The family of the author comes from the Małopolska region of southern Poland. After losing homes first to a fire and then to a flood, the family moved to Pomerania where they received land as part of the prewar agricultural reforms. Franciszka was four when the following took place.
On 23 November 1941, the SS in black and yellow uniforms came to our village. They told us to pack and several minutes later took us to the main camp for expulsees in Toruń. My mother was pregnant and felt ill. My father had asthma and a hernia. The following days were miserable and hungry, people died every night as they could not stand the conditions. We lived in a building which had been a stable. There were horses there that people had brought with them. People lived above them. There were no bunks, we slept on the cement and those that had managed to bring one slept on a mattress. There was horse excrement everywhere – it was horrible. The dead lay with the living for many hours.
It was hell for my family. First of all my mother got dysentery. This was caused by the dirt and bad food. The Germans took her to the camp hospital. We cried because we missed her but we had to stay with my father who was having trouble standing up as he was also ill. My elder sister was taken away for work. Up until then she had been taking care of us. When my mother’s health improved, she came back to the camp. I was five and my little brother was two. He felt the lack of milk and hunger the most. My mother did everything to keep us alive. She thought of escape in order to go to her family for bread, lard and jam. There was also nothing to wash our clothes with. My mother planned her escape. My older brother made a hole in the fence by cutting the wires. He did this when the Wachman was going in a different direction. He hid the hole with branches. On a foggy day, early in the morning, my mother escaped. She got to the railway station, went to Kornatów and then travelled on foot. Our friends lived in a village 4km from there. They were very surprised to see someone from a camp. My mother had injured feet, she had hurt herself getting out of the camp. She had wrapped the wound in a scarf. A friend who was a chemist bandaged it as the wound was serious. He gave medicine for my mother and for the family as well as money. Others who had a mill and bakery gave bread, a bucket of jam, others gave lard and sausage. She was given so much that she could not carry it all! She needed to be back in the camp at night as that is what she had agreed with the family. There was also a head count in the evening. It was very dark, the moon was peeking out from behind the clouds and we saw her shape through the barbed wire. The guard was nearby and we were shaking with fear. We saw that someone was approaching. The guard walked away. She pushed the bags through the barbed wire but she was not strong enough to get in by herself. She was so tired, worn out and terrified. Then my brothers, 14 year old Bronisław and 12 year old Franciszek pulled her in with all their strength. They took her to the washroom and she fainted through tiredness. When she pulled herself together she was very happy that we were all together again. She shared what she had brought with various people as everyone was hungry. She was pregnant but after giving birth she escaped various times from the camp but was not caught. Escapes were punished by death.
My brother who was born in the camp was called Eugeniusz. He was breast fed. Nappies were made from sheets and in the winter my mother dried them using her own skin. They would not have dried outside in the winter and it was not permitted to hang things inside. In any case it was cold everywhere as it was not heated. When Eugeniusz was one year old he got an infection in his ears as there were draughts everywhere. People could not sleep in such a stuffy environment and opened windows. My father had been ill earlier and he was taken to a hospital. Later my brother joined him. There were four of us still in the camp. My sister Karolina was working in gardening and brother Bronisław was road sweeping with other boys. They left each morning with the kapo who guarded them and they returned home once the work was complete. My brothers Franciszek and Władysław together with my mother and I stayed in the camp.
The camp in Torun had the name ‘Szmalcówka’. It was very bad there when we arrived but it got worse due to the lack of food. My mother could not risk leaving to get food. Władysław felt the lack of milk which the child needed. He died of hunger in my mother’s arms howling that he wanted milk and bread.
A kapo brought us a note from my father in the hospital. It said that Eugeniusz was now healthy and that he would return to his family in the camp. However we did not get to celebrate the return of my brother as the next day we got a message saying ‘Okoński Eugeniusz is dead. He fell from a window’. This was a shock for my mother and for the whole family. My father was still in the hospital and did not see the body of his son. He had often sneaked in to see him as the doctors were Poles. My father did not believe his son was dead. He was only one year old and the windows of the hospital were barred. He could not yet walk or talk so it was impossible that he died in that way.
Bronisław hurt his leg whilst working. It got worse and the wound opened and the leg started literally to rot. There were no bandages. My mother was very worried and tried to think of something to do. The kapo who went out with the boys to the streets was a Pole. My mother arranged an escape with him and paid well for it. She gave all the money she had. That day Bronisław went out with the other lads to sweep the streets. At a given moment he dropped his brush and started to walk. The boys shouted that Okoński was escaping but the kapo turned the other way. After a while he told the other boys that it appeared to him that he was going to relieve himself and he did not come back.
He went to the railway station and then to the place where my mother’s sister Marianna lived. She found work for him with a farmer who did not have his own children and required help on the land. My brother was very happy there and he liked the work in the fields. The farmer treated him as his own son and he arranged treatment for his leg. However the Gestapo realised that he was not there and my mother was questioned about his disappearance.
When my father got out of the hospital the Gestapo also questioned him about Bronisław. They asked where he was and if we had family on the outside. They threatened to send him to Auschwitz. My father was frightened for us and for the man who had helped organise the escape. My mother begged him to tell them where Bronisław was. The next day my father said where our family lived. The Gestapo very quickly found the place where my brother was staying. A guard was sent by train and he took a bicycle with him in order to cover the final 10km. When he arrived my brother was in the fields and he had to go immediately. The begging of the farmer did not help, he was old and had no strength for heavy manual work and he needed someone. The guard tied Bronisław to the bike with a chord. He cycled and Bronisław ran behind him like a dog. They returned to the camp at night. From a distance, I saw him coming back exhausted. They threw him in the cellar, in the place where they stored corpses. There were holes in the door and I could see that he was still alive. He sat there and cried and I cried too. He was afraid of what would happen the next day. Fortunately they released him after one week.
A typhus epidemic started in the camp and I caught it too. I had a very high temperature. I don’t know how I found myself in the hospital, the conditions there were terrible although they were better than in the camp. Later my brother Franciszek was also brought there.
Preparations got underway to send people to other camps. We were also taken. They took us to the camp at Potulice. It was a work camp in the forest surrounded by barbed wire. The inner wire was electrified. Guards walked between the two wire strips. There was no chance of escape. In the middle of the camp there was a two storey building in which there was a kitchen, washroom and two large gas ovens. On the first floor there were sewing and even other higher classes. The barracks in which we lived were made of wood. One after another, with very little space between them. My barrack was for families, others were for single women, men or children. There were also Jews, Gypsies and French people there. We slept on bunks with straw mattresses. The conditions were better than in Toruń. Everyone had to work but they did not receive pay.
The day they took us to Potulice was very nice. There were many people in the queue to get their hair cut as everyone had fleas. My mother had lovely hair and she did not want to cut it and she thought of asking the commandant to excuse her. She did not have fleas and she cried on her knees, pleading with the Kommandant. We were very surprised when he agreed to her request with the proviso that her hair was cut a little as she had a long pony tail. Everyone else had a headscarf on as they no longer had any hair.
We were then taken to the washroom to get clean and our clothing was put in machinery to get rid of the insects from the refugee camp where conditions were horrible. We were given barrack number 15. There were many people there but we were happy as we could sleep on bunks with straw and not on cement. As it was a work camp, my mother had to sew and my father worked in the kitchen. There was heating and potatoes were brought to be pealed. This was a good job. It was difficult for my father but he was happy that he did not have to dig ditches or work on a construction site. My two brothers were taken to a shoe factory in Bydgoszcz and my sister Karolina was sent to work gardening. As the youngest, I stayed with my parents. When they went to work, the children could go to the forest under supervision. The older children went to school to learn German. Those that did not learn quickly were beaten, they had wounds on their ears and swollen fingers. My mother heard them crying as she worked on the floor below. We children were in the forest from morning to evening – although this part of the forest was surrounded by barbed wire. We were very hungry and we frequently ate grass. In the afternoon we got some black coffee and when we returned we had a meal. The meal was general nettle or turnip soup but when you are hungry you will eat anything. Sometimes my father was able to bring me baked potatoes. These potatoes were better than sweets, something of course, I had not yet eaten.
I did not have anything in my childhood that free children had. For three years I did not see milk or butter on bread and no‐one even dreamed of sweets. One lived in constant fear and for the slightest infraction one was beaten in various ways. I remember how one man was ordered to dig a deep grave and then he was shot. Everyone had to watch this, children too.
In the camp people worked hard on the production of aircraft, army boots, sewing uniforms, saddling for horses and on growing vegetables. The children were employed in changing the straw in the mattresses. I also carried mattresses outside the camp to the haystacks and threw away the old straw and replaced it with fresh straw. There were frequent searches as people brought various items from work. There were no clothes, boots or sheets. Every day there was a roll call when the names of those condemned for various offences were read. My parents and I were in the camp for three years. Liberation came quite unexpectedly.
One day my mother went to work and she saw German soldiers at the gate in a state of anxiety. They quickly got on their horses or jumped into trucks and drove off. The gate was wide open but the prisoners did not escape. They did not know what was happening. My parents stayed in the camp for a week until the Soviets got there. People were terrified. They said that in the camp they were shooting at escapees. Then my father decided that we would leave and that we would go to Bydgoszcz to find my brothers. We used the cart that my father had carried potatoes in. We loaded what we possessed which were some covers, pillows and personal items. Then we had to push the cart through the fields as the roads were reserved for the army.