True stories from ww2 by Anna Szczepaniak

eTwinning project

True stories from WW2 by

Základní škola Aloise Jiráska, Lanškroun, the Czech Republic &

Szkoła Podstawowa nr 9 im. Mikołaja Kopernika, Dzierżoniów, Poland

Contents: 1. Participating schools 2. Memories from WW2 survivors - Maria Jamrozik - Alina Hazuka-Traczewska - Barbara Zarówna

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Maksymilian Juraszek Józef Oleksiewicz Josef Švarc František Bartoň 3. CLIL lessons heroes: - Hana Brady - Witold Pilecki - Irena Sendler - Nicolas Winton - Czech and Polish airmen in the Battle of Britain

1. Participating schools Základní škola Aloise Jiráska, Lanškroun, the Czech Republic Szkoła Podstawowa nr 9, Dzierżoniów, Poland

Szkoła Podstawowa nr 9 im. Mikołaja Kopernika (Nicolaus Copernicus Primary School number 9) in Dzierżoniów is a middle-sized school located in a mountainous region in south-west Poland in Lower Silesia. It provides education not only for students from Dzierżoniów, but from the nearest villages too. Currently, we have 483 pupils from 6 to 13 years old in 22 classes (Years 1-7). The school is involved in numerous projects. Our school is a part of the network of Health Promoting Schools, a project supported by the Ministry of Education. Pupils of our school have participated in eTwinning projects since 2005 being awarded with European Quality Labels (25 projects) and National eTwinning Awards (four projects) for their excellent work. Two-year-long 2

school project "Discovering Europe with foreign languages" was also awarded with the European Language Label in 2006. In 2015 SP9 Dzierżoniów was awarded with a certificate: ‘Top school of the Decade in Poland’ for involvement and successful work on eTwinning projects (only 10 schools in Poland were awarded). Since 2016 teaching students programming is one of the main aims in the teaching process at the school, as nowadays students have to become active users of ICT tools – they have to create the virtual word instead of just being passive users of it. Working on eTwinning project teachers use CLIL in teaching process, as the projects have concerned science and nature, history, culture, handcrafts, safety on the Internet, travel, healthy lifestyle and ecology. SP 9 Dzierżoniów for many years has been working on history projects studying different periods of our history - from Middle Ages till World War 2. As WW2 is an enormous topic with plenty of details, our eTwinning projects are focused on specific parts or events to let our students get from each project as much as possible.

4. Memories from WW2 survivors

Maria Jamrozik, born in 1935

I love my country and I know what homesickness is…

When World War the second began I was a four-year-old child. We lived in a big forest in Białowieża Forest in Żakowszczyzna settlement, because my dad was a gamekeeper. A lot from those days I only remember because my parents told me, but the deportation on 10th February 1940 I remember very well.

At night I woke up and I saw strangers and my parents walking in the house. I started to cry – my Mum was calming me down and told me we were going to visit my grandma.

A Soviet soldier came to me and gave me a biscuit – it wasn’t tasty at all. I still remember the taste – it tasted like caraway and it wasn’t sweet. We were going by a horse-drawn carriage with all the things my parents had been able to take in a hurry. It was a winter morning. The carriage was followed by a woman, she was shouting something. Now I know it was my Godmother and she wanted to say goodbye. The carter didn’t stop…

We were taken to a railway station where we saw wooden cattle cars. We were put into the wagons. Every wagon was locked and guarded by two Soviet soldiers with rifles in their hands. I remember there was a small iron stove in the wagon but I do not remember whether there was any fuel… In the corner of the wagon there was a round hole – a toilet for all the ‘passengers’… It was terrible.

While we were going and going my Mum was hugging me and covering with anything possible to make me feel warm. The train was going and going for days and nights…

There were wooden barracks outside in the countryside near a cemetery. Not far away there was a NKVD station. When Polish people were saying that after the war they would come back to Poland, the Russians pointed to the cemetery and said: ‘Your Poland is there’. Because of homesickness sometimes in the evening somebody behind the barracks sang ‘Poland is not yet lost, as long as we live…’ As soon as the Russians found out about it, they started to look for the one who had dared to sing the Polish national anthem.

We were in Karabash not far from Czelyabinsk. My father and my older sister (she was 17 then) had to work in the iron ore mine, where there was water up to their ankles all the time. The conditions were terrible. The worst were the night shifts – they (my dad and sister) couldn’t be late. My Mum didn’t sleep to wake them up on time. My second sister had to work in a canteen. She was fourteen then. She was made to learn and speak Russian but she refused. That’s why she had to work. When Władysław Sikorski in 1941 after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, started negotiations with Stalin about a common fight against Germany, we were moved to Kazakhstan to work in a kolkhoz in a village called Bratskoye. I still remember the name of the railway station: Burnoye. My father and sisters worked in the kolkhoz in the field. The deported families were staying with local families, it means with Russians or Kazakhs. After some time we had to move to another family, because the Soviets were afraid people could make friends. There were some Chechen families, who were treated extremely badly. They were starving almost all the time, they even weren’t allowed to work in the kolkhoz. I remember one Chechen was carrying his children, who had starved to death, in a sack to the cemetery…

It is really difficult to describe how we were starving every day, how we were doing our best to get something to eat… The situation changed when the front came near Stalingrad. My father was taken to Karaganda (Central Asia) to work in a coal mine. We received some letters from him. He wrote that he was starving. In the photo we saw he was swollen because of the food shortage. He survived thanks to a Russian doctor. She helped him which wasn’t easy and popular then.

We met my father after the war in Poznań. We returned to Poland in spring 1946. We couldn’t return to our house as it was already in the USSR territory. That is why we decided to go to the west part of postwar Poland. Our train stopped in Poznań for over a dozen days. My older sister found out that a train with Polish workers from Karaganda was going to come to Poznań. We met our father! How happy we all were! We were crying and enjoying the moment… I remember the end war of war. My Mum went to an office, the office was closed – 9th May 1945, Germany signed the capitulation!

When we were in Soviet enslavement I used to ask my Mum whether there were trees and flowers in Poland. My Mum answered there are beautiful trees and flowers, the meadows are full of colourful flowers and in the skimming forests there are billberries, mushrooms and amazing singing birds… Our way back to Poland was very difficult. It was spring 1946. I remember while we were crossing a river the carriage was carried away by the water. We were crying, because we were afraid we were going to sink. Fortunately we managed to reach the bank. We crossed the Soviet-Polish border on Wet Monday (the second day of Easter). I remember, the train stopped not far from a river. We celebrated Wet Monday on the river. That was the day when from the train window I saw churches, with people dressed in smart clothes going to them. I was dreaming about my own beautiful dresses and I was sure everything was going to be great in Poland. I love my country and I know what being homesick is, because I have experienced it.

Interview with her grandmother run by Ada Pictures by Martyna, 12

Alina Traczewska-Hazuka, born in 1936

I was born on 1st April 1936 in Dawidgródek (currently Belarus). My parents lived and worked as teachers there. I lived there for 2 years, then we moved to Pińsk for a short time and next to Łomża in 1938. It was the place where we had to face WWII. My mum came from a big family – there were 12 siblings (9 girls and 3 boys). One of my mum’s brothers became a priest, the second one worked in an office, the third one graduated with a PhD in Philosophy. He was the head teacher of a Junior Secondary School in Włodzimierz. Unfortunately, he was murdered in Katyń by the Soviets. My mum’s family was very poor. Once my Mum stopped going to school because she did not have shoes. A teacher said it was a waste of a great talent and helped her. Mum started to help rich students with their schoolwork. Thanks to it she could come back to school and she did not have problems with clothes and shoes any more. Mum was a very good student and she passed her final exams and graduated with honours. She really wanted to work as a teacher. Unfortunately, there was a law in Upper Silesia forbidding a married woman to be a teacher. When the war broke out dad went to Warsaw to fight for the Motherland. Then he moved to Grójec near Warsaw and he stayed there till the end of the war. We had no idea what was happening to him. When the Germans came to Łomża, where we lived, they threw us out of our flat. We were not a rich family. We had a piano, a radio (it was not common at that time). Dad also had a library with the classics of Polish literature in leather covers. The Germans took all of our belongings. We had to move into a small wooden house on the outskirts of Łomża. Mum could speak German so she got a good job, which helped us survive. 10

Alina with her Mum in 1942

Alina with her sister Wanda in Łomża in 1943

In 1942 I was 6 and I went to school. It was a secret school because mum did not want me to attend the German one. We had lessons at our teacher’s house. I remember that one day when I was coming back from my lessons I dropped all the books which I kept under my coat. Suddenly, I saw an SSman passing by. I was scared because I could have been punished for the books. Fortunately, he helped me, stroked my head and said in German: “Go home girl”. My sister had to hide not to be sent to Germany to work. She succeeded and she was not sent there. After the war she passed her secondary school final exams in Rzeszów. Then she graduated from the Economy University in Wrocław. She stayed at university working an a professor’s assistant. My memories from war include air raids, which took place from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. In the morning I used to go with my sister to check the bomb craters. The Allies threw napalm from the planes. We lived on the outskirts. I remember that in August 1945 after such a raid everything was burning, the ground was hot. One day I went with my mum to her sister who was a teacher. We wanted her to come to Łomża. It was my first time at the battlefront. I could hear the bullets

over our heads. I could feel the heat of falling bombs. I was 8 years old and it was a horrible experience.

With sister Wanda

I remember how Germans placed Jews in Ghetto in Łomża. I saw when they took my friend from a nursery school. I liked her very much but I never saw her again. That was horrible. Once a Jewish couple came to my mum and asked her to hide their sons. They knew they would die but they wanted to protect their children. My mum sent these boys to her friends who lived in the country. Their parents were killed by the Germans but they survived. The Jews were murdered. Germans took them to the forest, made them dig hole and shot them. Not all of them died at once.

Alina with Mum and sister in Łomża

In 1943/44 the Russians were approaching Łomża. There were more and more air raids and this situation lasted till the end of August 1944. Then the Germans started to retreat from Łomża. When the Russians came to Poland everything changed. They told us to leave the house and the city (not further than 30 km from the city). The evacuation was supposed to last for two weeks but it lasted up to seven months. We came back to our house in Łomża but it was not there. Everything was destroyed. My mum’s friend, a teacher, took us to her flat. Soon after that mum got a letter from her sisters and a brother who was a priest. They helped mum get a job. At the beginning of July 1945 we moved to Jedlicz near Jasło. My uncle was a priest there, substituting a severely ill priest. I stayed there for a year. I went to school to class 3. My mum found out that there is a lot of work for teachers in Racibórz, Upper Silesia. My aunt’s friend was a school inspector in Racibórz. In January 1946 my mum went to Racibórz. I joined her in July 1946. Dad came back from the war. We met him. He got a job in Jelenia Góra. We were planning to join him there. Unfortunately he got ill and died in a hospital in Kraków.

Mrs Alina with students at SP 9 Dzierżoniów.

Barbara Zarówna, born in 1939

I was born in 1939, I was 9 months old when the World War Two began. I was living in a village Aleksandrówka in Volhynia, near Volhynian Rokitno. When I was four years old in Volhynia started terrible slaugher of Polish people by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. In 1943 my village was invaded by Ukrainian troops and they murdered the inhabitants. Those Poles who survived had to escape to the forest. One of the victims of that slaughter was my nine-year-old sister Halinka. I survived because the day before with my Mum and my little brother I went to my aunt to Rokitno to take a First Holy Communion dress for Halinka. We survived thanks to my aunt who didn’t let us go home in the evening. My father survived thanks to Halinka – she woke him up when she noticed the Ukrainian people approaching the village. Halinka and my father were escaping to the nearest forest, they were noticed by the Ukrainians and they shot at them with rifles. One of the bullet reached Halinka’s back, another one – our father’s arm. They both fell down. The Ukrainians thought they were dead and they turned away. My father stood up, took Halinka on his hands and wanted to run away, the Ukrainians saw him and started to shoot again. My father looked at Halinka – there was blood on her all body, he knew she wouldn’t survive, he put her down on the grass and ran to the forest. To the end of his life he heard Halinka saying “Daddy, Daddy, save me…” He couldn’t save her… The Ukrainians reached Halinka’s body and hurt her 17 times with bayonets. Our village Aleksandrówka was completely fired. Polish people who survived the slaughter were taken to the school building in Rokitno. There they were divided : the strong ones were sent to Germany to work there, the weak and small ones were sent to death camp in Majdanek. My parents with us the children were sent to the concentration camp. We were put into a wooden cattle wagon, the men were separated from women and children. 14

There were a lot of people in every wagon. When we stopped in a small train station and the door was open I got off the wagon, because I saw a tap with running water – I was so thirsty…

Basia’s family before WW2. In the middle there basia’s sister Halinka While I was drinking water the door closed and the train left. I started to cry and run after the train, but I fell down, broke my head, elbows and knees… And a miracle happened. When I was lying on the rail line a man noticed me, he ran up to me, took me on his hands and started asking who I was. I looked at the man and I saw railwayman in a uniform. I was only four but I recognized my uncle. - Uncle Kazio Kulikowski - I said. - How do you know it? – he answered. - You visited us and I remember you. He asked me about my parents and what had happened I was there. I told him everything and he took me home. The Polish railwaymen could work during the war, because Germans needed railways, needed transport for people and things. 15

Wiktoria and Kazimierz Kunikowski in Antonówka, 17 May 1939. They took care of Basia after Volhynia slaughter in 1943 till the end of WW2. One day Germans and Ukrainians surrounded our guerrilla camp, where were staying mainly women and children. We had to do something to survive to inform our guerrilla troop. I was dressed up as a Ukrainian child (I spoke Ukrainian perfectly). Together with me went a Jewish boy. We had been arguing earlier but now we had to cooperate – we had to go through the forest and a Ukrainian village and reach our partisans to tell them about the danger. We were walking and some Ukrainian women gave us food as we spoke Ukrainian and said them we were going to our grandma. We reached the guerrillas and they saved our camp.

Guerrilla troop - Basia was staying with them in the forest. 16

In the guerrilla troop I suffered from serious diseases – one of the diseases was an eye disease and the second one was pertussis (whooping cough) - a highly contagious bacterial disease. The commanders of our guerrilla troop made a decision to kill me as whooping cough was too dangerous for the whole troop. I was taken by three guerrillas into the forest, far away from our camp. They put me near a tree, aimed at me with the rifles and… I started to laugh. Then the third guerrilla took me and we went somewhere in the forest. He cured me with saccharin. After some weeks we came back to our guerrilla troop. When the Red Army came to Poland my aunt and me were sent to Zamość, where we were waiting for the end of war. My uncle joined II Polish Army and he was wounded near Wrocław. When he came back to Lublin he met my father who was coming back to Volhynia with my mum and brothers from Germany. Then my parents found out I was still alive. Earlier they all thought I died. At last I could live with my family again. I remember when I found out that the war ended. It was 9th May 1945 together with my aunt we were queuing for bread – bread was very dark and we had to have cards to get it. The queues for bread were very long. Suddenly I heard cry, shout, laugh, joy, shots – incredible situation. The queue disappeared, I came to the women who was given out the bread and she gave me two loaves of bread – I was very happy.

Mrs Barbara with students at SP 9 Dzierżoniów.

Maksymilian Juraszek, born in 1933

My name’s Maksymilian Juraszek. I was born on 27th October 1933 in Romanian Bukovina in a village Poiana Micului. There were 12 people in my family: my parents and 10 children – I had five sisters and four brothers. My ancestors came from Czadca. They left their motherland in 1803 to look for better life. They settled in Bukovina and established a village there. In the village lived people of three nationalities – German, Romanian and Polish. Together they built a school and a church. All people lived in the same village being friends. People spoke Romanian, German and Polish. Before WW2 our village was a resort. In the summer tourists were staying in the village. Polish people built Polish House with a dining room, a kitchen, a swimming pool and bedrooms for rent. The tourists also were staying with the villagers.

Poiana Micului before WW2.

In 1939 some Polish tourists straight from our village had to go the army, because Germany invaded Poland on 1st September 1939 and the war began. In 1940 German families were moved to occupied by Germany Poland and they were settled in Polish families’ houses. The Poles were deported to Germany, to the camps or to poorer places, where they had to work for German invaders.

Photo taken in August 1940, 7-year-old Maksio is in the first row. In 1940 I was 7 and I started going to school, where I was taught Romanian. At home we spoke Polish only and Polish children didn’t know Romanian language at all. We started from the beginning, word after word. In Year 1 we didn’t have notebooks – we had small school boards in a wooden frame, we wrote with a scribe tool, and we eraze with a small cloth. On one side of the board there were lines, on the other one – checked pattern. In Year 2 we already had paper notebooks, we wrote with pencils. Later we started to write with inkwells. At school I was taught Maths, Romanian, History and Science. We had two teachers. The school lasted for 7 years. Years 1,2,3 and 4 were in one classroom and Years 5,6 and 7 in the other. My teacher learnt to speak Polish and she spoke to us in Romanian and in Polish. After school I fed the cows in the meadows. Our parents didn’t buy us any toys. All the toys we were making on our own. At the beginning of year 1944 soldier patrols started coming to our village – German and Soviet patrols as the front was very near our village. My uncle Michał, a forester, whose wife was German, could speak German. They were often visited by German patrols and they could talk about current political situation. On 2n February 1944 a Soviet patrol came and they took my father. They wanted him to lead them to the mountain nearby (1800 m) to see the German army. When they reached the top of the mountain, two soviet soldiers started to fight and one of them dropped his rifle, which fired. The bullets went very near my father – between his arm and body. Fortunately they missed him. The partol’s commander was very angry with his soldiers and punished them. He also gave my father a piece of paper and told him: Whenever you are in a trouble show this to a Soviet officer, he will help you. 19

"Справка выдана настоящим гражданину Симон И. в том, что он действительно сопровождал разведку вчера и была задача выполнена" - "This document was given to the citizen Simon I. as proof that he did accompany the reconnaissance yesterday and the mission was accomplished".

Soviet soldiers fight by Magda, 11.

My father went home and told us what happened on the mountain. Some of us didn’t believe it could help. However my Mum told him to hide this piece of paper, because it is war and we never know what can happen. On 1st May 1944 Hiltler’s Army were marching along the road. We heard them, there were a lot of soldiers. They came to the church. It was Sunday morning (8 am), there were people inside the church. German soldiers locked the church and were laughing at the people, they said they would not leave the church. One 20

of Poiana’s inhabitants Michał Najdek, said they couldn’t hurt the people, because their fathers and brothers were in German Army. Finally German soldiers freed the people. All they rushed home. One of German soldiers went to my uncle Michał and told him our village was going to be burnt. He told my uncle to pack some necessary things and run away and not to tell anybody in the village about it. However my uncle warned people in the village – some of them believed him, another ones – didn’t. My sisters as soon as they came back from the church, started to pack everything (featherbeds, pillows, pans, clothes,…) and took the things to the field. At about 4 pm three German soldiers arrived in our house and ordered to leave the house in five minutes. My Mum told me and my brother to let the cows leave the farm, what we immediately did. We lived next to the woods and our cows went to it. When we left our farm we saw the road full of people with farm animals walking towards the forest. When we reached the forest we saw our Poiana burning. The village was burning all the night and it was as light as during the day.

Poiana on fire by Hania, 11.

The whole night we were staying in the forest. We found a place under a tree and together with my younger brother and sister we lied there down. Our Mum covered us with the featherbed. At night it was snowing. During the day it was much warmer and the snow melted fast. In the morning we were climbing down the village – everything was burnt, and it smelled terribly. One house outside the village wasn’t burnt completely. We brought some water and put out the fire. We wanted to live there, but the next day Soviet patrol came and told us we had to run away because the front would be in our village. 21

We left our Poiana, we were evacuated to Tereblacz, 50 km far away from Poiana. The journey was very slow – we didn’t have horses (they were taken by soldiers), the wagons were drawn by cows. The weakest people were sitting on the wagons, the others were walking. On our way to Tereblacz we ate salted pork fat and we drank milk. Our Mum cooked mamalyga (flour with milk). When we were on the Soviet side, the Soviet soldiers came to us for milk and for a bucket of fresh milk they were giving us two loaves of bread.

Farm animals in the woods.

When we reached Tereblacz we couldn’t enter the town as the border was in front of it. We were looking for a place to stay. We stopped in a warehouse building in Seret where we stayed for 3 months. At the end of August 1944 we could return home. A problem again! The border moved and Seret was in the Soviet Union – we didn’t have passports and we couldn’t cross the border! My father used the piece of paper he was given by the Soviet officer. It worked! The whole group of people could cross the border and we could come back to our home village. On our way home we went through Radowce, where my two older sisters Maria and Rozalka stayed to work in a distillery. When we came back home to Poiana we built a simple shed and we built over the basement. We made wooden beds and we survived the winter. Luckily the winter was quite warm. At the beginning of spring Maria (one of the sisters working in the distillery) came home with a very bad news – Rozalka (the other sister) was chosen to be sent to a Soviet camp to work there. My Mum told my Dad to take that piece of paper and to try to free Rozalka. My Dad did so, Rozalka was already on the truck and if my Dad had come some minutes later she would have been sent to the camp. This way the piece of paper written by the Soviet officer helped us twice, saved us twice. 22

In 1946 our village was visited by some people from Romanian government with Polish consul and they told us not to trouble with rebuilding the farms, because there were Recovered Territories in the west of Poland with farms to live in them. The bravest ones went with the first transport in October 1946. After a month-long journey in cattle wagons they reached Dzierżoniów. They were settled in State Agricultural Farm in Dobrocin. They wrote to Poiana: We have work, we have somewhere to live, we have food. Do not afraid, come to Poland. The second transport arrived in Dzierżoniów in March 1947, the third one – in July 1947. I came here with the third transport. At the beginning we lived in Dobrocin, where we lived in a palace. In February 1948 we moved to Piława Dolna, to an estate, where Soviet soldiers had been staying before. The estate was transformed into a State Agricultural Farm (PGR in Polish), because we couldn’t have our own farms then. Adults worked in the PGR, children went to school. I was taught to be a weaver. However I wanted to be a driver and I reached the aim, I worked as a driver for tens of years. In 1956 I got married.

We have been living in Poland, very well, we have had bread. We have had everything to live and we can live. In Poiana there was poverty, terrible poverty, we came back from such a poverty…

Mr. Maksymilian with students at SP 9 Dzierżoniów.

Józef Oleksiewicz, born in 1929

I was born in 1929 in a town Grybów in the south Poland. When the war started I was 10 years old and I couldn’t go to school as Germans closed all Polish schools. I saw how Germans treated Jews and Polish people. I wanted to fight against Germans and I wanted to join the army as my brother did, but I was too young. I helped the soldiers in the forest (the partisans) and carried the messages what was very dangerous. When I was 14 I became a soldier, I was wounded twice, I was caught by Germans but I managed to escape. Polish people life during German occupation was very difficult. Polish people had to give the Germans a lot of food and then they were starving. One winter my family ate only potatoes three times a day as we didn’t have any flour to make the bread. The Jews in Grybów during WW2 had to move out from the town centre, they only could live in the suburbs and couldn’t even visit the town centre. All Jews had to wear an armband with the star of David. Germans stole all precious things from them and eventually sent them to the concentration camps where most of them were killed. When the war finished, a new occupation started in Poland and in Grybów too. The communists arrested most of Home Army soldiers. Me and many of my friends didn’t want to be arrested and that’s why I spent another two years in the forest. Unfortunately in May 1947 I was caught and arrested. First I was in prison in Kraków, then in a concentration camp in Jawor, where Home Army soldiers were treated like traitors and German nasis. People in Jawor were sure we were traitors who had helped Germans during the war. I left prison in June 1950 when I was 21. Then I moved to Lower Silesia, when I have been living till today.

Mr. Józef with students at SP 9 Dzierżoniów.

5. CLIL lessons heroes:

Hana Brady (1931-1944) Witold Pilecki (1901-1948)

Witold Pilecki was born in 1901 into family of rebels, freedom fighters and exiles. He fought in 1919-1921 Polish-Soviet War, a war that almost nobody knows about, but which could have changed the course of European history. In 1939 the Germans invade Poland and he rejoins his military unit and fight with distinction before the unit is almost completely wiped out. He then takes to the forest and becomes a partisan before returning to Warsaw and setting up one of the first underground resistance units. Reports come in about Auschwitz concentration camp but nobody knows what’s going on there. So he steps forward and volunteers, allows himself to be captured, brutally beaten and then sent to that terrible place. Arriving in Auschwitz 10 prisoners around him are automatically executed for no reason whatsoever and the terror begins.

In Auschwitz he sets up the resistance, survives beatings, torture, executions, murder, starvation, typhoid and all manner of other illnesses and horrors. His resistance breeds typhoid on lice and them plants them on the coats of some of the worst SS men. He’s the first person to send reports that tell the world that Auschwitz is not just a work camp but a place of execution and murder. His reports from Auschwitz are smuggled out by the Polish underground to the Allies, where they’re seen but not believed and the Holocaust continues. In 1943 some of his fellow resistance members are captured. Fearful that at any moment he might be betrayed because they’re being tortured he hatches a plan to escape from the camp. He’s one of the few people who actually escape Auschwitz and manages to make his way back to Warsaw where he lives in hiding. Then in 1944 the Poles decide to fight back and strike freedom in the heart of Warsaw and capture the city. Over the course of 63 brutal days he fights first as a private soldier and then commands a unit that goes on to fight with distinction. After the end of the Warsaw Uprising he’s sent to concentration camp again where eventually he’s released by the Allies. He then goes back to Poland to set up an organization dedicated to overthrowing the communist government that’s been imposed in Poland by Stalin. Then in 1948 he’s captured, betrayed by a fellow Underground member. He’s brutally tortured and then put on a show trail before being sentenced to death for ‘crimes’ against the communist government. And it was here in 1948 that he was taken to this prison and executed. One of thousands murdered by the communist authorities. His body dumped in an unmarked grave, he’s never been found. His incredible story, buried with him and forgotten. Shortly before he was executed he told a fellow prisoner: ‘I’ve been trying to live my life so that in the moment of my death I would feel joy rather than fear”. He was a unique man who lived and died in unique times. But between the wars he was able to start a family and worked very actively in his local community as a community leader. That’s the Witold Pilecki that we can take an example from. The challenge now is not to fight and be a hero in a time of death and war but to be a hero to the communities that we serve and the people that we love. That is Witold Pilecki’s legacy and an example we can all follow from.

When God created the human being, God had in mind that we should all be like Captain Pilecki, of blessed memory. Rabbi Michael Schudrich 27

Irena Sendler (1910-2008)

A Polish nurse, humanitarian, and social worker who served in the Polish Underground in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II, and was head of the children's section of Żegota (the Polish Council to Aid Jews). Assisted by other Żegota members, Sendler smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and shelter outside the Ghetto, saving those children from the Holocaust. Under the pretext of conducting inspections of sanitary conditions within the Ghetto, Sendler and her co-workers smuggled out babies and small children, sometimes in ambulances and trams, sometimes hiding them in packages and suitcases, and using various other means. Jewish children were placed with Polish Christian families, the Warsaw orphanage of the Sisters of the Family of Mary, or Roman Catholic convents. Sendler worked closely with a group of about 30 volunteers, mostly women. The children were given fake Christian names and taught Christian prayers in case they were tested. She kept careful documentation listing the children's fake Christian names, their given names, and their current location. The lists she buried in a jar under an apple tree. In 1943, Irena Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo and severely tortured and sentenced to death by firing squad. Żegota saved her life by bribing the guards on the way to her execution. After the war, she and her co-workers gathered all of the children's records 28

with the names and locations of the hidden Jewish children and gave them to their Żegota colleague Adolf Berman and his staff at the Central Committee of Polish Jews. However, almost all of the children's parents had been killed at the German Treblinka extermination camp or had gone missing. In 1965, Irena Sendler was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous among the Nations and a tree was planted in her honor at the entrance to the Avenue of the Righteous. However, there was no further public recognition of her wartime resistance and humanitarian work until after the end of communist rule in Poland in 1989. In 1991, Irena Sendler was made an honorary citizen of Israel. In 2007, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Nicolas Winton 29

Czech and Polish airmen in the Battle of Britain In 1940, from 10 July until 31 October, the Royal Air Force Fighter Command thwarted the German Luftwaffe's attempts to gain air supremacy over southern England, averting possible invasion and downing 1,733 German aircraft. But the efforts were not without significant sacrifice: 915 British aircraft were lost and an estimated 544 of the 2,927 aircrews of the RAF were killed.

303 Polish Squadron pilots The first Polish pilots reached Britain on 8 December 1939, arriving in Eastchurch in Kent after their departure from France two days earlier. More large transports followed in two-week intervals, and by early June 1940 a total of 2,164 air personnel had arrived in Britain and been assigned to various squadrons. France's capitulation on 25 June 1940 forced the Polish Armed Forces, alongside other Allied troops, to withdraw their units to Britain. A further 6,220 Polish air personnel would reach Britain by the end of July 1940, increasing the total of Polish airmen on British soil to 8,384 men. Exhausted servicemen, tired of being defeated by the Germans, looked upon Britain with great anticipation and named it 'The Island of the Last Hope'. Churchill declares to the Polish Prime Minister in Exile “We shall conquer together or we shall die together” and the two agree to establish two Polish fighter wings; No. 302 ‘Poznań’ Squadron and No. 303 ‘Kościusko’ Squadron. In just 42 days 303 Squadron shot down 126 German planes, becoming the most successful Fighter Command unit in the Battle of Britain. Nine of the Squadron’s pilots qualified as ‘aces’ for shooting down 5 or more enemy planes, including Sergeant Josef Frantisek, a Czech flying with the Poles who scored 17 downed planes. Overall the Squadron scored nearly three times the number of kills of the average British fighter squadron with one third the casualty rate.

A total of 145 experienced and battle-hardened Polish airmen fought in the Battle of Britain - 79 airmen in various RAF squadrons, 32 in No. 302 (Polish) Fighter Squadron and 34 in No. 303 (Polish) Fighter Squadron. The Polish pilots claimed 201 aircraft shot down. 303 Squadron claimed the highest number of kills (126) of all Allied squadrons engaged in the Battle of Britain. Witold Urbanowicz of 303 Squadron was the top Polish scorer with 15 claims. Sgt Tony (Antoni) Głowacki was one of two Allied pilots in the Battle to shoot down five German aircraft in one day, on 24 August 1940 (the other being New Zealander Brian Carbury).

Antoni Głowacki

Witold Urbanowicz

One Polish veteran, Stanisław Skalski, became the top-scoring Polish fighter ace of the Second World War with 18 11/12 victories and two probable. After the Sudetenland crisis and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, many young Czech Air Force pilots made their way via France to Britain. Many Czech pilots had fought in the short and bitter Battle of France thus gaining some form of combat experience. However, their skill was seen to the full in the Battle of Britain.

310 Czech Squadron pilots

At the start of the battle, the Czechs were distributed throughout already established Fighter Command squadrons. However, they were given their own squadron – 310. In total 84 Czechs fought in the Battle of Britain and they gained a reputation for aggressive aerial combat. In late August, Squadron Leader G D M Blackwood commanded 310 Squadron. Blackwood wrote about the men in his squadron: “The Czechs really did a fine job despite their aggressive attitude. I think that their only problem was that as soon as they saw an enemy that would make for a possible target, nothing else mattered.” Josef František - a Czech fighter pilot and World War II flying ace who flew for the air forces of Czechoslovakia, Poland and the United Kingdom. He is famous for being one of the highest scoring Allied aces in the Battle of Britain with 17 ‘kills’ – one of just a few ‘Triple Aces’.

Josef František