Tadeusz Stankiewicz - Righteous Among the Nations
In Spring, the Germans came and began to murder all of the Jews hiding in the dugouts. We were prepared to die with them. All it would take, was for one person to reveal who helped them. Those people died heroically. They didn't betray my family - Tadeusz Stankiewicz, Member of the Board of the Polish Association of Righteous Among the Nations, told PAP.
Tadeusz Stankiewicz was born in 1930 in Pulawy. His father, Stanisław Stankiewicz, was a forester before the war. Under the German occupation, he was in charge of a forestry near Opole Lubelskie.
"From the very first days of the occupation, when the Germans took control, the Jewish population was immediately discriminated against. There were many Jews; Pulawy alone was 30 percent Jewish. We had an ongoing relationship because the Jews were mostly craftsmen or merchants, who came to buy wood. There were also those Jews who became friendly with my parents going back to their secondary school years. This is how the resistance movement began to organise, and how my father’s foresters lodge became its ’central point'," said Stankiewicz.
Recalling the German oppression against the Polish Jews, Stankiewicz emphasised that when the occupation authorities organised the ghetto, Jews were "subject to restrictions in their contact with the Polish population." "They were marked by armbands with the Star of David. That was humiliating," he added.
"My parents decided to take action to help those people. They couldn't watch what was happening, although no one then believed that something like the Holocaust would take place," explained Stankiewicz.
When the Germans established a ghetto in March 1941 in the western part of Opole Lubelskie, Stanislaw Stankiewicz made a request to the German occupation authorities to allow him to employ Jews for work in forestry.
"In fact, we were tricking the Germans, because it provided these people with an opportunity to leave the ghetto. Thanks to this they could carry on their trade or work at their jobs. If someone was a shoemaker, then he could make an appointment with a farmer and receive food in exchange for repairing shoes. Poland was a country with a large agricultural sector and the need for farming equipment was huge. This took place through contact with the 'city', said Tadeusz Stankiewicz.
The Germans assigned Stanislaw Stankiewicz a group of thirty Jews - they were supervised by a former Jewish policeman from Vienna who accompanied the workers to and from the forester's lodge. Because the forester's lodge was located 10 kilometers from Opole Lubelskie, Stanislaw Stankiewicz made a request to the Germans to allow him to keep the group at the workplace for all of the working days, except for Saturdays and Sundays, which the Jews were to spend in the ghetto.
"He agreed that he would arrange accommodation in neighbouring villages near the forester's lodge, where they would be housed, and then the workers would return to the ghetto on Saturday and Sunday. It was organised in such a way that they would all gather in the morning at a check-in with the Jewish policeman, then head to the forest with their shovels. In reality, only four worked at forest nurseries, and the rest returned to their quarters and worked in their own trade. For their services, they received food from the farmers," Stankiewicz noted.
Tadeusz Stankiewicz underlined that this did not solve the problems of the Jewish population. "When the Jews returned to the ghetto on Saturday and Sunday, they were picked up by the Germans at the entrance gate. If one of them carried, for example, a goose, it immediately fell prey to the German military police. It was then also, that our organised underground ensured, during the return of the Jews, that a cart would pass near the ghetto wall and deliver (and throw over the wall) everything they had earned and received from farmers," he added.
On October 15, 1941, Hans Frank issued an ordinance which introduced - for the territory of the General Government - the death penalty for any Jews who left the ghetto area, and for any Poles who helped them. At the same time, the Germans demanded the return of all Jewish workers from the forester's lodge to the ghetto.
It was then that a lot of people appeared at the forester's lodge. Maybe two hundred, maybe more, and then night-time deliberations were held. What should be done? Decisions had to be made. The Jewish policeman went back to the ghetto with those who decided to return. Some made an agreement with the local population and left. However, 60 people decided to stay in the forest," said Stankiewicz.
"Four large underground dugouts were made at various points in forest area that were managed by my father. There was a sailor in the group who figured out how to make a hatch. It was covered with dirt and moss to camouflage it. It was a kind of lid, a kind of a 'wardrobe', which was lifted and there, one could find the entrance to a cavern, which was properly fortified - that's where people were sitting," he explained.
As children, Tadeusz Stankiewicz and his sister Barbara got up early in the morning and walked around the grounds of the forester's lodge to "gather cigarette butts from the grass." There were many there because people had to stand around and wait, because they couldn't all be accommodated in the forester's lodge. The people would become nervous during the meetings and throw them on the ground. If the Germans came, they might have become interested in why there were so many butts," he added.
In the forest, Tadeusz Stankiewicz found an exhausted Szloma Szmulewicz (Polish name: Jan), a refugee from the labor camp in Jozefow on the Vistula. Soon, he also joined those hiding in the forest.
"Winter was the worst. There was snow and there were footprints in the area. This could not be guarded against. These are living persons. They could not be hidden, buried in the ground, as one buried weapons. And a person just had to go outside. There were no toilets, we had to change the straw in the dugouts. Evidence remained," he stressed, adding that "the Germans were very meticulous and pedantic, they knew how many Jews there should be and how many Jews there were and how many were missing. They were looking for us."
Stankiewicz pointed out that there were isolated instances of the infamous participation of Poles, helping the Germans to track the Jews who were hiding. In the spring of 1942, one of them, a resident of Opole Lubelskie, pointed out to a detachment of Germans, Jews who were in hiding in the area of Stankiewicz’s forester's lodge.
Jan (Szloma) Szmulewicz noticed a 'szmalcownik' (a pejorative Polish slang word used during World War II that meant a person blackmailing Jews who were hiding, or blackmailing Poles who protected Jews during the Nazi occupation - PAP) collaborating with German soldiers. After the war, Szmulewicz became the main witness in the trial of the collaborator, who was sentenced to death.
"The (German) gendarmes, brought over by a certain person, liquidated these dugouts one by one. These people were murdered. We were prepared for death back then, and it was enough for this man to say who helped them (the Jews - PAP). The Germans used the method according to which they first gave the illusion of hope, asking: Who helped you? Where did the dugouts come from, the food?" Stankiewicz recalled, and added that "there were cases where some people were broken - either in this way or by torture."
"These people were murdered, they died heroically because they did not betray us," he stressed.
The Germans murdered all those who were hiding by shooting and throwing grenades into the dugouts. Six people were saved - those who were hidden in farm buildings near the forester's lodge and in the swamps. They stayed there until the Red Army came.
Jan Szmulewicz, as the only survivor, stayed in Poland after the war.
"Szmulewicz settled in Lublin. He opened a tailor's shop. We were in contact with him. He said: "My entire family died here (which counted nine people). I do not know where their ashes are; whether at Majdanek or Treblinka, but I will not leave Poland, because I have a second family here who saved me" quoted Stankiewicz.
Stanisław Stankiewicz was arrested for belonging to the WiN/AK. Transported to Warsaw, he was brutally interrogated, and killed by being pushed out of a window of the prison. The UB faked his suicide. The family never got permission for his burial.
(NOTE:
- WiN - Wolność i Niezawisłość - Freedom and Independence - a Polish underground anti-communist organisation founded on September 2, 1945 and active until 1952.
- AK - Armia Krajowa - Home Army - the dominant Polish resistance movement in Poland occupied by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II
- UB - Urząd Bezpieczeństwa - State Security Offices - 1944-56 - Communist-era security forces)
In 1986, the parents of Tadeusz, Stanislaw and Barbara Stankiewicz received the medals of the Righteous Among the Nations. Tadeusz received his medal in 2006, as did, posthumously, his sister Barbara.
Jan Szmulewicz died in 2007.
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