Photo by Andrzej Banaś

It’s just terrible
to say these
were Polish
camps.
It’s disgraceful
and unacceptable.
The camps
just cannot
go down
in history
as ‘Polish’

So many German atrocities, so much torment, so many tears… How is it that these camps are now Polish all of a sudden? wonders Stefan Lipniak, now aged 92, who went through the hell of four different German camps: ZAL Klein Mangersdorf, Arbeitserziehungslager Rattwitz, ZAL Markstädt, and KZ Auschwitz III Monowitz.

For Stefan Lipniak, his blissful youth and happiness came to an end at the tender age of 17. He was arrested by the Gestapo on the night of 26 June 1941. He and many other people were victims of the organisation of a high-ranking SS officer Albrecht Schmelt, who had come up with the idea of deporting thousands of young Polish and Jewish people to forced labour camps in Upper Silesia. The Germans carried out massive construction works, and they needed countless numbers of strong and fit men. However, their design was also to destroy the Polish nation through slave labour, says Stefan, who was one of many builders of the motorway in the Gliwice area.

The prisoners would work 14 to 16 hours a day. Despite the gruelling workload, they received only one meal a day. Little or no relief could be expected from a good night’s sleep, as the camp was rife with bugs and lice.

Stefan Lipniak was detained in ZAL Klein Mangersdorf for a year. He then went to Arbeitserziehungslager Rattwitz and ZAL Markstädt, and ended up in KZ Auschwitz III in 1944. He was transferred to KZ Auschwitz III Monowitz to work for the German chemical holding IG Farben, which relied heavily on cheap or forced labour. At KZ Auschwitz III, Stefan Lipniak faced the same conditions as in the other camps: cramped spaces, starvation, violence and death. Three or four people in my team died every day. They were immediately replaced with new ones, explains Lipniak. According to the estimates provided by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, about ten thousand people working for IG Farben alone died in KZ Auschwitz.

Despite the back-breaking work and terrible living conditions, Stefan Lipniak managed to survive. Having no intention of waiting passively for his liberation, he fled German imprisonment in dramatic circumstances. He escaped with the Death March convoy. With the Red Army advancing to the West, KZ Auschwitz-Birkenau and Monowitz were hastily evacuated. It was absolutely freezing and we were driven on foot to the West. A lot of people died during the march from exhaustion, starvation and freezing weather… The SS officers would have killed a prisoner like me without batting an eye, says Stefan Lipniak.

With the end of World War II, Stefan Lipniak decided to focus on his lifelong passion: football. He worked as a referee in the Małopolska regional divisions for over twenty years. Despite his age, he still has an extremely detailed memory of the atrocities. Whenever he hears about “Polish camps”, his voice begins to crack with emotion. It’s just terrible to say these were Polish camps. It’s disgraceful and unacceptable. The camps just cannot go down in history as “Polish”, says Stefan Lipniak.

Photo by Andrzej Banaś

Lidia Maksymowicz is the longest KZ Auschwitz child survivor. She still carries the injection and vaccination scars on her body that are the marks of Dr Mengele’s inhumane experiments. I was one of the lucky few to survive. Apparently, it was God’s will for me to bear witness to the place that the Germans converted into the world’s largest necropolis, says Lidia Maksymowicz.

Minsk, Belarus: a cold November night in 1943. German soldiers are leading hundreds of people to cattle wagons, which are soon to depart for German-occupied Poland. The train is heading for KZ Auschwitz. A three-year-old girl, at that time called Lyudmila Botcharova, is one of the ill-fated crowd. Children like me were taken to Auschwitz because they were needed as guinea pigs for Dr Mengele and his pseudo-medical experiments, explains Lidia Maksymowicz.

A small child at the time, Lidia Maksymowicz has a very good memory of what happened in the camp. The Germans wanted to extract as much as they could from the prisoners. The children, for example, were used as blood donors for the German soldiers. All this was just dreadful, she recalls. She managed to survive only because she was strong and healthy when she arrived in KZ Auschwitz. Starving and emaciated, children from the ghetto had no chance of survival. They were fated to die at the hands of German murderers, explains Lidia Maksymowicz.

Little Lidia (at that time Lyudmila) was separated from her mother, who was evacuated from the camp and forced to join the Death March heading for the West. The girl remained in KZ Auschwitz until the arrival of the Red Army on 27 January 1945. Following the camp’s liberation, the child was taken in by the Rydzikowski couple from the town of Oświęcim. After fifteen months of the KZ Auschwitz ordeal she finally had a family home.

Lidia Maksymowicz found her biological mother 17 years later. However, she decided never to return to Belarus. She says she is too grateful to her Polish foster parents.

Lidia Maksymowicz believes that her duty as a survivor is to bear witness to what really happened in KZ Auschwitz. The camps were set up by the Germans, after all; and it’s the Germans who invaded Poland. They established torture camps for many European nations. I think that writing and speaking about “Polish” camps is a disgrace. Those who do so offend and harm Poland and the Polish people, says Lidia Maksymowicz indignantly.

That is why Lidia often attends meetings with young people. She does this to tell them the truth. I sometimes speak to young people from Germany. When I tell them about the atrocities, they find it very difficult to believe. They are surprised that this hell on earth was their grandparents’ doing. Lidia admits that she does not know the cause of this terrible tragedy. How is it possible that a nation as refined as Germany, with so many eminent writers, artists and composers, could have bred people capable of such atrocities? she wonders.

Photo by Andrzej Banaś

We were
immediately
told that
it was
a labour camp,
not a health resort,
and we would
never leave it
alive.

I feel defiled. I am being accused of genocide, but it’s me who’s the victim. Karol Tendera, a KZ Auschwitz survivor, feels very strongly about the foreign media and their reports on “Polish concentration camps”. The 95-year-old from Kraków puts a lot of energy and determination into dispelling historical negationism. He even took legal action against ZDF, the German TV station.

When Karol Tendera heard that ZDF was reporting on “Polish death camps in Majdanek and Auschwitz”, he knew he had to do something about this. He sued the TV station, demanded an apology and a donation of 50 thousand euros for social causes. I want the forgers of history to apologise to our state authorities and the entire nation. I want them to be punished for the smear campaign, he says.

When the German occupation of Poland began in 1939, Karol Tendera was only 18 years old (he was born in 1921 in Kraków). He attended the Mechanical Vocational School in Krupnicza Street, and he was taken straight from the school grounds in 1940 and transported to Germany to become a slave labourer. He worked for two years as a car mechanic in a slave labour camp in Hanover. In May 1942, he managed to escape and returned to German-occupied Poland. He had only a few months to enjoy his freedom, before being arrested in January 1943. He was first transferred to the Gestapo headquarters in Pomorska Street, and later on to the prison in Montelupich Street.

In February 1943, Karol Tendera was transported to KZ Auschwitz. Hunderttausendvierhundertdreißig [100430 – editor’s note] was my name at the camp, he recalls as he quickly recites in German his camp number that is still tattooed on his forearm. He was horrified by the place he had ended up. It was sheer hell. We were immediately told that it was a labour camp, not a health resort, and we would never leave it alive. The only way out was through the chimney stacks of the crematoria, says Karol Tendera.

He still remembers every single day in KZ Auschwitz and Birkenau: the gruelling hours of digging the trenches, the pain from the blows, the hunger, and the thirst. I was sure I was going to die, he admits. He managed to survive, but freedom was still far away. In autumn 1944, Karol Tendera was transported to KZ Flossenbürg, a satellite German camp in Litoměřice, in the Czech Republic, where he was detained until the end of the war.

While in Auschwitz, I joined an underground organisation set up by Witold Pilecki. I can proudly say that I was defending my country. I risked my life for the nation. That is why Karol Tendera feels so strongly about phrases such as “Polish concentration camps”, which puts the responsibility for German-inflicted atrocities onto their Polish victims. I have to constantly disclaim and explain what really happened. For instance, I was once asked by an elderly German lady about the people we, the Poles, detained and murdered in the camps.

Photo by Andrzej Banaś

Constant beating and hunger produced a sense of anxiety and humiliation, helplessness and sometimes complete despair

The camps were set up by the Germans and were operated by the Germans. The Germans murdered the prisoners. The Germans cremated the bodies. Polish people had nothing to do with it. There were no Polish people there, only anonymous numbers. 

Fryderyk Jakimiszyn was born in 1927 in Kraków. He was a Home Army soldier, and is a survivor of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. On 16 January 1945, seventeen-year-old Fryderyk Jakimiszyn entered the gates of KZ Gross-Rosen in today’s Lower Silesia. The entire area was surrounded by barbed wire electric fences. The sweetish odour of incinerated human bodies produced by the relentless crematoria lingered in the air. Fryderyk Jakimiszyn will not forget this moment to his dying day.

Constant beating and hunger produced a sense of anxiety and humiliation, helplessness and sometimes complete despair, recalls Fryderyk Jakimiszyn. The gruelling toil at the nearby marble quarry only added to the prisoners’ misery. We would work from dawn till dusk. Many prisoners died in the process, he says.

On 8 February 1945, the evacuation of KZ Gross-Rosen began. Fryderyk was transferred to Mittelbau-Dora satellite camp near Nordhausen, where a massive German armaments plant was located. At the beginning of April 1945, he attempted an escape during one of the American air raids. Even though the guards fired their machine guns at the fugitives, I managed to flee the camp along with several other prisoners, says Fryderyk Jakimiszyn. His freedom was not to last for too long, however, as he was captured by a German patrol and transferred to Heinkel, the Sachsenhausen satellite camp in Oranienburg, where he was forced to perform slave labour. He still remembers the Germans and their sense of inevitable defeat. Even so, German orderliness and strict discipline were upheld to the very end, and the killing of the defenceless was rampant, he recalls.

It was by sheer miracle that Fryderyk Jakimiszyn escaped death. When the order to evacuate the camp was given, he took advantage of the haste and chaos among the guards and hid in a dugout, which was used as a bomb shelter. He was tracked down after two hours and taken away to the roll call area. The decision was made to execute him in front of other prisoners, so that everyone would know what their insubordination might bring. Looking into the eyes of death, I resorted to one final act of desperation: I knelt and sobbed and cried for forgiveness. I kissed the German soldier’s boots and shrieked: “I’m still a child, only seventeen years old, I want to go back to my mum.” I was repeatedly hit with a rifle butt and felt absolutely nothing, says Fryderyk Jakimiszyn.

His dramatic plea was successful. Fryderyk Jakimiszyn escaped with his life. He and other prisoners joined the Death March to Berlin, which continued its defence right up to the end of the Second World War. Prisoners were decimated by hunger, disease, and fatigue. The weakest prisoners were shot at the back of their heads, so as not to slow down the march. The roadside trenches were strewn with dead bodies. I saw more dead people than alive in the camps and during evacuation, he says bitterly.

Photo by Andrzej Banaś

The death
camps were
only built
in Poland.
But they were
established
and operated
by the Germans.
We must keep
remembering this

Halina Krzymowska, a KZ Ravensbrück survivor, finds it impossible to accept that the foreign press repeatedly writes news items about “Polish concentration camps”. The people who do this haven’t got the foggiest idea of those times and the tragedy. Someone has to tell the truth! says Halina Krzymowska.

She is very brief and yet moving in her account of the atrocities that were inflicted on those living in the camps. The Germans treated us like scum. They could hit us, kick us and kill us as they pleased. There was no one to come to our rescue, says Halina Krzymowska.

She experienced all this as soon as she entered the camp. I got my number and my badge assigned and I immediately passed out. As soon as my mum saw a high-ranking SS officer, she ran up to him and started to beg for help. Other Germans pounced on her and injected her with a poisonous drug. My mum only survived by a miracle, she says.

Halina Krzymowska was born in 1927 in Warsaw. She was the daughter of Jan Kamienobrodzki, a high-ranking civil servant at the Bank Polski. As a child, she attended the same school as the daughters of Marshal Józef Piłsudski. In September 1939, twelve-year-old Halinka was just about to start high school, when the outbreak of war suddenly stood in her way.

The teenager left Poland with her mother and brother in a convoy that was evacuating the Bank Polski reserves. The family crossed Ukraine, Romania and Yugoslavia, and eventually, with a group of other Polish people, ended up in the Isle of Krk in today’s Croatia. They spent several years on the island, far from the ravages of war. But this all came to an end in 1944 when Krk was invaded by the Germans, who arrested the Polish citizens. The Kamienobrodzki family were separated: Halina and her mother were transferred to KZ Ravensbrück; her younger brother ended up in an orphanage in Kraków. He was sent to a Germanisation centre for children. They would undergo special training to become German, says Halina.

In the camp, Halina worked in the sewing room and as a builder on the SS officers’ houses. After the World War II she and her mother moved to Sweden for a while, and then later returned to Poland where they finally settled in Kraków. The atrocities of war she witnessed as a teenager would never put a damper on her happiness and vitality. She has been extremely active for many years: she enjoyed mountaineering and skiing, and toured Poland on a motorbike with her husband.

Halina Krzymowska is happy to share her memories. She is adamant about one thing: the truth must always be told. The death camps were only built in Poland. But they were established and operated by the Germans. We must keep remembering this.

Halina Krzymowska died in Kraków, on January 16, 2017.

Photo by Andrzej Banaś

The Polish
government
has to fight
against Holocaust
denial.
To show the world
how many people
died at the hands
of the Germans

He has lost count of how many times he was tortured by the SS. Within the span of a few months, he went through the hell of three different concentration camps. The Germans told us that the only way out for us was through the chimney stacks of their crematoria, says Julian Wieciech, a Home Army soldier and survivor of the KZ Gross-Rosen and KZ Bergen-Belsen camps.

Julian Wieciech was arrested in his family home in the village of Lipnica Dolna on the morning of Sunday 29 October 1944. He was only 17 years old at the time. He was only 17 years old at the time. He was taken away to the prison in Bochnia for interrogation. Brutally beaten and repeatedly kicked, he tried to persuade his captors that his name was Kwiecień and that he worked as a farmhand at the Wieciech family estate. Ensign Julian Wieciech – pseudonym Skrzat (Dwarf) – made his name by taking part in a spectacular operation carried out in the Nowy Wiśnicz jail to rescue 128 political prisoners who had been consigned to Auschwitz for extermination.However, he continued trying to convince the Germans that he did not know the Home Army existed. His desperate attempts were unsuccessful. At the beginning of December 1944, Julian Wieciech entered KZ Gross-Rosen through the gate inscribed with the slogan Arbeit macht frei (Work sets you free).

The inmates were tortured on a daily basis. They might be killed for no reason at all. I remember one day someone deliberately stepped on our block leader’s cat. The inmates told him it was me. The block leader went berserk. He began punching and kicking me, and when I fell to the floor, he trampled on me. He was sure I was dead and he had my body taken away to a shed, says Julian Wieciech. He would not have survived had it not been for some inmates who saw he was still breathing.

The hardship of the camps, even at its worst, would never break Julian Wieciech. He remained loyal to the Home Army ethic and refused to collaborate with the Germans. When the SS told him to beat a praying priest, he had no qualms about saying no. He was whipped severely in return. The priest shouted at me: “Hit me, God will forgive you. Hit me or they’re going to kill you.” I just couldn’t do it, he says.

On 8 February 1945, KZ Gross-Rosen was evacuated. Julian Wieciech was transferred to KZ Mittelbau-Dora, and after several weeks he was moved to KZ Bergen-Belsen. He was one of the lucky few who survived the many days’ journey in packed trains, without sufficient water or food supplies. The camp was his final destination.

Every day at KZ Bergen-Belsen was a struggle for survival. On 15 April 1945, a car entered the camp, driven by a British officer who told the inmates in seven different languages that they were free, Julian Wieciech was barely alive. His emaciated body weighed only 36 kg. The doctors gave him ten minutes to live.

The Polish government has to fight against Holocaust denial. To show the world how many people died at the hands of the Germans, says Julian Wieciech emphatically.