Between Katyn and Auschwitz

M. B. Szonert

• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781643679761
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

“A joint decision of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union from August 1939 that sentenced Poland and other states to death was not without a precedent. It was the reverberation of what (Poland’s) neighbors from the West and East once decreed at the end of the XVIII Century and had been patronizing to the onset of (the XX Century). In the middle of the XX Century the same decision of destruction and extermination was made once again. (…)

A system must be created in which the economic and military supremacy shall never lead to the destruction of others and disregard for human rights.”

Pope John Paul II

On the 50th Anniversary of World War II

“­This powerful, engrossing work gives readers the human side of Poland’s fate in World War II. The author offers a masterful rendering of the War’s impact on the life of one young woman and her family, while at the same time telling their stories in connection with the larger, practically unknown saga of the destruction of the independent Polish state and its people’s desperate and heroic resistance to German and Soviet domination.”

Prof. Donald E. Pienko

All the events described in this book are true. All the characters are the real people. ­This documentary is based on extensive oral accounts of the participants, written accounts published only in Polish, original 18 letters from Auschwitz, and on thorough historical research. The story fills the void of historical knowledge in the United States with respect to the wartime experience of the Polish people. By weaving the past and the present, this book offers an eye-opening perspective on the impact of the past on our lives today.

Chapter 1

Prewar Warsaw

Danuta looks through the window of a suburban house. It’s very beautiful here. Neatly cut grass and the strip of wild forest embracing a small creek surround a large deck decorated with baskets of perennials. It is very quiet here. In fact it’s so quiet that it’s too lonely. A few years ago, she and her sick husband moved to live with their son in this elegant suburban house in Ohio. It is very comfortable here. In fact it’s so comfortable that she has become lazy.

At the turn of the millennium, Danuta spends most of her time in the armchair, waking up only to check the mail and make phone calls. She cannot write anymore but loves to read letters and watch TV Polonia. Only recently, TV Polonia began to broadcast, directly from Poland via satellite, a regular Polish TV program for worldwide audiences. Danusia watches TV Polonia non-stop. It gives her and hundreds of thousands of other Polish people scattered all over the world some sense of belonging, a distant and abstract community of their own, more of a virtual or semi-imaginary world.

Breathing heavily, she slowly scuffs along towards her armchair, her face twisted from exhaustion. The glare of the television screen brightens the gloomy room. As she slumps into the chair, a sonorous voice abruptly awakens her consciousness.

“On the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the Katyn Massacre…” She turns around confused. What occasion? What anniversary? A young reporter from the TV Polonia Evening News yells from the screen. “A special train carrying families of the Katyn victims arrived today at Katyn for the first official memorial ceremony.” Danusia holds her breath, staring wide-eyed at the screen. The camera zooms on a newly erected memorial wall covered with thousands of small plaques listing the names of the Poles bestially murdered by the Soviets in 1940. “This is my husband,” a woman in her eighties cries out pointing to one of the plaques. Danusia hastily draws nearer the screen. “You see,” the woman continues, “I was a happy wife for two years and a widow with two children for sixty years. This is a priceless moment in my life. I feel as if I am at last reunited with my husband. I brought with me today our two sons… They are already… in their sixties.”

Danusia freezes. The Evening News starts reporting on the official speeches given at the memorial ceremony by the Polish Prime Minister and a Russian official. “My God! Finally, we got them back!” She whispers, quivering with emotion. Hastily she turns towards the closet, pulls out a small metal case, and scuffs back to her armchair.

The image of the aged woman pointing to her husband’s name on the Memorial Wall haunts Danusia as she opens the compact box. The icy chill of the metal frame penetrates through her fingers. Her hand gropes frantically inside the box. Here it is, on the very top. She takes out a white piece of paper and unfolds it with devotion. In the brightness of the television’s screen, a circled portion of the text shines at her: “Sierzant Julius, born 1912, son of Pawel, Second Lieutenant, N 462/21, T 653.”10 Julius, her first true love, her dream. Only now it occurs to her that his name must be listed on the Katyn Memorial Wall. But she still cannot grasp it or, rather, she doesn’t want to. Only a few weeks ago, her son brought home this piece of paper–a copy of one page from the list of thousands of Katyn victims slaughtered by the Soviets in 1940.

Throughout all these years, she has wondered what could have happened to Julius. Never ever could she imagine that he met such a cruel martyr’s death. The memory of the magnificent officer vividly comes back. Closing her eyes, she tries to recall those happy summer days back in 1939 spent with Julius near Braslaw. His tall silhouette in the military uniform flickers in her memory. This fragile image of the handsome officer melts quickly with imagination and soon vanishes in cloudy recollection.

She folds the paper and looks inside the box. “Where should I put you?” she ponders. As her fingers caress different photographs and documents inside, she instantly recognizes each of them just by a slight touch. Each one is distinct. Each one conjures up a unique emotional feeling. The collection starts with photographs from her 1939 vacation, and continues with her first marriage wedding pictures, the Auschwitz letters, the German death certificate, the Soviet death certificate, pictures of her cousins deported to Siberia or lost in action in Great Britain, snapshots of her friends and neighbors killed during the defense of Warsaw, in the Warsaw Uprising, and in numerous concentration camps. The collection ends with the wedding pictures from her second marriage.

Now, sixty years after the crime, she adds to her shrine of martyrs yet another face – a victim of the Katyn Massacre, a name from the list of about fifteen thousand Polish officers barbarically exterminated by the Stalin’s henchmen. That shot to the back of the head of the prisoner of war standing over the mass grave in an obscure forest is one of the most hideous crimes of World War II. Yet, it has been effectively kept from the public eye for generations, a cowardly policy not to upset the Russians at any price. This thought makes her shiver.

She pulls out the wedding photograph from the first marriage. “Joseph, darling, I am going to place Julius next to you and Dad.” She talks to a man looking at her from the wedding photograph. “Julius has just returned from oblivion and needs our extra care. I am sure you will welcome him here, next to you.” The dark content of the metal box is her most treasured possession. In moments of despair, she always reaches for this box, finding comfort within and deriving strength from it. A loud noise of the opening garage doors fills the room signaling the arrival of her son. She puts the photograph back and hurriedly places the white piece of paper next to it. “Yes, that’s precisely what you want me to do, good!” she whispers with relief. Doors open and a man in his forties waves to her.

“Daddy, Daddy, look, I’ve just won the battle,” Danusia’s grandson yells from another room. “Look at the score!”

Danuta’s son slowly moves to the computer room and pats the boy on the shoulders. “Very good, Konrad! But that’s enough for now. Did you practice piano today?”

Konrad gets up grumbling something.

“Grandma, did he play?”

Danusia makes a puzzled face. “I guess he has played, a little,” she replies with some hesitancy. In fact, she has been so preoccupied with her husband and then overwhelmed by the news that she doesn’t really know. “There was this news today about Katyn,” she relates quietly. “An official memorial at the Katyn Forest. The camera briefly showed this new memorial wall with all the names listed.”

“Really?” Her son glances at her, unpacking his suitcase. An uncomfortable silence sets in.

“Grandma, I need your help!” Konrad’s energetic voice breaks the discomfort. “I have a project to do. I must write a biography of a famous person. I thought I would write about Marshal Pilsudski and his victory in the Battle of Warsaw.”

“Battle of Warsaw, that’s right. The 1920 defeat of the Red Army near Warsaw11 and the Katyn slaughter twenty years later, striking coincidence…” Danusia sighs with bitter sadness. She had been a history teacher for almost forty years. She bravely taught Polish history under the Communist regime and later in the Polish Sunday School in New York. History is her passion. She loves to tell the stories from the distant and not so distant past, and she does it with great eloquence and zeal. But today she doesn’t feel like talking.

“You love those battles, don’t you, especially the victorious ones. But you know, Konrad, the essence of history is what’s really behind those battles. What’s most important is why people fight those battles. Bring me that big red book from upstairs, I’ll show you something.”

Konrad already knows the big red book. That’s Grandma’s teaching manual. He finds it instantly. She opens the book ceremoniously and slowly turns the pages.

“You see Konrad, to me Pilsudski is not the symbol ...