Jan Ryszard Sempka was born in Warsaw on 13 May 1928. Before the war he lived at ulica Zakroczymska 1. He took part in the Warsaw Uprising and fought in the Old Town. After the end of the Uprising he was treated as a civilian and sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp.
On 4 September 1944 at around 11 a.m. the train stopped at the station at Mauthausen. People panicked as the name of Mauthausen was by now known for what it was. The train stayed in the station for around two hours and nothing happened.
The railway workers said that they were waiting for lines to become available in order for us to continue on to Linz. Around 1 p.m., the train was surrounded by the SS who violently threw us out of the wagons and ordered us to form up in columns. They drove us like cattle through the town in what for us was still an unknown direction. On leaving the town we could see the camp at the top of the hill. We could see the stone walls and guard towers. It was clear that we were not going to work in the vineyards, the road only led to the by now known concentration camp.
The men were forced into one section of the camp through a huge wooden gate whilst the women and children were kept back, behind the wall. We were taken to the square between the wall and the barracks. There was a wash house there and another hut which perhaps was a store. We were told to strip and were allowed to keep only our shoes and belt. We had to leave all valuables such as money, documents and other personal belongings. We were kept in the square until evening when we were taken in groups to the wash house. We were shaved leaving a 3‐4 cm strip in the middle of our heads. From the wash house we were taken out via a different exit. Prisoners were standing there. Each of us was given by them one piece of underwear, shirt or trousers. The clothing was in bad condition, one leg may have been shorter, the shirt had no arms etc. With screams and blows, the SS forced us to the main camp street. The camp was divided into three parts and we were taken to what they called the third camp.
It was dark. There was no lighting. We were taken to dark, two storey barracks and ordered to sit on the ground from the wall on the left side. The head of the barracks and the kapo were running around trying to push as many people into the barracks as they could. The prisoners sat the whole night on the bare floor, squashed in. On the right hand side of the barracks, there were straw mattresses and blankets piled as high as the ceiling. During the night, one of the prisoners who had been sitting in front of me, got up and left the barrack. The next day his body was found hanging from a beam in the wash room. He had also cut his wrists. There was blood all around him. I heard from other prisoners that he had owned a chemists shop in the Old Town. Probably he had had enough and committed suicide.
Before dawn the prisoners were forced out of five barracks, numbered from 26 to 30. It was very cold, the temperature must have been below zero as everything was covered in frost. People warmed up by forming what we called 'chimneys', that is by huddling together in groups of several people and warming each other up with our own body heat. The sight of the shaven prisoners dressed in torn rags was horrible. People did not recognise even their best friends. These first impressions of the concentration camp were horrific.
Since being forced onto the train, we had had nothing to eat or drink except for a small meal in Vienna.
After several hours standing outside, some tables and chairs were brought in and registration started. They took down our personal details and gave each one of us a camp number. I became number 95959 and from then on I was only that number.
I was sent to barrack number 27. The weather on that day and the following days was very nice, despite the early morning and evening frosts. During the afternoon the temperature reached 35° C. During the day we were not allowed into the barracks, we had to stand in the square. As there were no trees in the square, there was no shade. We tried to stand in the shade of the barracks and wall. Several people got sunburnt. The face of one of the prisoners bloated up to such an extent that we could not see his eyes. We were thirsty. We eventually received some coffee from the kitchens. The barracks heads ordered young prisoners to wash the floor of the barracks whilst one portion of coffee was given to three or four people. In turns we drunk this bitter, dark liquid. From almost the beginning of our stay, during what was called the quarantine, some people got diarrhea. They were taken to the camp hospital, what was called the “Revier”.
My quarantine lasted until 12 September 1944. On this day, in the morning with a group of more than 400 people, I was taken to the sub camp at Melk. The previous day we had been given a vest and drawers, also trousers, a shirt and a round cap with grey and blue stripes. Each of us got two strips of material on which a red triangle was printed meaning that we were political prisoners. We had to use a chemical pencil to write our camp number. We had to sew one onto the shirt on the left hand side above the breast. The second was sewn onto the left leg of the trousers on the rear below the knee.
Melk is around 90 km from Mauthausen and around the same again from Vienna. We arrived in the afternoon. The camp was located in a former military base. There were several walled buildings there, some were two or three storeys, there were also barracks. Just going into the camp did not promise anything good. A double barbed wire electric fence, guard towers with guards armed with machine guns and hand guns. At the entrance there was a post to which a prisoner was tied by his hands and feet. It was punishment for a crime I did not yet know. It was depressing to see the other prisoners. Some of them were attempting to get the last nourishment out of empty soup containers. Others were looking for food by overturning a waste container. Obviously they tried to do it in a way in which they would not be caught as they would be punished for it‐at best a beating from the SS or prisoner functionary.
All of us who had arrived from Mauthausen were sent to block 13. We were located on a large room on the first floor. The room was divided into four parts by boards, with large gaps between them. Each part was given a different block number‐from ten to thirteen. There were around 2,000 prisoners in this room. Each block had someone in charge.
Our boss was prisoner, a German with a green triangle. He was a criminal. He immediately ordered a roll call and selected some people to do things related to cleanliness and order in the block.
The block was made up of three‐tier bunks adjacent to one another, with only a narrow gap so that prisoners could get in and out of beds. The bunks had rough‐hewn planks on which were laid paper bags filled with wood chips. Each bed had two old, worn out, gray, foul‐smelling blankets.
That day, our prison files were completed and we were assigned to work groups called kommandos. I was assigned to a fifty person group called “Kommando Keller Lutz Wasser”. The name of the kommando came from the company for which we were working.
At four the next morning we were woken up by the bell and the shouts of the block head and other prisoner functionaries. They shouted 'Aufstehen!' (Get up) as they ran through the block. The first people they came across were pushed into the kitchen for breakfast which consisted of a mug of black, bitter water called coffee and one eighth of a kilo of black bread. At the same time prisoners needed to quickly get dressed, make their bed and run to the wash room. Then they needed to form up for their work groups. Meals were given according to how many people were working in any given kommando. All the time the block leaders were shouting, swearing and pushing people around. Those who were late were pushed and beaten. Breakfast had to be eaten quickly, usually on foot. After eating, the prisoners were drawn up in a column in front of the building in rows of five. Then they were counted several times and taken to the roll call square. At five the camp roll call was held. We were counted again by the block leader, the Blockführer (who was from the SS), Rapportführer and finally by the Kommandant. Once this was completed we were taken to work. Some worked in the camp, whilst others were taken outside. The latter were under constant vigilance by armed SS men who often had dogs.
My kommando worked 5 km from the camp. We were guarded by five SS. We had to cut a ditch into rocks and then place large piping in it. This was to carry water from the Danube to quarries. We walked there and back every day. Food was overcooked cabbage, turnip, carrots, and later during the winter we got dried vegetables. This was given at our work place. Sometimes we did not get fed at all at work, in this case we got it with our evening meal in the camp, in the block where we lived.
Each of the prisoners had to carry a bowl for his food. A bowl was guarded as though it were gold. If you did not have a bowl, you did not eat. Some had metal bowls, others were ceramic, whilst others had tins that had once been packaging for food. The spoons which had been given to us on arrival in Melk were also closely guarded. People carried their bowls in different ways, knowing that they could never part from them. Metal bowls could be attached to the belt via a hole. It was more difficult with ceramic bowls. They were also heavier and during a 10 km march could be a nuisance.
Dinner was usually one ladle of the black, bitter liquid they called coffee, one eighth of a loaf of black bread, sometimes a spoonful of white cheese or a piece of margarine or jam. On festive days we also received a slice of sausage. Sometimes the block leaders for their own reasons gave a double portion of bread either in the morning or the evening. This meant that the prisoner would go without a meal as it would all be eaten in one go and so would have to go to sleep hungry or go to work without eating.
17 September 1944 – it was a Sunday and we did not have to work. Prisoners who worked outside the camp got every second Sunday off as changes in the work pattern were needed. Usually there were three shifts. Also this gave a day off for the SS who guarded the prisoners as well as the civilian workers. There was a full complement for the morning and evening roll calls except for those who were in the “Revier”. After counting the prisoners the Kommandant warned the new arrivals to keep discipline and not to try to escape. Escapees were always caught and killed. He added that in the camp no‐one has the right to live longer than three months and the only exit was through the crematory chimney. After a few days in the camp and having witnessed the beatings, deaths, punishments, tying people to the post, drowning in vats of water and other forms of cruelty, it was not hard to believe the Kommandant. A long stay in the camp was not possible. The most important thing was to avoid a situation in which one could be beaten or killed.
The Sunday off was not a day of rest for the prisoners. Various forms of torture were found. The block leader from my block wanted the prisoners from my block to be like soldiers on parade. Therefore, irrespective of the weather, we were drilled with exercises to get us to quickly form up in columns in fives or in tens. Prisoners who were unable to do this quickly enough were forced to squat and jump like a frog around the column. We were drilled in taking off and putting on our caps so that with the command 'Mützen ab' (Caps off) one would hear one sound of the caps hitting the calf of our right legs. With the command 'Mützen auf', the caps had to be put on immediately and perfectly on the head. Those that failed to do this were given the frog punishment, were beaten or had to clean the rooms or wash the floors or something similar.
Another form of torturing prisoners was communal washing and disinfecting clothes. This could happen at night and without warning. Prisoners were woken and ordered to strip. Clothing had to be tied in a bundle, with the number on the outside. Prisoners who were called had to take their clothing to the steamer. Naked prisoners, irrespective of the weather, in rain or in frost, were forced to the wash room with beatings and shouts some 150–200 metres from the block. Depending on the mood of the washroom staff, either cold or very hot water was used. Several minutes later, one group was taken away and another arrived. They ran back to their block and the block leader alongside other kapos checked to see if the prisoners were clean. If the opinion was that the prisoner was not clean or had mud splashed on him, which was possible in the run back to the block, he was forced back to the washroom and made to repeat until he was clean. No‐one slept that night. When clothing returned from the steamer, it was still wet and the numbers were not visible. In these conditions, finding one's own clothing took a long time. Everyone had to be dressed for the morning roll call. It was a nightmare for the prisoners. The fortunate ones were those that worked during the night and did not have to go through it.
I worked in the “Kommando Keller” with a group of around fifty people from Warsaw for about six weeks. At the beginning our friends who worked in the tunnels were jealous that we could work outside and in only one shift. However when the weather started to change and when it was damp and later when there were frosts then we had to wear wet, heavy clothing without the possibility of getting out of the rain or of warming ourselves up, we were jealous of those in the tunnels. This was the hardest part of my stay in the concentration camp. I cried more than once with my friend Zbyszek Wąsowicz, three years older than me and then 19 years old, because of the cold and hunger and the water that constantly fell from the pipes held by chains above the ditches which we had dug with our own hands. We thought that in these circumstances we could not even dream of living the three months which the Kommandant had spoken of.
One day, whilst walking to work, our group which was carrying various items such as tools, beams, chains etc. took the wrong turning and this led to a long diversion. The Kommandant, SS‐Hauptsturmführer Julius Ludolf saw us from a distance in his car. On arrival he shouted and hit our kapo, a Hungarian Jew, who compared to other kapos was a very reasonable man. The commander of the group was relieved and another SS man was appointed in his place.
When we returned from work, our group was broken up and assigned to other kommandos. I was out of luck as I was assigned to one of the hardest jobs, the Merkendorf Kommando where we built living barracks for people from Vienna who had been bombed out. The kommando had a bad name due to the sadistic Kommandoführer and his SS staff which he had selected personally. We arrived at work via difficult, muddy roads which after about 4km had exhausted our strength. Our work consisted of carrying bags of gravel, concrete elements, emptying cement, carrying water etc. Not a day passed without the Kommandoführer beating several prisoners to unconsciousness or to heavy bleeding. His favourite way of beating prisoners was to make them stand next to a wall and then hit them in the face so that the back of their head hit the wall. He stopped once the prisoner was heavily bleeding. Any excuse was good for a beating. It could be being out of step whilst marching to work, working too slowly, wearing a piece of a cement bag under one's shirt to keep the cold out, not taking off one's cap to a SS man etc.
One day stands out in my memory. Our kommando, which counted several hundred people, was carried in goods wagons to Merkendorf. A short way from the railway station at Melk there was a wooden platform on which prisoners could enter the goods wagons. Prisoners had to stand on the left and right so that there would be space in the centre for the SS escort. We were taken several kilometres to a place where tunnels were being constructed. There was a similar ramp there. That day, going to work, I had problems with bending my leg. I thought that this was due to swelling which happened to all of us. Once we arrived at the tunnels and were unloaded, we formed up in columns on the platform. In the column we always walked arm in arm in such a way that clung to the prisoner on the right. I had difficulty bending my leg whilst going down the ramp with the result that the whole column slowed down. An SS man ordered a prisoner to take me by the right hand to speed me up. The prisoner showed that he did not want to do this. The SS man hit him with the butt of his rifle in the back of the head as he fell forward. This caused so much confusion in the ranks that I fell behind to the next line of five whilst the prisoner who had taken my place had to carry the unconscious man to the roll call square. The number of prisoners always had to agree. The unconscious man was placed next to our column. After a short time an Oberkapo arrived. He was a criminal, identified by a green triangle. We called him 'Gypsy'. He kicked the unconscious prisoner, told him to get up 'Aufstehen' and when the prisoner did not react, he stood on his neck and strangled him.
The behaviour of this criminal was well known in the camp. Few days passed in which he did not murder a prisoner brought to the camp. His favourite method was drowning his victims in vats of water. That day, when I arrived back in the camp in the evening, I went to the revier where prisoner doctors examined sick inmates. A decision to keep a sick prisoner in the camp hospital had to be made nevertheless by an SS doctor. The swelling to my waist was so bad that they had to cut my trousers off. A decision was made to keep me in the hospital. This sickness, which was commonly called dropsy (oedema) in the camp was caused above all by hunger and the conditions as well as the wearing out of the organism.
It was very difficult to stay in the revier. Prisoners thought of a stay there as a stroke of good luck as they did not have to go to do backbreaking work, they had shelter and they had more chances of getting food as prisoners who had very high temperatures could not eat ‐ they only wanted to drink. Therefore it was possible to exchange the drink that was called coffee for food. The conditions in the revier were very hard. There were bunks each bunk had up to three or four prisoners in a single bed. As autumn turned to winter the number of sick people increased. The death rate too. At the beginning of the autumn the dead bodies were taken to Mauthausen to be burnt there. There was only one barrack for the sick at Melk until the end of 1944 when a second was built. A crematorium was added to it to destroy the remains of those that died and were murdered.
Prisoners in the revier who could still move had to do various jobs which the kommandant of the revier assigned them to. This included cleaning, carrying food from the kitchen, overseeing supplies, carrying the dead etc. I remember one day I was sent to the cellar to clear a blockage in the sewer. When I went below I was shocked to see many dead bodies discarded there and to get to the blockage I needed to climb over the bodies. The knowledge of what would happen if I did not complete my task was stronger than my fear. The thought that I had to walk over the bodies of my colleagues frightened me but I had to do what I had been ordered to do. I still remember the crunch of bones under my feet even though I tried to be very careful. The worst was that to get to the pipe which was suspended from the ceiling I had to get to the other side crawling amongst the dead. The pile of bodies moved with my weight. It was as though the arms and legs of these people were moving. I will never forget that!
My stay in the revier lasted only several days. The swelling went down thanks to lying in a warm room and not having to go to work. Every few days the SS doctor who was in charge inspected the prisoners. As I no longer had a high temperature, he decided that I could return to my block. That same day I was assigned to the night shift on the Czernichowski Lochschuppen Kommando. This was a 15 person group of prisoners who had to unload wagons where tunnels were being dug. This was mainly cement, gravel, crushed stones and other building materials. The work was hard and we were outdoors all the time in the rain, frost and strong winds. One needs to remember that our clothing was not suitable for working in such conditions. I only had a shirt and light vest and an apron which was called a coat. The shoes I had arrived in had long given up on me and I had received wooded sandals which were attached to my feet with a wire in order to prevent them from falling off. There was no chance of any socks. The feet were protected by rags or paper from the cement bags. Some people even walked around with nothing on their feet as they had not received any sandals.
I remember above all the time of Christmas 1944. On Christmas Eve, the first shift finished as there was to be two days off. On that day, the roll call for those working on the tunnels was called for 13.00. I need to add that roll call always happened before and after work. Each kapo wrote down the number of people working in his group and reported to the Kommandoführer. At the end of work, he called his group together and checked that everyone was present. Everyone had to be accounted for. If a prisoner died or was murdered, the corpse had to be alongside the group. The SS man appointed by the Kommandoführer counted each group and checked that everything was the same as at the beginning of the work. On Christmas Eve, after finishing work, we were counted various times. The numbers did not add up. A prisoner was missing, and it turned out to be a Pole who had been brought there several days earlier from Auschwitz. Light snow and rain was falling. The tunnel was large and there were plenty of places to hide. Everyone knew that over Christmas the SS would go back to their barracks and the work place would be empty. Probably the prisoner also hoped that this would give him the chance to escape. The SS and prisoner functionaries were clearly very worried.
As far as I recall there had been no escape attempts from our camp for some time as all earlier attempts had ended in failure with the prisoner being caught and murdered. We were kept on the roll call square until late in the evening without food in the snow and worsening mud. Around 22:00 a large group of SS arrived. They had changed places with the guards in the towers on the train which took us to Melk. Walking to the camp from the station we saw the lights on the Christmas trees and heard people singing. That day the SS behaved especially brutally. On arriving in the camp we saw a Christmas tree in the roll call square which had been lit up. We received half a loaf of bread which was to last for the entire Christmas period. Each person also received a pinch of chopped roots and tobacco leaves. This was the Christmas ration of tobacco and the only one that I recall that all prisoners received.
Very early the next day a roll call was held for the prisoner functionaries which included the block bosses, kapos and camp police. After a group was chosen of these prisoners alongside a large group of SS, they all went to the site of the tunnels to search for the escapee. For those that stayed behind, the day started as it would on any other day. After the morning roll call, we returned to the block and coffee was handed out. This day it was different, had a slightly sweet taste. It had probably been mixed with dried, roasted sugar beets. For me the day began very badly. As I was going to the cauldron which contained the coffee, I met the block boss. He noted that I had a rag around my neck. On the rag there was the badge the Germans gave some prisoners who were allowed to stay in the block and I had not returned it. He tore it from my neck and then ordered me to strip and hand over everything for disinfection. As I had been working on the transport of cement, I had specks of cement on my head and neck. The conditions in the camp were such that we were unable to wash ourselves properly as there often was no water in the washroom and toilets. There was no soap, no towels and on top of all this I had frozen hands with open wounds on my fingers. The block boss called for one of the young prisoners whose job was the Stubendienst (taking care of cleanliness). He gave him a wire brush and ordered him to take me to the washroom to clean me up. The washroom was in a small building beside the block, around 30 metres distant. There was a hard frost which later lasted until the middle of March. All the trees were covered in white frost. I was lucky in as much as the Stubendienst was a Pole from Silesia and he tried to help me get rid of the cement. He only lightly scrubbed the brush using water. There was no soap. That day I walked around covered only by a blanket. I did not get my clothes back the following day.
On Christmas Day in the afternoon, the group of prisoner functionaries and SS returned to the camp. They brought the beaten up prisoner who they had been unable to find the previous day. He had been hiding in one of the sewage pipes. He had been unable to escape as the whole area had been tightly guarded by SS in the guard towers and patrols. At evening roll call he was covered in coloured rags with a sign around his neck saying in German 'I escaped and was caught.' He was paraded in front of all the prisoners. I believe that he received a sort of amnesty in view of the fact that it was Christmas. He did not get the usual 75 strokes nor did he have to suffer being tied to the stake for two or three days with nothing to eat or drink. Maybe he was sent to the penal company at Mauthausen, I don't remember.
As the death rate was very high owing to the conditions in the camp, from time to time new transports comprising of several hundred prisoners came to Melk to replace those that had died. After New Year there were fewer transports owing to the front getting closer. In this case prisoners had to work longer hours. In the middle of February 1945 after completing one shift, the Blockschreiber told me that I must go to work on the night shift for several hours. After receiving my evening meal and having two hours to go before needing to go to work after roll call and being completely worn out, I risked punishment by lying down on the bunk. I was woken by shouts in the block. I heard my surname shouted several times, which did not happen in the camp as only number were used. It turned out that one prisoner was missing at roll call. After checking they found out that I was the missing prisoner. I got up quickly and ran to the column. I was seen by the Schreiber and block boss. I was given immediate punishment. I was ordered to lie on the table and the block boss hit me with a rubber baton ten times on the back. When I got up he hit me over the head. The prisoner column from block 13 quickly made it to the roll call square. All the prisoners were already present.
The SS Blockführer started to shout at our block boss and demand to know why we were late. The response was that a prisoner had hidden himself to avoid going to work. The camp Kommandant ordered the police to give me 25 strokes. I do not know how many I received, I only know that I counted to 14. We had to count out loud when beaten. On getting to 14 I lost consciousness. That day I did not go to work as my fellow prisoners took me to the revier. After several days I was examined by various doctors including one in an SS uniform.
Either the next day, or two days later (I can't quite remember), I was given treatment. I got several injections in my leg, above the knee. The following days I was treated with a dark fluid which gave me a high temperature. My leg swelled and became red. Then pus started to form in wounds in the foot, above the bone, around the knee and around the right arm pit. A prisoner nurse who we called (in Russian) ‘Uncle Jasha’ told me that it was phlegmon‐a spreading inflammatory condition which causes pus to form. It was rumoured in the revier that the Nazi doctors were experimenting with this disease. All of the patients had a similar condition. There were three or four of us lying on one bench due to lack of space. It was impossible to sleep as one of us constantly bothered another.
There was also a plague of lice. We were naked, had no underwear and were covered only by one blanket. Insects gathered under the paper bandages which caused a terrible itching. The death rate amongst patients was very high. More than one of the prisoners lying on the same bed as I died. His place was quickly taken by another. I stayed in these conditions until the beginning of April when the camp was evacuated.
No‐one slept the night before the evacuation. The prisoner functionaries were anxiously running about. The rumour was that healthy prisoners would walk to Mauthausen whereas the ill would be murdered. There was panic in the revier until dawn. In the morning, a lorry arrived and the ill were put on it. I also heard that there were horses and carts. We were taken to the railway station at Melk where a goods wagon was waiting for us. Those prisoners who could get in by themselves did so whereas those that could not were thrown in like bales of straw.
We were kept in the wagons with barbed wire against the windows for two days without food or water. We often waited in sidings. On the third day we arrived at the station at Mauthausen. We did not know what to expect. The wagons were surrounded by armed guards (not just the SS) and once more with shouts the sick were thrown out of the wagons onto the platform.
It was very cold. A delicate yet thick rain was falling. Several corpses were thrown out of our wagon. It was the same story in other wagons. The sick prisoners were taken to the camp by lorry as well as by horses and carts. This took several hours owing to the shortage of transport. The first to arrive were those that could walk by themselves. Those that could not walk had to wait for transport. After several hours lying on the ground, frozen to the bones, I saw someone I knew who was helping load people onto the truck. I used the last bit of strength that I had to call him. He got another prisoner to help him put me onto the lorry. After the obligatory wash which always happened to new prisoners arriving in the camp, those that could still walk were chased to the revier and those that could not, including me, were taken there in a four wheeled cart. The conditions were horrible. At that time there were several thousand sick in the hospital. The sick prisoners received half of the starvation rations which were given in the rest of the camp. On bunks designed for one person, there were four of us. I was on the lowest level. In my bunk there was Jozio Rosolowski who was about 15. His older brother died in the camp.
I found out after liberation that the prisoners were not liquidated at Melk. Once the sick who could not walk were brought to Mauthausen, the walking sick came on foot. Not many made it. Exhausted and unable to continue walking, the SS murdered them. On 15 April with great speed some prisoners were taken by goods wagons or ship along the Danube to Linz and then to the camp at Ebensee.One day, the exact date I cannot remember, one of the prisoners in our bunk died. We did not inform the orderly who looked after our bunks. This way we were able to get his rations which we shared amongst ourselves. The hunger was worse than lying with a corpse. That went on for three days.
At the beginning of April the news went out that some of the sick prisoners would be taken to the main camp where they would get better rations in order to improve their health. This gave a spark of hope that we would survive, especially as we knew that the Soviet and American armies were not far away. The orderly was a Pole from Warsaw. He had been in the camp a long time, his number was not much above 2,000. I only remember that he lived somewhere near ul Wspólna before being arrested. Unfortunately I do not know his name. The revier where I was below the central part of the camp.
The orderly came to us and told Jozio Rosolowski and me not to report when they called our numbers to be given food. He also told us that he had changed our numbers with Frenchmen who had died. As the block was surrounded by SS, it was quite clear that feeding sick prisoners was not the aim of the exercise. After liberation we learned that the sick prisoners who had been taken had been gassed.
Mauthausen was liberated by the US army on the morning of 5 May 1945. From 5 ‐ 7 May the camp was run by a committee of prisoners. The Americans took over only on 7 May. Medical help was immediately arranged. The sickest prisoners were taken to the main camp where one of the blocks was organised as an evacuation hospital of the American army and given number 130. I was taken in a vehicle belonging to the American Red Cross. I was on the verge of complete collapse, I was unable to even feed myself. I must say also that I was 174 cm tall but weighed only 34 kg. Two of my friends from the revier fed me. They were Zbyszek Wąsowicz who lived at ul. Zakroczymska 1 and with whom I had been taken from Warsaw. The other was Zdzislaw Piskorek. I had begun the fight in the Warsaw Uprising with him and I had met him again in the revier in Mauthausen.
On 9 May 1945, I received a blood transfusion and my legs were operated on in five places and were drained. Apart from dropsy, they said that I had a damaged right eye with 0.1 vision and severe pleurisy with effusion on the right side. My temperature was over 39°C. I was kept until the beginning of June as they needed to take water from my right lung. My life was saved only thanks to the care I received.
I was in the hospital until the middle of July 1945. Mauthausen was in the part of Austria assigned to the Soviet Union. When we woke one morning we realised that there were no more Americans in the hospital, however there were Soviet soldiers walking in the corridor. That day a horse and cart were found in the neighbourhood and some sick people were taken several kilometres to the village of Katzdorf. There we were placed in a walled, one storey building in which older people had lived earlier. The situation of the sick changed diametrically. There were no more doctors, no normal food. We got a little whole meal bread for breakfast and lunch with a piece of margarine and jam, sometimes some cold meat, more often sausage. For dinner we got some soup and mainly unpeeled potatoes. A staff sergeant was in charge who went to Mauthausen once every few days. Mauthausen had become a Soviet army base. One of the sick was Dr Wartanowicz, a medical doctor from Poland of Jewish descent. He managed to get to the hospital in Mauthausen to take some medicines and help those that needed it. There were also two Austrian nurses.
That was the situation until the middle of August when it was announced that a transport would be organised to Poland. Despite my difficulties in walking, even with sticks, I volunteered. On either 18 or 19 August (I can't remember the exact date) three tractors with trailers turned up in the morning. They had seats. Each one of us who was going to Poland received half a kilogram of wholemeal bread, a fourth of a packet of margarine and around 150 grams of sausage. The tractors took us to the station of Amstetten, several kilometres away. There we got into two empty goods wagons.
I returned home on crutches, with a serious tendon contracture in the right knee, a bandaged right foot, without shoes, in camp uniform, an old padded jacket and small cycling cap even though it was the middle of summer. My possessions were completed by the blanket that I had managed to take from the hospital in Mauthausen as well as a box in which I had bandages, some small souvenirs and my sickness card from the American hospital.
The way home was hard. The first few days were in open goods wagons which often stood on sidings in the middle of nowhere whilst other trains had priority. We had to find our own food. As I could not move easily, I had to rely on my travelling companions. At Bratislava we were given a passenger wagon which took us to the border at Petrowice. There we got into Polish wagons and continued to Dziedzice. That took six days. At Dziedzice I was placed with other very sick people in a hospital run by the Polish Red Cross. After several nights on the boards of goods wagon I had the chance to sleep in a bed with a cover as well as normal food. As people there were in a weak state and could not go in person to the repatriation office, formalities were carried out there. A civil servant with a photographer took care of the necessary documents. I wanted to continue on home to my family. I was still very weak although I now weighed 42kg. I received a repatriation certificate which allowed me to travel free of charge to my family near Dęblin. I also got 100 zl which was enough to buy several packets of cigarettes.
I decided to go to my family near Dęblin the next day. I hoped that I would meet my mother and the rest of the family there as we had heard in the camp that mothers with little children had been taken from the camp in Pruszków to what had been the General Government, mainly to the Krakow administrative area. In those days, the trains did not run according to timetables and were so full that people also travelled on the roof and the links between carriages. From Dziedzice I took a train to Poznań. I had to change at Koluszki for a train going to Lublin via Radom and Dęblin. At Koluszki there was also a crowd of people waiting for trains as it is an intersection of lines coming from various parts of the country. It was impossible to find a place in the waiting room so I sat down on the ground next to the building. As I have already mentioned, I was weak, I had no strength in my muscles and could not get up by myself. I was too embarrassed to ask for help to get up and therefore could not eat anything from the buffet or use the toilet. A middle aged couple started a conversation with me. When they learned that I was returning from a concentration camp, they brought me soup from the buffet. When the Lublin train arrived, it was full to the brim but these people helped me find a place on the step of one the old style of wagons which people used to get into the train. After a while, maybe an hour or more, some people who saw in what state I was, took me to a compartment occupied by Soviet soldiers.
As we approached our destination, my fear for the rest of my family grew. Since the Uprising had begun, I had no word of them.
The journey had been a long one, with many stops both at stations and in the middle of nowhere and I was very hungry. I arrived at Zajezierze, the station before Dęblin.
My return was unfortunately not happy. At Zajezierze, the stationmaster saw how I looked which was then unusual there and asked who I am and to whom I wished to go. He told me that four people in my family were dead. This tragic news completely broke me down. When I got to my grandparents' home. I looked so bad thatmy grandmother, my mother's mother, did not recognise me until I got up close to her. My family told me that on 31 August 1944, soon after I had left my mother and younger sisters in the warehouses on ul. Stawki in Warsaw, the Germans selected a large group of the old, sick and children telling them that transport would take them to the camp in Pruszków. After liberation it turned out that they had been murdered in the factory in ul. Okopowa street.
My mother Anna was then 44, my sister Basia was 12 and Wandeczka 4. The Germans also murdered my neighbours. I need to add that almost all of my neighbours were taken to concentration camps where many were killed. The women were taken to Ravensbrück. My older sister Maria who was 19 was also taken here. My older brother Waclaw was killed during the Uprising on 10 September 1944 on the Three Crosses Square.
Of my closest family, only my father avoided being sent to a concentration camp and that was because the Uprising began when he was in ul. Złota and could not make it home. After the Uprising he was taken somewhere near Opoczno.