Anna Żalińska

Every sacrifice made of life, including ones in the name of homeland’s freedom, is painful and difficult for those loved ones who survived. But the fate of these families, in which the occupant managed to kill almost everyone, and the few who remained, scattered around the world, seems particularly tragic. That is how the natural carriers of memory die; then the duty to commemorate the dead heroes rests completely on the local community. That was the case of the Stobiecki family.

Józef Bieniek, one of the guardians of memory of the life and martyrdom of the Stobiecki family, gave this evaluation to their attitude: The family shone in the gloomy darkness of these times with a glow of the highest value that humanity and mankind can boast of.[1] Despite the occupant’s efforts to turn the Polish nation into a cheap labor force, devoid of moral sense, detached from their culture and mutual national relations, the Stobieckis actively and effectively worked in the field of underground resistance, and being tortured they did not give away anyone from among the many members of the resistance with whom they cooperated. From the family of seven involved in underground activities a mother and four of her children died. Two siblings survived, son Władysław and daughter Elżbieta, the latter probably died in Canada, where near the end of her life she often went to visit her daughters and for treatment.

And such was the history of the family: Maria Jarosz was born in Krakow on 20 April 1878 She was a teacher herself and she married a teacher of secondary school, who later became a school inspector – Stanisław Stobiecki. They had six children: Janina, Celina, Elżbieta, Zygmunt, Władysław and Alina, who were raised in an atmosphere of patriotism and mutual support. Stanisław Stobiecki died before the war, in 1938. Just before its outbreak, Janina, the oldest of the siblings (born on 4 October 1908 in Krakow), with teacher’s education, was working at the Urszula Kochanowska Elementary School in Nowy Sącz. The same profession was chosen by the two-years-younger Celina, who was born on 14 October 1910. She taught at the Św. Jadwiga Śląska Elementary School (renamed in 1946 to Królowej Jadwigi).[2] Another child of the Stobieckis – Elżbieta, born on 4 July 1912 – moved to Kraków probably before the war, most likely working there as an office clerk (she graduated from a secondary economic school). She married Jan Wądolny, who came from Mucharz. On 7 June 1943, in the occupied Krakow, between the two dates of tragic family accidents, their first daughter Ewa was born. Elizabeth’s husband also got involved in the underground resistance. He was caught by the Germans, and his stayed in prison cost him a permanent health loss. After the war, he belonged to the Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy (ZBOWiD). On 3 September 1948, in Katowice, the second child – Barbara – was born in the Wądolny family. Both daughters left for Canada in the 1970s. In 1978, after the death of her husband Jan, ailing Elżbieta would also often travel from Kraków to Canada.[3]

Let’s get back to the chronology of events. Later, after three daughters, two sons were born in the Stobiecki family: Zygmunt, born in 1914 (celebrating his birthday on 10 April), before the war he studied medicine at the Medical Faculty of the Poznań University.[4] Three years later, on 28 May 1917, Władysław was born. It is hard to write anything certain about his life of the pre-war and occupation periods because of the lack of sources. During the occupation he probably lived in Nowy Sącz at Sobieskiego Str. with his wife and two daughters.[5] Sure enough, after the war, in the 1970s he lived  in Gliwice as a retired teacher (another child who went in the professional footsteps of the parents!), and his last place of work was the Mining School Complex of the “Sosnowiec” mine.[6]

The Stobieckis’ last child, Alina, was significantly younger than her siblings, she was born on 28 May 1923 (in the forty-fifth year of the mother’s life) in Nowy Sącz. At the outbreak of the war Alina was 16 years old, she was a schoolgirl and also a scout. Her sister Janina was also a girl scout in the 1st Girl Scout Troop in Nowy Sącz, Celina was probably also a member of the same team.[7]

The house at Kunegundy 14 Str. where Maria Stobiecka lived with her daughters Janina, Celina and Alina, from the autumn of 1939 was already serving the fight against the occupant. Zygmunt was the one who introduced the family tot he resistance as an incredibly ideological person, an altruist. The outbreak of the war found him spending the summer holidays in his family home. On 1 September Zygmunt already volunteered at the District Recruiting Command to join the army. He was sent to join a unit forming in Lviv. Due to the German strategy of Blitzkrieg Zygmunt did make it to the unit; after wandering for three weeks he returned to Nowy Sącz.[8] Here, he quickly noticed the huge and uncontrolled influx of refugees (especially soldiers and volunteers to the army in the West, political and social activists) and the resulting need to guide them safely south, through Slovakia to Hungary. Spontaneously, as one of the first, together with his friends (including Lesław Wojtyga, Ignacy Klimaszewski, Jan Żółciński, with help of Tadeusz Sokołowski and his mother Anna) he organizes a smuggling operation, providing safe houses, border intelligence and communication network. With the involvement of his mother and sisters, the Stobiecki’s family house becomes a temporary lodging on the smuggling route to Hungary. A similar spontaneous response to the influx of refugees was the Refugee Help Committee established by the Sichrawas, in which, among others, the Stefaniszyn sisters became involved.[9]

Zygmunt’s older sisters, Janina and Celina Stobiecki, supported their brother in the organization of smuggling routes. Also, after the formation of the underground state structures in Nowy Sącz, managed from Warsaw, Janina, operating under the code name “Jola” and Celina began acting as runners between Nowy Sącz and Kraków and Warsaw, carrying money and mail, delivered by couriers from Hungary.[10]

Zygmunt, code name “Zymek” repeatedly crossed the borders as a guide and courier, reaching Budapest. In February 1940, the first great border “giveaway” happens. Zygmunt is wanted by the German border police, Greko in short (the so-called border police commissariat – Grenzpolizeikommissariat Neu-Sandez)[11], commanded by Heinrich Hamann. Stobiecki fled to Krakow, where he received false documents for his mother’s maiden name – Jarosz. Under the new pseudonym, “Zygmunt”, he became involved in the work of ZWZ-Kraków district as a head of the Section for Aid of Prisoners and Victims of Nazi terror, cooperating with his sister residing in Krakow, Elżbieta Wądolny. Elżbieta operated secret mail boxes in Krakow and Tarnów. In addition, Zygmunt stayed in contact with prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp, to which he delivered medicine and other necessary articles. The main links of the communication network were Polish guards and staff of charitable organizations, among others, providing food to political prisoners.[12]

Zygmunt Stobiecki, as a man of leftist views, used his sister’s apartment in Kraków at Tomasza 26 Str. as a secret meeting place for groups of Kraków leftist activists (one of them was Józef Cyrankiewicz, the post-war Prime Minister and member of the Polish United Workers’ Party).[13]

As a result of the next “giveaway” in the District headquarters at Krupnicza Str. in Kraków, Zygmunt’s Kennkarte got in the hands of the Gestapo. He went into hiding again, often changing his place of residence, efficiently rebuilding the network of communication with prisons, but as a result of a informant’s denunciation he was arrested on 20 June 1941 He was kept in the Montelupich Prison. After a brutal investigation at the Gestapo building on Pomorska Str., during which he did not give anyone away, he was sentenced to death. He sent a farewell letter to Elżbieta’s Kraków address, using the secret mail network he himself organized. It contained a kind of last will: Whatever shall await you on the underground trail, never go back, and do not hesitate for a moment when the decision to act comes has to be made. Because in the present situation there is nothing more important than serving the tormented Homeland and the fight for its freedom.[14] Zygmunt Stobiecki was sent to Auschwitz, where, after months of being used for hard work, on 14 April 1942, his death sentence was carried out.[15]

After Zygmunt was arrested, his mother and sisters ceased their activities. Receiving news of his death was a very painfully experience for them. However, they did not close themselves up in their pain. In the period in which they did not engage in the underground resistance, they continued providing material assistance to the Jewish people in the Nowy Sącz ghetto.[16]

Maria Stobiecka and her daughters resumed their underground work in winter, at the turn of 1942 and 1943. Then Janina became the main driving force of their operations and their initiator was Maria Wzorkówna  “Kinga”. It was her who introduced the Stobiecki women with Jan Lipczewski “Andrzej”, who was sent by the Home Army Main Headquarters from Kielce to rebuild the organizational network of the Home Army Inspectorate in Nowy Sącz. They did not refuse and entered the new organizational structures of the underground state.[17]

Celina Stobiecka monitored the radio broadcasts, and based on it, together with Janina they would create information bulletins. In addition, they were talking care of administrative and office work of the Home Army Nowy Sącz District Inspectorate – “Niwa”. The “Niwa’s” Communications Department was located at their house and its operation was supervised by Janina. She acted as a liaison between the Nowy Sącz inspectorate and the District Commands of: Sącz, Limanowa, Gorlice and Nowy Targ.[18] In addition, she was involved in the activities of the Women’s Military Service.[19] Celina coordinated the “N” operation in Nowy Sącz – which was diversionary and propaganda actions directed against the Germans. The youngest of the sisters, Alina, was tasked with the distribution of “N” prints in German.[20]

The tragedy strikes unexpectedly. On Sunday, 19 March 1944 Janina was coming back from Kraków to Nowy Sacz. She spent her free Saturday and Sunday with her sister Elżbieta and her infant niece Ewa. On the way back, at Lipczewski’s request, she took with her underground “tissue paper” and radio parts. In Tarnów she had to change; as she waited for the train, she was surprised by a German inspection. The Nazis round the passengers up in an underground tunnel. Although – according to Józef Bieniek – Janina managed to leave the dangerous package on the platform unnoticed, her appearance matched the description of someone wanted by Gestapo. Or maybe someone gave her away as the owner of the abandoned package? She was arrested. The investigation was conducted in Tarnów, then in Kraków, where Janina gets identified and sent back to Nowy Sącz. During the interrogations she gave nobody away.[21]

As Janina did not return on Sunday, as she was supposed to, anxiety grew in Stobiecki house with each passing day. Unfortunately, the women did not take any precautions against the possible intrusion of the German police. Three days after Janina’s arrest, on 22 March, the Nowy Sącz Greko searched the suspect’s house. The radio, the typewriter, the duplicator and great amount of underground press (including propaganda prints in German) and mail were quickly discovered, with the names of encrypted mailboxes and code names.[22] Mother and daughter, who were at home, Maria and Alina, are arrested. Celina is brought in to the police station at Czarnieckiego 13 Str. from school, where she had classes at the time. One of the students of the Św. Jadwiga School remembered the event. The Germans gathered all the students and staff in the courtyard, singled out the “beloved” teacher, who was publicly defamed, accused of hostile activity, and then escorted to a car.[23] It is very possible that it took place in the courtyard of the Immaculate Conception Sisters monastery, which housed a total of six elementary schools during the occupation after their buildings were taken over for military purposes.[24]

Already after the first search of the Stobiecki house, the Germans noticed – rightly so – that they picked up the trail of an important organization. In search of further underground materials, their house was literally turned upside down. There is a special team working here, ripping up the floors, breaking down plasterwork, smashing stoves and searching every nook and cranny.[25] However, they did not find anything that would lead them to next victims.

Soon after the Stobieckis was arrested, the people they worked with, and those were often entire families, were in panic. Some, quickly reacted and decided to save themselves from the expected arrest by fleeing from Nowy Sącz. But days passed after days and nothing happened. The women stayed silent, probably infuriating SS-Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Raschwitz, the then head of the Greko, who took over it after Hamann was moved to Kraków. Despite elaborate tortures. Finally, the Germans attempted to use the “ultimate” measure. They blackmailed Maria Stobiecka, promising to spare the lives of the battered daughters, Janina and Celina, in exchange for giving away their associates. The women did not yield, aware of the fact that their death means the life of many others. According to the findings of Bieniek, Janina and Celina were killed under the prison wall, shot in front of their mother on 25 April 1944.[26] According to another, more probable version, the women are shot in the presence of their mother at the Jewish cemetery. And it is there that they were buried.[27] Both sources mention that the Stobiecki sisters died shouting “Long live Poland!”. The same words could be heard from Maria two days later, on 27 April 1944, when the execution platoon shot her in Rdziostów. Before that, her youngest daughter, Alina, was killed in front of her. And so the pained mother said goodbye to her children and her Homeland[28].

Reportedly, shortly after the execution, a conversation was to take place between Johann Heuchert, a German interpreter employed at Greko, who took part in the savage interrogations of the Stobiecki women, and a Polish farmer supplying him with cured meats, who was also an informant of the Home Army. Heuchert, though reluctant, supposedly admitted: Congratulations! If all your women are such heroes, no power will ever beat you. Yes, yes, these women were exceptionally brave and very strong.[29]

In the same execution, in which Maria and Alina died, two other heroines, a young scout and her mother were shot: Maria Kardaszewicz and her daughter Ewa, a schoolgirl and a 16-year-old team leader of the Gray Ranks. After the war, the bodies of these four victims were exhumed from the crime scene in the Rdziostów forest. The exhumation protocols of Mary and Alina indicate that their bodies were recognized by their clothes and hair, and the visual inspection was conducted with participation of: Witold Barbacki, Jerzy Kardaszewicz, Władysław Stobiecki and Elżbieta Wądolny.[30] The bodies of Janina and Celina were not be identified.

Today all of them rest together at the municipal cemetery on Rejtana Str. Maria Kardaszewicz with her daughter Ewa, Maria Stobiecka and Alina, and in the tombs there is a place prepared for Janina and Celina, as evidenced by symbolical inscriptions. In addition, the Councilors of the City of Nowy Sącz honored the heroic family, giving the name of the Stobiecki Family to one of the streets which crosses the Lwowska Str. in the Gołąbkowice district.

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[1] Józef Bieniek, Saga rodu Stobieckich (z dziejów ruchu oporu na ziemi sądeckiej), “Rocznik Sądecki” 1966, vol. 7, p. 399.

[2] http://sp2ns.pl/informacje/, accessed on: 2.10.2021.

[3] The information about Elizabeth, as well as the father’s year of death given above, come from passport files kept in the Institute of National Remembrance: IPN Kr 37/54386, Akta Paszportowe Elżbiety Wądolnej, Podanie-Kwestionariusz z 1987 roku i wcześniejsze; other information after: J. Bieniek, Saga rodu Stobieckich, pp. 399, 400.

[4] J. Bieniek, Saga rodu Stobieckich, p. 400.

[5] See footnote 23.

[6] IPN Kr 37/54386, Akta Paszportowe Elżbiety Wądolnej, Podanie-Kwestionariusz z 1987.

[7] Stobiecka Alina, Stobiecka Janina [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walk o niepodległość Polski, Warszawa 1988, pp. 377–378, cf. also Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddział w Nowym Sączu (later as ANKr O/NS), Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa na Sądecczyźnie, ref. 31/559/34, Pismo zaświadczające o udziale harcerek w działalności konspiracyjnej, p. 201.

[8] J. Bieniek, Saga rodu Stobieckich, p. 400.

[9] J. Bieniek, Lord znad Dunajca, “Almanach Sadecki” 1995, № 4 (13), pp. 45–46, 51.

[10] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa…, ref. 31/559/34, Pismo zaświadczające o udziale harcerek w działalności konspiracyjnej, p. 201; also: Stobiecka Maria, Stobiecka Janina, Stobiecka Celina [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walk…, p. 378.

[11] Commonly called “Gestapo”. It was the German border police, headquartered at Czarnieckiego 13 Str. Gestapo had never operated in Nowy Sącz, its functions were performed by the border police. For more information on the topic cf.: Dawid Golik, Obsada personalna niemieckiej policji bezpieczeństwa i służby bezpieczeństwa w powiecie nowosądeckim w latach 1939–1945, “Rocznik Sądecki” 2020, vol. 48, p. 214

[12] J. Bieniek, Saga rodu Stobieckich…, p. 402, cf. also: Stobiecka Maria [w:] Słownik uczestniczek walk…, p. 378.

[13] J. Bieniek, Saga rodu Stobieckich…, p. 405.

[14] Ibidem, p. 404.

[15] Ibidem.

[16] Stobiecka Celina, Stobiecka Janina, Stobiecka Maria [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walk…, p. 378, p. 379.

[17] J. Bieniek, Saga rodu Stobieckich…, p.404.

[18] ANKr O/NS, Związek Kombatantów Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej i Byłych Więźniów Politycznych. Zarząd Okręgowy w Nowym Sączu, ref. 31/558/713, Kilka sylwetek Kobiet bardziej zaangażowanych w Ruch Oporu na terenie województwa,

[19] Stobiecka Janina [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walk…, p. 378, cf. also: Leszek Migrała, Nowy Sącz w latach II wojny światowej, “Rocznik Sądecki” 2016, vol. 44, p. 108.

[20] Stobiecka Alina, Stobiecka Celina [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walk…, p. 378.

[21] J. Bieniek, Saga rodu Stobieckich, p. 408.

[22] Ibidem, p. 409.

[23] Archiwum Sądeckiego Sztetlu, Wspomnienia Barbary Świdlińskiej de domo Werc, ur. 1935 r. w Kościanie, audio recording. Barbara Świdlińska recalls that her big sister would help younger children learn and because of that she was visiting the house of the sister of the teacher Stobiecka on Sobieskiego Str. There were two little daughters there, and their mother did not have time to help them learn. Because there were no other Stobiecki sisters, perhaps she means the family of the brother, Władysław. Born in 1917, he was 27 years old in 1944. Considering that before the war people married a lot sooner than today, Władysław might have had a child or even two children of early school age in the occupation period. It is possible that this information could be confirmed or disproved by a thorough query in the parish records of the St. Margaret church in Nowy Sącz or by contacting the family living outside Nowy Sącz.

[24] http://sp2ns.pl/informacje/, https://szkola.bialyklasztor.pl/tradycja/, accesed on: 2.10.2021.

[25] J. Bieniek, Saga rodu Stobieckich…, p. 409.

[26] Ibidem, p. 411.

[27] Stobiecka Celina, Stobiecka Janina [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walk…, p. 378.

[28] J. Bieniek, Saga rodu Stobieckich…, p. 411.

[29] Ibidem, pp. 412–413.

[30] ANKr O/NS, Sandecjana, 31/190/54, Protokół ekshumacyjny Marii Stobieckiej, p. 63, Protokół ekshumacyjny Aliny Stobieckiej, p. 65.

Anna Żalińska

The Kardaszewicz family consisted of Maria and Jerzy (both chemists by profession) and their two children: Jerzy junior, born in 1926 and Ewa, two years younger than him. Parents came from around Lviv, they moved to Warsaw before the war, and after it began, they took refuge in Nowy Sącz.[1] During the occupation, the whole family was involved in the activities of the underground resistance, all four of them were arrested, the men survived, the women – mother and daughter – could not have been saved, they sacrificed their lives together.

Jerzy Kardaszewicz senior was a chemical engineer with a PhD academic degree. Before the war, he worked for the Polish arms industry. Maria, a graduate of the Faculty of Chemistry of the Lviv Polytechnic University, ran her own pharmaceutical and chemical laboratory in Pionki near Radom, where the family lived in the years 1928–1938. One year before the outbreak of the war, they settled in the capital, where Maria started working in the National Engineering Works. Maria Kardaszewicz was the daughter of Jan Leciejewski, a gymnasium teacher, and Amelia née Cieplik. The family raised her to be a patriot, which she expressed by participating in the Defense of Lwów at the turn of the years 1918 and 1919 as a member of the gymnasium platoon. Afterwards she was active in the Female Military Training, a paramilitary organization founded in 1923 with roots dating back to the period of World War I[2].

Ewa Kardaszewicz was born on 10 May 1928 in Lviv. She attended elementary schools in Pionki, and later in Warsaw and in Nowy Sącz. When the war broke out, the family was evacuated east, and after the Soviet troops entered Poland on September 17, they retreated back to Warsaw. In spring 1940 Ewa, her parents and her brother moved to Nowy Sącz[3]. She was a woman of average height, with bright blond hair and blue eyes, who easily gained friends with her endearing appearance and nice disposition. She loved reading books, which, as a matter of fact, became her main entertainment in the absence of other possibilities of spending free time, such as cinema or theater. She was very talented, full of joy of life and love for the Homeland[4]. She quickly adapted to the new environment, and in 1943 she became involved in underground scouting movement[5].

Maria Kardaszewicz ran a shop during the occupation[6]. It was one of the underground contact post box, and Maria acted as a runner of an intelligence cell of the Nowy Sącz District Inspectorate (“Niwa”) between the ZWZ-AK Main Headquarters  in Warsaw and the Command of the Nowy Sącz-City District (“Nurt-I”). In addition, Maria Kardaszewicz maintained contact with the partisan unit of Lt. Julian Zubek. Her husband, Jerzy Kardaszewicz “Doktor”, was involved in the production of explosives for the Sapper Department of the Operations Branch of the ZWZ-AK Main Headquarters in Warsaw[7]. In 1944, he cooperated with “Tatar’s” forest unit[8] and the Soviet guerrilla. His son remembered, that he trained them, among others, in field mining[9].

Jerzy Kardaszewicz junior was a member of the Polish Scouting Organization (the so-called “Grey Ranks”) commanded by Andrzej Otmianowski. He was in charge of distributing press, military training and obtaining information about German military units[10].

Ewa graduated from the elementary school in 1943 and officially continued her education at the Trade Vocational School (one of the few secondary schools legally operating in occupied Nowy Sącz), while also, within the secret teaching organized by the Immaculate Conception Sisters, she followed the curriculum of the pre-war gymnasium. Ewa studied in the group taught by Janina Jaworska (married name Zagórzycka), a recent graduate of the secret high school of Nowy Sącz Immaculate Conception Sisters[11].

The apartment of Ewa Kardaszewicz, located in a German tenement house at Grodzka 39 Str. was a place of frequent meetings. The proximity of German owners paradoxically created a sense of security. Ewa, like her brother, was a sworn scout of the Girl Guides Organization with alias “Promyk” (“Little Ray”)  [12]. During one of the meetings, Ewa Kardaszewicz presented the scouting ideals and ways of their implementation in the occupational reality to her teacher Janina, “drawing” her into a 5-person patrol (apart from Kardaszewiczówna and Jaworska, its members were three Rudnicki sisters: Ewa, Barbara and Hanna). Janina took an oath and became a scout, and at the same a member of the Gray Ranks. The girls not only learned together, but also had time for working on their character, for physical exercises and for reading underground press, which was delivered by the team leader Zofia Otmianowska ( “Zorza” or “Małgorzata” – before the war, a member of Scouting Association Wielkopolska Region; her family was displaced from the Poznań region after the outbreak of the war, and ended up in Nowy Sącz)[13].

Ewa took part in tourist trips organized by the scouts in the area of Przehyba, Rożnowskie Lake and Pienin Mounatins. At one of such expeditions she completed a first-aid training. The Polish underground state trained field nurses to help in partisan units, as well as in the future insurgent operations[14].

Ewa was often accompanied by a dog she got from her father before the war. It was a Scottish terrier and his name was “Jolly Donald”. The dog went missing in mid-March 1944 – It was the harbinger of disaster – Ewa’s anonymous biographer wrote about this event[15].

Ewa’s main task in the Gray Ranks, apart from regular scout’s commitments, was to distributing underground press. Team leader Otmianowska brought, among other things the “Information Bulletin” and scouting periodical “Wzlot” from the command of the Kraków Region[16]. And so one day, after a finished lesson, Eve bragged before Janina Jaworska that her shoes (and they were heavy winter shoes probably very long) are completely stuffed with “tissue paper” (i.e. underground prints). Janina remembered the day well – 27 March 1944 – the day, when Ewa was taken away by the German police. Soon after the girls parted, one or two hours after Ewa went home, Andrzej Otmianowski, the brother of “Zorza” appeared in Janina’s apartment[17]. He gave her the terrible news about Kardaszewiczówna being arrested, ordered Janina to burn any underground press she had. After the arrest of Ewa Kardaszewicz and her tragic death, Janina ceased all activity in scouting and the underground movement[18].

On 27 March 1944, the German police arrested the entire Kardaszewicz family. First, Maria was taken from her shop, and then a trap was set up for the remaining family members in their apartment in the tenement house at Grodzka 39 Str. Ewa, her brother Jerzy, her parents and her mother’s sister, all were taken to prison. The aunt was released on the next day. The father was bailed out by his family (perhaps with underground movement’s money, as an important agent of the resistance[19]). The son, Jerzy, was beaten and interrogated and then sentenced to death. He escaped from the Tarnów prison one month before the execution, using a momentary confusion of the German services caused by the attempted assassination of Hitler, carried out on July 20 by Claus von Stauffenberg. Jerzy was helped by a bribed Polish guard, Jan Kroczek (who released him and two other prisoners from Nowy Sącz, Władysław Stender and Mieczysław Tumidajewicz, together with other inmates going out of the prison walls for work; Jerzy and his friends used the first opportunity to run for the forest. The guard also escaped[20]). Władysława Lubasiowa deatils the next part of their escape and hiding in her memories printed in “Almanach Sądecki”. Jerzy Kardaszewicz was among those who secured her escape from the city when she was wanted by the German police and she had to hide in the forest[21]. Andrzej Otmianowski, who was meant to die together with the three above mentioned, did not survive – he died on 28 August 1944 in the execution in Zbylitowska Góra near Tarnów along with other victims from Nowy Sącz[22].

Maria and Eve were subjected to a brutal investigation in which they did not give anyone away. They died on 27 April 1944, shot in Rdziostów[23]. In the same execution two other heroic women were killed: Maria Stobiecka and her daughter Alina, and also four men. According to an eyewitness account, Ewa Kardaszewicz was to die shouting  “Long live Poland!”. She died less than twenty days before her 16th birthday[24].

Jerzy Kardaszewicz was deeply affected by this personal tragedy – he did not recognized any people met on the street, he moved around as if he was in a trance – Janina Jaworska-Zagórzycka, Ewa’s teacher, recalled. She herself, after the death of her friend, wrote down the following poem in her diary:

          When the Little Ray has gone out

When I look at these mountains woven with spring mists
At these clouds hanging over, in running flying fits
When I feel the breeze of winds, caressing my face
I do not believe that Ewuniwa no longer is among us.

When the apple tree blooming on a quiet night in May
My whispered requests will rouse the powers ad a spell
The music of its leaves will bring back the hatred
The victims, the pain and the whip
And Ewunia’s effort with it.

When under the blue of the sky I hear the angles sing
And a slender charming poplar extends its arms for me
Like a faithful companion and brother, in my earthly years
I know I won’t see you again
You – the little ray of sacrifice.

Teutonic iron pride is waiting for its victims,
And Poland stained with blood provides them beyond measure
You were such a victim, because you kept the love for Poland,
You lived for her, suffered, and gave your life for her.

 You gave example to us, the young, example, a thousands hearts you gained
You walked in the footsteps of the great Polish women, that more than the whole heart’s treasure
Loved Poland

 To us, the Polish scouts, this precious gift belongs,
And after the war we will report to the homeland with dignity,
The candle of the young hearts will light, the Germanic barbarity will turn to dust,
And the girl scouts songs will bring back the heroic name: of Kardaszewicz Ewa[25].

 After the war, with the efforts of the family, the bodies of mother and daughter were exhumed and laid at the municipal cemetery in Nowy Sącz. The graves of Maria and Ewa Kardaszewicz are located close to the graves of those who died together with them – Maria and Alina Stobiecki.

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[1] Kardaszewiczowa Maria [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walki o niepodległość Polski 1939–1945. Poległe i zmarłe w okresie okupacji niemieckiej, Warszawa, 1988, p. 177.

[2] Ibidem.

[3] Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddział w Nowym Sączu (dalej ANKr O/NS), Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim, 31/559/38, Ewa Kardaszewicz – unknown author’s typescript, p. 77; see also: Kardaszewiczówna Ewa [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walk o niepodległość, p. 177.

[4] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, 31/559/38, Ewa Kardaszewicz, p. 77.

[5] Kardaszewiczówna Ewa [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walk o niepodległość, p. 177.

[6] Słownik uczestniczek walki o niepodległość lists Piotra Skargi Street as the location of M. Kardaszewicz’s shop. Since the spring of 1941, this street has become a part of the closed Jewish ghetto. When the two ghettos were created, the non-Jewish residents and shopkeepers were forced to move. Janina Zagórzycka in the mentioned memories wrote that the address of the stop was Krakowska Street, which was then the name of the street near the castle, which became the northern border of the ghetto. Maria’s son, Jerzy Kardaszewicz, in his memoirs from 1966, wrote down the location of the store as Lwowska Street – over it in pencil it is written “Piotra Skargi 5 Str”. This second address is indicated in an anonymous note about Maria Kardaszewicz kept in ANKR O/NS under the same signature as Jerzy’s letter. Perhaps M. Kardaszewicz really did change the location of her store? There also arises a question about possible changes in street names. Cf. ANKr O/NS) Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim, ref. 31/559/33, Anonimowa notatka o Marii Kardaszewiczowej oraz List Jerzego Kardaszewicza z 27 marca 1966 r.

[7] Kardaszewiczowa Maria [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walki o niepodległość, p. 177.

[8] See: Władysława Lubasiowa, Światła obrazu i cienie, “Almanach Sądecki” 2000, № 1, p. 54 and others.

[9] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, 31/559/33, List Jerzego Kardaszewicza z 27 marca 1966 r.

[10] Ibidem.

[11] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, 31/559/34, Janina Zagórzycka, „Promyk” na ziemi sądeckiej, p. 2–3; cf. also: Kardaszewiczówna Ewa [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walk o niepodległość, p. 177.

[12] Parallelly to the male-only Polish Scouting Organization, there existed the female Girl Guides Organization. The “Grey Ranks” code name originally referred only to the male organization, female teams used the code name “Związek Koniczyn” (“Clover Union”) or “Bądź gotów” (“Be Ready”). From 1943 it was customary to use the name Gray Ranks for both of the organizations. The Polish Scouting Organization and the Girl Guides Organization were established before the war as autonomous organizational units of the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association. In September 1938 the Girl Guides Organization isolated a separate service, the Girl Scout Emergency Service, which only accepted girls over 15 years of age, who would be trained in one of four services: Samaritan, communications, house economy, childcare. In March 1939 the Girl Guides Organization and the Girl Scout Emergency Service were both incorporated into the Female Military Training Organization. When the war broke out, the Girl Guides Main Headquarters operation was suspended, and the command of the Emergency Service took over. Cf.  Zofia Florczak, Organizacja Harcerek (OH) [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walki o niepodległość Polski 1939–1945, Warszawa 1988, pp. 508–509.

[13] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, 31/559/34, Janina Zagórzycka, “Promyk” na ziemi sądeckiej, pp. 3–4; also: ref. 31/559/33, List Jerzego Kardaszewicza z 27 marca 1966 r.; See also: Otmianowska Zofia [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walki o niepodległość, p. 304.

[14] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, 31/559/38, Ewa Kardaszewicz, pp. 77 & 79; Cf. also: Kardaszewiczówna Ewa [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walk o niepodległość, p. 177.

[15] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, 31/559/38, Ewa Kardaszewicz, p. 77.

[16] Ibidem, pp. 77, 79.

[17] Both, Andrzej and Zofia, died at the hands of the Germans in 1944. Zofia was killed in a guerrilla battle close to Działoszyce near Krakow in August 1944. She was 20 years old at the time. Her brother Andrzej was arrested in Nowy Sącz and shot for undeground activity in Zbylitowska Góra on 28 June 1944. It was the same execution in which Jerzy Kardaszewicz is said to have died, cf.: Otmianowska Zofia [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walki o niepodległość, p. 304; Józef Bieniek, Droga wiodła przez mękę, “Almanach Sądecki” 1994, № 2 (7), p. 79.

[18] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, 31/559/34, Janina Zagórzycka, “Promyk” na ziemi sądeckiej, pp. 3–4.

[19] This is a hypothesis of the author of the text.

[20] Cf. ANKR O/NS) Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim, ref. 31/559/33, Anonimowa notatka o Marii Kardaszewiczowej oraz List Jerzego Kardaszewicza z 27 marca 1966 r.

[21] W. Lubasiowa, op. cit., p. 44 and consecutive.

[22] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, 31/559/38, Ewa Kardaszewicz, p. 79; Kardaszewiczówna Ewa [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walki o niepodległość, p.177; Józef Bieniek, op. cit. p. 79.

[23] Archival and online sources provide two dates: 27 and 28 April The exhumation protocols of 1945 indicate 27 April as the exact date, cf. ANKr O/NS, Sandecjana, 31/190/54, Protokoły ekshumacyjne Marii Stobieckiej i Aliny Stobieckiej, pp. 63, 65.

[24]ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, 31/559/38, Ewa Kardaszewicz, pp. 79, 81, Ibidem, Związek Kombatantów Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej, 31/558/713, Kilka sylwetek Kobiet bardziej zaangażowanych w Ruch Oporu na terenie województwa.

[25] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, 31/559/34, Janina Zagórzycka, „Promyk” na ziemi sądeckiej, p. 5.

Anna Żalińska

Hermina Gelb, married name Templer, was born on 30 November 1903 in Bujne, a few kilometers east of Rożnow. Her naming ceremony took place in the nearby Paleśnica five days later, i.e. on December 5. Her parents were Wolf Gelb and Mirjam, the daughter of Jakub Horn and Neche née Volkmann, from Żbikowice.[1]

When they lived in Bujne, Wolf was a tenant of the surrounding forests.[2] It is not known when exactly the family moved to Nowy Sącz. The Gelbs were a well-to-do, as before the outbreak of the Second World War Wolf was a landowner[3] and co-owner of a beer, sweet spirits and marmalade factory. It was a plant called “Bocoń” or “Miodystynia”, located in the Przetakówka district at Zdrojowa 32 Str. The Gelb family lived nearby, on Na rurach Str.[4] The last address where Hermina lived with her husband and children just before the outbreak of the war is Na Rurach 53 Str.[5], it may have been her family home. In a surviving photograph from the 1930s. Hermina stands with several-year-old boys against the background of a large, two-story tenement house surrounded by a garden on every side[6].

Hermina attended the Female Gymnasium in Nowy Sącz. Then the family still lived on Zdrojowa Street. The evidences of those times are not only school catalogs, which preserve her name[7], but also a pencil portrait of her sister Regina, sketched together with faces of other students of the Gymnasium by Bolesław Barbacki[8], who was a drawing teacher at this school in 1920s. Gelbówna’s siblings were quite numerous, among them there were brothers Alfred and Ferdynand and sisters: Regina and Natalia, who was born in 1916.[9] Hermina married a Captain of the Polish Army, Izydor Templer, born in 1892, the only Jewish officer of the 1st Podhale Rifle Regiment, promoted to an officer rank of the second lieutenant still in the time of the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Army. Templer fought in the Polish-Ukrainian war, he served in the rank of Captain from 1931.[10] Izydor, actually – Izrael, Templer, jovally called “Iziu”, was an avid athlete (cyclist).[11] The couple had two sons: Mieczysław vel Mordechaja (born 12.06.1928[12]) and Ludwik – Leib (born 6.04.1932[13]). When the war broke out, Major Izydor Templer, went to the front as a regiment quartermaster. After his unit was destroyed, he fled with others to Romania or Hungary, where he was interned and directed to a POW camp. Paradoxically, despite his Jewish descent, as a Polish officer, he survived the war in a German oflag. After the war, he served in the Polish People’s Army in Warsaw, and in the 1950s. he supposedly went to Israel and gained the rank of general there.[14]

Meanwhile, immediately after the Germans attacked Poland, on 1 September 1939, the Gelb family began evacuation to Lviv. Hermina probably stayed with her sons in Nowy Sącz, while her siblings and parents found themselves in the Soviet occupation zone. There, according to the family accounts for refusing to accept the Soviet citizenship, they were were sentenced to be sent to Siberia. Even before the deportation, the father – the head of the family, Wolf Gelb, died in Lviv of a heart attack. Regina and Alfred somehow managed to stay in Podolia. Ferdynand – Fredek (a lawyer by education, born in 1902) and Natalia – Netka (born in 1916, a pre-war graduate of a two-year gardening course at the Jagiellonian University) with the mother, Maria were transported deep into Russia. The exiles lived in deplorable conditions. In a surviving letter to her family from May 1941[15] Regina writes that she is sending them seeds (carrot, parsley, lettuce, dill, onions and cucumber) and 100 cigarettes for her brother. She herself worked as a presser in a kit fabric manufacture. In her letter, she assures her family that she will send the next package soon and complains that her loved ones do not receive her letters. We can presume how much the conditions of Regina and her brother changed after the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941 They both died in unknown circumstances.[16]

Meanwhile, Hermina stayed in the ghetto created by the Germans in Nowy Sącz.[17] On 23 June 1942, the ghetto liquidation, executions and mass train transports to the Bełżec extermination camp began. We don’t know how, but Hermin managed to escape from the ghetto and hide with her two sons (younger one, Ludwik, was less than 10 years old). Her hiding place was located in the wicker thicket over the Łubinka river.[18] Reportedly, she was provided with food by the service from the estate of a German from Nowy Sącz, Aleksander (the so-called “Aleksandrówka” manor house, the building still exists at Tarnowska Str.).[19] According to the tradition kept in the family, Hermina was ill, and that is why she did not decide to keep running away, and her sons did not want to leave their mother. They were supposedly denounced to the police for a piece of bread.[20] According to another – seemingly more plausible – account, the family was given away to the German police by a “blue” policeman, a pre-war neighbor of Gelbs and Templers from Przetakówka. It was not dictated by personal revenge, but rather by fear of punishment for failure to fulfill their duty when the hiding place was discovered.[21] What happened next? About that the two stories – oral family tradition and official written account – differ again. Natalia Gelb, during her stay in Poland after the war, heard – and that is what she passed down to the next generations – that her beloved sister and her sons were shot on the bridge over Łubinka.[22] However, the archives of the Municipal Court in Nowy Sącz preserved a record of a hearing of a witness, Edward Pawlikowski, about the circumstances of Hermina’s death (nota bene recorded by another victim of Nazi torturers, who survived the war, Janina Stefaniszyn[23]): the documents clearly show that Hermina died at the execution site in Rdziostów. We do not know how long Hermina and her sons were kept in prison or in the Greko arrest at Czarnieckiego 13 Str.[24] In any case, probably not later than a few days (or maybe even the same day) after their arrest, the mother and her sons were added to the transport of people sent to be shot in Rdziostów. They were recognized there by Edward Pawlikowski, then a 20-year-old man, an employee of the Baudienst[25], who lived in Sącz on the Rybacka Street, who remembered Hermina from before the war, as she was an officer’s wife, a widely recognized person. Pawlikowski left a touching account of that moment: The Germans shot the Jews lying on the ground next to the dug out grave. The execution lasted about 20 minutes, because the prisoners were shot in lots. It was at that time that Templerowa and her children were shot […] before her death, she pulled her sons close to her and died together with them.[26] Pawlikowski, together with other young men from the Baudienst, buried the corpses, and at that moment he also recognized Hermina’s dead body. Unfortunately, we do not know the names of the other victims of this execution, as well as their number or exact date of death. Pawlikowski testifies that these events took place in the autumn of 1942, after the liquidation of the ghetto (i.e. after 28 August), but before the All Saints’ Day, i.e. 1 November.[27]

The tragedy of the war was survived by Hermina’s sister and brother – Netka and Ferdinand – and their mother Maria Gelb, who were sent to Siberia. Together with them was Beno Szwarzbart, later Netka’s husband. Born in Jarosław in 1910, son of a professional soldier, a successful cross-country skiing athlete, soldier of the Polish Army in the September campaign, after being captured, he escaped from a German hospital to Lviv. From there he was sent to Siberia together with the Gelb family. When political relations between Soviet Russia and the Polish Government-in-exile were restored with the Sikorski-Mayski agreement, many Polish prisoners and exiles were released to join the Polish Armed Forces in the East being formed in the USSR. Beno enlisted in Anders’ Army in 1941. In 1942 Natalia and Beno got married, and because of that it was possible for them to leave Russia together. Natalia served in the Women’s Auxiliary Service. Her brother, Ferdynand, officially enlisted in the Polish military ranks, and her mother, Maria also left Russia together with the Anders’ Army. When the Army reached Israel, Miriam Gelb remained there. Beno and Fredek went through the entire combat trails of their units, fighting on the Italian front in 1944. Beno, as an officer, was released from service in 1947. Then he left permanently for Israel and re-connected with Netka. Ferdinand emigrated to the USA after the war. Natalia gave birth to a son before the war was over. She died in Israel in 2005.[28]

——————————————————————————————

[1]     Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddział w Nowym Sączu (later as: ANKr O/NS), Izraelicki Okręg Metrykalny w Nowym Sączu, ref. 31/494/137, Księga urodzeń z 1903 r., Akt urodzenia Herminy Gelb, certificate 293, p. 148.

[2]     Ibidem.

[3]    In the source material he is literally referred to as the “owner of estates”, cf. ANKr O/NS, Żeńskie Gimnazjum w Nowym Sączu, ref. 31/234/7, Katalog główny klasy III na rok szkolny 1917/1918, Karta ucznia Gelbówna Hermina

[4]     http://www.sadeckisztetl.com/przetakowka-dzielnica-z-historia.html, accessed on: 6.06.2021.

[5]     In the source material “Rury 53”, cf. IPN Kr 18/869, Sąd Grodzki w Nowym Sączu, Sprawa uznania za zmarłą Herminę Templer z synami, Poświadczenie Zarządu Miejskiego w Nowym Sączu z 22 września 1946 r., p. 4.

[6]     Photograph of Hermina and her sons – family property, copy received from Shachar Grembek from Israel, grandson of Natalia Gelb, correspondence dated 6.07.2021.

[7]     ANKr O/NS, Gimnazjum w Nowym Sączu, ref. 31/234/7, Katalog główny klasy III na rok szkolny 1917/1918, Karta ucznia Gelbówna Hermina

[8]     Reproduction of a portrait in the album (R. Gelbówna presented together with Anna Ćwikówna): Bolesław Barbacki (1891–1941) Mistrz portretu. Collections of the Muzeum Okręgowe w Nowym Sączu, Nowy Sącz 2001.

[9]     Account of Shachar Grembek from Israel, correspondence dated 6.07.2021.

[10]    Cf. biography of Izydor Templer in: Stanisław Korusiewicz, Apel Podhalański, Nowy Sącz 2018, p. 631.

[11]   Personal interview by Anna Żalińska with an Anonymous Interlocutor from Nowy Sącz, 3/15/2021

[12]   Ibidem, Account of Shachar Grembek, correspondence dated 18.03.2021.

[13]   Ibidem.

[14]   https://sadeczanin.info/i-pulk-strzelcow-podhalanskich/100-lat-temu-w-nowym-saczu-powstal-1-pulk-strzelcow-podhalanskich?page=0%2C1, accessed on: 7.07.2021; cf. also: ,„Bóg, honor, ojczyzna. Sądeccy żołnierze i generałowie w służbie niepodległej Rzeczypospolitej”, ed. by. J. Leśniak i H. Szewczyk, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej & Fundacja Sądecka, Nowy Sącz – Warszawa 2009, S. Korusiewicz, op. cit., p. 631.

[15]   Letter of Regina Gelb dated 22 May 1941 in Podhajce (near Brzeżany, Tarnopol district), property of the family.

[16]   Account of Shachar Grembek, correspondence dated 18.03.2021, cf. also: A Facebook post: From Anders Army to the Israel Army https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=154034476558722&id=100479871914183, accessed on 20.03.2021.

[17]   IPN Kr 18/869, Akta sprawy Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu uznania za zmarłą Herminę Templer z synami, Protokół Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu z dnia 15 października 1946 r., p. 2.

[18]   Ibidem, p. 6.

[19]   Personal interview by Anna Żalińska with an Anonymous Interlocutor from Nowy Sącz, 3/15/2021

[20]   Account of Shachar Grembek, correspondence dated 3/18/2021

[21]   Personal interview by Anna Żalińska with an Anonymous Interlocutor from Nowy Sącz, 3/15/2021

[22]   Account of Shachar Grembek, correspondence dated 18.03.2021.

[23]   Janina Stefaniszyn, a scout, AK runner, she was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück camp, in 1946–1952 she worked in the Municipal Court in Nowy Sącz, cf. Stefaniszyn Janina [in:] Encyklopedia Sądecka, ed. by J. Leśniak, Nowy Sącz 2000, cf. also IPN Kr 18/869, Akta sprawy Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu uznania za zmarłą Herminę Templer z synami, Protokół Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu z dnia 15 października 1946 r., p. 2.

[24]   The Border Commissariat of Security Police, Greko in short (commonly and mistakenly called Gestapo), whose head at the time was Heinrich Hamann, cf. Dawid Golik, Obsada personalna niemieckiej policji bezpieczeństwa i służby bezpieczeństwa w powiecie nowosądeckim w latach 1939–1945, Rocznik Sądecki 2020, vol. 48, p. 214

[25]   It was the Construction Service created by the Germans in the General Government; a form of forced labor for teenagers and young men. Boys from the Baudienst were often sent to fill in the mass graves in Rdziostów, they were often given vodka beforehand. Cf. Jan Wróbel, Monografia miejsca pamięci narodowej w Rdziostowie [in:] Miejsce Pamięci Narodowej w Rdziostowie, ed. Katarzyna Godek, Stowarzyszenie Korzenie i Skrzydła, 2013, p. 13.

[26]   IPN Kr 18/869, Akta sprawy Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu uznania za zmarłą Herminę Templer z synami, Protokół Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu z dnia 15 października 1946 r., p. 2; The confirmation of the death of Hermina Templer and her sons in Rdziostów can also be found in the publication iejsce Pamięci Narodowej w Rdziostowie ed. by. Katarzyna Godek, pp. 13 and 18, however, this study counts Hermina among about 600 victims shot in Rdziostów in May and June 1941 From Pawlikowski’s account it is clear that it must have been later, in the autumn. And so people keep the memory of Hermina and her place of death, only the dates of the event are inconsistent.

[27]   IPN Kr 18/869, Akta sprawy Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu uznania za zmarłą Herminę Templer z synami, Protokół Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu z dnia 15 października 1946 r., p. 2.

[28]   Account of Shachar Grembek, correspondence dated 18.03.2021, cf. also A Facebook post From Anders Army to the Israel Army https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=154034476558722&id=100479871914183, accessed on 20.03.2021.

Anna Żalińska

From March 1940, the Women’s Military Service (Wojskowa Służba Kobiet, WSK) was created, as an auxiliary service of ZWZ (Union of Armed Struggle), under the command of Maj. Maria Wittekówna (it operated within the structures of the Organizational Branch of the Home Army Headquarters and was based on the women’s auxiliary service units existing before the war). In the spring of 1942, the Girl Guides Organization with the Girl Scout Emergency Service was incorporated into the WSK. Women were to engage in underground activities primarily as couriers and runners, as well as field nurses, informants, organizing economic and office support for the Home Army and its command and in guard service – in underground resistance as well as in the armed uprising planned in the future. [1].

One of the commandants of the Women’s Military Service under the Nowy Sącz Home Army Inspectorate – the city and district of Nowy Sącz was Jadwiga Golachowska “Sawa”. Exposed in July 1944, she avoided arrest and went into hiding in the area of Łącko.[2] Her position as the commander of the WSK was taken over by Zofia née Uhl Kubiszowa (“Ofka”), a runner. Soon after taking the command, already on 30 September 1944 she also was exposed, arrested and sentenced to a concentration camp (where she survived until the end of the war).[3]

Apart from the functioning of the organization described above, sometimes women would end up in partisan units, directly in the military structures of the Home Army. Initially – according to the memoirs of Julian Zubek –  the orders of the ZWZ Command of the Nowy Sącz district prevented women from joining partisan units.[4] Already in March 1941 Gen. Stefan Rowecki “Grot” sought to give women the same rights as men had in voluntary military service. The situation was finally legitimized by the decree of the President of the Republic of Poland in exile, Władysław Raczkiewicz on the voluntary service of women of 27 October 1943 Based on it, on 18 January 1944, the Commander of the Home Army Gen. Tadeusz “Bór” Komorowski issued the order 129/I, which allowed for the participation of women, both in the underground resistance period and in the future uprising, in all military activities of the underground, including combat.[5]

One of the organizers and commanders of a Home Army partisan unit with women from Nowy Sącz in its ranks was Julian Zubek “Tatar”, a pre-war graduate of the State Teachers’ College in Stary Sącz, a physical education teacher.[6] From mid-1944 he was a unit commander of the 9th Company 3rd Batallion of the 1st Podhale Rifle Regiment of the Polish Army. Even before the unit was officially formed at the command of his superiors in the underground structures, Zubek would organize combat training, as early as from mid-1940. He gathered around him mainly young men and, under the guise trips to the mountains, he trained them in the scouting ways, as well as how to handle weapons and give first aid. Above all else, they got to know their future area of sabotage operations and gained forest experience (through all-day and night orienteering trips, with a compass, in the area of Przechyba, Turbacz or Jaworzyna). There were also girls in Zubek’s “Forest Military College”. Moste of them had fisnished pre-war military courses and Polish Red Cross nursing courses. They expanded their knowledge and shared what they knew with others. Among the women who went on “trips” organized by Zubek and later kept cooperating with him in underground partisan movement, the commander recalls: Michalina Chrzanowska (assisting with food supply and intelligence), Krystyna Cholewska (“Kuba”, member of the forest unit), Barbara Mitas “Lajla” (later“Baśka” – in the unit), Maria Steindel (Zubek’s future wife) and Aleksandra Żabecka. The last one greatly contributed to the organization of trainings, when she rented and was running a mountain shelter in Przehyba.[7]

Zubek also mentions two other women cooperating with the unit: Helena Barbacka and Genowefa Szarysz (“Czarna”), who were recruited to the ZWZ-AK in cooperation with Zubek’s unit. They acted as couriers and field nurses, they joined the underground movement through the underground system of triads by the previously sworn members of the unit.[8]

Helena Barbacka was “drawn” into Zubek’s unit by Adam Ślepiak “Żar”. The last member of their underground “triad” was Kazimierz Prohaska. It was in the autumn of 1942 when she became a runner, sworn in with the alias “Gencjana”. It was the name she used to sign articles she wrote before the war, as a student, for the inter-school magazine “Zew gór” (“call of the mountains”).[9] The contact point was located in her house, i.e. in Villa Marya at Jagiellońska 61 Street (the same one from which in July 1941 her uncle, painter Bolesław Barbacki, was taken to later be executed), as well as in the Savings Bank Office, where she worked (at 2 Szwedzka Street). She would take wounded into her home and provide them with medical help, harbor members of the underground and refugees.[10]

Until April 1944 Adam Ślepiak worked as an accountant at the Jan Jasiński perfume wholesale company at Jagiellońska Str. Right after the Easter holidays, which fell on April 9 and 10 that year, the German police entered the company, searching for him and Kazimierz Prohaska. “Żar” managed to escape.[11] At that time, the obvious choice for somebody wanted by police was a forest partisan unit.

Memoirs preserved an account of one of the courier operations, in which Adam Ślepiak took part, and afterwards, needing medical aid, he received it from “Gencjana” in her house. In April 1944, on his back from Hungary with another courier, “Żar” was carrying a smuggled light machine gun in his backpack. Near Stary Sącz they stopped in a bar. Waiting there for a meal, they were surprised by the Germans. It seems that someone from the staff gave the partisans out, after the machine gun, not well enough hidden. They both managed to escape, but were separated. Wounded “Żar”, eventually got to Helena Barbacka’s house. After having his wounds treated, he returned to a safehouse in Zyzda family in Dąbrówka. He got there, to his delight, just when his companions were singing “Eternal Rest” for his soul.[12]

Helena Barbacka, at risk of exposure, in September 1944, joined Zubek’s forest units as a regular member.[13] This gave the unit the opportunity to celebrate a joyful event – on 23 November 1944 Helena Barbacka and Adam Ślepiak got married. A modest ceremony took place in the little church in Dąbrówka, and was celebrated by the priest of the parish, Michał Kuc. One of the partisan friends, “Niedźwiedź”, secured the ceremony by standing on the lookout.[14]

In the unit, Helena would take care of the sick in the field hospital, wash, and – according to the recollections of Maria Zubek – kept the camps chronicle.[15] She would also cook, although there not always was anything to cook. Black flour soup with blackberries or mushrooms was not an uncommon meal. After about four months in the forest she returned home the day before the New Year’s Eve. Her husband, Adam Ślepiak, “came out” with the rest of the unit only after the Germans retreated completely.[16]

After the war Helena worked as a clerk in the bank, and Adam Ślepiak graduated from the Kraków University of Technology. Helena was awarded with the Partisan Cross and with the Knight’s Cross of Polonia Resituta. She continued the family tradition, performing at the Workers’ Theatre (named after her uncle Bolesław Barbacki) and was an active member of the Sącz Land Club[17].

Another woman who joined Zubek’s forest unit in August 1944 was Barbara Mitas “Lajla”, later called “Baśka”. She came from Nowy Sącz. Zubek called her the good spirit of the unit.[18] She was first cooperating with the unit providing intelligence and food products. When she learned that staying in Nowy Sącz will put her at risk of arrest, she was forced into hiding until the end of the war. Barbara Mitas, as a woman of remarkable strength, took part in direct combat operations, carrying weapons and ammunition. If necessary – and the forest unit often changed the location of their base – she would burden herself with the duties of a porter, metaphorically and literally, carrying on her shoulders the heavy partisan belongings[19].

The presence of a few women in a masculinized unit also brought about tensions in male-female interactions. In Zubek’s branch, “Baśka”, not involved in any relationship, was particularly vulnerable to the advances of colleagues. Zubek finally prohibited Baśka from joining the camps, and assigned her to the field hospital together with “Tatarzyna”. Although reportedly she was capable of using her strength to fend off unwanted adorers who got to insistent.[20]

Maria Zubek née Steindel ”Myszka” House also spent several weeks in the branch. “Mouse”, wife of the commander. On 3 June 1943 in the chapel of the Jesuit Fathers in Zabełcze she was married to Julian Zubek. The groom invited two friends from Kraków to the ceremony.[21] The newlyweds lived for a short time in Nowy Sącz, and their apartment was the center of underground meetings. When they had to leave the city, the boys from the forest unit changed Maria’s alias from “Myszka” to “Tatarzyna”.

The time that “Tatarzyna” spent with the unit was a period of her advanced pregnancy. Her duties included tending to the kitchen (although men also had kitchen duty) and taking care of the sanitary facilities. The unit was our home, our fellow soldiers were our brothers, of whom we had to take care as heartily as possible Maria Zubek recalled years later. And the forest units often struggled with hunger, filth and cold[22].

When the time came for Maria Zubek to give birth, she was taken in at the home of doctor Zbigniew Wroniewicz “Turek” in Łomnica. Both he and his wife helped provide food medical aid. Ms. Wroniewicz provided the young “Tatarak” with diapers and shirts acquired in the countryside, and after the mother left with the child, she kept regular contact with them, helping if the need arised.[23] Family was a huge support for the forest units, providing them with food and clothing. Besides that, the anonymous today, spontaneous help organized in villages, where shoes or clothes were repaired, was not without significance.[24]

Staying in touch with partisans could have ended tragically. That was the case of the Polański family. In their cottage, at some distance from the other buildings of the Majchrówka village, bread would be baked for the unit. Two partisans, completely surprised by the German sweep, died there with weapons in hand. The Germans set fire to the house and did not spare its inhabitants: 21-year-old Maria Polańska with her eleven-month son, her mother Maria Izworska and an older shepherd died.[25]

Julian Zubek’s unit  ceased operations in January 1945, when its members handed over their weapons to the war commander of the city, Guard Col. Ivan Nagatkin in front of the District Office building and went home.[26] Below I quote a more extensive fragment of the account of Władysława Lubasiowa (née Szkaradek) on that period. She herself was wanted by the German police and was hiding in the forest.[27] Her remarks perfectly describe the situation of men and women of partisan units, and in general of the Home Army underground, after the Germans left and later, after the war.

Shortly after the detonation of the ammunition storage in the Nowy Sącz castle, which took place on 18 January 1945, Władysława decided to assess the situation in the city in person. On the way to Nowy Sącz, she was accompanied by Fedko, a partisan from the “Zawisza’s” unit.

We got through the [castle] rubble, through a passage that looked cleared and… I saw a “nice” welcome in Nowy Sącz, my family city. There, on a make-shift wooden fence – big, colorful posters: “Filthy dwarfs of reaction – begone” and two terrified “manikins”, each with an inscription on the back: AK and NSZ [Home Army and National Armed Forces] – and a stout, large shoe giving them a powerful kick… On another one – a huge broom and the same letters on the “manikins” with a slogan: “We will sweep the reaction out of Poland”. I will never stop seeing these posters until the day that I die  – I thought stunned.
And like a prophecy I heard the Ujejski Chorale coming from a distance… I stood there bewildered, and was suddenly brought around by Fedko’s hoarse voice:
– What should I do?
We looked at each other and I shrugged to appear indifferent.
– Throw your weapon in the bushes somewhere, or in an ice-hole on the Dunajec River and go back to plowing your field. Spring is coming. The seasons do not fail, or at least they did not fail so far. Armies come and go… different regimes exist – and change… And the earth remains.[28]

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[1] Cf. Marek Ney-Krwawicz: Komenda Główna Armii Krajowej 1939–1945. Warszawa 1990, pp. 79–81, Andrzej Chmielarz, Wojskowa Służba Kobiet, “Biuletyn Informacyjny. Miesięcznik Światowego Związku Żołnierzy Armii Krajowej” 2020, № 7 (361), p. 3.

[2] ANKr O/NS, Związek Kombatantów Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej i Byłych Więźniów Politycznych. Zarząd Okręgowy w Nowym Sączu, ref. 31/558/713, Kilka sylwetek Kobiet bardziej zaangażowanych w Ruch Oporu na terenie województwa, maszynopis, p. 6

[3] Ibidem. 6.

[4] Julian Zubek “Tatar”, Ze wspomnień kuriera, Kraków 1988, p. 85.

[5] A. Chmielarz, op. cit., p. 4-5, cf. also: Maria Wittekówna, Szefostwa i referaty WSK w komendach ZWZ-AK [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walk o niepodległość Polski 1939–1945, Warszawa 1988, pp. 511–512.

[6] About pre-war activity of Julian Zubek, especially in sports, see: Piotr Kazana, Przedwojenna działalność sportowa mjr. Juliana Zubka, “Almanach Sądecki” 2016, № 3/4 (96/97), pp. 67– 85.

[7] J. Zubek, op. cit., p. 22.

[8] Ibidem, p. 25.

[9] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim, ref. 31/559/33, Wspomnienie z okupacji Heleny Ślepiakowej z 25.02.1970 r.,

[10] J. Zubek, op. cit., p. 85.

[11] ANKR O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa…, ref. 31/559/33, Wspomnienie z okupacji Heleny Ślepiakowej,

[12] ANKR O/NS, Związek Kombatantów Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej…, ref. 31/558/1448, Józef Bieniek, Wspomnienie o Adamie Ślepiaku – Żar,

[13] ANKr O/NS, TVS Archive of Wiesław Szkarłat from Nowy Sącz, audiovisual recording „Chłopcy od Tatara”, an interview with Helena Ślepiak.

[14] J. Zubek, op. cit, p. 174.

[15] ANKR O/NS, Związek Kombatantów Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej…, ref. 31/558/962, Maria Zubek, Udział kobiet w ruchu partyzanckim polskim i radzieckim na Sądecczyźnie, p.1.

[16] ANKr O/NS, TVS Archive of Wiesław Szkarłat from Nowy Sącz, „Chłopcy od Tatara”, an interview with Helena Ślepiak.

[17] Ibidem.

[18] J. Zubek, op. cit, p. 103.

[19] Ibidem.

[20] Ibidem pp.22, 59, 65, 104.

[21]There was one story connected with the invitation: one of the guests, Jerzy Ustupski, wanted by Gestapo, traveled with a falsified Kennkarte. The Gestapo officer checking his papers on the train let him go at first, but he got interested in Ustupski’s hooked nose of a highlander. The Gestapo officer, thinking that he is dealing with a Jew, forced Ustupski to prove his descent, ordering him to take of his trousers in the station toilet, which ended up with a major scare and chasing the departing train accompanied by the laughter of the amused Germans. Quoted after: J. Zubek, op. cit., p. 26.

[22] ANKR O/NS, Związek Kombatantów Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej…, ref. 31/558/962, Maria Zubek, Udział kobiet w ruchu partyzanckim polskim i radzieckim na Sądecczyźnie, p.2.

[23] Ibidem; J. Zubek, op. cit., p. 162.

[24] B. Faron, Okupacyjne zimy. Impresje, „Rocznik Sądecki” 1998, vol. 26, p. 201.

[25] J. Zubek, op. cit., p. 141.

[26] Ibidem, pp. 204–205.

[27] She stayed in hiding in a shepherd’s hut, among others, with Captain “Hala” – Henryk Musiałowicz, who together with Jerzy Kardaszewicz (“Doctor”) manufactured grenades, Wladyslawa performed courier duties, contacting, if necessary, the above-mentioned Zubek’s unit, cf.: Władysława Lubasiowa, Światła obrazów i cienie, „Almanach Sadecki” 2000, № 1 (30), p. 53.

[28] W. Lubasiowa, op. cit., p. 59–60.

Anna Żalińska

Berta Korennman was probably born on 1 November 1920 in Kovel.[1] Her father was a tailor, and her mother was a midwife. The couple also had a son, Zelig, three years younger than Berta.[2] They were Polish Jews, quite assimilated, although Berta’s father kept the traditional appearance, wearing a beard and sidelocks. Berta’s war story – escaping the ghetto, hiding, and “living on the surface”[3] later, deportation for forced labor and finally the long-desired liberation – is one of many similar stories from the period of German occupation of Poland. But the story of this particular Jewish woman is one especially remembered by the people of Nowy Sącz, and this is because of the unusual place in which she was hiding from the Germans – the clock tower of the Nowy Sącz Town Hall. Berta, seemingly unwillingly,[4] went down in history as “the girl from the clock” (although she was already almost twenty-two years old when she was hiding in the town hall.

Berta Korennman briefly described her war memories in writing; they were kept in custody of Jan Dobrzański, son of Henryk Dobrzański (born 1916), owner of the watchmaking workshop at Jagiellońska 2 Str. (the corner of the Jagiellońska Str. and the Main Square, in the so-called Ritter Tenement House, nota bene the workshop still operates today today, divided between two Dobrzańskis, grandchildren of Henryk). During the occupation it was the workplace of Stefan Mazur – a man who saved Berta. From these memories, we know that before the war started Berta lived with her parents and brother at Kraszewskiego 22 Str. in Nowy Sącz.[5] It was part of the district on the other side of the Kamienica River, also called Piekło, where the occupant created the second ghetto.[6] In 1940, she got aquainted with Stefan Mazur, a watchmaker’s assistant.[7] Stefan was born in Nowy Sącz on 1 May 1921, as a son of a worker Władysław Mazur and Rozalia Janiczak from Łącko, who was 24 years old at the time and worked in Nowy Sącz as a housemaid.[8] After graduating from the elementary school, he went to work in Henryk Dobrzański’s workshop, first as an errand boy and later as a watchmaker’s assistant.[9]

During the occupation Berta worked with her father in a small tea shop owned by Hechtental, a Jew. As repression intensified and the prohibition on leaving the ghetto was announced, Stefan and his mother started supplying Jewish families, including Berta’s family, with bread and selling them other food that was available “on the free market”, outside of the Jewish district. No authority was concerned about supplying the ghetto with food, everyone was always hungry. Stefan felt sorry for the Jewish people, their hopeless situation invoked his pity. He had many school friends and childhood playmates among the Jews. Since the spring of 1942, passing by the gates of the ghetto, more and more often he had seen the corpses being carried out of there. These were the victims of night-time executions done by the members of the SS, often drunk. Stefan was also an unwilling witness of the executions carried out at the Jewish cemetery on Rybacka Str. – his three-kilometer walk from his house in Zabełcze to work took him there every day. He did not see the actual executions, as the cemetery was surrounded by a cordon of armed Germans, but he often heard shots coming from there until late afternoon.[10]

In the summer of 1942, the Nowy Sącz ghetto was liquidated. Berta’s parents were taken from the “Hell” district ghetto by train to the East. It was announced to the Jewish and Polish people that the transports were organized to the places of work in the East. Initially, it was commonly believed. Stefan would often walk out of the workshop to look at the deported Jewish people, who walked from the ghetto to the railway station on foot. One day, in the crowd escorted along the Batorego Avenue, he saw Mr and Mrs Korennman. According to Stefan’s account, they also saw him, and Stefan nodded understandingly – it was supposed to be a sign that he will take care of their children. When the first mass transports began, the plan to free Berta and Zelig from the ghetto was often discussed by their parents and Stefan. The Korennmans went, perhaps unaware until the end, to die in the Bełżec death camp. When the parents were gone, Stefan felt naturally responsible for the siblings.[11]

After his parents were deported, Zelig was taken by the Germans to work in a sawmill in Rytro. Before the war the facility belonged to Count Adam Stadnicki from Nawojowa, during the war its management was forcibly taken over by the Germans. At Berta’s request, Stefan when there once to visit Zelig.[12] Berta, forced to  move to the closed ghetto in the Nowy Sącz center, remained with no family. However, in the ghetto she found her friend, Hela Szancer. It was Hela who helped realize the escape plan  and finally convinced Berta. Since she managed to save some valuables, she could provide for them to survive on the so-called “Aryan side”. Berta contacted with Stefan, throwing a secret letter wrapped around a stone over the wall on Pijarska Street. On the appointed evening the boy was waiting for Berta under the western wall of the ghetto – in the bushes over the Dunajec River. The girl jumped over the obstacle with Hela’s help, and Stefan, under the cover of the night, led her to the hiding place – a tight, dark room inside the clock mechanism on the tower of the Nowy Sącz Town Hall. It was the watchmaker Henryk Dobrzański who was responsible for the maintenance of the old clock from Prague, which had to be wound up every day; he delegated this task to Stefan.[13]

On the next evening, as it was agreed, Stefan helped Hela Szancer get out of the ghetto the same way, over the wall. Hela had forged documents with the name Makowska and she immediately left Nowy Sącz. When getting on the train, she arranged a way to communicate with Stefan Mazur in case she found a safe hiding place for herself and Berta. And indeed, shortly after, Hela let him know that she had found a safe place (it was probably in Jasło) and that there was also room for Berta there. Berta could get out of her hiding spot under the clock. She spent there less than two weeks (about 10 days[14]), although considering the conditions in which she stayed there (tightness – the room was too small to stand up fully straight; no window, close presence of the Germans, terrible hygienic conditions, complete dependence on somebody else) – subjectively the time must have felt a lot longer. The town hall was full of officials, both Polish and German, gendarmes and blue police officers. There were also some private apartments in the building. Only Stefan and his boss had the keys to the clock rooms, but for safety Berta had to keep absolute silence. She was dependent on one person – only Stefan knew that she was there. Fear and discomfort were definitely compounded by the constant ticking sound of the town-hall clock. Stefan Mazur came every day to supply Berta with food. He went up the tower under the pretext of winding up the mechanism and no one guessed the real purpose of his visits, although he made them two or even three times a day and was often seen by a fireman guarding the tower at all times.[15]

Henryk Dobrzański probably suspected that someone was hidden there, Stefan often talked with him about possible ways of helping Jewish people (he even considered using the shed in the principal’s garden as a hiding spot). In the end, Dobrzański was involved in Berta’s escape by coincidence: he was present in the workshop when the message for Stefan came from Hela Szancer. He spoke with Hela by phone and passed the information about all of the arrangements to Mazur. He was also in the clock room after Berta left it, but before Stefan was able to clean up the clothes and excrements left there. He strictly forbade Stefan from further contacts with the Jewish population, but he did not give his employee or Berta away, although that way he risked his own life, his name was also on the German hostage list. This meant that even if he was not directly involved in any activity against the Germans, they could have still arrested them at any time in retaliation for any of the prohibited acts.[16]

The women had to change their first place of hiding for unknown reasons. Probably in October 1942 they found shelter in Gromnik, with the Koziks, a family of Poles displaced from Pomerania. The two friends stayed with them under assumed names as Polish women, Berta had a baptism certificate obtained by Hela for the name Stefania Kusak. Their stay with the Koziks was paid for by Hela. Stefan visited both women, passing himself off as Hela’s brother and Berta’s fiancée. While Berta’s looks did not give away her descent, the Semitic features of Hela Szancer exposed them to gossip and threatened the security of their cover. Although Hela brushed off all remarks with courage and audacity, playing a role of an aristocrat, the danger was real, especially since the second half of the house in which they lived, was often visited by a blue police officer.[17]

In December, they were explicitly ordered to leave Gromnik by the head of the village. On 6 January 1943, both women and Stefan Mazur set off on a journey to Przemyśl, hoping to find shelter with Szancerówna’s friends. There, Hela finally arranged for herself and Berta to go to Germany for work, justifiably thinking that she will be safe as long as she is useful for the Germans. All three of them go to the office in Przemyśl; Stefan is with them at Berta’s request. A strange scene takes place in the office – Berta, probably driven by fear, runs away, literally from the desk of the clerk registering her, who chases after her outside, but Berta manages to loose him in the street crowd. So what next? Stefan spontaneously decides to take Berta to his uncle in Lviv. He did not even know the unlce’s exact address, buy he hoped to find him in his workplace and ask for his help. He intended to set Berta up safely in Lviv and for himself to return to Nowy Sącz. But they were unlucky and just before their destination, at one of the last stations they found themselves in a round-up. Holding hands and claiming to be brother and sister, they luckily were not separated[18].

They were sent to forced labor at the Stahlbau-Litzka armaments factory in Leobschütz (presently Głubczyce in the Opolskie Voivodeship).[19] They traveled there three days in cattle cars. They lived in a factory lager and worked 12 hours a day. They worked in the factory from February 1943 until the approach of the Soviet front in April 1945. Then they were evacuated together with other workers of different nationalities than German. They ended up on a farm near Gersdorf in Southern Germany. They returned to Poland just after the end of the war in May.[20]

Berta and Stefan first settled in Sosnowiec, where Stefan found a job in a watchmaking workshop. In July 1945, they got married, probably at the Civil Status Office in Bytom.[21] From there they returned to Nowy Sącz, to Stefan’s family. His mother told them how, after Stefan disappeared, she was arrested and severely beaten for her dealings with Jewish people. In the summer of 1946, Berta managed to re-establish contact with Hela Szancer through their common friend.[22]

Hela’s story, after the women parted in Przemyśl, was similar. Hela also survived until the end of the war, working for the Germans in factories or on farms. Then she returned to Poland and settled in Pomerania. She got married, with her husband unaware of her Jewish descent. In the 60s. she tried, and probably succeeded, to move to Israel.[23] Since her married name is unknown, her post-war history is difficult to confirm.

In 1956, the Mazur family settled in Lublin.[24] On 11 August 1992 Stefan Mazur received the Righteous among the Nations title.[25] In the same year, his wife Berta/Stefania, died of a heart attack. Stefan Mazur died on 2 October 2006.[26] The couple left behind two children, who, like their mother, are reluctant to go back to the painful, occupational history of their parents.

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[1]     https://sprawiedliwi.org.pl/pl/historie-pomocy/historia-pomocy-mazur-stefan, accessed on: 19.06.2021.

[2]     Anna Dąbrowska, Światła w ciemności. Sprawiedliwi Wśród Narodów Świata. Relacje, Ośrodek „Brama Grodzka – Teatr NN”, Lublin 2008, Stefan Mazur, p. 371.

[3]     This expression was coined by Emanuel Ringelblum, historian and founder of the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, murdered by the Germans in Warsaw in 1944 Living on the surface during the German occupation meant for a Jewish person to live on the so-called Aryan side, which required hiding their descent and assuming a false identity. An alternative to living on the surface was to go underground, i.e. going into some kind of hiding spot and depending on someone else’s help, cf. https://sprawiedliwi.org.pl/pl/o-sprawiedliwych/zydzi-w-ukryciu/rodzaje-kryjowek, accessed on: 25.06.2021.

[4]      She never openly spoke about her experiences, she did not like sharing her war memories, reportedly there were no mechanical clocks in her house, because she could not stand the ticking. The only commonly available written source created by Berta/Stefania is a short testimony written for the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland – although it was never submitted there – and published in “Almanach Sądecki”. Most of the information about her life and rescue was preserved thanks to her husband, Stefan Mazur.

[5]     Berta Korennman (Stefania Mazur), Relacja z okresu okupacji, „Almanach Sądecki” 2009, № 1/2 (66–67), pp. 147–150.

[6]      The first ghetto was created between the main square and the castle in July 1940 and it included the area of the former Jewish district with the synagogue; the second ghetto stretched along the right bank of the Kamienica River and included Kraszewskiego Str., on which there were the Jewish hospital and orphanage among others. Initially, both of the areas were open, with time wire entanglements appeared, the ghetto near the main square was cut off from the rest of the city by a wall over 2-meters high.

[7]     B. Korennman, op. cit., pp. 147-148, cf. Relacja ustna Stefana Mazura z dnia 11.10.1993 r., Archiwum Państwowego Muzeum na Majdanku (later as AMM), ref.VIII-410.

[8]      Archiwum Parafii pw. św. Małgorzaty w Nowym Sączu, akt urodzenia Stefana Mazura, Liber natorum z roku 1921, certificate 176, see also: akt małżeństwa Władysława Mazura i Rozalii Janiczak, Liber copulatorum z roku 1923, file 108 dated 4 October.

[9]     https://sprawiedliwi.org.pl/pl/historie-pomocy/historia-pomocy-mazur-stefan, accessed on: 19.06.2021, cf. also: Anna Dąbrowska, Światła w ciemności., p. 371.

[10]    A. Dąbrowska, Światła w ciemności, pp. 372, 374.

[11]   Ibidem, p. 373.

[12]   B. Korennman, op. cit, p.148.

[13]   AMM VIII-410, see also: A.Dąbrowska, Światła w ciemności, pp. 372–373.

[14]   AMM VIII-410.

[15]   A.Dąbrowska, Światła w ciemności, p. 373.

[16]    Ibidem, s. 374, the full record of Stefan Mazur’s testimony, on which the account in the book by Anna Dąbrowska was based, is kept in the archives of the Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre Centre in Lublin. At the request of Stefan and Berta’s children, the testimony is not currently made available.

[17] Ibidem, AMM VIII-410.

[18] Ibidem.

[19] The factory produced both agricultural machinery and bomb bodies, cf. A. Dąbrowska, Światła w ciemności, pp. 372–373.

[20] B. Korennman, Relacja z okresu okupacji, pp. 149–150, cf. also: AMM VIII-410.

[21]    It is impossible to verify this fact, because the marriage records for 1945 was not preserved in the Civil Registry Office in Bytom. According to some sources, the wedding took place in Sosnowiec, but during the query in the local CRO such an act of marriage was not found.

[22]   AMM VIII-410.

[23]   AMM VIII-410, also: http://teatrnn.pl/sprawiedliwi-lubelszczyzna/szancer-hela/, accessed on: 19.06.2021.

[24]   AMM VIII-410.

[25]   https://sprawiedliwi.org.pl/pl/historie-pomocy/historia-pomocy-mazur-stefan, accessed on: 19.06.2021.

[26]   http://teatrnn.pl/sprawiedliwi-lubelszczyzna/mazur-stefan/, accessed on:19.06.2021.

Anna Żalińska

Halina Barbara – that’s how she would often sign her name. This already indicates the strongly formed personality traits, such as seriousness and sense of responsibility. At the same time, she was remembered as a very cheerful, energetic and sociable person. People close to her would call her Halinka or Hala instead. In the hopeless, reality of the occupation her attitude could arouse hope and faith, for those around she was like a ray sunshine among the darkness. In January 1945, she was wounded by a piece of a bomb. In the last weeks of her life, which she spent in the hospital, despite physical pain, she stood out among the companions of her suffering by her unfading serenity and patience. This is how she was remembered.

Halina was born on 29 may 1920 in Nowy Sącz at Kunegundy 15 Str.[1] as the first-born child of two teachers: Bolesław and Anna née Juszczyk. Bolesław Szurmiak taught Polish language and literature at A. Mickiewicz Elementary School in Nowy Sącz. He also belonged to the “Sokół” Gymnastic Society. As a dedicated educator, he effectively shaped interest in Humanities among his students (he mentored, among others Antoni Siteka – as he would himself mention[2]).

In 1924, the second daughter of the Szurmiak marriage, Maria, and on 26 December 1928 Aleksandra was born. The childhood of Halina and her sisters was quite carefree. In 1930, with an excellent fourth class graduation certificate from the K. Hofmanowa Elementary Universal (in the so-called “Ciuciubabka”), Halina took the secondary school entrance exam. Her literary talent started to show already. She belonged to a school choir. She also manifested passion for sport (she was great at ice skating) and mountain hikes. In the 8th grade of secondary school she was the editor-in-chief of the interschool magazine “Zew Gór” (“Call of the Mountains”). A tradition at the Szurmiak family home was composing poems and organizing performances for various family holidays – in which Halina excelled. The time filled with intense studying was alternated with holiday stays at the “priest Uncle”’s in Garwolin – her mother’s brother who took exceptional care of his niece, including financial help – especially in the pweriod of her university times[3].

Ijn secondary school Halina became involved in scouting. She joined the team in 1932, and on 6 May 1934 she pledged the scouting oath. A year later, after finishing a course in Karwieńskie Błota by the sea, she became the leader of the 5th female group at the Hofmanowa school. From 1 February 1937, she took on the role of a team leader, which she would keep – according to her sister’s account – until the outbreak of the war. She was present at the famous ZHP International Jamboree in Spała in July 1935 She received more and more scouting ranks: volunteer, pioneer and Samaritan, gained merit badges: direction-giver, city guide, cook, camper, launderer, maid and gasfitter[4].

From middle school, during the entire occupation period, Halina kept a diary – the so-called “confidants”. She devoted significant parts of her writing to her feelings, spiritual condition and religious experiences. As early as in winter 1933, at the age of 13, she joined the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On this occasion, a theatrical performance was staged, in which Halina played the main role[5]. In may 1938 she went to the Eucharistic Congress in Budapest, which she remembered as a wonderful yet short pilgrimage[6].

In the summer of 1938, having graduated high school she considered studying at the Higher School of Journalism in Warsaw. Finally, he decides to enroll in the Warsaw University. She starts studying at two faculties at the same time: Polish philology and pedagogical psychology. After the first year, she successfully passes all of her exams[7]. She spends her well-deserved holidays with her family in Nowy Sącz. She was here when the war broke out. She joins the scout emergency service right away. After a few days, in view of the approaching German troops, the Szurmiak family moves to Garwolin. After settling in Garwolin, at the “Uncle’s”, Halina volunteers for the scout nursing service[8].

In the face of the occupation of the whole country, the Szurmiak family returns home. In Nowy Sącz, Halina must find a job to avoid being sent to Germany as a forced laborer and receive an Ausweis (occupational ID). Together with her sister Maria, they sign up for a two-month tailoring course. Whatever they manage to sew, they exchange in the countryside for food products. Later Halina learns German stenography and, after long efforts, gets a job as a typist in railway repair workshops, which were under German management[9]. She works there until the last day of the occupation, which was also the day of her tragic accident. Office nightmare – this is how you the conditions of ther work can be described. Despite the unpleasantness she experienced from her German supervisors, her colleagues always saw her as kind and cheerful, although never servile. Even working for the occupant was something she tried to use to her advantage: Through the Germans working in the workshop, she would send packages to people from Nowy Sącz forced to go to work in the Third Reich from their families. After a 11–12-hour work day she still found time for self-education – she would do it in a very systematical manner. She would learn English, translate from German to Polish, read philosophical and religious literature, as well as fiction. She continued to write her own pieces – it was difficult to find time to do it between work and home duties and also helping her mother, who fell ill from being overworked. When she was shocked by the death of her childhood friend – Jerzy Szaflarski (brother of Danuta, with whom Halina was also friends) – she wrote a novella for him, entitled „Jacek and Alicja”. She has left several notebooks with reports on philosophical, religious and scientific books as well as on works of fiction. Her letters to her university friends were a specific kind of papers, apologetic letters and philosophical tales, in which she tried to convince them to take the path of patience, self-education and perseverance, which was to lead them toward God[10].

She had a strong youthful need for action, expression and sharing. The reality of occupation was overwhelming for her. I can’t live in ordinariness – she writes – I suffocate and I cannot find an outlet to express my thoughts and if I didn’t have my Ally [this is how she calls her close friend from the occupation period[11]] and books, I would fall into black melancholy[12].

During the occupation Halina again got involved in scouting, but in a completely different role than before the war. The absence of sources makes it difficult to reconstruct these events accurately. She was probably “drawn into” the underground courier initiative by her former instructor Bronisława Szczepaniec. The period of Halina’s most intense activity in this area could have been from the spring of 1940 to March 1941. It was then that an active group of girl scouts-couriers, under the command of Zofia Kuhnen “Karolcia”, would operate within the structures of ZWZ-AK. Zofia was the main courier of the Nowy Sącz Inspectorate and worked closely with the aforementioned Bronisława Szczepańcówna, Ewa Harsdorf, Lidia Scheur, Maria Długopolska, Janina Aleksander, Zofia Stebelska, Maria Wusatowska, Bronisława Strumiłło and others. Halina’s tasks in the team could have been sending correspondence and orders, distributing underground press, establishing communication with other couriers or delivering messages or texts to a secret printing house. The activities of the group were interrupted by arrests which took place in March 1941 “Karolcia” managed to escape, her mother Hermina, was taken to a concentration camp instead of her. She was first in Ravensbrück, from where she was sent to the Auschwitz gas chamber, in one of the first transports of women sick and unable to work[13]. Halina could have engaged in the above-mentioned activities, although – as her biographer Fr. S. Nawrocki writes – she was generally not involved in the underground work, she did not have the right conditions for it. On the other hand – Fr. Nawrocki notes – she was eagerly engaged in scouting work[14]. What other kinds of “scouting work” was possible during the occupation than secret teaching, underground communication and charity? During the war in her workplace, i.e. in the area of the railway workshops, Halina created a girl guide group. These women would actively participate in dispensing meals to children, helping the displaced within the framework of the Central Welfare Council, and would regularly attend church services, to receive Holy Communion for the intention of the freedom of the homeland[15].

Halina loved mountains and blooming apple trees. The first thought she expressed in words, when she was told her leg has to be amputated was: So I will never walk up to Przehyba again? Immediately after the question she added: May the will of God be done[16]. Free Sundays – usually every other Sunday – she would spend on hiking trips in the Sącz region. It was during one of such trips – in the Tatra Mountains – that she experienced (as she described it in her “confidants”) her “conversion”. Witnessing a storm near the Giewont mountain in summer 1941, she realized that her vocation is constant self-improvement and helping those in need, the ones around here, to the extent of her possibilities. She started creating self-education groups and retreat groups, and her correspondence took on the characteristics of a systematic lectures on Christian morality. Sensing her openness and goodness, people started spontaneously gathering around her. For friends in the workplace, she becomes a confidante and adviser. They would call her “our Sunshine”. She would use even her 10-minute breakfast breaks for philosophical mini-lectures. In the evenings, in private apartments, discussion meetings initiated by Halina would take place. She organized psychology meetings, retreats and days of recollection in the White Monastery, with the help of priest she knew[17]. Let us share ourselves without forgetting about ourselves – she writes in her “confidants”. – Let us be of service to people, without ceasing to work for ourselves. Let us gift people, not omitting ourselves and not sparing generosity. This is the most beautiful program combining the love of the neighbor with the love of oneself[18].

Halina became one of the few victims of front operations in Nowy Sącz, when the retreating German columns were bombed by the Russians. It was in the afternoon of 16 January 1945. As usual, she came home for a half-hour lunch break and hesitated whether to get back to work at all as the German management fled. She decided to go back for her briefcase. On the way to the workshops, she was wounded by a fragment of an air bomb. The projectile struck her thigh, causing femur fracture and heavy bleeding[19]. After that she stayed in a hospital with constant fever, and the leg had to be amputated. Halina prayed and saw her suffering as a sacrifice for others. Nobody ever heard a word of complaint from her, she offered support to other patients. A month after the amputation, her situation did not improve at all, the thigh wound festered more and more. Halina Szurmiak died on Palm Sunday, 25 March 1945. The funeral was held on Tuesday after Easter. The coffin decorated with flowers was carried from the house to the cemetery by her colleagues. I approach death serenely – she wrote in a letter to a friend – for me it is white, as the Japanese visualize it. Death is only a decisive turning point – a transition from one phase of life – unnecessary, transient, to the second phase – necessary, constant, certain[20].

This is how the testament of Halina Szurmiakówna’s life was summed up after the war by her friend: She would radiate energy, vivacity […] Something incredible. I would never have believed if I had not witnessed it with my own eyes […] She would fundamentally change our souls, pull us out of apathy, make us interested in life and taught how to perceive its beauty[21].

——————————————————————————————

[1] „Taterniczka ducha”. Życiorys Haliny Barbary Szurmiakówny studentki Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, edit. By Fr. Stanisław Nawrocki TJ, Kraków 1980, p. 3. This publication is the primary source of information about Halina Szurmiak’s life and was created based on her “confidants”, correspondence and conversations with people who knew her.

[2] Antoni Sitek i jego rodzina [w:] Zachowajmy w pamięci. Katalog wystawy, A. Totoń, R. Bobrowski, p. 61.

[3] „Taterniczka ducha”…, pp. 4–11 and beyond.

[4] Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddział w Nowym Sączu (later as: ANKr O/NS), Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim, Notatka biograficzna autorstwa Marii Szurmiakówny, ref. 31/559/38, p. 133–135.

[5] „Taterniczka ducha”…, p. 15.

[6] Ibidem, p. 21.

[7] Ibidem, p. 24.

[8] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, Notatka biograficzna, ref. 31/559/38, p. 135.

[9] „Taterniczka ducha”…, p. 45–46.

[10] Ibidem, p. 50–53, ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, Notatka biograficzna, ref. 31/559/38, p. 133.

[11] On 8 November 1942, that man was arrested by the Germans; he was later released, cf. „Taterniczka ducha”…, p. 99. “Confidants”, and after them Fr. S. Nawrocki do not give the names of people close to Halina, which makes it impossible for them to be identified without additional sources.

[12] „Taterniczka ducha”…, p. 97.

[13] Zofia Kuhnen-Gawrońska [in:] Zachowajmy w pamięci…, p. 37.

[14] „Taterniczka ducha”…, p. 99.

[15] Ibidem.

[16] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, Notatka biograficzna, ref. 31/559/38, p. 139.

[17] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, Notatka biograficzna, ref. 31/559/38, pp. 139–143, „Taterniczka ducha”…, pp. 145, 166.

[18] „Taterniczka ducha”…, p. 59.

[19] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, Notatka biograficzna, ref. 31/559/38, p. 133, „Taterniczka ducha”…, pp. 154–157.

[20] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa, Notatka biograficzna, ref. 31/559/38, p. 145, „Taterniczka ducha”…, p. 166.

[21] „Taterniczka ducha”…, p. 109.

Anna Żalińska

Zofia Janczy was remembered in the occupation period history of Nowy Sącz, first and foremost as a dedicated teacher and scout. In the wider circles she was remembered as the one who returned from the hell of the German  Ravensbrück concentation camp for women, where she was setting an example of highly moral behavior full of sacrifice, as a leader of a secret scout team “Mury” (“Walls”).

She was born under Russian rule on 1 may 1905 in Brody of the Tarnopol Voivodeship (today the city is part of Ukraine, in the Lviv region) as the younger daughter of Wojciech Janczy and Emy née Kriške. She had an older sister, Kazimiera (married name Pawłowska) born on 12 March 1904 – she was also a teacher and a scoutmistress, after the war she lived in Nowy Sącz (where she worked in the day room of the Elementary School No 2[1]).

Zofia finished primary school in Nowy Sącz. She then joined the Municipal Teacher’s College in Nowy Sącz. On june 15, 1925, she passed her maturity exam. From September 1925, she started working in elementary schools (also in Gorlice, later she returned to Nowy Sącz). In 1931 she completed the State Teacher Higher Training Course in Kraków. She taught Polish language and literature as well as history[2].

She joined the scouting ranks before graduating from elementary school, in 1918[3]. When by the decision of the Kraków Scouting Organisation Headquarters from 1934 the teams in the Nowy Sącz district are divided into three districts, Zofia Janczy acts as the district commandant of the 2nd Railway District in Nowy Sącz. She held the title of Scoutmistress of the ZHP (Polish Scouting Association) – the highest instructor rank of the Girl Guides Organization. She was the organizer and commandant of numerous scouting camps and colonies. She participated in international scouting meetings. From spring 1939, she was a leader of a Team of the Girl Scout Emergency Service, which had its roots in the Girl Guides Organization, and in March 1939 became part of the larger structures of the PKW (Female Military Training) Organization. The Girl Scout Emergency Service accepted girls over the age of 15, who had proven themselves in at least one of the four services: Samaritan, communications, house economy, childcare[4]. The main objectives of the girl guides in the Emergency Service, after being incorporated into the PWK, were to prepare in the areas of anti-aircraft and anti-gas defense and to perform communication functions in the event of the war [5].

According to the accounts of those who knew her, Zofia was characterized by extraordinary kindness and serenity. In addition, she was deeply religious and fervently practicing her faith[6]. By combining a strong experience of faith with the scouting principles, she was fulfilling her calling to help her fellow men in every situation, even in captivity.

When the war broke out, she evacuated with her mother to Hungary. There she ended up in Losone and then in Garany, where she helped orgnize elementary education in a Polish refugee camp. In addition, in Garany she worked with the Polish commandant of the camp to help smuggle Poles to the West – she took photos for documents and organized cultural events for those waiting for the journey. During her time working at school, she would also prepare celebrations of national holidays and anniversaries, which years later she would recall with affection. When the camp was moved to Tajo, the children went to a bigger school already existing there[7].

Therefore, Zofia Janczy returned to Nowy Sącz, in July 1940. She again took up her school job, she would also help take care of displaced persons from Poznań and Pomerania regions and feed children, working with the Central Welfare Council. After connecting with the underground, she became a liaison of ZWZ (Union of Armed Struggle) in Nowy Sącz. In the apartment she occupied with her mother, from November 1940 to March 1941 the briefings of the district heads of the Nowy Sącz poviat would take place – there were fully conspired, Zofia would never even see the people meeting. She owned a radio and a typewriter (which was forbidden), which allowed her to act as a courier and intelligence operative and to distribute radio news[8]. She operated under the pseudonym “Mewa” (“Seagull”), which was her “forest” name from the scouting time (“Czarna Mewa” – “Black Seagull”) [9].

Arrested on 7 May 1941, after an investigation in Nowy Sącz, she was sent to prison in Tarnów[10]. In Tarnów prison she shares a cell with “Ziuta”, Józefa Kantor, and Stanisława Szczeklik from Tarnów. That’s how Stanisława remembered that period: There were many women of value in Tarnów prison, so the atmosphere in the cell, despite overcrowding and rough interrogations, was good and friendly. In these difficult conditions my friendship with Zosia Janczy began […] [She was] a person of great heart and flawless character. She loved her mother very much. Every day around 7 in the evening she would stand quietly at the prison window and she would stay still for a few minutes. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me that before the arrest she had agreed with her mother that they would always talk to each other at this time of day[11]. The transport of 12 September 1941 took all three aforementioned women from Tarnów to the FKL Ravensbrück concentration camp, where they arrive in October. In the same transport there are known girl guides from Nowy Sącz, whom Zofia knew, Janina and Józefa Stefaniszyn. Zofia becomes the camp number 7303[12]. Initially, the entire transport was quarantined. Even then, staying in one of the camp barracks and accurately reading the humiliating intentions of the camp crew, Józefa Kantor, a teacher from Szopienice, a scoutmistress and a member of the Silesia Scouting Organisation Headquarters, inspires three other scouts from her transport: Maria Rydarowska from Gorlice, Aniela Wideł from Bielsko and Zofia Janczy from Nowy Sącz, to create a scouting team in the camp. Zofia and Józefa Kantor know each other from the scouts meetings they participated in together before the war. The team is given the name “Mury” and the slogan “Endure and help others survive”. Women initially gather around them several dozen pre-war girls guides in groups of several people each, and everything is kept in strict conspiracy. Zofia Janczy became the leader of the “Fundamenty” (“Foundations”) group[13].

In the camp, faith became her mainstay. Despite the ban on religious practices, she would personally organize services for fellow prisoners (she led the prayer with the words of the Holy Mass from the illegally kept service book), celebrations of church and state ceremonies[14], and furthermore – discussions and lessons for the willing fellow prisoners[15]. This is how she remembered her work and prayer in the camp (she worked in a sewing room, sewing buttons to German uniforms[16]): Often among the rumble of the machines on which we were sewing military uniforms, a sensitive ear could have captured a familiar litany call to the Virgin Mary or the Heart of Jesus  […] And in the morning […] a silent melody of the Book of hours would flow from the machines the Polish women used. If caught singing they would explain, that it helps them not fall asleep[17].

She spent 1.453 days in captivity. She managed to survive the inhuman conditions of the camp. She had returned to Nowy Sącz in June 1945. Her last address before her death was Żółkiewskiego 17 Str., app. 3[18]. She returned to work at school and in scouting, acting as an instructor. From 1963 she had worked in the library of the Elementary School No. 7. She was involved in the Youth Affairs Committee of Nowy Sącz ZBOWiD; she was meeting with scouts and other school youth on the occasion of various anniversaries and talking about war and her life in the camp[19]. She was afflicted by disability of her right hand (which made it hard for her to write)[20], she had a war-disabled person card, and was hospitalized several times. She died at a hospital, supposedly with a smile on her face, on 25 September 1977. Her funeral became a religious and patriotic manifestation, with huge participation of people connected with scouting and school as well as former Ravensbrück prisoners and her pupils. She was laid to rest at the municipal cemetery in Nowy Sącz at Rejtana Str. in the 11th quarter[21].

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[1] IPN Kr 37/92, Akta paszportowe Zofii Janczy, Podanie-Kwestionariusz z 23 maja 1975 r., k.14 et seq. Kazimiera Janczy Pawłowska is mentioned on the list of ZHP girl guides to be nominated in: Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddział w Nowym Sączu (later as: ANKr O/NS) Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim, ref. 31/559/38, p.5.

[2] Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddział w Nowym Sączu (later as: ANKr O/NS), Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim, 31/559/30, krótki życiorys Zofii Janczy – autograf, p. 147., cf. also: Marta Lorek, Stanisław Gniady, Sądeczanki – więźniarki Ravensbruck, „Almanach Sądecki” 2014, nr 1/2 (86/87), p.29.

[3] M. Lorek, S. Gniady, op. cit., p. 29.

[4] Zofia Florczak, Organizacja Harcerek (OH) [in:] Słownik uczestniczek walki o niepodległość Polski 1939–1945, Warszawa 1988, p. 508–509.

[5]) ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim, 31/559/30, Relacja Zofii Janczy z dziejów hufca harcerskiego w Nowym Sączu, p. 107.

[6]) ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim 31/559/34, typescript Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego w Nowym Sączu – biogram Zofii Janczy, p. 6.

[7] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim, 31/559/34, Zofia Janczy – Wspomnienia z lat okupacji – 14 marca 1969 r., pp. 44–45.

[8] Ibidem, pp. 43–44.

[9] Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddział w Nowym Sączu (later as: ANKr O/NS), Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim, 31/559/34, typescript Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego w Nowym Sączu – biogram Zofii Janczy, p. 6; M. Lorek, S. Gniady, op. cit., s. 29.

[10] M. Lorek, S. Gniady, op. cit., p. 29.

[11] Urszula Wińska, Zwyciężyły wartości. Wspomnienia z Ravensbrück, Gdańsk 1985, p.59.

[12] M. Lorek, S. Gniady, op. cit., p. 29.

[13] Danuta Brzosko-Mędryk, Mury w Ravensbruck, Warszawa 1979., pp. 26–28

[14] For example, a celebratory Sunday morning with a lecture, songs, declamation in 1942, on the anniversary of the November Uprising, cf. U. Wińska, op. cit., p. 128.

[15] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim, 31/559/34, typescript Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego w Nowym Sączu – biogram Zofii Janczy, s. 6.; Cf. also.: U. Wińska, op. cit, p. 100.

[16] U. Wińska, op. cit., s. 333.

[17] Ibidem, p. 100.

[18] IPN Kr 37/92, Akta paszportowe Zofii Janczy, Podanie-Kwestionariusz z 23 maja 1975 r., p. 14.

[19] IPN Kr 37/92, Akta paszportowe Zofii Janczy, Promesa, p. 17, Podanie-Kwestionariusz z 5.06.1970 r., p. 24.

[20] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim, 31/559/34, Zofia Janczy – wspomnienia z lat okupacji, p. 43.

[21] ANKr O/NS, Materiały do dziejów harcerstwa w nowosądeckim, 31/559/34, maszynopis Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego w Nowym Sączu – biogram Zofii Janczy, p. 6; https://genealogia.okiem.pl/forum/viewtopic.php?hilit=Janczy*&t=9488, accesed on: 15.10.2021.

Piotr Kazana

Roman Stramka,

born on 13 July 1916 in Ptaszkowa, where his mother Maria née Wysocka was from.^[1] His father was a highlander from Harklowa, a railwayman, Ludwik. Roman came from a large family, he had nine siblings.^[2] In Nowy Sącz, he attended the elementary school and the Trade Gymnasium, he also graduated from the Trade Institute in Vilnius^[3]. In his youth years, apart from studying and working on a family farm, he practiced sports, which over time became his life passion. He was a track and field athlete, a canoer, a footballer and a cyclist, but from all of the disciplines he loved skiing the most. As the youngest member of the “Sandecja” KS KPW skiing section, he has developed into one of its most outstanding athletes. In 1931, at the age of fifteen, he achieved his first sports success, winning a ski run during the the KPW Sports Clubs Championship in Zakopane.^[4] On 8 May 1932 he placed third in the track and field running in Nowy Sącz.^[5] In 1934, together with the ski patrol team of the “Sandecja” KPW he won first place at the nationwide competition of the KPW centers in Sławsko.^[6] In 1938, he worked on the construction of a road in the area of the water dam being constructed on the Dunajec River in Rożnów, and then spend the earned money to buy a racing bike.^[7] At the outbreak of World War II, he and his friends went east, to escape the approaching front line, only to return home after a few weeks.^[8] Together with Franciszek Krzyżak and the Świerczek brothers, in autumn 1939, he commited sabotage in the Nowy Sącz Railway Workshops.^[9] In October 1939, Kwiatkowski and Freisler involved him in the organization of the network to smuggle people to Hungary. For the first time Stramka reported for duty in the “Romek” base in Budapest in early 1940. In February 1940, Stramka was exposed smuggling throught he border Jerzy Pracki “Jurek”, a courier of the SZP-ZWZ main command. They were arrested and at the turn of April and May 1940 they were selected for a transport to the concentration camp in Oświęcim. Stramka was released by the Germans by mistake and he returned to Nowy Sącz.^[10] He repeatedly got away from the hands of the Germans, and his most famous escape was getting out from behind the walls of Gestapo prison in Nowy Sącz on 18 October 1941^[11] After the escape he returned to the courier routes. After the end of the war, in 1945, he left for Lower Silesia, near Kamienna Góra. In 1946, he received a job at the State Agricultural Industry Plant in Maszewo (Lębork county).^[12] On 31 March 1947, he presented himself before to the amnesty committee of the District Offices of Public Security (Powiatowy Urząd Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, PUBP) in Nowy Sącz.^[13] During his work at the State Agricultural Industry Plant in Maszewo, he was worked out by PUBP in Lębork.^[14] From 1949, he was under surveillance of the Security Office.^[15] On 23 June 1953, after interrogation in Krakow, he signed an obligation to cooperate with the SO under the pseudonym “Przystojny”. He was recruited to provide information about other couriers and to help secure the border areas. In July 1956, the leading officer, Mieczysław Korczyński, positively assessed the results of cooperation with Roman Stramka and passed over further contacts with him to the SO in Zakopane. However, the partially surviving personal file of the informer “Przystojny” show that “[…] during the cooperation, he provided no valuable materials and the only information obtained was limited to characterizing the activities of the Budapest outpost and the activities of the Budapest couriers.^[16] On 7 March 1958 Stramka was removed from the list of agents, because “[…] even in the period before October he was dishonest and reluctant to continue cooperation. After October, he avoids meetings entirely. […] He is hostile towards the People’s Republic of Poland […]”.^[17] From 1948, he lived in Zakopane, where he worked as a warehouse worker at the Physical Culture Centre on Chałubińskiego Str., and then, in the years 1951–1956, as a seasonal winter sports instructor at the Central Military Sports Club Zakopane in Gronik^[18]. At that period, he achieved numerous successes in ski sports.^[19] He returned to Nowy Sącz, and got involved in organizing sports life in “Start” Nowy Sącz and “Poprad” Rytro Sports Clubs. He died on 1 September 1965 of injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident in Biegonice. He rests at the municipal cemetery in Nowy Sącz at Rejtana Str. He was awarded with the Cross of Valour and with the Virtutti Militari Cross.

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[1] Raport o wytypowaniu kandydata do werbunku, IPN Kr 009/5788, Kraków, 12.04.1951, p. 009.

[2] Relacja Marii Stramki-Ryby, Nowy Sącz, 22.05.2015.

[3] Katalog Szkolny Szkoły Handlowej w Nowym Sączu, cl. 3, APNS/SHNS/7; Z. Mordawski, Roman Stramka (1916–1965), „Rocznik Sądecki”, vol. XXIII, Nowy Sącz 2000, p. 332.

[4] „Kolejowe Przysposobienie Wojskowe”, № 3/1931, p. 16.

[5] Commemorative medal for the third place in the cross-country run, Nowy Sącz, 8.10.1932, from the collection of the Stramka family.

[6] Commemorative medal from the 1934 Main Skiing Competition of the Railway Military Training, from the collection of the Stramka family; “Kolejowe Przysposobienie Wojskowe”, № 4/1934, p. 14.

[7] Z. Mordawski, op. cit.

[8] Ibidem.  

[9] W. Frazik, Roman Stramka, Polski Słownik Biograficzny, vol. 44, Warszawa, 2005–2006.

[10] Protokół przesłuchania R. Stramki, Teczka personalna agenta-informatora ps. „Przystojny”, IPN Kr 009/5788, Kraków, 23.06.1953, p. 12

[11] J. Bieniek, Między… , p. 329.

[12] W. Frazik, Ibidem.

[13] Oświadczenie R. Stramki, IPN Kr 009/5788, Teczka informatora ps. „Przystojny”, Nowy Sącz, 31.03.1947, p. 17.

[14] Akta sprawy agencyjnego rozpracowania kryptonim „Maszewo”, dot. kontroli operacyjnej środowiska byłych członków AK i NSZ na terenie Państwowych Zakładów Przemysłu Rolnego w Maszewie, podejrzanych o działalność antypaństwową, IPN GD 0027/614.

[15] Ibidem.

[16] Charakterystyka informatora „Przystojny”, IPN Kr 009/5788, Teczka informatora ps. „Przystojny”, Kraków, 26.07.1956, p. 45–47

[17] Ibidem.

[18] Życiorys R. Stramki, Archiwum Romany Stramki-Kroczek, Nowy Sącz, 5.10.1962.

[19] Relacja Marii Stramki-Ryby i Romany Stramki, Nowy Sącz, 22.05.2015.

Piotr Kazana

born on 1 January 1914 in Dzikowo near Tarnobrzeg as the fourth child of the marriage of Joseph and Helena née Malinowski. The Ryś family arrived in Nowy Sącz at the end of the 19th century and moved into a house at J. Matejki 2 Str.^[1] From the age of ten Zbigniew was a scout.^[2] At that time, his passion for sports was born; he took up track and field, skiing in the “Sandecja” KPW section ^[3], skating and canoeing. He went to school together with Tadeusz Sokołowski, Karol Głód^[4] and Jerzy Iszkowski.^[5] After graduating from the II Gymnasium in Nowy Sącz in 1933, he did his military service in 4 PSP in Cieszyn. In 1934, during the great flood that hit Nowy Sącz, he was awarded the Medal for Saving the Dying.^[6] After being transferred to the reserve, he began legal studies at the Jagiellonian University, but due to material problems he was not able to complete them.^[7] He joined the Border Guard, served on the Polish-Czechoslovak border in outposts Benowo, Sianka and Czystohorb near Komańcza.^[8] He was active in the field of sports, among others, he participated in the Hutsul’s Route of the 2nd Brigade of the Polish Legions ski patrol marches.^[9] During the defensive war in September 1939, he took part in the fights at Żółkiew and near Lviv^[10]. He began his adventure in the underground movement by organizing the smuggling of people out of the country. Initially, it was spontaneous actions, he helped refugees together with Tadeusz Sokołowski, Karol Głód, Tadeusz Szafran,^[11]Stanisław Suski^[12], Józef Jenet^[13] and Leszek Wojtyga^[14]. He was sworn in the ZWZ in spring 1940 by A. Smulikowski „Kotowicz”. After the government emissary Jan Karski was caught in Slovakia he was given the task of freeing him from the hands of the Germans. On 28 July 1940 thanks to the help of dr. Jan Słowikowski^[15], Jenet, Szafran, Głód, Feliks Wideł^[16] and Jan Morawski the operation codenamed “Szpital” (Hospital) was successful.^[17] In June 1941 Ryś started supporting the ZWZ underground foreign communication efforts; he organized a relay courier route with the code name “Karczma”^[18] with the variant Warsaw – Waksmund – Harklowa – Białka – Krempachy – Dursztyn – Łapsze Niżne – Stara Wieś – Kežmarok – Poprad – Dobszyna – Poloma – Rožňava – Budapest. As a courier, he continued his underground work until the Wehrmacht entered Hungary in March 1944 After the end of World War II, he returned to the country. In October 1945, he enrolled in the second year of law studies at the Wrocław University. He disclosed his activities on courier routes to the communist authorities. In November 1945, he left for Kraków, and was accidentally detained by the Kraków Security Office.^[19] On 1 June 1946, eight months after his arrest, he was released and returned to law studies, which he graduated.^[20] Although the Security Office kept him under observation, he became a professional lawyer. He was thrice awarded with the Cross of Valour and the Order of Virtuti Militari; he died on 29 September 1990 in Wrocław. He rests there, in the Grabiszyński Cemetery.

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[1] Ibidem, Z. Ryś, Ibidem. 

[2] Z. Ryś, Ibidem, p. 9.

[3] J. Zubek, Ibidem, p. 15.

[4] Karol Głód, born on 25.10.1914 in Stróże, athlete, officer of the Polish Army, ZWZ organizer in Nowy Sącz. He was arrested by the Gestapo in May 1941 in connection with the organization of the escape of emissary Jan Kozielewski vel Karski from the Nowy Sącz hospital in July 1940. On 23 February 1942, he was brought to the KL Auschwitz concentration camp and received the prisoner number 24766. He was killed by firing squad shot on 17 June 1942 (according to the SS documentation – 18 June 1942), Auschwitz-Birkenau. Miejsce Pamięci i Muzeum. Information about prisoners, http://auschwitz.org/muzeum/informacja-o-wiezniach, accessed on: 3.05.2015; More on the participation of K. Głod in the escape of Jan Kozielewski vel Karski see: Z. Ryś, Ibidem, pp. 16–21; S. M. Jankowski, Ibidem, pp. 118–148, Z. Rysiówna, Z przeżyć okupacyjnych (wspomnienia), „Rocznik Sądecki”, vol. 9, Nowy Sącz 1968.

[5] Jerzy Iszkowski “Orczyk”, “Kord” (1914–1962), a major and pilot from Nowy Sącz, during World War II he served in the 304th (Land of Silesia) Bomber Division, a “cichociemny” special paratrooper, after completing the diversionary training, he was dropped at night from 27 to 28 April 1944 near Lublin. After the war, he was repressed and sentenced to death, the sentence was later changed to ten years in prison. He was awarded, among others, with the  Order of Virtuti Militari, see further; T. Kosecki, Jerzy Iszkowski (2014–1962), „Sądeczanin”, № 5/2014.

[6] Z. Ryś used a canoe to save 60 people from the completely flooded districts of Nowy Sącz, Z. Ryś, op. cit., p. 10.

[7] Z Ryś, Ibidem, p. 10-11.

[8] P. Kozłowski, Zapomniani obrońcy granic południowo-wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej 1922–1939. Biography of officers, guards and contract staff of the Customs and border Guard, typewritten, Przemyśl 2010, p. 255; the rest of the career of Zbigniew Ryś in the Border Guard was described on the basis of the above work.

[9] Hutsul’s March of the 2nd Brigade of the Polish Legions – organized in the Eastern Carpathians in 1934–1939 see further; D. Dyląg, Marsz zimowy Huculskim Szlakiem II Brygady Legionów Polskich 1934–1939, „Kultura Fizyczna”, № 2/2013.

[10] Życiorys Z. Rysia, IPN Bu 01236/352, Wrocław, 8 May 1947, p. 30.

[11] Tadeusz Szafran – officer of Polish Armed Forces, executed on 21 August 1941 in Biegonice.

[12] Stanisław Suski  – student of the Jagiellonian University, executed on 21 August 1941 in Biegonice.

[13] Józef Jenet ( 1916-1941) – an athlete, schoolmate of Z. Ryś from the II Gymnasium in Nowy Sącz, one of the co-organizers of the successful “Hospital” operation, executed on 21 August1941 in Biegonice.

[14] Lesław Wojtyga (1914 – ?), a lawyer from Nowy Sącz, together with his brother he actively participated in the organization of people smuggling network; after the war, in 1945–1948 he was a member of the the Polish Workers’ Party, and then of the Polish United Workers’ Party; in 1945–1946 he was the head of the secretariat of the Minister of Public Administration; deputy director of the Main Control Office of Press, Publication and Performances in Warsaw (censorship), in the years 1951–1957 deputy chief director of the Supreme Cinematography Board in Warsaw; then in the years 1957–1958 he was a counsel of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; from 1958 to1965 a counsel for cultural affairs of the Polish People’s Republic embassy in Moscow; in the years 1965–1969 department deputy director at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

[15] Jan Słowikowski “Dzięcioł” (1915–2010), doctor, professor of the Medical University, member of the ZWZ-AK, one of the co-organizers of J. Karski’s escape from the Nowy Sącz hospital in July 1940, after the war he was an outstanding specialist in pediatric surgery, see further: Leśniak J., Profesor Jan Słowikowski lekarz-bohater, “Rocznik Sądecki” vol. XL, Nowy Sącz 2012, p. 7–22.

[16] Feliks Wideł (1899 – 1943), a forester in the estate of Jan Morawski from Marcinkowice; in July 1940 he took part in the organization of emissary Jan Kozielewski’s escape from the hospital in Nowy Sącz, he harbored the fugitive in his lodge; as a result of a denunciation he was arrested by the Gestapo; he was taken, through prisons in Nowy Sącz and Tarnów, to the KL Auschwitz concentration camp, where he received the number 88577. There he died on 7 March 1943; Auschwitz-Birkenau. Miejsce Pamięci i Muzeum. Informacja o Więźniach, http://auschwitz.org/muzeum/informacja-o-wiezniach/, accessed on 03.05.2021; about F. Wideł’s participation in Jana Kozielewski vel Karski’s escape see further: Z . Ryś, Ibidem, pp. 16–21; S. M. Jankowski, Ibidem, pp. 118–148, Rysiówna Z., Ibidem, pp. 441-445.

[17] J. Ryś, Ibidem, pp. 30–38.

[18] Ibidem.

[19] Arkusz Streszczenia, IPN BU 01236/352, Kraków 7.05.1946, p. 10.

[20] Ibidem.

 

Piotr Kazana

born on 11 November 1906 , in Nowy Sącz in the family of Jan and Maria née Perła.^[1] Kwiatkowski’s childhood dream was to become a pilot.^[2] After graduating from Elementary School in 1924, he went to Zakopane, where he graduated from the State School of Wood Industry.^[3] At that time, in addition to his interest in aviation, serious involvement in skiing became part of Kwiatkowski’s life. After returning to Nowy Sącz, he was enlisted for compulsory military service in the 3rd Podhale Rifle Regiment in Bielsko, where he became a member of the skiing section of the Military Sports Club of the 3 PSP.^[4] After finishing service, he returned to Nowy Sącz and became involved in organization of skiing sport in “Sandecja” KS KPW, as an athlete and trainer, and gliding sport in the KPW Nowy Sącz section, and then in the glider school in Tęgoborze near Nowy Sącz, with numerous national and regional successes.^[5] In September 1939 Kwiatkowski was mobilized in the 2nd Air Force Regiment in Krakow. In the wartime conditions, despite his best attempts, he was not able to find it and he returned to Nowy Sącz.^[6] At risk of arrest, he joined the underground movement. In November 1939, he was sworn in by Freisler and started working in the smuggling of people to Hungary in the network of Gucwa “Góral”. In the years 1940–1944 he was a courier of the Government Delegation for Poland, he would mainly take the routes through Orava. In 1944, after the connection with Hungary was severed, Kwiatkowski was involved in the work of “Limba”^[7], he guided Felczak across the border and they both joined the 2nd Company 4th Battalion of the 1 PSP AK Partisan Unit commanded by Cpt. Julian Zapała “Lampart”^[8]. After the war, he tried to return to normal life and devoted himself mainly to instructor work for of glider pilots; he also started working in the Main Railway Workshops in Nowy Sącz as a material dispatcher^[9], in the quarry in Klęczany, he also worked as a manager of the Glider School in Tęgoborze. In 1950 “[…] As a politically uncertain man […]”^[10] he was dismissed from this position. He returned to aviation in 1956. He was under observatien of the Security Office and “[…] Since the first days of the liberation of Poland he [L. Kwiatkowski] has demonstrated his distinctly hostile attitude toward People’s Poland […]”.^[11] He died on 11 February 1968 in Nowy Sącz after a long and severe illness and was buried at the Municipal Cemetery. He was awarded with the Order of Virtuti Militari, 5th Class, the Gold Cross of Merit, the Bronze Cross of Merit, the Partisan Cross, the Bronze Medal of Merit for National Defence and was honored with Paul Tissandier Diploma and the title of a Distinguished Sporting Aviation Activist title. One of the streets in Nowy Sącz, in the Gorzków district, and the Podhale Aeroclub were named after him.

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[1] Relacja Antoniego Kwiatkowskiego, Nowy Sącz 18.05.2014.

[2] Życiorys Leopolda Kwiatkowskiego, ms, Nowy Sącz 5.03.1946,

[3] Relacja Antoniego Kwiatkowskiego, Nowy Sącz 18.05.2014.

[4] WKS 3PSP membership card of L. Kwiatkowski.

[5] See further: P. Kazana, Przyczynek do biografii Leopolda Kwiatkowskiego, „Almanach Sądecki”, № 3–4/2015, pp. 75–81.

[6] Z. Mordawski, Leopold Kwiatkowski (1906–1968), „Rocznik Sądecki”, vol. XXIII, Nowy Sącz 1995, pp. 324–326.

[7]“Limba” – a n underground regional organization, which was most likely established as an extension of the activities of the Secret Military Organization and the Organization of the White Eagle in Orava. The members of this organization participated in securing smuggling points on the ZWZ-AK courier route with the code name “Szkoła” and on the civil communication routes of the Government Delegation for Poland. The organization was also gathering intelligence, among others, on the Slovak border guard posts on the Slovak-occupied Orava. See further: J. Kasperek, Podhale w latach wojny i okupacji 1939–1945, Warszawa 1990.

[8] See further: D. Golik, Partyzanci Lamparta. Historia IV batalionu 1. pułku strzelców podhalańskich AK, Kraków 2014.

[9]Prośba o zwolnienie ze służby na Polskich Kolejach Państwowych, Leopold Kwiatkowski File, Department of the PKP S.A. Company Archive in Sosnowiec, Nowy Sącz 31.07.1946.

[10] IPN Kr 010/8727, Teczka agenturalnego sprawdzenia na Leopold Kwiatkowski, Nowy Sącz 19.03.1963, p. 234.

[11] Ibidem, Plan operacyjnych przedsięwzięć po linii rozpracowania agenturalnego sprawdzenia na: Leopold Kwiatkowski, Nowy Sącz, p. 15.