´óÏó´«Ã½

Part 2— Tadeusz Korfanty, My Fathers Story

I am writing this account on behalf of my father Tadeusz Korfanty, a concentration camp survivor of Mauthausen-Gusen and Polish political prisoner No 48938. My name is Marysia and I am the eldest daughter of Tadeusz and Sheila Korfanty (nee Denham). I have a younger sister, Helen.

My father told us many stories when we were children. This transcript is taken from those stories and a tape recording made on 27th October 1990 interviewing my father about his childhood and war recollections.

He was nothing but trouble when he was a child, growing up in Poland in the 1920’s and 30’s. Years later after he came to England as an immigrant when the concentration camps were liberated and he’d recovered as best he could in a Red Cross hospital. He would tell both me and my sister about all the mischief he used to get up to. He would talk and laugh about how he outwitted the Nazi’s, how he fought against their oppression and prejudice. He was my hero.

My father was born in Silesia, southern Poland in a town called Siemianowice. The family later moved to Myslowice where my grandfather Edmund became the first Town Clerk and my aunt Hilda set up the fire brigade obtaining the town’s first fire engine from Leyland, England.

As a child, my father tried to glue a teacher to her chair when he was 5 or 6 years old. He poured glue onto the chair when she left the room because he thought the gluing and sticking they were asked to do was sissy. He stole a police dog puppy because he loved it so much but when a reward was offered he returned it to the police commandant for the equivalent of a few pence. He thought that it was a good business so did it again and suffered the consequences! He wrecked a steam train by playing engine driver with his friends on an unguarded fired-up engine in an engine shed in his home town of Myslowice. When they accidentally released the break, it crashed through the shed doors and tipped into the turntable pit. He set fire to the living room curtains when he knocked over the Christmas tree. Broke several slates when he used his satchel for a sledge in the thick Polish winter snow. My Grandmother was at her wits end with him.

Then in 1938 the Nazi’s marched into Poland.

When he described how and when he was eventually arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, I wanted to hear him tell stories of his bravery and how he was a hero and resisted whatever was dealt to him. I wanted to know my Dad was the bravest strongest man to fight these wicked Nazi criminals, but he was only 17/18 years old. The stories he told about these times weren’t so funny.

As a child I saw his broken nose, his ripped nails, his damaged and painful neck and spine from the beatings, his inability to eat a full meal because of his shrunken stomach as a result of the starvation, and of his emotional and psychological problems and waking screaming in the night.

When I asked my Dad, how did you survive such awful things, how did you do it? He would say we all tried to help each other, sometimes my life would be saved by a little kindness from someone else and I would try to help others, we just survived the best we could and well I always thought ‘tomorrow will be better’, I kept telling myself ‘tomorrow will be better’.

A little kindness in the midst of horror saved his life on more than one occasion, and he did the same for someone else in return, and reached out to help others. Though the childhood of myself and my sister were different from our friends, what I learnt from my Dad was that it’s not easy to be a hero. I am no hero, but that it is important to have courage, to stand up for what you believe is right, fair and honest, to hold out your hand to those who need your help, regardless of their colour, religion and beliefs and look after those who are persecuted and bullied, that’s when they need your kindness the most and then, then tomorrow will be better.

My father survived the horrors of torture, imprisonment, beatings, being taken to Berlin with his father Edmund and brother Ryszard for trial for treason against the German State and finally the greater horrors of the concentration camps at Mauthausen and then the sub-camp Gusen.

Its difficult to know exactly when my grandfather, Ryszard and my father were moved between prisons but from letters and post marks I have in my possession I can say that

in November 1940 and March 1941 they were in Katowice
in October and December 1941, they were in Breslau (Wroclaw)
in February and March 1942 they were in Berlin
in March, May and November 1942 they were in Rawitsch where my grandfather died
and finally Mauthausen at the end of 1942
then Gusen 1 where Ryszard died in January 1943
and Gusen 2 where my father was a prisoner until liberation on 5th May 1945

My father spent time in jail in Wroclaw (Breslau) (Poland) sometime before his trial in Berlin (Germany). He recounted events that took place over that period of time. He recalled that the prisoners were given work to do by their guards, the Vienna police. My father was given the task of making baskets which were then sent to the ammunition factory. He received bread for his work. He worked hard at this and received extra bread. Once a basket was finished he would ram it hard into the basket below. When the baskets dried they were found to be unusable as they were brittle and the bottoms fell out. Once the guards found out about his little sabotage trick he was severely punished. He was put in glass house in the cellar which faced the guillotine which he saw in action on a number of occasions. He told us ‘I’ll never forget that.’ His next job in the prison, as he could no longer be trusted on basket work, was tearing cloth up to re-used. The cloth was then put in a mill and recycled to make new clothes and uniforms.

My father was later moved to Krakow. This prison was managed by the Gestapo not the Vienna police. He would be taken out of the Gestapo headquarters to work in the day and put back in the jail at night. A fellow inmate was a master painter and needed help to carry out the painting work he was given. He picked my father to help and told the guards he was also a painter. My father had no experience and once again was in trouble. His paint mix was wrong and when he painted the benches of a nearby stadium where horse jumping took place, the Gestapo soldiers got sticky green paint on their uniforms. It was the dripping green paint from the flower pots on the canopy that gave him away though. The paint mix contained too much linseed oil and not enough powder so the paint dripped down onto the soldiers below. He had to scrub it all down and start again. The master painter showed him how to mix the ingredients properly and he continued to carry out further painting works without too much trouble.

Some painting work included going into the Gestapo interrogation rooms at night where they were required to clean the walls of blood and repaint to rooms ready for the next interrogation.

Ryszard also did general decorating alongside my father but was taken off this type of work as he showed talent as an artist. He was given the special job of restoring paintings and statues in Gestapo possession.

In the cellars of the Gestapo headquarters in Krakow my father discovered a wine store which he managed to find access to by removing a board. He succeeded in stealing about 15 bottles of wine and then put the board back. He shared a jail room with about 50 other men. They all enjoyed the wine together and threw the empty bottles through the cell bars onto a canopy above the street when they were finished. Every night after that he brought a few bottles more back to the cell by tying the bottles to his legs inside his trousers. They were never searched at the prison so my father continued this escapade for some time.

He also became the supplier of cigarettes to the group of prisoners. The SS each received an allocation of cigarettes and cigars. My father's role was to distribute these. He would give each SS employee 4 cigarettes instead of the 6 that were allocated and keep the 2 to share amongst his fellow prisoners. The prisoners were asked on one occasion where they got the German cigarettes from but answered they got them from the local police while carrying out some work for them.

Ryszard and my father were imprisoned in Monteloppe for a time following their arrest for trying to escape over the Hungarian border to join the free army abroad. They were put into a transport cell and instead of the Vienna police guarding them, the SS guards took over. The guards would come into the cell tormenting the group of prisoners that was in there any time it took their fancy. They would burst into the cell, all inmates had to stretch up and the SS would select one individual out from the group. On one occasion Ryszard smiled at one of the soldiers he recognised from his home town. Ryszard was then immediately selected and required to bend over and was brutally beaten with sticks by the group of guards. The man who recognised him said ‘no smiling here’

Ryszard and my father had travelled on what my father called the trail of the 7 jails. He gave six of the names of these as Krynica, Nowy Sacz, Krakow, Katowice, and finally Wroclaw to Berlin where they were on trial for treason against the German state in the secret court at Rawitsch.

Rawitsch is where my grandfather died and my father believes he contracted tuberculosis and lung problems. Ryszard and my father were sent to Mauthausen concentration camp, the mother camp and then transfered to Gusen. These were finishing camps for inmates from hard labour and a starvation diet. The camp was extremely cold during their first winter. In February Ryszard became very ill through starvation. Ryszard and my father were still under quarantine at that time and so couldn’t work. Ryszard was taken to the camp hospital, injected in the heart with petrol and cremated in the Gusen camp ovens. My father always felt the burden that he was somehow responsible for the death of his brother. He thought they were going to help him in the hospital. They hadn't been in the camp long enough for my father to realise what admission to the hospital really meant.

When my father was first placed in Gusen 1 he was prisoner number 6734 Block 22 Hut B and later in Gusen 2 Block 4 Hut B his prisoner number was 48938. My father said in Mauthausen Gusen people were dying like flies.

More than half those deported to Gusen did not survive. More than 37,000 inmates died at the camp. They died from malnutrition, a violent death through torture and beatings, lack of medical care and forced and relentless labour in the stone quarry works and tunnels of the subterranean factory. The prisoners built the underground tunnels where they were then forced to build aircraft in the tight oppressive space of the Gusen and the Bergkristall works. It was here that there was a production line for the "Messerschmitt 262". Inmates of Gusen 2 called it ‘The Hell of hells.’

After Ryszard died, my grandmother was notified. Friends and neighbours of the family gave a variety of things to my grandmother to send to my father in the camp, some items he received while others were taken by the guards. With what he did receive he risked his life many times trying to trade and help the group he was with. He would negotiate with the Capos, the foreman of men, who were the persons who controlled the life and death of prisoners. Sometimes he would save his own life, sometimes that of a member of the group. The group tried to help each other to survive.

He was seventeen years old when the Nazis invaded Poland and twenty-three when he was liberated from the camp.

All the Gusen Camps were liberated on 5th May 1945, the same day as Mauthausen Camp. On the 23rd May 1945, the liberating US Army blew up much of the Gusen II Camp as there was too much Typhus and disease in the barracks.

Few lived to tell the tale of the horrors of these two camps. Those who lived found it difficult or impossible later to talk about what they had experienced and witnessed. The average life span in these camps was 3 months. My father learned to live and survive for 3 years. Although he delighted in telling stories of his time fighting and outwitting the Nazis he would sink into a deep depression when the real horrors came to his mind.

Survival wasn’t just about waiting for the allies to open the gates headed with Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes You Free). Survival to a camp victim and their family is about learning to get through each day and for the rest of their lives learning to live with and come to terms with guilt, hatred, anger, fear and depression. My father survived by telling himself ‘tomorrow will be better’.

My Uncle Kurt had managed to survive Dachau concentration camp and emigrated to America after his liberation.

My father emigrated to England after leaving the Red Cross hospital in Italy. Settled in Sheffield and married a local girl. At home my sister and I soon learned that bunk beds, showers and striped shirts and pyjamas were just some of the things not allowed in the house. Curtains were often not fully opened. Politics, war, oppression and even the slightest whisper of Nazi existence sparked intense emotional scenes yet I believe his kindness and generosity where unsurpassed by none.

Understandably, like many marriages with the additional emotional and psychological strain of ‘survival’, his marriage eventually failed. But Tadek was a man of many ideas and worked on the philosophy that tomorrow is another day. He thought of many schemes that would one day make his fortune. He cared very little for money and gave most of it away to others, enjoyed many a good drink and saved very little for himself.

He could never get warm. He had so little body fat that he would still feel cold in the height of summer. He always ate sparingly. He suffered for most of his life from the injuries to his neck and back. His nails never grew back properly from the torture he’d received although his broken nose from being hit by the butt of a rifle was fixed through surgery. He also had inactive tuberculosis as a direct result of being in the camps.

He died peacefully in his home, at the age of 70 on the 25th March 1992, on what would have been his mothers one hundredth birthday. He always stated that he survived the camps as a direct result of the strength, courage and initiative of his mother.

He died sitting in his comfortable chair with a computer magazine and cup of tea by his side, thinking about his latest computer orientated money making venture he hoped to embark on.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.