when and where you were born?
ZAWACKI: My name is Leonard Zawacki, and I was born on January the 20th, 1916, in the town of Grudziądz, which at that time was under the German occupation.

Interviewer: Tell me a little tiny bit about your childhood.
ZAWACKI: I went to school in my hometown, and I graduated from the high school, which we called gymnasium. After the graduation, I enlisted into the school of foreign trade in Warsaw [Warsaw School of Economics]. In 1938 I was called up to the Polish army, and as a graduate of gymnasium, I only had to serve one year. You served in officer candidate school, reserve officer candidate school, which I did. I was supposed to be released in October 1939, and the war started on September 1st, 1939. I took part in the fighting. 

I was assigned to a unit of anti-tank artillery, and I took part in the defense of Warsaw. On September 27 Warsaw surrendered, and I was taken as a prisoner of war, taken out of Warsaw on the 28th of September to the west and near a small town of Prushkov. There we were kept, thousands of soldiers in an open field and meadows, and then divided in four groups: south, north, east, and west. Since I came from the north, I went to the north group. We were loaded then on trains and taken to the north. We came to the town of Torun, which is a town some 40 miles south of my hometown. There we were taken, unloaded, and then taken to the other side of the Vistula. 

We arrived at the western part of the Vistula River. The two bridges which were across the Vistula were both damaged, and we had to walk single file, too, because of the side of the river. There we were again assembled, and we were supposed to go to the citadel, where they told us that we were going to stay only overnight, and then the next morning they were going to release us. Of course, I realized that this was a lie, as most of the things they told us, and I myself separated myself from them. I asked the guard [if] I could go to the toilet because we were near the station in Torun. He said “Yes.” I went to the toilet, and I didn’t return [from] it. He saw me going away, and he said, “Where are you going?” I said, “My troop is assembled at the other part of the station, and I have to attach [to them],” and I think he realized that I was running away. But he let me go. 

So I went to the other station, and quite accidentally I met my cousin, who never did serve in the armed forces, but he was in a uniform, a soldier’s uniform. We got together, and somehow he was able to secure some blank forms, which were given to people who considered themselves of German origin. They were issued these passes, and he had the blank form, so we filled them out with our names and signed some fictitious names to it. Of course, we didn’t have any stamps. Anyway, we boarded the train to our hometown and arrived around midnight. At the exit, all the passes were checked, and there were the SS people and the SR people and the armed forces people. When they looked at our passes, they told us to step aside. We stepped aside, and then they gathered us. I think there were 11 of us or so. They said, “You again have to go to the citadel overnight, and then in the morning we’re going to release you.”  

Of course, we knew better than that. So they marched us from the station. My cousin was an owner of a lumberyard, and we had to pass near the lumberyard. We were in the last row, and he told the guard, “Look, there is still my name on, my firm name, and why do you want me to go to the citadel for the night if I could sleep at home?” And he said, “All right. Go ahead.” Then I told him, “It’s my cousin. I can stay with him, too.” He said, “All right. Go.” And we went, and that’s how we got away from being prisoners of war and spending the rest of the war. So I went and I stayed overnight, and the next morning I went home, and …

Interviewer: Let’s back up. Why do you think he did that? Why do you think he let you go?
ZAWACKI: Well, I suppose because, first of all, we spoke German to him. We both did speak German. We more or less pleaded, and he saw … I don’t know who the man was, whether he was a local man. Maybe he knew us, or at least he knew my cousin. Anyway, it seems that he had some kind of feeling that he [should] let us go. I don’t know, and I don’t know who he was or what. But anyway, he did let us go.

Interviewer: One other question: That whole period, what was it like? Was it very disorganized?
ZAWACKI: No, it was not. The Germans were not disorganized; the terror was right from the first day the Germans came. They started terrorizing people. Some of my relatives who belonged to organizations which the Germans thought were unfriendly to them, they were arrested right on the spot — taken into the forest and shot on the spot — and all trace disappeared. So the terror was there, right from the first day of occupation, and why he did this, I couldn’t tell. 

I can go further. That was when I came home. It was in October ’39, and I think after three weeks I was arrested. Not [just] myself, with some other friends of mine, students. I was arrested by the local Germans, who formed special units, protective units. The German name was Zellschutz. They wore green armbands with black lettering saying “Zellschutz.” They were looking, Germans, because my town had approximately 10% of the German population. I was arrested when we were visiting a friend. As we walked out of his apartment, they were in the hallway, and they arrested us, two of them. Matter of fact, I knew one of the Germans; he was a young man [who] also attended the gymnasium in my hometown. Pre-war there were two gymnasiums, German high schools. One was in my hometown, and the other one was in southern Poland, in Silesia. I don’t exactly know which town, but I think it was Bytom. He was a student at the high school and became this Zellschutz, and he arrested us. 

We were taken to a place as hostages. We were kept in a huge hall, and there were no beds; there was only straw on the sides of the room, which we for the night spread [out]. We had to lie down on the straw; we had no blankets or anything. After a few days, we were allowed to contact our parents and our families, and they could deliver to us food because they didn’t supply any food. I stayed there for only three weeks because of a friend of mine who had a German friend who was associated with some German organization. Matter of fact, he studied journalism in Germany, in Berlin. After he finished his studies, he became a member of the propaganda ministry — Goebbels’ propaganda ministry. His parents lived in my hometown. He was visiting at the time, and my parents asked him whether he could get in touch with this friend of his, whether he can get me released. So he did. 

One night, I think at midnight, they called me in to a small little room where there were three Germans, one who was in charge of this hostage camp. He was a local veterinary doctor, a German, then some other person whom I didn’t know, and this friend of my friend, who I knew only from sight. They interrogated me, what I was doing, what I intended to do. I said, “I don’t know, you know, the war …”

They said, “We’re going to release you, but on the condition that you have to leave these territories.” These territories [in] which we lived — where the western and northern territories were right away incorporated into the German Reich — they considered these lands as purely German. They said that you cannot live here; you have to go to the part of Poland which was not incorporated into Germany, but which was formed as a … they called it a “general government.” The governor general of this territory was Hans Frank, who later on at the Nuremberg trials was convicted to death and was hung. 

The territory encompassed both Warsaw and Krakow and Lublin. It was the central [part] of Poland. They said you cannot stay here. Then this veterinary, I remember his name, Gramser. He said, “How long do you need to liquidate your things here?” I said, “Three weeks.” He said, “You’re crazy. You don’t need three weeks. We want you out of here in a week.” So I said, “Of course.” I agreed. I would even go in one day. Anyway, then they released me, and I walked out of the room. This friend of my friend — he was a doctor of journalism — his name was Lutkow. I forgot his first name. He walked out with me, and he started speaking to me in Polish. He said, “Look, you don’t have to leave; you can stay here. You know, the stuff that Gramser said that you have to [leave]. But I can tell you, you don’t have to leave. You can stay here.” So I thanked him very much and went back to the cell. Then the next morning I was supposed to be released. The next morning came, and nothing. They called some other names of people who were released, but not my name. 

So I went to the door and told the guard. I said that my name was supposed to be called. He went back to the office, and after awhile they did call my name, and I was released. But while I was there imprisoned, one day they called ten names of ten hostages, and they were taken away. Then they were publically shot in the town square. Today there’s a monument remembering this. There were innocent people who didn’t do anything wrong. I knew some of them. For no reason whatsoever, they were shot publically. 

After I was released, I think I didn’t even wait a week, and again with my cousin … because his property was taken away, the fellow who had the lumberyard. It was confiscated, and a German owner was put in his place. He didn’t feel secure, and we both left and went to Warsaw. Of course, I didn’t have much means of supporting myself. My cousin, being in business, had some savings, and we lived together in Warsaw for the time being. In the meantime, he was trying to recover his property, which he eventually didn’t recover. But they permitted him to go back and run it, because he knew how to run the business. Apparently the owner, or what they called “Treuhänder” — [which] means a man who was, I can’t find the proper name of it, but anyway somebody who was taking his [place] and running the business [trans.: trustee or custodian] — apparently didn’t do a good job. He eventually was able to get the job back, not as an owner, but as a manager. He went back, and I stayed in Warsaw. 

In the meantime, I did join the underground movement. The first organization was called Związek Walki Zbrojnej [Union of Armed Struggle] — ZWZ was the abbreviation — which later became the home army, Armia Krajowa, the army supported by the legitimate government, which was at that time already in London. I was arrested on the 31st of October 1940. At that time I …

Interviewer: Before you go to that, how did you find out about the underground movement? Tell me a little bit more about that.
ZAWACKI: I had a friend. His name was Cebulski. That’s also one reason why I was arrested. He was also from my hometown in Grudziądz, and he was involved in an organization formed by one [who was] also a student in my hometown, which he joined. I didn’t join because I wasn’t already. He joined this organization, and he wasn’t caught, but the principle of the organization was caught. He was tried, then convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed in Poznań, quite a big city, which was incorporated in Germany. The execution at that time, it was by … they chopped his head off with an ax. He was axed. 

This friend of mine, since he escaped and he came to the general government to Warsaw, was tried in absentia. He was also sentenced to death. He already had connections with the underground. He contacted me, and we got together. He knew a captain of the Polish armed forces, pre-war, who was a member of the organization, and he swore me in as a member. I myself don’t think that I was arrested for that because I don’t think they knew about it. But they knew that I knew this friend of mine. Since he had a death sentence hanging over his head, apparently they were following him because when they arrested me, they came to my … they arrested me at 3:00am in the morning on October 31st, 1940. I was asleep. I had a small bachelor’s apartment, one room, and kitchen and bathroom.

In the night I heard tremendous knocking at the door, kicking in the door. I looked through the visor, and I saw three people. One was in the Gestapo uniform, and the other two were in civilian clothes. They were shouting to open the door immediately. So I opened the door, and they pushed me aside. They came with drawn revolvers, and they pushed me aside. One went to the kitchen, one to the bathroom, and the other to the room. They were looking around. They were looking for — they said — leaflets, and for arms. They didn’t find either because I didn’t keep anything at home. 

Anyway, then they started asking me questions. One question was, “Your friend was here with you yesterday?” Apparently, he changed his name, and he failed to tell me about it. I knew him only by his real name, and so when they asked me [if he] was Cebulski — that was his assumed name — I said “No.” So they hit me, like in the movies, with the hand across … hit me right in my temple. I fell to the floor, and as I fell the three of them started kicking me. I said that I remember that the only person who visited me was this young Cebulski, and I told them his real name. Apparently they knew this, and they stopped beating me. 

I got up, and after awhile they had a small conference between the three of them. Then they came back and said, “You’d better get dressed, and you will go with us.” So I got dressed, and then they took me out. Two of them held me by the cuffs of my jacket. They walked on both sides. This one in the uniform drew his revolver and walked behind me. He told me, “Don’t try anything because I am going to shoot you.” They took me down through the street, and there was a car waiting, a Mercedes. They only drove Mercedes. They opened the door, and as they opened the door I saw another friend of mine sitting there. He said, “Oh, you know each other.” I said, “Yes, I do.” And then they told me to get in. One of the SS sat between the two of us, and the chauffeur. They drove me to the prison, Pawiak Prison in Warsaw. 

There were already approximately ten people, other prisoners. We were registered, and I was taken to a single cell in the basement. It was only a small bed. There was no furniture. There was no window. It was a dirt floor, and the walls were dripping with water. There was only a pail, which you use as a toilet, and once I came there, I didn’t really know what happened. After a while, a guard came and took me out into the yard to the showers. I had to undress. My clothes were disinfected, and I had to shower. After the clothes came back, my suit and so on was all trampled. The guard took me to the second floor of the prison and took me to a cell. I don’t remember the number of the cell. Anyway, the cells were small, maybe seven feet wide and ten feet long. There were already nine prisoners. With me, there were ten of us. There was no bunk or anything; we had to lie on the floor. Again, there was no furniture whatsoever except a pail where we could relieve ourselves. 

We were taken only in the morning to the toilets where we could wash a little, and I think in the afternoon once, and in the evening. The rest we had to spend in the cells. At that time there were prewar Polish guards as well as German SS people. Some of the Polish guards were very friendly and pleasant and helpful. Some were not so helpful. One of the guards, I don’t know how he found out, but he found out that I do speak German. One day he asked me … apparently he was living in a house, which was a Jewish-owned house, and it was requisitioned by the government, by the Germans. Apparently whoever took over from the Germans wanted to increase his rent, and he said, “On the salary which they pay me, I won’t be able to pay the rent for it.” He asked me whether I couldn’t write an application to the authorities, whereby they wouldn’t increase his rent. So he took me to the office, and I did write a letter. After a few weeks, he got a reply. Not only didn’t they increase, but matter of fact, they reduced his rent. 

He was very appreciative, and he said,  “What can I do for you?” Of course, I wanted to tell him, “Let me go free from the prison.” But he said, “What I can do for you [is] I can take you out of the cell since you do speak German. You can be an interpreter.” He took me to another part of the prison, to another ward, which was served only by a German guard. There I became an interpreter to this German guard. 

Of course, my life was a little easier because I was with four other prisoners in one cell, and we also had bunks. I didn’t have to sleep on the floor. Two of the prisoners who lived also in this cell worked in the prison kitchen, and as such they were able to … well, they had more food, but they were not allowed… and they were afraid to bring any food. But what they did bring, they brought always in the evening when they came to the cell — a whole pot of coffee. The coffee was so sweet; they probably put pounds of sugar into it. We drank this coffee, this sweet coffee, which was not real coffee because the Germans wouldn’t give the prisoners … it was substitute coffee. Anyway, it looked like coffee. The sugar, of course, was very important. I could move free because they didn’t close the cell. Whenever the guard needed me to translate [inaudible], so I did translate. 

In the meantime, I was taken for interrogation. You were interrogated in the headquarters of the Gestapo, which was in the central part of Warsaw. You were taken there by a truck, and guards were in the truck as well as motorcycle guards going behind the truck. When you came to the Gestapo headquarters, which were now located in the prewar Polish educational ministry … the cellar wing was converted into cells where the prisoners were taken before they went for interrogation. There were ten individual cells and four, I believe four, common cells. 

The common cells, the prisoners called them “trams” because they were single seats on each side of the cell. In the middle there was a walking path, and you had to sit facing the wall. You were not allowed to look around, and you couldn’t talk to your fellow. The guard was behind you, and if he heard you talk or move your head or [inaudible], he came and he hit you over the head. You sat there motionless. You didn’t get any food or anything to drink. When the interrogating officer called, a guard came and took you out to the room. 

I was taken to the room, and in the room there was this interrogating officer, who was now in a uniform. When they arrested — he was one of the arresting — he was in civilian clothes. He was an officer of the Gestapo. There was [also] a typist, a girl, and an interpreter. Since the interrogating officer knew that I spoke German, he was very rude to the interpreter. He told him, “Get lost. He speaks German, so we don’t need you here.” Then he started interrogating, questioning. Actually, they didn’t have anything they could hang on me. They didn’t find any leaflet; they didn’t find anything, and I didn’t admit that I was a member of the resistance movement. They didn’t know that. The only thing they were about [was] the friend of mine, and again I told them, as I told them when they first arrested me. 

So it was typed, and then the typed report was given to me for reading. I read it through, and then I had to sign it. I did sign it. Frankly, it was not incriminating to me at all, except that I knew this fellow. Then he called the guard, the guard took me again down to the cellar and to these common cells, and I had to sit until all of the prisoners were interrogated. Sometimes the interrogation went deep into the night, and sometimes until the next morning — of the other prisoners — and you had to sit until they took you back. They loaded you back into the truck, and then they took you to the prison. I was taken in the late afternoon back to the prison. In the meantime, you missed your food. You didn’t get any food in the prison. The food was meager as it was, but I still didn’t get anything that day to eat.

I can tell you one incident when I was awakened in the middle of the night by a Gestapo man. They came to our ward, they woke me up, and I had to interpret. They called 20 names out of different cells. These were hostages, and I think some of them knew the fate they faced. Most of them were very well educated. Some were professors of the Warsaw University, and some were engineers. Only one, I remember, was a criminal prisoner. All of them behaved with tremendous dignity. They didn’t plead or beg or anything, except this criminal prisoner. He fell to the floor and begged the SS man, kissed his boots, to spare him. Of course, they wouldn’t have anything of it. I had to interpret, and then they were taken outside to Warsaw and shot as hostages. So that’s the one experience I had in prison.

I spent five months in Pawiak Prison. During that time I had a girlfriend, who of course was not arrested, and somehow she managed to send me a parcel. How I knew that the parcel was from her, because I couldn’t communicate … you couldn’t write any letters, or anything like this. You could only send letters if a guard would take them on the sly; otherwise there was no possibility of communicating. But I know that this was from my girlfriend because she sent me also a small pillow, and I recognized the pillow, that it was from her. She sent me some food, but the food was always shared with others. Before it came to you, the parcel was very skimpy. But anyway, it was a sign that somebody did think about you.

As I said, I was five months in [inaudible]. April 4th, 1941 in the afternoon the whole prison population was called out into the yard. There were already tables set up and the Gestapo people with lists. They called the names of different prisoners. Once your name was called, you had to go to a different part of the yard and stand. My name was called, too, and I had to go. Those prisoners whose names were not called were then taken back to the cells. I think the capacity of the prison was around 800 prisoners, but there were over 2,000, or even more. 

They were preparing a transport, and the transport was over 1,000 prisoners. After the prisoners whose names were not called went back into the cells, then they issued us — I don’t remember exactly, but I think — half a loaf of bread, and we knew that we were going into a transport. Of course, we didn’t know where, but the word already was spreading in Warsaw and in the prison that there was a concentration camp by the Polish name of Oświęcim — in German, Auschwitz. Everybody dreaded it because the word was that it was an extermination camp. We all prayed that we were not going to that camp.

In the evening the big trucks arrived with SS guards, and also Warsaw municipal buses. We were loaded into these buses with shouts and with beatings, with the SS people beating us with bats and with bullwhips. We had to run into the trucks and the buses, and then [we were] taken to the western part of Warsaw, the western railroad station. There again we [inaudible]. We were loaded into the cattle cars, again with beatings, shouts, dogs. I don’t remember how many prisoners to a cattle car, but there was standing room only, and again, there was no water. The only thing was a big drum that served as a toilet. Probably around midnight, they locked the doors and the train moved. Of course, we didn’t know where we were going. 

The next morning we arrived somewhere at a siding. We heard some voices, shouts, and dogs barking. Then the doors were opened, and with shouts we were driven out of the cars. You had to jump out; there was no ramp. We were put in a formation, in rows of five prisoners and 20 rows to …

Interviewer: Tell me what you remember about the forming of the Jewish ghetto, and did you see anything when the ghetto was formed? Did you see people get rounded up?
ZAWACKI: Yes. The Jewish ghetto was started sometime in 1940. Prewar, there was a Jewish quarter in Warsaw; there was no ghetto. People could go freely back and forth, but most of the Jews concentrated in one section. The main street was Nowolipki, and as a matter of fact, the prison Pawiak in which I was, was right in the middle of the ghetto. The ghetto was formed, I don’t know exactly what month, but in 1940. At that time, there were orders given that all Jews had to go and register to go to the ghetto. Many Jews didn’t. They also, by law, had to wear armbands with the Star of David. In Warsaw they didn’t wear any Star of David on their jackets, but they had to have an armband with a blue Star of David.

Those who didn’t wear [one] could hide. They just didn’t wear. It’s true that some of them were betrayed, and they had to go into the ghetto. But there were gates, and you couldn’t go to the ghetto yourself. Nobody could. I think you had to have a special permit. I never did. Through the ghetto, for instance, there were trams, streetcars going through it, but they were separated. For instance, the streetcar tracks separated one part of the ghetto from the other one. In order to go from one part they built bridges, just provisional bridges made out of wood, wooden bridges, where the Jews could go through one part to another part. They could move around in the ghetto freely. That’s as much as I remember about the ghetto.

Interviewer: Tell me about this man, Doctor Eichner.
ZAWACKI: Yes. I lived in a house on Smulikowski Street, number 13. This house belonged to a Jewish owner, and I think if I remember correctly, his name was Wolanow [sp?], and he ran a lottery in Poland. The house was confiscated. On this street there were many other houses that were all confiscated. This Doctor Eichner, who was a lawyer, lived in this house in which I rented a room with a friend of mine from a Polish couple. I myself think that the owner of the apartment was Jewish, but he didn’t declare himself. He mostly lived with his parents who lived outside of Warsaw, and he stayed there. 

But we rented one room, and one day I was in front of the house, standing there, and a fellow came across twirling his walking stick and accidentally hit the windowsill of Dr. Eichner’s office. It was on the ground floor. As he twirled, quite accidentally. He walked inside because he was a friend of the lady where I lived. When he walked in, the doctor came to the window — the window was open; it was in the summer — he walked out, he saw me standing, and he said, “What happened here?” He was quite rude. I told him in German that a fellow was walking here twirling his [stick] and accidentally hit his windowsill. “Oh, sorry.” He calmed down then.

Another day I met him in the walkway from the house, and he stopped me and said, “How come you speak German so well?” I said, “Well, I learned at school, and I visited. I also had some relatives in the free state of Danzig, which was mostly where you had to speak German, and that’s how I learned.” He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m not doing anything.” I was a student. The universities were closed. The high schools were closed. You couldn’t learn. I said, “I don’t have any ….” “Well,” he said, “why don’t you come to my office, and I’ll see what I can do.” I said, “All right.” 

In a few days I went to his office, and he said, “Since a German authority ….” He was a German, and he came from the city of Breslau, which was in Silesia. He tried to speak Polish; he tried to learn Polish. When I came to his office he said, “The German authorities gave me six Jewish houses on this street” — because he had his office there, and he lived there as well — “for administration.” And he said, “Well, my practice, you know, doesn’t permit me to spend much time on it. Somebody has to administer these houses.” The administration, what it meant [was] to collect the rent and so on, and if there were any repairs, to have repairs done. 

I was already a member of the resistance, and I didn’t want to be accused of collaborating with the Germans or anything, so I went to my organization, and I told them I was offered this job. What do they think? Whether it is OK for me to take? Because I have to live; I didn’t have any other means. So they said, “Yes, it is OK. You can administer.” I took the job, and I administered these six houses. There was the house where I lived and the next few houses. Later on, the doctor got in touch with me, and he said, “You know what, the German authorities want me to take on the administration [of] 10,000 houses of confiscated Jewish property. Many of the apartment houses were owned by Jews. He said they were all confiscated, and they had to be administered. He said, “What do you think? Shall I undertake?” I said … well, I didn’t think about him, that he couldn’t do it. But it would give jobs to many Poles who could do it, and have a job and means to live.

So I said, “Yes, why not?” He said, “Do you think I will get these people to ….” I said, “I’m sure you will. You’ll have to advertise, and you will get many people who will try to help you and administer these houses.” Which he did. He did advertise. Matter of fact, my brother-in-law was a lawyer himself, but he was in a prisoner-of-war camp. Some of his friends knew me and met me in Warsaw. They came to me [and asked] whether I could help them to get these jobs. And they did. They did get [the jobs], and the 10,000 Jewish properties were administered mostly by Poles. Dr. Eichner had to have a big staff, and he employed one lawyer, also a Polish lawyer, who had to do all the hiring. Dr. Eichner also had a girlfriend who was Polish. 

After my arrest, I later on learned that he was shot; he was executed. Now, there were rumors that the Gestapo — because he was so friendly towards Poles — that he was executed by them. The other version is that he was executed by the resistance because he had Polish girlfriends. He was a married man, but his wife didn’t live with him. His wife remained in Breslau. I don’t know what the truth is; I wasn’t there, so I don’t know exactly what happened. I met his one girlfriend. It was quite an accident.

When I was in Rome in 1945 I came to the hotel, and as I walked into the hotel I saw this girl there. I recognized her right away. I said, “What happened?” and she told me the story about Eichner. I said, “How did you get out?” She was actually Ukrainian, or he gave her a Ukrainian pass because to be Polish, and be associating with Polish girls, was not in his best interest. It didn’t look very nice with the German authorities, so he made her Ukrainian. Actually, her father, I think, was a White Russian, and he was running away from the communists. When I met her in Rome, her parents were with her. How they got out of Rome [was] because during the war, Italy was one of the Axis members. They …

Interviewer: I’m sorry. I think we’re almost out of tape anyway [coughing]. I want you to tell me what you know about what happened to the rent money.
ZAWACKI: The rent money?

Interviewer: To the rent money that you administered.
ZAWACKI: Yes, the rent money went to him. He was getting 10% of the take. If there was 2,000 zloty, he got 200. It was 10%. The 10% we split 50-50. In other words, he gave me 5%, and he took 5%. That was the deal. 

Interviewer: Where did the rest of the money go?
ZAWACKI: To the German authorities. Yes. I had to put it in a bank. I only deposited 90%. The 10% went split between us 50-50. 5% to me and 5% to him. That was my money. That’s how it worked. But after we got the 10,000 houses, I don’t know how it worked. I don’t know what the deal was. This was private because he lived on the street, and the houses were all on this one street where he lived.

Interviewer: You mean it was a private deal between him and the German authorities?
ZAWACKI: I suppose so, yes. The other deal with the 10,000 houses, that was probably a separate deal, a different deal, and how it was worked, I don’t know.

Interviewer: To begin, if you could just give me the date and then opening the doors of the cattle cars in Auschwitz, and just start at that point and describe to me what happened.
ZAWACKI: OK. Are we on?

When they opened the cattle car, it was now April 5, 1941. We were driven out of the cattle cars and put in rows of five, and 20 rows of five made 100 prisoners. And the next hundred, and so on. Then we were surrounded by the guards with the dogs and marched. We marched maybe 15, 20 minutes, and then we came to a gate. Of course, we still didn’t know where we were. We came to a gate, and on the top of the gate was a sign, which read “Arbeit Macht Frei,” which means “Work will make you free.” On the side — later on we found out [it] was the guardhouse — on the side there was a sign which read, “KL Auschwitz.” “KL” stands for Konzentrationslager Auschwitz. Then, of course, we knew that we were in Auschwitz, the place we dreaded most. 

Once they opened the gate, we marched in. We were met by some, as I said, sinister looking characters, wearing something like navy cops or sailors wear. Navy blue jackets and striped trousers with high boots. Later on we found out that this was the Lagerältester, which means he was the camp senior. He was a German criminal prisoner. His name was Number One. His name, as I mentioned before, was Bruno Brodniewicz, and he wore an armband, a yellow armband with red lettering on which it says, “Lagerältester.” Then there were some other prisoners in striped uniforms with armbands. Some had “Blockältester” which means block senior, and we were marched to the showers. 

There we had to undress, and we were shaved all over our bodies, including our heads. Then we had to go into a tank, which was full of some chemicals, disinfectants. We had to submerge in it. From there we went to the showers, and we had to wash. When we came out of the showers, we had to put our civilian clothes … because when we came from the prison we were still in civilian clothes. It was packed in a bag, in a paper bag with our number. Of course, we didn’t have a number then. But after the showers, then we were issued the prison uniforms. We got long underwear, striped blue and white stripes, but very, very narrow, and underwear. Then we received striped, one-inch wide stripes, white and blue, trousers and jackets, and a cap, also striped. Then we were issued two swatches of white cloth with a number — my number was 13,390 — and two red triangles. A red triangle indicated that we were political prisoners. These numbers and the triangles we later on had to sew on our jackets, on the left-hand side of the jacket, the triangle first, and underneath the number. On the right-hand side of the trouser leg, again the triangle at the top and the number at the bottom. The numbers were assigned also to our civilian clothes, which we had to pack in a bag that was then stored in special storage rooms. 

Again we were put, I don’t know whether 100 or 50 or what, and we were taken over by a Blockältester, which means a block senior. The block senior walked us to the block, and we were assigned a block. I remember that my block assignment was number seven. At that time, the numbers changed constantly because the camp was in constant construction. The camp was the former barracks of a Polish pre-war artillery unit, and this site was chosen for the camp. This block number seven was a one-story brick building, and the Blockältester, his name was … I don’t know his name, but he was called “Bloody Alois.” His first name was Alois. Bloody Alois. He wore also a red triangle, and he came from Sachsenhausen. He was a German, apparently a German communist. He was the most brutal person one can imagine — to kill for him a prisoner didn’t mean anything. That’s why he was called Bloody Alois. 

We were taken to this block, and I was assigned to — there were only four rooms on this block — this huge room, I don’t know the size, but probably maybe 50 feet by 20 or so, a huge room. In charge of each room was a “room elder” [Stubenälteste], and most of them were already Polish prisoners. The block elders were all Germans. I was assigned to this room, and he was a Polish fellow, I forgot his name. There were no beds; only in one part of the room there was a pile of straw, and next to it were a few blankets. In the night the straw was spread over the whole floor of the room, and we had to lie there one next to another in many rows. We had the blankets, one blanket maybe for three prisoners. 

The day started at dawn [and went] to dusk. Even before the dawn we had to get up, and we had to run out of the block. In front of the block, there were small wooden pails of water, and everybody had to wash in this water. Maybe 10, 20 prisoners washed in the same water. You just splashed; there was no means of cleaning your teeth or anything like that. In the mornings you got half a liter of some liquid which they called either “coffee” or “tea.” It had the color of coffee and the color of tea, but it was some substitute. That’s all you got in the morning. Then you went to work, and there were three roll calls at the time when I came, three roll calls of the prisoners a day. One was in the morning, one was at noontime, and one in the evening.

After the morning tea, you went to work. Those like myself when I first came, of course were assigned to the worst possible jobs. You had to dig for the foundations. I myself had to carry the wheelbarrows full of earth some 300 yards away. All the work had to be done on the double. You had to run with it, and while you were running with this wheelbarrow, you were shouted at and beaten. Then you had to come back and get another load, and again. The foremen mostly were all Germans at that time, and they beat you for no reason whatsoever. Of course, doing such exhausting work, you just couldn’t do it for long. At one time I was also assigned to the lumberyard, where I had to chop wood and saw wood, and you were exposed to the elements, whether rain or shine, snow or not. You just had to work. 

At noontime we did get a liter of soup, watery soup. For a long time we had nothing but turnip soup. Very seldom did you see a piece of potato, not to mention meat or anything like that. In the evening we received one-third of a loaf of bread, dark bread. We received a small cube of margarine, the size that you get in the restaurant sometimes. We also got a slice, maybe a quarter-of-an-inch-wide slice of sausage, second quality sausage, and a teaspoon of substitute marmalade. Also this coffee or tea, or whatever they called it. And that was our food for the day. I don’t know how many calories it was, but it was starvation rations. I myself always ate the bread. I never saved it for the morning because many times prisoners who did save … the bread was stolen, and then they didn’t have anything, so I ate mine in the evening. Didn’t leave anything; didn’t have any bread in the morning.

The punishment if they caught you stealing other prisoners’ bread and you were caught — it was a death sentence. You were killed. Either the room elder or the block elder told the kapo, because when you went to work, the kapos were in charge of you. They told them that this fellow had stolen bread from another prisoner. He was killed; they brought him back from work dead. That was an unwritten rule in the camp. You never stole from another prisoner because you deprived him of his livelihood. 

Interviewer: Tell me about the different triangles.
ZAWACKI: There were six main colors of triangles, indicating the different kind of prisoners. As I said, the red was [for] political prisoners. Most of the Poles had political. Then there was a red triangle on top of a yellow triangle, but reversed so that it formed a Star of David. This was a designation of Jews. There were Jews at the time. At the beginning they were in small numbers, but there were Jews. Then there was a green triangle, [which] indicated a criminal prisoner, and they were mostly Germans. There was a black triangle, which indicated an anti-social element, in cases of women — prostitutes, and men — pimps, and so on. Then there was pink triangle, which indicated homosexuals. There was a lavender color, which indicated Bible scientists and those who were opposed to war, pacifists and so on. Jehovah’s Witnesses, they wore this lavender or purple color. They were the most, I would say, decently treated of all the prisoners. So these were the main six different colors of triangles. With the Jews it was the two triangles reversed. [Red] on yellow.

Interviewer: And the Jews were right with you at the beginning?
ZAWACKI: Yes, we all went together. We all went on one block; there was no difference. Later on, when the big numbers of Jews started coming to Auschwitz, actually to Birkenau, they were mostly in Birkenau. Maybe I should tell you what constituted Auschwitz. [In] Auschwitz there were three main camps. One was Auschwitz I, which was the camp that was called “Stamlager” or “Mother Camp.” Then there was Birkenau or Auschwitz II, which was, I would say, a mile and a half away from Auschwitz I. This was a huge camp. The capacity of Auschwitz I, where I was, was probably 30,000, maybe over 30,000 prisoners, but Birkenau camp was built to hold 200,000 prisoners, and Birkenau also had a women’s camp. 

[The] women’s camp, and the barracks in Birkenau in the men’s camp and the gypsies’ camp — because there were gypsies — were all wooden barracks; actually, they were horse barracks for the German army. There were no windows in them. The women’s camp was only one-story barracks, and I was able to visit it once. The conditions were appalling, absolutely appalling. The mud was more than ankle deep, and the poor women wore wooden shoes. They came open here … actually slippers, like wooden slippers. They lost them in the mud; they couldn’t get them out. It was just … and the barracks, they were just unbelievable. Filth. It’s still standing now. I visited the camp a few times after the war. It’s still standing. The Birkenau men’s camp is not [still standing] because it was all wooden, and somebody set fire to it. Only the chimneys are standing. 

Interviewer: How did you happen to go to the women’s camp?
ZAWACKI: I worked in the workshops, and later on, I went to work as a carpenter. I was no carpenter, but they took me later on to work in the office, in the carpentry. I was promoted and became the chief clerk of all the workshops, which consisted of the electricians, locksmiths, carpenters, joiners, glaziers, roofers — all the trades were there. So I became the chief clerk of this, and later on I became also the … they transferred me from the workshop itself to the central construction offices, where they employed architects, engineers, draftsmen. I was there; the workshops had their own room. 

I was sitting [in the office] with an SS man and a civilian German. As such, I was able to go to the camp because I asked. I wanted to see the conditions. The different craftsmen had to go to this camp if there were repairs to be made, if for instance, something went wrong with the electricity, or something needed to be done by the joiners or by the carpenters. I was able, once there was a need to go to the camp. The fellow in the office, another clerk, a friend of mine with whom I escaped, he made out a pass and he put my name [on it]. I went with him and the SS who took us — because you couldn’t go there without a guard — he didn’t care who he took, which prisoner, was I a real craftsman or not. I went there; that’s how I was able to go, and I saw the conditions. That was the only one time I was [there], but there were many other people — carpenters and electricians and so on — who went daily, and they were telling about the conditions there. That’s how I was able to go there and see.

The camp was in constant building. When I first came, I was on Block 7. This block later on was razed, and another story was put up on it. Later on it became number 14. Then it became Block number 22. There were 28 blocks in the Mother Camp, 28 blocks, and they went from one on one side to 11. Block 11 was called the “Death Block.” It was the bunker block, and there was a yard and there was a death wall against which prisoners were shot in the back of the head. There were standing bunkers where four people … the cell was three feet by three feet, and there was only a door at the bottom of this. The prisoners had to crawl in and stand up, and four of the prisoners in this small bunker were locked up for the night. There were, I think, six such standing bunkers. Mostly they were put there, and without any food, then only the bodies were pulled out from the … and burned. There were other cells where … and other instruments of torture where people went. Anybody who went to Block 11 seldom came out alive.

Now the women’s camp, at one time it was actually in Auschwitz itself. The 11 blocks that were on the eastern side of the camp were all partitioned with barbed wire, and this was a women’s camp. Then the conditions there for the women were quite decent, but they didn’t last long. They were only put there until they built the camp in Birkenau. Once this was built, then they went back there. Also, after the invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941 — I don’t know exactly, I think either it was in October or November — the part of nine blocks was separated again by barbed wire. The gate was put on, and on this gate they wrote, “Prisoner of War Camp.” The Russian prisoners were brought there, and there were approximately 11,000 of them. Out of the 11,000, by I think December of that year, only maybe 1,000 survived. The rest were all dead. Most of them were dead by starvation, by typhus, and by beatings. The bodies of these Russian prisoners were stacked six feet high because they didn’t have the capacity to burn the bodies. 

The one crematorium which was in Auschwitz I was the smallest of all the crematoriums, and it just couldn’t burn the bodies fast enough. Next to the crematorium in Auschwitz was a small gas chamber. People were gassed. Of course, the biggest crematoriums were in Auschwitz II and Birkenau. This crematorium in Auschwitz was designated number I, and then there were numbers II, III, IV, and V in Birkenau. There the capacity was much greater, much greater, especially the gas chambers. They had the capacity of 2,000 or even more prisoners. All people could be gassed in one sitting, and there were four of them. So approximately 10,000 people could be gassed in a matter of a few hours. The gassing was not the problem; the problem was the disposing of the bodies because the capacity of the ovens was quite limited. That’s why many of the bodies were burned in ditches, or they were burned in stacks, and disposed this way.

Since we are [talking] about gassing, the first gassing actually took place in Auschwitz camp itself. It was the gassing of some 600 Russian prisoners of war and some Polish prisoners. It was, of course, after the invasion of Russia by Hitler. I think it was approximately in September of 1941. We were all called back from our workplaces to the camp. Maybe I should also explain how the compound itself was only for the prisoners to go for the night to sleep. The compound, as I said, in Auschwitz I was 28 blocks. It was surrounded by two rows of electrified barbed wire and by towers with guards with machine guns. On the east and south sides, there was also a maybe 10-foot-high concrete wall because next to the east there was a public road, which of course, they didn’t want anybody to see the camp from the south … I lost myself now.

Interviewer: You were all brought back to camp.
ZAWACKI: We were all brought back to the camp one afternoon, and we had to go on the blocks. They told us that nobody could go to the windows and look out. Anybody [who] would be caught would be killed. The guards were all over the camp, and we didn’t know what was going on. We found out later on the next day because the pallbearers told us. They were prisoners who had to remove the bodies. Apparently 600 Russian prisoners — I think they were all officers — most of them were all political kommissars. They were taken to Block 11, the Death Block, and put into the cellars. The cellars were sealed off. There were half windows. The half windows were covered with dirt in order to make them gas-tight, and then they were gassed there. 

In the night the bodies were removed by the pallbearers and taken to crematorium number I in Auschwitz, and they were burned. From the pallbearers we learned that they were Russian officers or soldiers. Among them, there were also some 200 Polish prisoners who were gassed. That was the first gassing which was performed. Later on, there were gassings in the small gas chamber in Auschwitz. I once was witness, not to the gassing itself — because nobody, only the prisoners who worked there — but the block I was on was number 22 later on, which was the nearest to the crematorium. 

You couldn’t see the whole of the crematorium, only part of it. You could only see the foreyard of the crematorium. There was a gate, and then there was a small yard. To this, from our windows where we were at the far end of this block, I saw myself a truck arrived. It backed out to the gate to the small yard, and Jews had to — only men — they arrived from the truck and were put into the yard, and there they had to undress. How do I know that they were Jews? Because they were Hasidic Jews; they wore special dress, mostly black hats and black on their head, and most of them had beards. Later on, we also found out from the crematorium people who had to burn the bodies that they were Jews from the Polish city of Będzin, which was in Silesia, not far from Auschwitz. These people had to undress, and then they disappeared. I couldn’t see that, but they all went to the gas chambers, and they were gassed.

As I worked in the carpentry at that time, and then in the workshops, I had to take orders. The orders came to me, and I had to distribute the orders to the different workshops, whether it was an order for the locksmith, or an order for the carpenters, or for the glaziers, or for the electricians, and so on. There were orders coming, for instance, for gas-tight doors, and there were drawings [of] how the doors should look, what they should look like. The doors were approximately three inches, maybe three-and-a-half inches thick. They were insulated inside with some gas-proof material. I don’t know what it was. I think it was wool, some wool. The edges of the door they were this way [gestures to describe], and the edge was felt, how do you say?

Interviewer: Padded.
ZAWACKI: Yes. In the middle of the door was a visor open with glass on both sides because, as I said, the doors were three, three-and-a-half inches thick. There were two bolts, and through this … then the ray [?], when they gave the order, read “vier zonderbehandlen der Juden.” It means “for special treatment of Jews.” I never came across where they talked about a final solution. They always referred to it as “zonderbehandlen der Juden,” the special treatment of Jews. Of course, we knew it was the same thing as the final solution. If somebody today tries to say that it didn’t exist, so why did you need the gas-tight doors? Anybody who wants to deny it is either ignorant or wicked.

Interviewer: How many of those doors were there? Many?
ZAWACKI: Quite a few. The first door was done for the crematorium for the gas chamber in Auschwitz, and then there were the other ones in Birkenau. I don’t know how many all together, but at least, as far as I know, probably at least five. Five doors. I’m now sorry because when I went back to Auschwitz, I had to keep a register, a big book. I had to register it. Every order which came in had to be registered. It was my job. And when I went back, I’m sure, had I seen it right away, I would have taken it with me and then from there you would be able to find out how many doors there were. But I remember. If I had a drawing board or something, I could draw exactly what the door looked like because I remember it so well. So, now maybe you want to ask …

Interviewer: Yes. Why don’t I ask you. You mentioned an incident about Russian POWs …
ZAWACKI: Yes, that’s what I wanted to say. I was a witness because at that time I became a clerk on the block. It was Block 25A. 25A was right next to the camp kitchen. At that time there was a small yard in front of the kitchen. One day, it was in the morning, when all the commanders went to work. Only the people in the rooms and the clerk were on the block. We saw through the window, because it was on the second floor, that the SS brought out tables and there were some papers on it. We knew something was going on. Later on, they brought maybe 100 men. They were stripped to the waist, but you could see from the trousers that they were soldiers. As I said later on, we did find out that they were Russian soldiers. It was also after the invasion, after June 22, 1941. I think it was in August. They were registered or questioned, or whatever, the SS. You couldn’t be conspicuous and look through the window with your nose next to the pane. You couldn’t do it. You only could do it from afar. 

They were taking some evidence of them, and later on they were taken to a sandpit that was behind the kitchen, already outside the compound. Near the guardhouse was a sandpit. The sand was used for construction. They were taken out, and the SS, only the SS, in the most vicious way they were killed. They were killed by — and this I saw with my own eyes — they were killed by being hit by spades. They split their heads. They were told to lie down, and they put the handles of the spades over their throats, and they stood on each end of it and suffocated them. Or they were put on the edge of the pit and then kicked in the groin. When they fell down, they took big stones and they threw them. Of course, I couldn’t see because they were down in the pit, but I saw the SS throwing the big stones on them. Then there was a small narrow-gauge wagon on which they loaded the sand to be taken to the construction site. They loaded this with the sand, and then they told the prisoners to lie down next to these wagons where they could turn over. Then they turned over, and the whole load of sand was put and they buried them alive. That I saw. That was the most horrible thing I ever saw.

[Pauses, then resumes.]

I couldn’t tell, and nobody really knew … at that time, they probably killed half of these 100 men before noon. Then, of course, they had to go to lunch, the SS. After lunch they killed the rest of them. They were all killed; they were not shot or anything. They were murdered, the most brutal way.

Interviewer:  By a small handful of SS?
ZAWACKI: Pardon?

Interviewer: How many SS?
ZAWACKI: Oh, I couldn’t tell you. I just don’t know. Not too many SS men. No. Not too many. We heard that there were also kommissars. Some of them, at least to me, some of them looked … had Semitic features. Maybe they were Jews. I don’t know. Because the viciousness which they displayed, the SS, you can’t imagine. You can’t imagine.

Interviewer: You told of another incident where you mentioned a pretty heroic act by Father Kolbe?
ZAWACKI: Oh, yes. Father Kolbe. Yes. I was on the block. It was quite soon after I arrived in Auschwitz. Of course, I didn’t know Father Kolbe then. I didn’t know him from Adam. Nobody really knew who you were unless you had close friends who you knew from outside before you went to prison. Otherwise you didn’t know who your next neighbor was, unless you got friendly. Anyway, a prisoner escaped, and at that time there was a collective responsibility. If a prisoner escaped from a work unit or he was stationed on this block, then they were taking hostages, mostly ten or 20 hostages for the escape. In this instance the prisoner escaped, and the camp commandant … he was [the commandant] only of Auschwitz, not the top commandant. His name was Fischer. He came after the roll call in the evening, came through the … because the prisoner was stationed on our block, on this block, and he came to select the ten hostages. We had to stand in ten rows. He went one row through another, and I don’t know what decided him, but he picked out. He said, “You step out.” He looked you in the eyes. He looked in my eyes and passed me up. He looked into somebody else’s eyes and … anyway, he selected ten at that time, ten prisoners. 

One of the selected prisoners was a Polish sergeant in the army who was married and had children. He was lamenting that he never will see his children or his wife. At that moment, a man stepped out and said that he would like to take his place, to save him. The commandant agreed, and this fellow went back into the row and survived. The other man died of starvation. Later on we found out that — of course, at that time I didn’t know — it was Father Kolbe who was later on canonized, and I think maybe he’s already a saint. The fellow whose place he took, his name was Guyow Nichek [sp?], and he survived the camp. I don’t know whether he’s still alive or not, but that was the incident. I was there. Yes, I do remember it vividly.

When we came [to Auschwitz], the commandant was Fischer. When we arrived, he made a big speech to us all. It was translated by a translator. Of course, he spoke in German. He said, “You are here for the duration of the war.” The next sentence he said, “The only way out of this camp is with the smoke through the chimney of the crematorium.” Once he said this we all felt that the whole world [had] collapsed around us because there was no escape. The only escape was through the chimney with the smoke of the crematorium, and of course, for many Jews that was the only way.

Interviewer: In any of the work that you did, did anyone do any sabotage or any resistance that you remember?
ZAWACKI: No. Well, not that I know. I can tell you this. The terror was extreme. We lived in constant fear because you never were sure what the next moment could bring. To me anyway, it was the biggest uncertainty. The uncertainty in the life. In the camp. You could have been safe in your work because you worked, and the SS man in charge may have been quite decent treating you, but once you came back to the camp, you didn’t know. In the camp there was the so-called political department, which was the camp’s Gestapo. You didn’t know what they had in mind. For instance, the worst thing [was] when you went to the hospital; you were sick, and you were emaciated. They took you to the gas chambers because they didn’t want to waste any food on you anymore.

There were, I tell you, the ways of killing people. There were the mass killings. The gassing was the biggest one. Then there was the injection, where they injected you in the heart. They injected you with phenol, a chemical that causes instant death. Then there were, of course, executions by shooting. You were shot in the back of your head at the death wall. But before the death wall was built, the shootings were executions by firing squads. It was done in the sandpits and gravel pits outside the camp. Many times, when we stood at the evening roll call, the prisoners were taken out of the Death Block, Block 11. At one time it was number 13, but the numbers were constantly changing. 

They had bound their hands with wires in the back of them, and they walked through the camp to the gravel pit behind the camp, and then they were shot by firing squads. That was done later on. They were shot, I don’t know for what reason, maybe it was [because] they wasted too much time. They were shot just against the wall in the death yard, against the death wall. They were shot from a small caliber rifle, and they were shot. Always one of the prisoners took the victims who had to be shot by the arms, one on left arm and right arm, and led them towards the wall. The SS man, the executioner, came from the back and shot first one and then the other one, and then they were thrown on the piles. This ground was soaked with blood two meters deep. Afterwards, when the camp was liberated, they dug it up. They had to dig two meters deep to get the blood out of this place. 

How many were shot? One person, it was Palitzsch. I think his first name was Gerhard [yes, that’s the name]. He was the rapportführer, and he was the executioner. At the time when I was the clerk on the block, you saw him with his rifle under his arm walking to Block 11, which meant that there would be execution. The executions were almost daily. Every day, one way or the other. Later on, the gassing was every day. The shootings were every day. The injections were given almost daily. You could see him going  … in other words, one knew that there would be execution. The small caliber rifle was used because it didn’t make too much sound; it wasn’t very loud. Apparently, it must have been very effective. 

There were others who did executions. There was another rapportführer; his name was Oswald Kaduk. Palitzsch apparently got in trouble with the authorities, and he was later on sent to … that’s what I hear, this is only from hearing; I have no knowledge otherwise. Apparently his family, his wife and two children, were bombed and killed in bombing raids, and he apparently got friendly with a Jewess in the Birkenau camp, and he was found out. Then he was sent to fight the partisans. Because of this great service, which he rendered to the German camp, he was not executed, but he was sent to fight the partisans in Yugoslavia, and he was killed. That’s what we heard.

This other, Oswald Kaduk, was caught and tried in East Germany. He was sentenced to death, but then it was commuted to life. Afterwards, there were other things, which they tried to try him [for] in West Germany, and he was taken to West Germany and tried again. I think the trial went for many, many years, and there were many witnesses called from Poland. I don’t know whether he’s free or whether he’s still in prison. Didn’t know. That was, I think, one of the last trials which was conducted.

Interviewer: Tell me what it meant to be one of the older prisoners in camp. Tell me about life expectancy in the camp.
ZAWACKI: The life expectancy of a new arrival was between two to three months; it depended, of course, on the work — if you had a very heavy [job], and of course new arrivals always got the worst jobs. The heaviest jobs, like digging under foundations and carrying bricks and doing very heavy-duty load, on the food which we received, they couldn’t exist longer than two, three months. If you were lucky, like I suppose I was, that I did meet a friend of mine who was already an established prisoner because he came with the first transport and was able to get a job as a groom to the SS horses, officers’ horses. Therefore, he was able to share some of the food that the horses received, which was more than the prisoners did, like potatoes and carrots, and even sugar, although the sugar was discolored. But they had means of cleaning it. 

They could survive, and because of him I was able to survive, because he introduced me to the master of carpentry, and I was able to work in the carpentry shop. But other people who were unable and who had to work these hard labors just couldn’t possibly survive more than two, three months. Those who were emaciated were called Muselmann, and they lost all will to life. They walked like in a daze, and with one finger you could push them, and they fell over and never got up. It was a terrible sight. One of my friends who was arrested with me, he died. He didn’t survive. I met him once, and I couldn’t do anything to help him. He died; he became a Muselmann and perished.

Interviewer: So if you had lived for a long time, you gained respect.
ZAWACKI: Yes. The respect was even the SS. The German guards respected anybody well respected. They had a certain respect because they saw that anybody [who] was able to survive three months and longer, then he must be a person of strong character and strong will and good physical condition. They did. They had a certain respect. I would say, yes, they did. Of course, there was … among prisoners, when you were an old prisoner, you were also trusted, that if you survived the first few months, that you must be of good character and be able to conduct yourself in a manner. 

There were, of course, some prisoners who did survive because of their brutality, not only all bad German criminal prisoners who were in charge, kapos and so on. Later on, I think, when the German war machine was slowing down, some of the German prisoners were called up to the German army, and they apparently formed some special units. The kapos later on and the block elders, they were either Polish or Czech — there were also some Jewish in the Jewish camp; in Birkenau there were Jews. Now, some behaved honorably and some didn’t. 

There were … like one of the prisoners in Auschwitz I camp who did the injections, killing; [he] was a Polish prisoner who did it. His name was Peinshtick [sp?]. Everybody knew about it, but nobody could do … what happened, he was transferred later on to another camp, and then he was killed. These were the unwritten rules of the camp, that you better behave yourself because eventually somebody will get you. There was another prisoner who was also tried. I told about this Kaduk, a rapportführer. He was a block elder in Auschwitz I, and later on he became a block leader in the punishment company. There was a company where you went as a punishment. You seldom came out once you went to this company. He behaved badly, and he was arrested in West Germany and tried. I don’t know what the result was, whether he’s free now or not. 

And there were many informers among the prisoners. There were not only German informers; there were Polish informers. It was a fight for survival. Some did it by honest means, and others couldn’t care less how they achieved this. But I would say anybody who survived for a long time was trusted, and that’s how, for instance, we could arrange our escape from the camp because we knew all the prisoners, and we trusted them and they trusted us. We more or less knew who the informers were, once you were that long in the camp. You knew who to avoid and who not, who you could trust and to whom you could speak, and so on.

Interviewer: Let’s cut for just one second. 
ZAWACKI: Could I tell you that I contracted typhus?

Interviewer: Yes, but I think we ought to … yes, let’s do typhus and then go on.
ZAWACKI: Yes. At one time … typhus was always, but there was an epidemic in 1942. It was a great epidemic of typhus. It was the spotted fever. I contracted it, and I went to the hospital, what they called a hospital, in the camp. It was so bad that later on … you know, we had bunks, and there were three-tiered bunks. In the hospital there were also three-tiered bunks, and they were approximately three feet wide, and on them many times three prisoners, three sick people had to lie. Two in this way, and one in the legs [gestures]. It was terrible. I contracted it, too, and I was for 16 days in high fever. Apparently my constitution was quite good, and I didn’t lose consciousness. But I didn’t eat through the whole sixteen days. All I did get was hot water, boiled water to drink. 

I was for the next three weeks in convalescence. Then I was released one afternoon, and I don’t know, maybe I had a friend doctor who I knew, Dr. Feikel. After I got out and was in convalescence, he gave me two injections of glucose. That’s the only medication I did get, to strengthen me. Then, as I said, one afternoon I was released, and the reason for it I don’t know, but maybe the doctor knew something or not. I was released in the afternoon, and I was so happy that I was now out of the [hospital] and I tried to run. I didn’t realize how weak I was. I couldn’t lift my feet, and I fell right on my face. Then I went on the block. The next morning, around 6:00am in the morning or 7:00am, the trucks came through the hospital, and all the patients, whether in convalescence, all still sick, were loaded on these trucks and taken to the gas chambers, and they were all gassed. They were not all Jewish; there were Christians and Poles and Czechs, and many, many different nationalities; they were all there, and all taken and gassed. I avoided it just by some maybe 12, 13 hours. I avoided being gassed.

Interviewer: You don’t know if somebody saved you?
ZAWACKI: I don’t know. Maybe the doctor knew, and they released me because I was the only one released, and I don’t know why. I suppose it was fate, or somebody just knew something.

Interviewer: What happened, sometime around late in 1943, I think it was, that you decided, even though escape was impossible, that you would look into that. Tell me what happened, how it led up to that.
ZAWACKI: I was thinking about escaping. Matter of fact, the first day I was arrested, when I was taken to the prison and we were in the entrance hall, I already thought then that I’d just walk out because I did speak German. I said maybe I’d be able to talk myself out, and I wanted to go to the gate, but I didn’t. I didn’t know enough how the workings of it were, but then when I came to Auschwitz, at the beginning I didn’t think it because you were so hungry, and you just couldn’t gather your thoughts. All you were thinking about [was] how to survive.

But later on, when I more or less became acquainted, I got together with a friend of mine, and we were thinking about escaping. We did have a plan, and we did prepare for it. Of course, preparations were where you had to involve many people and trust many people. Now in the camp there were some crafts, which couldn’t be performed by prisoners because they were specialty things, which had to be done. Therefore, they did employ outside people from the … Polish workers, and these workers were more-or-less free to mingle with the prisoners, and some prisoners did mingle with them and were able to talk and exchange information from the outside. Some of them were even able to send letters to their families from outside. They did. Some were caught, and if a civilian person was caught, they were brought to the camp or they were executed right away. So they were taking great chances. 

But anyway, so we did; one of the fellows made the contact. There were four of us who planned to escape. We wanted to escape as civilian workers, and we did prepare the passes. They were of course forged, and our photographs were drawings, and then taken the photograph, by a lens. Somebody brought a lens and we made the photograph of these drawings, not of us. It couldn’t be done. That’s what we put on the passes, and then the civilians also brought bicycles. What they did, they came on a bicycle and left the bicycle in this spot. It was not covered in the joiners; there were small places where they could be hidden in the joiners. They left them, and they brought four bikes because the four of us wanted to escape. They also brought four civilian clothes. And we also were able to prepare toupees. They were very crudely made. I don’t know who made them, but anyway, they were. Then we decided that we’re going to go out of the camp. At that time when we planned, there was no more collective responsibility. In other words, nobody would have suffered because of our escape. We didn’t want anybody to be starved to death because we escaped. We didn’t think in these terms. We thought that if we do, we didn’t want anybody to suffer for us.

So when the day came that we escaped, we wanted to go with the other workers, and comingle and go in one group, and then show the passes, and I’m sure the guards wouldn’t check each pass separately, closely. And when the time came to quit, which was … the workers had to leave by 5:00. We went to the shed. It was the shed where we changed the clothes into the civilian. This one fellow who actually made all the contacts with the civilians because he was in a position to do it, he just didn’t show up in the shed to change, so then one of my friends changed back into the prison and went to see where, what’s happening. Then he came, and he was shaking like a leaf. He just couldn’t contain himself. He was mumbling. He said, “I’m sorry. I can’t make it.” He said, “I cannot do it. I just can’t take the risk.”

So then we had to abandon it. We again changed into our prison garb, and now we were afraid about him, whether he is not going to tell on us. If we wanted, we could have eliminated him because of the lies. We could have infected him with typhus, and he knew it. If he wants, he went to the hospital. The doctors were all Polish or Jewish or Czech or what, and they were friends of ours. They would have taken care of him, but he promised us, he said that he cannot do it, but he’s not going to do any harm to us. If we want to go in a different way, he said to trust him. And we did. We did trust him. And we had to change our plans. 

Then apparently, somebody must have known that we were planning to escape. Then the other group came, and they approached us whether we wouldn’t go in a different way. The different way was to acquire SS uniforms and take prisoners out to work outside the camp. That’s how we started planning. Some of the people who were involved had connections. One of the prisoners had connections with the people because everywhere I worked, prisoners, everywhere. Only the top authorities were the Germans, but otherwise the inside organization of it was all in the prisoners’ hands. They were all in the offices. Everything, the whole evidence, everything was kept by the prisoners. Doctors, everything. So we decided that we [would] escape as SS guards and take four prisoners out to work, outside the camp. Since my friend and myself spoke quite decent German, we were picked to be the SS people. Some of the friends who were involved had friends who worked in the storage rooms where they stored the SS uniforms. They were able to smuggle out of the storage rooms one pair of trousers, and then a second pair of trousers, then a jacket, then another one, then a cap, then a second cap, then a belt, and the second belt. This was brought in, and it was stored in my friend’s who was supposed to change in the SS uniform with me who had a small studio. He was a carver and a sculptor, and he had a small studio. He was not bothered by anybody, by the SS, because he worked for them. He sculpted things for them for which they sometimes gave him some bread and some sausage. They took these things and probably sold it or kept it, sent it home. 

So we stored it in his small studio, and then when the time came to escape, we transferred it to the lumberyard. Actually it was not only a lumberyard, but all the building materials were stored in this place. It was called bauhof [building yard]. In the barrack where the lumber was kept there were three friends of ours, and they hid the uniforms there. These uniforms they then put the insignia [on] because we didn’t want to go out as just ordinary SS men; we wanted to go as NCOs in order that we were able to carry side arms, of course. Any SS man who was taking out people to work, outside, had to be armed. Not only armed, had to have a special permit. But I’ll come back later to it. 

The arms, of course, was an impossibility for us to obtain, but we again had friends who worked in the saddlery workshops, and we were able to obtain two holsters for which we then made dummy pistols out of wood. One of our friends knew somebody in the saddlery, and he approached him with a concocted story that the chief of the carpenters and workshops, who was an SS man by the name of Alfred Shinner [sp?] had his birthday coming up and his holster was rather shabby, whether he would make a new holster for him. The fellow said yes. Of course, everything was done for a piece of bread, and a piece of sausage if you could obtain it. He said yes he would do it, but what size is the pistol? We said we can’t ask him to give us the pistol so that you could make the holster. We said the normal size, just make one. 

So he said OK, but don’t blame me if it doesn’t fit. Of course, that was the whole idea, that it wouldn’t fit because we needed two. So no matter what he would do, it wouldn’t be the right size. And he made this one holster. We told him, “No, I’m sorry. It is too small. Will you make a larger one?” Again for a piece of bread. So he made another one, and then we had the two holsters. As I said, for the two holsters, this sculptor man made dummies out of wood, dummy pistols. The holsters were open in the back, and of course you could see whether there was a real pistol or not, but since the camp, especially in the winter, was a rather damp place — Auschwitz was a damp place — the SS always wrapped the back of the pistol in a black cloth so that you couldn’t see from the back if there was a real pistol or not. So we did the same thing, and nobody knew whether there was a real pistol or not. 

Then the SS needed a pass to take prisoners out to work. The passes were issued by the issuing SS officer, and they were of different color for different days. Again, one of our fellows who were escaping with us knew a fellow prisoner who worked in the printing office. The printer gave him some blank forms in different colors. Now, the day we wanted to escape, which was — matter of fact, in six days it will be the 50th anniversary. On the 28th of September, 1944. When we came to issue these blanks, the color was pale blue; we looked through our blanks, and we didn’t have a pale blue, the nearest to it was pale green. We said, “Well, we’ll take the pale green; we’ll take a chance.” I knew who the issuing officer was, and I did it in my office. 

Of course, we needed a stamp to stamp the … again the sculptor, the carver, he carved the stamp out of very soft wood, and he made a very good facsimile of it. I tested it on a piece of paper in my office on an inkpad, and it came very good facsimile. So on the 28th I did fill out this pass, and I forged the name of the issuing officer who was on the SS, Unterscharführer Müller, signed his name, put the stamp. In order that the stamp wouldn’t be recognized, I smudged it a little. Then the prisoners themselves needed a permit from the workshop SS man. This was no problem because one of the escapees was a clerk in the office there, and he had the blanks. He issued the blank that four prisoners, glaziers, are going to work in this spot. He signed this SS man’s, forged his name, so we had these two pieces of passes which we needed. Then we obtained … because if we failed, we obtained some cyanide poisoning. We obtained it from the camp pharmacy, which again was run by prisoners. The prisoner who did run it was Marion Toleenski [sp?], and he was a very nice fellow. He gave us cyanide in the form of powder, which we wrapped in pieces of paper. Each one of us had it with them.

Before that we already had contact with the underground, and we had to contact the underground through a Polish girl who worked as an SS civilian cleaning woman in the barracks of the National Labor Social, NSDAP. It’s the acronym of the German Nazi Party [National Socialist German Workers’ Party, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei]. Through her we contacted with the underground and the resistance movement. How we did contact her is that, again, she was instructed to do some damage either to the plumbing or to the electricity or something that broke down. Then workers had to come to correct it. Of course, whenever we needed something and there was a call, then this fellow who worked in the workshop office always assigned somebody, either himself to do with another mechanic to go there, or I went there, and he made the contact. We exchanged information with the girl, and she took it to the … so with her, we did decide that we escape on the 28th of September, 1944 and that the — how do you say the word, the recognition …

Interviewer: Password.
ZAWACKI: The password will be a Polish carol, which the fellow who is going to meet us was supposed to whistle. The Polish carol’s name was “Przybiezeli do Betlejem,” which was “They Came to Bethlehem.” Everything was ready for us to go. Since we didn’t have the proper color pass, we said that we will try to avoid going through the gates where the passes would be checked. We already surveyed it beforehand that to the buildings to which we had to go to put the glass panes in, there was a shortcut, which led under the tower of a guard. Many workers passed this way many times, and they were never stopped. So we said that we will try to do the same thing. We had someone look out for us, a fellow prisoner, a very good friend of us, who was looking at the place. He was supposed to give us the sign, whether it was OK or not OK. 

We decided to escape at noon time —it was the time when the SS, most of the them, went to the mess hall for lunch, and there wouldn’t be too much of them moving around — because we had quite a distance to walk to meet our prisoners who we were taking out to work, and they were quite a distance away. So when the day came, at 1:00pm it so happened that an SS man who was in charge of me and the workshops came to my office, and he wanted something urgently to be done. It took some time, and I was delayed. Eventually he did leave. He went to lunch, and then I was able to leave. I went to meet my friend, the other one who was supposed to change into the SS clothes. We went to the lumberyard because in the meantime we transferred it to the lumberyard, the uniforms. We went there, and these people were quite worried that we were late, and they thought that we won’t show up at all. But anyway, we did come. We changed into the uniforms. They inspected us. They were supposed to then, after we were successful in escaping, they would burn our prison uniforms. They inspected us, and they looked out of the barrack whether the air was clear, and they told us yes. 

We walked out, and as I said, we had to walk approximately almost half a mile. It was dangerous. It was really dangerous because we were afraid that we could meet some SS people who would recognize us. It happened that we were lucky. We didn’t meet any prisoners who had to salute us, the prescribed way where they have to take off the cap and look at us. One of the fellows recognized me; I met him later on in 1945 in Italy, and he said that I looked very pale. Anyway, so we came to the place where we were supposed to meet these prisoners who we were taking out to work. We told them to pick up their tools, the glass, and shouted the way the SS shouted at prisoners, to pick up. They picked up the glass, and we walked towards the tower. There our lookout gave us the sign that everything is clear, that we can go. We went. It was a narrow pass leading there under the tower. The guard on the tower with a machine gun, seeing our insignia, shouted “Heil Hitler” to us, and we shouted back, “Heil Hitler.” We said, “What a beautiful day it is,” in German, and he said, “Yes, it’s a nice day.” We went. We passed. 

We had to come to the main road, and on the main road, as we were maybe some 50 or 40 yards away — there were always roving patrols [that] would check the SS and the prisoners who worked outside the big chain of guards — as we were approaching this road, on the bicycle was an SS man, a sergeant SS man on the bicycle, and he was looking in our direction. He was unable to make up his mind whether to stop and check us out or whether to go on. He almost stopped on the bike, and then finally decided to go, and he went on.

We didn’t know what we would do, but between ourselves we said, “Well, if he does check out and he finds that we have the wrong passes, then we either have to kill him or take him with us.” Hoping that he won’t make too much noise. Anyway, he did go on. We came to the road, and as we came to the road, going away from us was a whole company of SS going to the firing range. They just must have passed only a few minutes before we got there. So we crossed the road. We went into the houses; there were new houses being built for the SS. The panes had to be put into the window frames. It’s not like here where the whole window comes with glass and everything there. You just put first the frames, and then you have to put the window in. 

We went in the house, looked around. Nobody was there. We went to the other side of the house and we looked around. Nobody there. Then we walked because there were open fields, and the fields led to the river Sola, which floats near and through the city of Auschwitz. We came to the river. Near the river the vegetation was quite lush, and in the bushes the glaziers took the heavy panes off their backs and their other tools, and we dumped it there. Then we walked on the west side of the river, going south for some 150 yards, and then went into the river. The level of the river was very low at that time. We walked in the riverbed for some 115 [yards?]. In order to lose the scent for the dogs, you know. Once the search would start, then cross to the east side of the bank and walk along. 

As we walked towards the south, there was a young couple lying in the grass and we knew that there only a fellow was supposed to be. Anyway, we came there, and we don’t hear any whistling of the carol. So we passed. Then suddenly we hear that somebody is walking, or even running behind us, and he’s trying, whistling, but no tune comes out, so we turned around and we then spoke in Polish, “What are you trying to whistle?” He said, “Przybiezeli do Betlejem.” And we said, “Well, you are our contact then.” He said, “Yes.” He said, “Yes, I couldn’t get the tune out. I was so nervous because you looked so impressive as SS men.” I said, “You were supposed to be by yourself.” He said, “Yes, but I was so lonely I said I better take a companion, the girl.” So then they came with us, and we walked further south, and they put us in very deep bushes. He said, “We have to wait here. I have to see the commandant of the partisan unit, and he will come here.” After a while he came, and he brought us three grenades and two real pistols this time. Then he said, “We can’t go any further until it becomes dark because some of the bridges and the roads are being watched by the SS.” So we waited in the bushes until it became dark. 

While we were sitting in the bushes we heard the siren go off in the camp. We probably at that time were maybe three miles, three and a half miles away from the camp. Once the siren went off, we knew that we were discovered, that we were missing, and that the search would begin. When it became dark he took us, and he led us through some paths and roads. I don’t know where. We came to a farmer’s house, and there we were given very poor civilian clothes, very poor. The Polish peasants didn’t have much themselves. We shed our SS uniforms, which they hid for their further use later on. The prison garb was taken out and burned right away, and we were given a bowl of soup and a glass of Polish vodka, a small glass. 

Then the same guide who picked us up came and walked us, bypassing the villages, further south to the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. We arrived in the morning and there we were met by two partisans, also former escapees from Auschwitz, and then taken back further, deep in the mountains, and high in the mountains to the headquarters of the partisans. Approximately 100 people were there, and approximately 20 of them were former escapees from Auschwitz. There were approximately 667 attempts of escape from Auschwitz, and 270 were caught and executed. The execution was always by hanging, public hanging. 397 survived, but not much is known about them. Our group which just escaped, we were six, and I believe, I’m not sure, but I believe it was the biggest group that ever escaped from Auschwitz. Out of the six, three are [long pause, cries] …. I’m sorry.

Interviewer: It’s all right.
ZAWACKI: Three are now deceased, and of one there is no knowledge what happened to him. The other one, the sculptor who was with me, changed in the uniform, lives now in Poland, but he’s 81, and he recently had a stroke. I’m 78, and I live in Ashland, Oregon [tears]. I’m sorry.

Interviewer: Don’t be sorry at all. So now you are with the partisans. What did you do then?
ZAWACKI: When we came to the partisans, we of course didn’t know what the strength was of the partisans and what the equipment and armament was, but we had plans that we thought maybe we could liberate some of the prisoners — or liberate the whole camp. But we found out that we were too ill equipped, and we wouldn’t have any chance of liberating because it may have been a big catastrophe. You couldn’t fight against three to four thousand well-armed guards. It was an impossibility. Besides that, even if we did succeed, what would you do with the thousands of prisoners? What would happen? How would you feed them? Where would they go? Where would they hide? 

It was impossible, but we did succeed in one instance where we freed two prisoners. We intercepted them. While they were walking from one camp to another, they were intercepted. They were taken by genuine guards, and we gave them fictitious papers that these two prisoners were wanted in the political department, which was the camp Gestapo. They released them, and we signed papers for them. They released them, and they were free, but one of them didn’t survive. He was killed later on. There was a raid on one house where they were staying. Matter of fact, I was in the house the night before, in the house with a friend of mine also who did escape, who now is still alive, but who had the stroke in Poland. We were six together, and they told us that [there were] too many of us here, and why don’t you leave? 

Since we didn’t know what they wanted to do, we did leave, and the next morning the SS surrounded the whole house and they were killed. Three of them were killed, and one I think I did describe to you. I spoke [of him] before. He was taken alive. How he survived, he hid in the basement of the house, actually in the cellar. In the cellar they kept potatoes. When potatoes get old they start sprouting, and then they remove the sprouts and they put them in one corner of the cellar. The SS knew that there were four prisoners, I mean partisans. They knew that they killed three of them and there must be a fourth one. So what they did, they were throwing grenades into the cellar. This fellow, once they threw the grenade he threw it to the next compartment in the cellar, and then they exploded. After the second grenade, he went into the sprouts and hid underneath. 

After awhile the SS came to the cellar because there was no movement, and they looked and didn’t see anybody, and they were saying, “He must be here. He must be here.” They looked, and then finally one of the SS had an idea to look under this and they discovered him. Then they bound his hands. Matter of fact, one of the SS men [who] discovered him was from the political department, and he knew him personally. He said his name was Anton Vickrin [sp?]. He said, “Ah, das bist du Anton.” Oh, it’s you, Anton. They bound his hands behind his back and put him on a truck. The truck was going … they put him in with his back to the caboose, whatever you call it, and the SS were sitting on each side of the truck. 

He knew that if they were going to cross the tracks, which made a bump, that he was very close to the camp and that was the time to escape. He loosened his hands in the back, and as it went through the tracks, he jumped out and jumped straight on the street. He broke his collarbone and his face was a mess of blood. He picked himself up, and he ran straight on the road. Before they stopped the truck, he was quite a long distance away. Anyway, he was running. He said, “I didn’t look anywhere, left or right. I just run straight.” 

Then he came to a house —we had some safe houses where the people would house us — he went there and this lady of the house took care of his wounds and so on. Afterwards the search came. She pretended that she is not well, and she went to bed. He hid behind her in bed, was lying behind her. In Poland winters are quite cold and they have eiderdowns. The eiderdowns are quite thick. So when the SS came to the house, she pretended that she’s very sick. The SS were very afraid of catching any disease or anything, so they just glanced through and walked out. The next day, I think I came from the mountains back again, and we took him to another place from there. We had to take him on a cart. That’s how he survived, and he lives today in Edmonton, Canada.

Interviewer:  When you guys took the two prisoners with the papers from the SS and said they were wanted, were they two that knew you?
ZAWACKI: Oh, yes. They knew. Yes.

Interviewer: They didn’t know you were coming?
ZAWACKI: Yes. They did. 

Interviewer: The underground grapevine?
ZAWACKI: Yes. We had a contact. They were contacted. They knew exactly what was happening. Yes. You see, it is not very well known, but there was an organization. We had a military organization in the camp. It was formed … there are two theories about it. Everybody claimed the communists… after the war there was a prisoner by the name of Cyrankiewicz [Jozef]. He became later the prime minister of Poland, of communist Poland. He claimed that he organized his underground in the camp. He together with some of the communists — there were communist prisoners, mostly Austrian communists and some German communists — and they say they formed, but this was very, very small. It was blown out of proportion because the communists took over power in Poland, and that’s why, and he was there, and therefore, they … 

But the real organizer of this was a Polish captain. His real name was Witold Pilecki, but he was in the camp under the assumed name of Tomasz Serafinski. He let himself be captured in Warsaw and brought to Auschwitz. In Auschwitz he organized the underground movement. He later escaped with another prisoner, with two prisoners he escaped, and he went to Warsaw. He fought in the Warsaw uprising. Then he came, and I met him when I was in Italy in the second Polish Corps, and he was going back and forth to Poland. He was captured in Poland and accused of being a spy for the West, and he was tried and executed. Executed by Cyrankiewicz; he wanted to be the hero, and he was in power because he was the prime minister of Poland at that time. 

That’s the whole story; there’s a lot of story to it. I don’t know whether we have time to tell you everything, but it’s up to you.

Interviewer: How much tape do we have?
Videographer: [inaudible]

Interviewer: Let’s put on another roll of tape, and even though I don’t think we’re going to go for a whole hour …

Interviewer:  You were telling me about Tomasz Serafinski.
ZAWACKI: Yes.

Interviewer: And you said that he actually plotted getting captured and brought to Auschwitz. Tell me a little more about when that was, and what you knew of him while you were there.
ZAWACKI: Of course, I didn’t know him before he was captured in Warsaw, but he let himself be captured. There were roundups in Warsaw. I don’t remember his number, but I think it was 8,000 something, or 4,000.

Interviewer: 4859.
ZAWACKI: Yes, was it?

Interviewer: 4859.
ZAWACKI: 4859. I knew [it was] something around. So he came to the camp voluntarily. He was a member of the underground in Warsaw. He was also a member of the ZWZ organization, which later became the home army, and it was sponsored by the legitimate Polish government in London in exile. He was an army officer, a reserve officer. He was a captain in the Polish army. He was married. I think his daughter is still alive. He wanted to know and to report to the organization underground and to London, to our government in London, what’s happening in Auschwitz. If anybody wants to tell that they didn’t know what was going on in Auschwitz, it’s not true because there were many couriers who went to London, and of course the Polish government in exile in London shared the information with the British government. The British government shared the information with the American government. 

So they knew what was going on, especially the annihilation of the Jews. Not only the Jews, but we were victims as well, the Poles. Maybe we were not gassed en masse as the Jews, but some of us were and some of us were executed. I don’t know whether you know, but Poland during the last war lost 6,000,000 people. Out of the 6,000,000, 3,000,000 were Jews, Polish Jews. But the other 3,000,000 were all Christians. Of course, they died in different points of the war. Some were soldiers who died on the battlefield. Many died in Russia, were taken to Siberia. 200,000 died in the uprising of Warsaw. Altogether 3,000,000 people, and the Germans were very indiscriminate at the beginning. Anybody who opposed the Germans, or who belonged to any organizations that were unfriendly to Germany in prewar Poland, they were all captured and executed. And then all the intelligentsia of Poland, they were destroyed indiscriminately. The priests, many of them were taken to Dachau and other concentration camps. So it was a great suffering for the Polish nation. Yes.

Interviewer:  Tell me. You knew Tomasz in camp. I want you to tell me a little bit about how you knew him in camp, and also how long he was there before you escaped.
ZAWACKI: Yes, I knew him in camp because he also worked in the carpentry. First he worked as a carpenter. Again, he was no carpenter. Matter of fact, he worked afterwards with the carvers. He was no carver either, but we protected each other if we could. He approached me but everything was very hush-hush. As I told you, there were informers in the camp. At one time some of the organization, some of the members were taken, and they were executed. I don’t remember now how many. Some were taken to the bunker, and then I think either starved to death or shot against the wall, death wall. Some, if they found out about anybody plotting to escape … one time there was an incident where from the central construction office where I worked, there were 12 members of this commando who were engineers and surveyors who went outside. Apparently somebody betrayed them, and they were publicly hanged in the camp, 12 of them. They built a special railroad track, built on two or three posts, and they had to stand up on not boxes, but small, what do you say? Not chair, without the backing …

Interviewer: Stools.
ZAWACKI: Yes, on stools. Then the nooses were put around and they kicked out the stools, and they were hanged. Now, one of the prisoners, I hope I remember his name … after they put his head in the noose, he kicked the stool himself out. What is his name? And he hanged himself more or less. They were betrayed, apparently, by somebody.

Interviewer: In the camp?
ZAWACKI: Yes. In the camp. I know because there was one prisoner who was an informer. His name was Loroshewicz [sp?], and he claimed to be from Georgia. Of course, I don’t know about that, whether he was a Georgian or not. He had a very dark complexion and was a very good looking man. He was an informer. He later on escaped from the camp. He also escaped. He became the kapo of the central [sounds like baulaitunk?] commando. He went as a surveyor with some other, a Jewish fellow, and they escaped. I never heard anything afterwards what happened to him. Nobody knew what happened to him. He betrayed the 12. The 12 people died for him because he betrayed them. 

Interviewer: In the underground in the camp, or in the resistance, in the underground grapevine, was there any connection between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II? Did you know what the Jewish underground was trying to do?
ZAWACKI: We did. I know that there was an uprising in Auschwitz II, in Birkenau. But it was already after my escape; I wasn’t in the camp at that time. I know that they overpowered some guards, and many of them got out, but many of them were killed that I know that [inaudible].

Interviewer: You did, had not heard? That was probably right after you left, pretty soon after.
ZAWACKI: Yes.

Interviewer: And you hadn’t heard anything about it before you left, or about its …
ZAWACKI: No, no.

Interviewer: And you hadn’t heard anything about a plan to blow up the crematorium?
ZAWACKI: By the prisoners or by the  … 

Interviewer: By the prisoners or by anybody. You had …
ZAWACKI: Well, there was one. They did blow up one of the crematoriums, the prisoners did, but I didn’t know. No.

Interviewer: And you hadn’t heard anything about it?
ZAWACKI: No, but we knew that there was a plan to destroy the evidence, the whole camp. [It] was called the “Moll Plan.” He was Hauptscharführer Otto Moll. He was a very cruel man. You’d better watch out, when he wasn’t … you didn’t take your cap off in time, he could kill you right away. He was a person who, and I only know just from hearing, I didn’t witness it myself, but he was able to do that. Apparently he was taking the Jewish children by the feet and smacked, hitting with the head against the wall, or throwing them alive into the pits where the bodies burned, burning them alive. He was a monster of a man. He was a blonde. He had a plan. He came with a proposal to the commandant; he knew how to destroy the evidence, and what he wanted to do is to bomb, to get bombers and machine guns and tanks. Of course, the German command couldn’t afford it. It was already 1944, end of ’44. They were losing the war and they couldn’t possibly commit big forces to destroy the camp, so it fell flat.

Interviewer: You knew about that plan in the camp?
ZAWACKI: Yes, we did know that. Yes. We knew that the Germans would try to destroy the evidence. That we knew. But we didn’t know, of course, in what form and how it would be done. But we did know. 

Interviewer: Did you know what was happening …
ZAWACKI: Because they did it prior, in other camps which were further east. They did destroy many of the evidence.

Interviewer: And you heard about this?
ZAWACKI: Oh, yes. Yes.

Interviewer: And did you know what was going on in the war, in the outside?
ZAWACKI: Yes, we did know. I’ll tell you how we did know. We had electricians. When the radio went on the blink, they brought the radio to the electricians. The electricians never released a radio, never repaired it until they got another radio. They repaired it right away, and we listened to BBC, and we had all the information. In my office I had a big map of Europe, and one of the prisoners who also was a clerk in one of the … he was a painter. Somehow he got a map, somewhere I don’t know, of Europe. He brought it to my office, and he said, “Can I display it here?” I said, “Gee, I don’t know why not. What can happen?” 

So he displayed it in my office. In my office, I was sitting… on the left-hand side, in the desk was an SS man. He was very seldom in. He was not a bad man. On the right-hand side sat a civilian German from Breslau, from Wroclaw, now Poland. I was sitting here, my desk here, and the map was behind me. Many times the SS man, when he was in the office … because he was a supply man; he was traveling all over Europe getting supplies for the camp. The camp was constantly being built. Enlarged. Whenever he was in the office and he looked at the map, he came to me and said— they called me Leo — he said, “Leo, tell me where’s the front?” So I told him. I wasn’t afraid. I said, “It’s here, here.” We went to the map. I said, “Here.” He said, “[inaudible] it’s impossible. You’re crazy.” I said, “Our people say that it is [inaudible].” I said, “You believe your people, believe whatever you want, but I’m telling you that’s what they say.” So they knew that we were well-organized, we were … if it wasn’t for the uncertainty of life, it would be bearable, but you knew around you everything was …  all the gassing, the smell of it, and you knew what was going on. 

But the SS, later on, in 1944, they knew that the war was  … but of course they couldn’t say anything. They couldn’t say, but they knew it was crumbling, and the end was there. This particular SS man, his name was Bracht. He came from Silesia, and he spoke some Polish. These people spoke both Polish and German. He was a purchaser. He was going around. What he said [was] that he took over a Jewish-owned enterprise in his hometown, and he got it for nothing. What he was doing when he did the purchases traveling all over Europe, it went first to his enterprise. From there he sold it to the camp, so he was making money hand over fist. He was very shrewd, very shrewd. He never did anything wrong to me or as far as I know to nobody else. 

There were many SS people who were from — Auschwitz was in Silesia actually — and many of them were from that part of the country. They were mostly all bilingual. Some of them had Polish names, but they were Germans, and I think, especially the civilian from Breslau, from Polish Wroclaw, he was conscripted. He was sent here as a civilian because he couldn’t serve in the army; he was lame in one leg, and therefore he couldn’t serve in the armed forces. But they assigned him here, and he was very unhappy, and he told me, and I did … he was a decent man. He did. I wrote through him to my family. He took the letters and my family sent to his address, and he brought the letters to me, which were going without the censure. 

Next to my office there was an office. The partitions were all glass partitions, and we could see. There were four offices. Right next to mine was an office where there were ten Jewish girls, and they were all bilingual or even more, but all of them spoke excellent German and they could take shorthand in German. There were girls from Czechoslovakia, from Slovakia, from Hungary. One was from Holland. There were two German girls, one Polish girl. The one Polish girl, she married in … they all got out, all the ten girls; they were evacuated. I escaped, but they were evacuated later on and they all survived. The Polish girl survived and later on came to London. I met her in London when I was in London. She met a Polish fellow, also with the name Serafinski, and she got married. He was a Polish lawyer. She married this lawyer. He died since. They had one child, a son. Whenever I am in London now, I still see her.

The other girls, they all survived, and I corresponded with one for some time. She was in Prague, in Czechoslovakia, but after a while I did stop writing to her, and she stopped writing to me.

Interviewer: Did they live in Auschwitz, too, and then come there in the morning to work, those girls?
ZAWACKI: Yes, these girls had special quarters. The quarters were not in our camp. Our camp and compound was separate and only men, but these girls — and there were others who worked in other offices — they had one block. There were blocks built where some of the SS were quartered, and they had one block and they lived. Whether they were surrounded by guards, that I don’t know. I was never there. But that’s where they lived, and they came every day in the morning to work. Yes. They were very, very smart girls, excellent typists. Many times I had some typing for them to do. This one girl, she talked with me and typed a mile a minute, and reading there and talking to me. I couldn’t believe how she did it. Yes. They were excellent workers.

Interviewer: In that time period in the winter then, in the winter of ’44 after you escaped and you were with the partisans, in that time period, in the early spring of ’45, did you happen to see any death marches, or did you know of …?
ZAWACKI: No, I didn’t.

Interviewer: Did the partisans know about them?
ZAWACKI: No, we didn’t know.

Interviewer: Didn’t know that camps were getting evacuated?
ZAWACKI: Well, we suspected it, but we didn’t know. No. No.

Interviewer: Now I’m going to go back. As if we haven’t talked before, I want you to tell me a little bit about being the clerk. Because we sort of covered that in the context of other stories, and I think that was a really important job, so I just want you to tell me a little bit about that.
ZAWACKI: As I said, the administration of the camp, the top administration, was SS. The commandant at one time was Rudolf Hess, and then afterwards they changed. All the administration, everything was the SS. The political department was; the chief of the political was Grabner. But in the political department, the clerical work was done by the prisoners. [In] the camp itself, the compound itself, all the evidence, all the registration, everything was done by prisoners. The preparation of the roll call for the evening and the morning was done by prisoners. The SS only were taking the prepared things from the clerks of the different blocks. The evidence. They took it, and then they went to the rapportführer in the front and they reported everything is OK. Then this rapportführer in turn went to the camp commandant, and he reported that everything is accounted for. 

If somebody died in the night they had to come and be laid out for the roll call. Dead or alive, you had to be accounted for. And all the work … for instance, in the workshops where I was, there was only one SS man in charge of the carpentry and one SS man of all the workshops. So all the other clerical work had to be done by the prisoners, and the SS relied upon it. They just relied. Of course, for us it was easier because we had an easy job. We were not exposed to the elements; we sat at a desk. We didn’t get any more bread. We didn’t have any other privileges. Once we went to the camp, we were just again an ordinary prisoner, except that we were already old prisoners. We already knew people, other prisoners, and other prisoners knew us. That was the only advantage we had. 

Interviewer: Now when prisoners got taken out to work, the ratio was quite different with the SS. Is that right?
ZAWACKI: Yes, the ratio was, for instance, if they went beyond the chain of the guards. You see, let me put it this way. When we went into the compound to sleep, then the guards surrounding the compound were those only on the towers, right? And then there was the guardhouse. All of the big chain of commands, when we went to work, were taken out and taken back to the barracks. They were free. When we went out in the morning to work, then they threw the big chain of guards around on which territory some prisoners, like myself — because I had to go with orders to different parts of the camp — I could move freely, but I couldn’t go beyond the big chain of guards. Once you wanted to go beyond this, you had to be accompanied by an SS man. In other words, you were out of the camp altogether. The ratio was so: one prisoner, one guard. Two prisoners, one guard. But three prisoners, two guards, and so on it progressed — the more prisoners, the more guards. The ratio was mostly one prisoner for two. Four prisoners, two guards, and so on. That’s how it was. 

But within the greater chain of [guards] you could move freely. Some prisoners could move freely. Some prisoners, those who had … the whole administration they relied very much on the prisoner work. The Germans couldn’t do it without. For instance, the architects and the engineers who worked, the doctors. There was a chief doctor, SS doctor, and there were chief engineers in the camp, but most of the work, the donkey work, was done by the prisoners. By the engineers, architects, prisoners, and there were Jewish engineers working and Polish and Czech. There were no German prisoners; there were some draftsmen who were German. 

There was one Polish prisoner. He was an engineer, and apparently he was so good … yes, I remember his name was Plaskura. He was a civil engineer, and he was from the town of Oswiecim itself, pre-war he lived there. He knew the territories, and he did all the draining and so on of the territory because it was very damp. They appreciated him so much that they released him from the camp. They released him so he could work as a civilian engineer. He had to report every morning to work, but he could live outside the camp, but he had to be committed to work in the camp. That’s the only one, and I think another one, a builder, and he was also Polish. He was a construction engineer, and he built most of the big … and he was also released but could work as a civilian and live outside the camp. That’s two instances that I remember which took place. For instance, this fellow Plaskura, this civil engineer, his brother was also in the camp, but of course he was not released. He was a chemical engineer and they wouldn’t let them. 

Now I started talking about that there were actually three big camps: Auschwitz I; then Auschwitz II, which was Birkenau; and Auschwitz III, which was Monowitz. Monowitz was east of the city of Auschwitz, and there were two big complexes of synthetic rubber factories and synthetic gas plants. I remember when these were built, and I think they were not finished until 1943. The prisoners who worked, they had to get up when it was still dark. They had to go by train; if the trains were running, they loaded them on the train. They didn’t come back from work until late when it was dark, many times very dark. Then they got the Russians. Most of the workers there were Jewish, and many of them they died by the thousands because of the hard labor — they were digging for the foundations — and the meager rations, and the long hours. It was terrible. Nobody wanted to go to this commando, but I think there were thousands of prisoners who had to work there, and thousands of them were dying. These were the three main camps.

Then there were sub-camps all over the place. Some of them were even in Czechoslovakia. Many prisoners worked in the coalmines. There were times when there were, I think, close to 200,000 prisoners. Can you imagine 200,000? It’s a big city. 200,000. Those who were in the camp, who got numbers and so on, there were approximately over 400,000 which were numbered and tattooed, the numbers tattooed. At the beginning when I came, we were not tattooed. The orders came later on in 1942 when everybody had to be tattooed. We had to be tattooed and were tattooed and then inspected whether we actually did carry out the orders. The new arrivals after that date were tattooed right away at the inception.

Interviewer: Did you ever meet Rudolf Hess?
ZAWACKI: Yes, I did, and I’ll tell you how. I worked as a clerk in the carpentry. The Oberkapo of the camp carpentry was a German criminal, but a very decent fellow. His name was Lang. I forget his first name. I was the clerk. Matter of fact, he put me in the clerkship there because I was not … I was an ordinary carpenter, but he knew of me that I spoke German, and he couldn’t get along with the clerk that was there. He was also a Polish fellow, but they couldn’t get along because this fellow, Lang, the Oberkapo, he was an “operator.” He did things “on the left,” as we say. He did things, had furniture made for some of the SS for which he got some cigarettes and sometimes even liquor. So he did it. This fellow in the office, the Pole, apparently they didn’t agree or didn’t … he wouldn’t assign the woods to it, so he threw him out, and then he took me. I said, “Look, I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a carpenter. I don’t know how to assign the wood, how much wood is necessary for this.” He said, “Oh, never mind. You’ll learn.” So I said, “OK.” 

One day he had a plate carved, beautiful work. There were artists and painters. We had artists who came from the Polish Academy of Arts, professors. Beautiful work. This one plate was carved, and he said, “Take this to the commandant’s wife.” He was an operator. I don’t know whether she ordered it, or … anyway, he said “Take it to her.” So I said, “OK.” To their house you could go back through the garden, because the house of the commandant, Rudolf Hess, was right near the road, and there was another guardhouse nearby. You couldn’t go on the road to get to the house, but through the garden you could get to it. 

I went through the garden, and as I walked to the house in the garden, in the garden was Rudolf Hess. He saw me, and he stopped me and said, “What are you doing here?” I said I was sent by the kapo of the carpentry to deliver this to Frau Hess. He looked and me and said, “OK.” I went into the house, and I told her that this is from the kapo of the carpentry. So she said, “Oh, wait. Wait. I [will] give you some cigarettes.” And she did go, and she brought me, but not a full [pack]. She said, “I don’t know where my husband keeps the packages of cigarettes.” But she gave me a started pack of cigarettes. I, of course, took it to the kapo and gave it to him. I told him that I didn’t take the cigarettes out because I didn’t want him to think that I was taking. I didn’t smoke anyway. So that’s the one time where I did meet Rudolf Hess. Yes, and I did speak to him.

Interviewer: OK.
ZAWACKI: Now of course, as you know, he was captured after the war. He was hung. He was tried. He was brought back to Poland, and he was tried and convicted to death. Then he was hung in Auschwitz itself, in the camp. Facing the camp. He was hung.

Interviewer: Tell me about after you got out and you were in the resistance. Tell me about the end of the war coming and getting caught between the … 
ZAWACKI: Yes. In the partisans, we also had ten Russians. Some of them were flyers who were shot down. They were wandering, and they came, and we took them in. There were also some escapees from the prisoner of war camp. Then there were some who were parachuted behind the German lines. There were three of them. Then there was one who was from the NKVD, the KGB. There was one. Altogether we had ten. 

When the front started coming closer to us, we already knew from the east parts that some of the units of the partisans — because we were loyal to the government in London, and the Russians already brought their own communist government into Poland — we knew that some of these partisans were captured and then sent to Siberia. We tried to avoid this same fate, so we took the Russians. There was discussion [of] what to do with the Russians. After all, they were our allies, so we said we [will] take them deep into the mountains and leave them there until they find the Russian army, and let them then join the army. We didn’t want them to be together with us. So when the war became near, they were taken by a guide deep into the mountains and then left there. I think we left them food, and we said, “You are now on your own. You’ll have to fend for yourself.” 

We then dispersed. The unit was dispersed because we knew what was going on. We were given first false civilian documents that we were local workers around there because once the Russians came there were roadblocks. You couldn’t pass without being asked for identification. So that’s what we did. Those of us who were in Auschwitz made our way to Auschwitz and there we registered as genuine ex-prisoners. We destroyed our phony civilian identifications, and we got identifications as ex-prisoners of Auschwitz. From there we went to Krakow. Everything was very fluid. Already the Russians were in Auschwitz itself, and they liberated some of the … because not everybody was evacuated there. The people who were unable to walk, the sick ones who were left in the camp … 

Interviewer: So when you came back, what was it like to come back there? 
ZAWACKI: I only went to the office. I didn’t go through the camp. I didn’t walk in. None of us walked in. We just went to get identification papers. Then we went to the city of Auschwitz, to the town, and we stayed there because some of the ex-prisoners of Auschwitz were local people. We couldn’t get any transportation. Later on there was because the Russians also formed their own Polish forces, and they were already on the territory there. They had trucks, and then some of them took us to Krakow and that’s how we … 

Interviewer: Tell me what you found in your office when you went back.
ZAWACKI: Yes. That was a different time when I went. I think I went after I was in Oswiecim, the city. I went back to see my office. The first thing which startled me to walk into the office on … there was a rail to the entrance, and over the rail there was a pair of trousers. I looked at the trousers and they bore my number: 13390. I know that I left them in my desk. I had a spare pair. It didn’t occur to me to take them with me. I just left them. Maybe I just didn’t want any part any more of it, so I left it there. But then I walked into the barrack itself, and believe me, the Russians made a mess. They kept horses there. All the officers they kept horses, and there was a big mess all over the place. 

I went then to my office, and as I went to my office, in one of the offices, I found a folder. The folder contained three plans of Auschwitz. As I looked through them, they were apparently sent for approval to Berlin, to the headquarters of the SS for approval. When I opened it, in red ink there was a signature of an inspecting officer. It said, “Gesehen und …”  approved. I’ve forgotten the German word. It meant “I saw it and I approved of it,” and he signed it. On the other one, he made [a] few corrections. He wanted that this be changed. Oh, “Gesehen und genehmigt” in German. And I took the whole folder with me. I kept it and I took it home to my parents. I kept it there. 

Then after I became [an] American citizen and I went, I think, the first time in 1958 to Poland — maybe later on — I took these plans and I brought them out here to the States. But I didn’t want to give them to anybody; there were no museums here. I said, “I think I’m wasting this. These things should be somewhere, in an archive or in a museum.” 

Then my cousin in Poland … she was in the resistance. She was quite a girl. She was a courier from Poland during the war to England. Then she was trained in England as a parachutist. She was the only woman parachutist who was dropped then back into occupied Poland by plane. There are books written about her. Among others, one book written by Sue Ryder. I don’t know whether you know Sue Ryder [Margaret Susan Cheshire, Baroness Ryder of Warsaw and Baroness Cheshire], a British well-known person who did write and did many good things for the underprivileged, especially the people from the East: Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and so on.

This cousin of mine opened a museum and an archive for the underground activity in this part of Poland. I gave these plans to her. Later I regretted it because then I found out here this Holocaust Museum was opened. I thought maybe it would be a good idea to have it here, but it was too late. I already gave it. When I asked, I said, “Give me at least one plan back,” but she said, “No.” But she did send it back to Auschwitz, to the museum in Auschwitz — the plan of Birkenau. I hope to go next year to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. And maybe I will find out whether it is there.

Interviewer: Tell me what these things showed.
ZAWACKI: They showed the whole plan. Birkenau was the whole plan. It was beautifully done, and it was done all by prisoners. Beautiful work. Each prisoner when they did make these plans — drafted it — they had to sign it. Of course, they didn’t sign it with a name; we didn’t have names, we had only numbers. The signature was, “Done by prisoner number such and such.” You knew who the prisoner was if you knew his number. Then of course, it was inspected by the architect, which was an SS man. In this instance, all of these were inspected and signed by an SS Unterscharführer Djakow [sp?]. He was also caught. He was an Austrian. He was an architect. He was caught by the Austrians, and he was tried. He said that he was not guilty of anything. I knew him. I spoke a few times to him because we were in the same office. 

These plans, especially this one of Birkenau, was the whole camp. It was all the barracks with the gates and the crematoria. There were four crematoria with four gas chambers, each attached to the crematorium. These were crematorium number II, III, IV, and V. The capacity of these gas chambers were approximately 10,000 on one sitting. If they wanted to gas 10,000 people, I think it took 20 minutes to gas. The problem was not the gassing, the problem was disposing of the bodies, and the capacity of the ovens was rather limited. Therefore many of the bodies were burned in ditches or on piles. Of course, it was burning day and night, and the smoke was high in the sky. You could smell the burning flesh. That’s why when I spoke about Moll, where he threw some of the children into the ditches, that’s where the bodies were burned. They were soaked with gasoline and then burned, the human flesh. Of course, I was not a witness to it, but that’s what I know from people who did. The fat, the human fat, was boiling on top of it. On this they threw live people into it. There were terrible things.

Interviewer: Now I’m going to go all the way back and ask you — before you got arrested, when you were in the resistance before, what kinds of things were you doing?
ZAWACKI: Already at that time we did think of resistance, and armed resistance. After the war, in ’39 when Warsaw surrendered, not all the arms were surrendered to the Germans. Some of the arms were hidden in different places, all over Warsaw and outside of Warsaw. My assignment was to find out where these places are, and when I found out where they are, they were supposed — I didn’t do it because it was too early — that they were brought to a central place and hidden. In case there was need to use them, the movement would know where the arms are and how much and how many, and where the munition is, and so on. That was my assignment. I think it was a dangerous assignment, but I …

Interviewer: You got caught before you …
ZAWACKI: Before. Yes, that’s right.

Interviewer: OK. One last question: for you, the moment of liberation was really when the six of you got out and got … 
ZAWACKI: Yes.

Interviewer: There wasn’t a moment of liberation later, when it ended?
ZAWACKI: Not really. No. It was rather sad, the liberation, because we didn’t expect … and we didn’t know really what the Russians are. Before the Russians came we were hiding, and we came out from the mountains. We were hiding in the different villages. When the first wave of the Russians came, they liberated us of whatever we had. First of all they took watches. We did have a watch, I had a watch, and I knew that’s what they’re doing, so I put it [inaudible]. Oh, they found that. Their excuse was always, “Well, we’re looking for arms, that you are Germans.” I said, “So why do you look here for arms?” And then they took our watches away. They were not … I think the women had more to fear from them than the men. They were raping. 

I must tell you one thing. They always asked us, “Where is the border, the pre-war Polish-German border?” In Silesia, where we were, Auschwitz was not far from the pre-war border. And we asked them, “Why do you ask?” He said, “Because once we cross this border, we can do whatever we like.” They were doing everything here; they were raping the Polish girls. And they said, “We can do whatever we like once we cross this border.” That was their excuse. Because they knew it was Germany, and therefore they had a free hand to do, and they did. They did rape all the German girls and the … not that I’m sorry because of what the Germans did to us and to the Jews, but that was their attitude.

I’ll tell you [about] one instance. We were already waiting for the Russians to come. Actually, we at one time were in the no man’s land. The Germans were here, and the Russians were here. We were in the middle. We were at a peasant’s hut and one day from nowhere on a horse comes a Russian officer. He had to cross his farm, cross the Sola River, and he came there, and we said, “What are you doing here? The Germans are here.”  “Aw, the hell with the Germans,” he said. He told the peasant, “Take care of my horse.” And then he said, “I want something to eat.” He came and sat down. We were three of us. We started talking, and he said, “We are there, and we’ll be here soon.” Then he said, “Do you want to see Polish money?” Because the Russians already introduced the Polish government and they had. We said, “No, we didn’t see the Polish … let’s see.” He showed us the Polish money. Then we said, “Do you want to play poker?” And he said, “Yes, we play poker.” So we played poker, and we took all the money away from him. He didn’t like it, but he was a good sport. He said, “All right, but now I want to go to sleep.” And he went to sleep, and he told the peasant where he could sleep, which bed he could use. He went to bed. He couldn’t care less. I said, “Suppose the Germans come here?” He said, “No, never mind.” 

So then in the morning we went to sleep, and before we got up, he was gone. We said, “What happened?” to the peasant, and he said, “Oh, he got up and took his horse and went back.” In the afternoon he came riding with the horse with the colonel who was in charge of the regiment, and he was his adjutant, but he didn’t recognize [us]. He wouldn’t say anything to us; he didn’t even look at us. He just passed us on. They were a brave bunch, many of them, yes, but they were also … well, they didn’t behave the best. They were not on their best behavior, no. 

Interviewer: Thank you. 
ZAWACKI: You’re welcome.

Interviewer: I’m done unless you … we only have three minutes. I’m very, very moved.
ZAWACKI: OK. Thank you. Thank you.