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I am Polish and I was born in 1927. When the war started I was just passed exams to go to secondary education, which we used to call gymnasium ….
I was in western Poland but because it was September which was the holiday time, my mother sent me off to my uncle and her sister who had her estate in eastern Poland. We didn't expect invasion from the East we were expecting invasion from Germany from West. While we were there Russians came in. Almost the same two weeks after Germans invaded us, Russians came in from the East and they captured me, my sister, my aunt and my grandmother. When I say captured we were classed as refugees.
So anyway, my aunt and my sister. My aunt was a landowner which in Soviet eyes was the biggest crime possible and my sister because she was a young girl, they managed to smuggle themselves out towards West. By that time Poland as a nation collapsed, because half of it was Russian half of it was German but they preferred to go back to the West because they were frightened to be raped. They left us behind because I was too young and she was too old. So I was left behind to look after her, and sometime in January 1940 Russians came over and put us in trucks, railway trucks, cattle trucks with the reason to send us off somewhere else, Siberia or whatever. But my grandmother died during the journey in one of the trucks. There wasn't good security there. There were soldiers walking around. Every stop we had to get some water and some food. People wandered around to relieve themselves. So I thought “Sod it ; I'm going off on my own!” I had no reason now to stay because my grandmother was dead. I was about 13. So I left the train.
By then I spoke a bit of Russian and Bielorussian. So I trekked back towards West because I wanted to be with my family. I ran away. It was very easy because people wandered around; I went somewhere to relieve myself. All I can remember is that I sort of turned around, I found some peasants hut and told them I want to go to Poland so they were very sympathetic and put me up for the night, directed me in the right direction, sometimes they put me on the train (.I had no money you see.) or sometimes a horse and cart was going to the next village, in my direction West.
And in about two months, I got back to Warsaw which by then was German occupied. I got back to Warsaw in May. I think about the 14th of May. The reason I remember that very well was because when I got in contact with my mother, although she was heavy smoker, she made a vow that she'd stop smoking if I got back home alive. By then they didn't know where I was. Well basically I had to live! In occupied Poland, German occupied Poland. 14th of May 1940 very hard winter it was. I was trekking back from the end of January to May about three months.
So basically I landed up in Warsaw in summer. Anyway I managed to get across the dividing zone between Russians and Germans. Actually I met an English man; he was escaping from the Russians. But unfortunately I didn’t get his address because I didn’t speak English then. So I finished up in occupied Warsaw. In the meantime, the Germans re-settled all the Polish people from Western Poland into what they called “general government”. Part of Western Poland was incorporated into Germany proper. So I knew my mother would be in Warsaw because we had relations there.
Within a few months I joined the Polish Underground, the Polish Resistance: funnily enough through the boy scouts. I met my group leader and he said we were resisting German occupation. We were sort of divided into cells of six and we didn’t know anybody apart from our own six. It was what we used to call “conspiratia”. Everything was “hush hush”. But being a young lad, I joined what they called “small sabotage”.( that’s translated into English” ) and we were just causing mischief to the Germans… putting anti German placards, anti German graffiti and turning signs around; German signs like directions to battalion no. 2 or field hospital no. 3.
This was 1940; I joined the underground towards the late summer or autumn of 1940. And gradually we were getting instructions in the use of weapons. Semi-military training. And by 1944, I’d progressed to more important jobs, sabotage, blowing up the trains. Germany was at war with Russia by then. The usual tricks; for example, there was a newspaper which was German edited called the Warsaw Courier and the polish Underground printed an almost identical copy on the front but inside was anti German propaganda. Of course I lived right through that very heavy time when there were street executions in Warsaw. For example, if a German was killed, the Germans used to take 10 people hostage, usually reasonably prominent people, professionals, doctors whatever and there were placards on the walls saying these ten people will be executed if there is another German killed. And they actually did that. And Warsaw is full of shrines where they were killed in reprisals. And that’s how it went, right up to 1944, when the Russians were coming very near to Warsaw. We heard the Russian artillery going. Our underground command decided that we should open up and start a proper “uprising”. The decision for the uprising was from the underground and our government in exile in London. That was August 1st 1944. Now during the Warsaw rising I was burnt with a flame thrower, from a tank. And I finished up in a couple of hospitals, heavily burned.
To start with, I lived with my mother and my sister. But I was captured by the Germans. They sent me for some mission to Krakow, myself and my leader of my little platoon. We were both captured and interrogated and our cover was that we were smugglers…. So they gave us a good beating and they put us in the camp for transportation of forced labour to Germany. Of course they had all my details, they knew where I lived, they knew my name. I was 17 then. But we managed to escape from there. It was quite easy. I remember both of us, we went to the latrine and jumped over the wall. So when I came back to Warsaw, they knew my address. So I joined the Partisan unit which was about late winter 1944 simply because I couldn’t live at home anymore. The unit was in the forest, Poland was covered in pine forest.
Anyway after the Warsaw rising, I was walking wounded because all I had was bandages on my face and my hands. See; my hands are burned. We were withdrawing from that part of Warsaw, which was the old town but the only way we could get away from there was through the sewers. So they evacuated me from the old town to the part of town that was still in the hands of the Resistance and put me in another hospital. But in the meantime, the Polish command negotiated; because to fight was hopeless, we had no ammunition, no food, Russians were right across the Vistula river, we could see them through the binoculars. But they wouldn’t help us. They wanted to get rid of Polish intelligencia, Polish patriots. But pressure from western governments and the Germans allowed us full “combatant’s rights”…. So consequently we became prisoners of war, when the whole “Underground” surrendered and I was taken prisoner as a walking wounded.
So I went into this POW camp which was Stalag 4B and there were a lot of Englishmen. It was in Muhlberg in Germany … it wasn’t far from Leipzig. We heard when they were bombing Leipzig. Whilst we were in Stalag 4B, the Russians were coming. We could hear the guns and a lot of us decided we didn’t want to fall into Russian hands. The Polish Underground were mainly anti Communists. So the camp commandant actually allowed us to walk out with a couple of Germans and quite a few English; because we could hear the guns from both sides. This is now March/April 1945. So roughly three or four hundred Poles and another two or three hundred Americans and English, we just marched out of the camp. Obviously they knew they were losing the War so they were quite happy to let us go. There were Poles; there were English, Australians, French, Dutch. And it was chaos; I’m talking about the last four weeks before the war ended. And the Poles had nowhere to go.

Postscript — After the War…….

So I joined the Polish second Corps which was part of the British Eighth Army and I went to Italy. This was the summer of 1945. I went to Officers College in Italy. I passed the exams and became an Officer Cadet with Officers rights. I had a marvellous time in Italy because we got paid properly. Eventually they sent me to Britain and I finished up in Bristol where I had an operation on my burns. This was in 1951. Churchill, because we were fighting on their side, gave us the privilege of either going back to Poland or staying with a view to becoming British citizens. And the majority did not want to go back. It was Poland under Stalin and the ones who went back were put against the wall and shot. It depended on how prominent you were. I shouldn’t think they’d have shot me, but they’d certainly have put me in the “nick” for sometime to “re-educate me”. We were in a re-settlement camp and we were gradually allowed to be absorbed into civilian life. So that’s how I ended up in Bristol.

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