The turmoil of the world war Adolf Hitler began in 1939 brought with it a mass of victims from across Europe, though the greatest number came from Poland. Nazism incited racial and national hatred among nations on a scale the history of the world had never known before. First and foremost, Nazism wanted to exterminate the Slavic people, and especially the Polish people. Germany was the first to attack our homeland without declaring war. This happened on 1 September 1939. In a very short time, they occupied all of Poland. At that time, I worked in Lublin County. The Germans, who spread Western culture, began by reducing the number of teachers and opening schools with two or three teachers. On 1 January 1940, I too was dismissed. I was left without means of subsistence. I therefore began secretly teaching children in private homes so that I could have a piece of bread. The Germans decided first and foremost to exterminate the working intelligentsia. Arrests began, as did roundups in the streets. First, they put everyone in prisons, and as these became overcrowded, they transported people to concentration camps. On 9 May 1941, I was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to prison in Lublin. A terrible feeling overwhelms a person upon entering prison. The slamming and locking of the doors by the guards felt like passing through the gates of hell.
It takes strength of spirit not to break down. On 19 May 1941, I was taken to the Gestapo for interrogation. Interrogation is terrible. They put me in handcuffs, tied my legs with a thick rope, laid me on a table, and then five Gestapo men began to beat me. When I started screaming, they gagged me with a sweater so that I could not make a sound. In this way they tried to force me to confess to invented things about which I knew nothing. The interrogation lasted from five to seven o’clock. I was beaten and black all over. They led me to a cell, where a fever began to shake me. The prisoners who were in the cell wrapped me in a wet sheet, and I dozed off like that. At nine o’clock in the evening, the Gestapo men came to take me back to the castle. After waking up, I began fainting continuously. The women could not revive me. This went on for quite a long time. When I regained consciousness somewhat, the women dressed me, and I returned to the prison by car.
It was the Gestapo men’s custom that every prisoner had to stand facing the wall so as not to look at them. I kept fainting and did not hear my name; after this ceremony of checking whether everyone had returned to the prison, they lifted me and took me to cell no. 41. In the cell, I fainted throughout the night. One of the prisoners, Eugenia Biegowa, sat over me all night and all day, reviving me and wrapping me in cold compresses every few minutes. I had been beaten and could not move for nearly two weeks. My body began to fester; the same happened to my hands from the handcuffs and my legs from the rope, as I had been tied very tightly.
Every morning and evening, an SS man came to the cell to count whether all the female prisoners were present. We had to stand in two ranks and greet him by saying, “Good morning, Mr. Oberwachmeister.” If any prisoner did not speak, she was immediately beaten, and some were even killed. I could not raise my eyes and look at those tormentors, and so I was prepared for death at any moment.
I remained in the castle in Lublin until 21 September 1941, awaiting transport to a concentration camp each day. On the aforementioned day, I was taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. On 23 September 1941, I arrived in the town of Fürstenberg. SS men and women awaited us with huge dogs, and Ravensbrück was four or five kilometres away. We were loaded into vehicles and taken to Ravensbrück. On the camp’s main street, a transport of 500 people stood all day without food, and the food we had brought with us was taken away. Each prisoner had to report to the office, give her personal details, and then received her number. My number was 7906, and from that moment there was neither a surname nor a first name, only a number. Then each of us was taken to the bathhouse, where a doctor supposedly examined us; our belongings were taken away and we were given prison clothes, the so-called striped uniforms. Many prisoners had their hair cut, myself among them. We were assigned one block for quarantine, which was to last six weeks.
To be continued.
(We remind readers: Stefania Tajcher was one of the first post-war teachers in Bolesławiec and the organizer of education in our area.)