Wanda Lorenc watched horrified as the first Wehrmacht soldiers
stormed into Warsaw. Jan Porembski witnessed the mass executions of
Polish civilians. Barbara Makuch became a courier for the Polish
underground until she was caught and tortured. Jan Komski was
thrown into the very first transport to Auschwitz and observed its
rapid expansion firsthand. But, unlike the nearly three million
other Polish Christians (and three million Polish Jews) who died
during World War II, they survived.
Richard Lukas presents the compelling eyewitness accounts of
these and other Polish Christians who suffered at the hands of the
Germans. They bear witness to unspeakable horrors endured by those
who were tortured, forced into slavery, shipped off to
concentration camps, and even subjected to medical experiments.
Their stories provide a somber reminder that non-Jewish Poles were
just as likely as Jews to suffer at the hands of the Nazis, who
viewed them with nearly equal contempt.
Zbigniew Haszlakiewicz remembers being brutally whipped and
tortured-hung by his arms and legs, hands tied behind, and
repeatedly stabbed: "I prayed to lose consciousness, but it was
impossible. The Gestapo soon tired and started to drink beer and
smoke cigarettes as they sat at that big desk. And I hung like a
hammock."
Lorenc tells of encountering starving Jews: "I broke an end off
one loaf of bread] and threw it to a woman in the group. An SS
guard saw what I had done, rushed over to me and began to beat me
with her stick. When I fell, she beat me with her boots. Two of my
teeth dislodged and my mouth filled with blood. When I returned to
the barracks, no one recognized me."
But Dr. Jan Moor-Jankowski also recalls: "One night they took a
prisoner and hanged him. He died in front of our eyes. I remember
seeing a tiny twig of a tree from the window. As time passed, I saw
a bud on the twig and soon leaves came out. It was something that
gave me hope."
Through the survivors' voices we also learn about the Polish
underground, the Council for Aid to Jews (Zegota), the Jewish
Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Home Army's heroic battle
during the Warsaw Uprising in late 1944. Lukas places the
narratives in their historical context and Jan Komski's drawings
capture the horror of concentration camp life.
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