大象传媒

Students from County Upper School in Bury were just about to depart for a trip to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland when they met him.

Witold Kasicki, in 1945 in Germany

He was serving with the Polish armed forces as a cadet in a telephone exchange when the Germans invaded on 1st September 1939.听 As the Nazis overran the country he was told by his superiors to fend for himself.听

Later he returned to Warsaw and joined the Polish resistance movement.听 He was there for the failed Warsaw uprising in August 1944 and says he witnessed rapes and the destruction of the city.听 He wasn't Jewish, a gypsy or any of the minority groups that were persecuted by the Nazis, so he had political prisoner status.听 He was sent to Bruchs, Hersbruck and Dachau until the end of the war.

Witold moved to London with Jola, who was his childhood friend who'd travelled to find him in a Jeep after the end of the war.听 He became a successful building engineer and later retired with his second wife to Ixworth in Suffolk where he's been working to restore an old house.

'The Story Of A Polish Exile' is published by Athena Press.听 Listen to 大象传媒 Radio Suffolk's features on Witold's meeting with pupils from County Upper School's Matthew Fletcher, Andrew Banbury, Rupert Gove and Rachael Griffiths.听

You can also read about the story of a German Jewish man who passed through Europe's concentration camps by clicking on the Frank Bright links on the right>>