Joasia, born in 1925

They Wouldn’t Accept It…

For the past few years, I had been persuading Joasia to write down her wartime memories. She didn’t want to. She said that she had nothing special to tell… Finally, when I offered to write what she would tell me, she relented. Joasia could well have written her story, but most likely—like many of us—she didn’t want to delve into her wartime experiences.

Halina Szostkiewicz

Here is Joasia’s story:
The war found Joasia in Jadwisin, a small town near Serock. The whole family lived there in a house bought by her father, a renowned chemist. Father called this house “the Joasia Manor”… On the first day of the war, the German air force bombed nearby Zegrze, where a garrison and communication units were stationed. Therefore, a decision was made to move the family to Warsaw. The whole family went to Warsaw by car, borrowed from a friend, who was a bank manager. They stayed in Saska Kępa at their aunt and uncle’s house, but not for long.

It seemed that the Germans were going to bomb the bridges. Fearing being cut off from the city center, the whole family went to their friends’ living at Wspólna Street. But at that point, they were already bombing Warsaw on a larger scale and a bomb hit the building at Wspólna Street. It broke the marble stairs.

They found shelter at Pius Street, where there were already many people and conditions were rather dreadful. After the capitulation of Warsaw, they all returned to Saska Kępa, where their aunt and uncle’s house turned out to be in ruins, but they somehow managed to live there. The return to Jadwisin took place because of a certain coincidence.

Joasia’s elder brother, drafted into the army, had been captured. When he was in Serock on his way to the POW camp, he sent a note to Jadwisin, obviously unaware that no family member was there. But the person who was there was a German officer. Impressed by the house (which was equipped with a chemistry laboratory) and especially by the German literature, including the annals of the German chemical society, the officer intercepted the card, made efforts to free the prisoner, and brought him to Jadwisin. Her brother managed to send a horse-drawn cart to Warsaw, which brought the family home. It was the beginning of October, but it was already snowing.

The house in Jadwisin was a shambles, but it was possible to live a relatively normal life there. The nanny baked bread. Once a week Joasia and her younger brother went to the headmaster of the school in Serock for private lessons.

At that time, there was a palpable tension in the area. A German soldier died in Serock and the German authorities announced that he had been poisoned by Jews. The expulsion of Jews from Serock to Nasielsk took  place  in  mid-December  1939.  Joasia’s  mother,  who  came  from a Jewish family, left for Warsaw. She stayed in Saska Kępa with her sister, who needed a practical person around. In the absence of servants, her sister was helpless. She’d never “run the household”; instead, she worked professionally and academically. She was a pediatrician.

Before November 11, for a short time, the Germans arrested Joasia’s father and uncle, who also owned a house and lived in Jadwisin. During this period, the German authorities were establishing the boundaries between the General Government and East Prussia. Probably for this reason, they displaced the Radziwiłł family from their palace in Jadwisin, but allowed them to live in the house of Joasia’s paternal uncle.

The families became friends. It’s linked to an interesting detail related to the customs or even worldview. Since Joasia was unable to study normally because it was getting too dangerous to attend lessons in Serock, she learned French from a French woman staying with the Radziwiłł family. Mrs. Jelska, the “resident” aunt, who lived with the Radziwiłłs, decided to educate Joasia in good manners. She also had her read the novel by Roman Dmowski entitled Dziedzictwo, full of antisemitic content. This novel, as it turned out a little later, was popular among the landowners. Joasia’s uncle, who, in the later years of the war, spent some time with his daughter in the Kielce region, received the same novel from a Jesuit priest who was hiding there!

novel by Roman Dmowski—in 1931, Roman Dmowski published two novels under the pen name of Kazimierz Wybranowski: Dziedzictwo [Heritage] and W połowie drogi [Halfway].

The first wartime winter was severe, but Joasia’s family survived it in good condition. Her mother was at her uncle’s, her father often went to Warsaw. In March 1940, the Germans deported the Radziwiłł family to the General Government, having them cross a dangerous river where the ice was already cracking. Mr. Radziwiłł was shot by the Germans at the end of the war, Mrs. Radziwiłł and her three sons survived the war. After the war, Mrs. Radziwiłł worked in the Supreme Technical Organization, in the Palace of Culture. When meeting Joasia there, she was always friendly and warm to her.

In April of 1940 the Germans arrested Joasia’s father. First, he was in the concentration camp in Działdowo, then in Dachau. Fortunately, they managed to get him out of the camp after four months. The youngest sister of Joasia’s father was married to a man of German origin. He was also a bank director and had numerous contacts with various people. He had, for instance, contact with a certain Volksdeutch who, when bribed, arranged for releases from camps and prisons. And so Joasia’s father regained his freedom after four months.

While her father stayed in Warsaw, the children remained in Jadwisin, outside the borders of the General Government. Somehow, after various efforts, it was possible to bring them to Warsaw. However, a problem arose with the nanny, who was not only needed as help, but was a genuine member of the family. The Germans wouldn’t let her out of the Reich, despite her explaining that her mother was in the Governorate and she wanted to visit her. She was of German origin and she was asked to sign the Volkslist, which the nanny refused to do. Finally, after deliberations and persuasion, she signed the list. She visited her mother, but she didn’t stay long with her because she saw a portrait of Hitler on the wall. “That devil,” as she would later say.

Joasia’s grandmother was already in the Warsaw ghetto… Joasia’s family lived at her uncle’s in Saska Kępa. The young people—Joasia and her younger brother Andrzej—took clandestine classes, they also participated in underground work. But soon the Polish police (the so- called navy-blue police) took her aunt, uncle, and their daughter to the ghetto. Home furnishings were confiscated and taken away. Earlier, her uncle, a scientist of world renown, had been ruthlessly fired from the National Institute of Hygiene, of which he was the scientific director. The efforts made by the Central Welfare Council to free them from the ghetto were in vain. Uncle wouldn’t accept the invitation to Zurich due to the family situation. His wife’s mother and Joasia’s family, whose father was still in the concentration camp at that time, would have been left without anyone to care for them. After his release, Uncle was willing to go. He received visas from the embassy of Yugoslavia, which at that point wasn’t yet conquered by the states allied with fascist Germany. In this way, the government of Yugoslavia expressed its gratitude to Uncle for his role in fighting the typhoid epidemic during World War I. Then, however, the German authorities stopped issuing travel permits. For this reason, the efforts of scientists from the United States, supported by the American government, to free Joasia’s uncle failed. It was 1940.

Joasia’s family continued their stay at her aunt and uncle’s house, which wasn’t safe. Somehow, they managed to falsify the registration book, but it was still precarious. Her elder sister Hania lived outside the house under someone else’s name.

It was 1942. The liquidation of the ghetto was approaching. It was agreed that Joasia’s aunt would leave the ghetto with a group of people working outside it. But then they got a warning. Two policemen came to the house in Saska Kępa, hinting that its residents were under surveillance and that they were in danger. As a result, Joasia’s mother moved to her friends’, who lived on Jerozolimskie Avenue. Joasia’s father went to the ghetto gate to fetch Aunt. A little later, Uncle and his daughter left the ghetto.

Joasia’s grandmother, an 83-year old woman, had a broken hip and avoided deportation and further suffering by taking poison.

Of course, Aunt and Uncle were provided with appropriate “Aryan” documents under fake names. Apart from her own Kennkarte, Joasia’s mother also had another one under a different name. Fugitives from the ghetto continued to come to the house in Saska Kępa, and they needed help. Some showed up quite unexpectedly, just before the curfew. Joasia puts it simply, “It was hard…” It got easier when the nanny turned up in the summer of 1942 and took over Joanna’s household chores.

Joasia’s mother was at home until ’42, then she lived with her friends, and returned home in 1944. She was part of the Home Army, just like Joasia’s older sister Hania and younger brother Andrzej. Joasia and her father had “other tasks”, they helped Jews in hiding. After escaping from the ghetto, Aunt and Uncle were hiding in a rented apartment under a different name, but they moved outside Warsaw for the summers, thanks to which they avoided the Warsaw Uprising. They lost their daughter, who died from anorexia, a disease difficult to cure under these circumstances.

Joasia studied in clandestine classes, conducted by teachers from the Queen Jadwiga Junior High School. Lessons were held in private homes, including at the Gecow family’s, who were of Jewish origin. Most of the girls who studied together were Jewish. Everyone knew about each other. But this wasn’t discussed and neither were a number of other things. There were many taboos. It was safer this way, the environment was very discreet. All the girls who were friends with each other were in the underground, in the Home Army. Joasia says, “I was a bit on the margins. I lived far away, I crossed a dangerous bridge where round-ups were frequent, and I had these ‘other tasks’.” Only the uprising in the ghetto stirred up a commotion.

There was a religious education lesson. The priest said, “The Germans visited the archbishop and mentioned finding the graves of Polish officers in Russia ‘killed by the Jewish communists’. The uprising in the ghetto also targets Poles.” The priest’s words were followed by silence, there were no comments… The next day, posters announcing the killing of Polish officers in Katyn appeared.

There was a “mishap” in the Home Army circle to which the girls belonged. They were warned that they had to go into hiding. They didn’t return to their homes, they wandered around, stayed in different places, it was hard. Finally, the two exhausted Gecow sisters came home for the night. And a misfortune happened, it was then that the Germans burst in and they were arrested. And they died. Their parents and younger sister survived the war.

The Warsaw Uprising found Joasia at her aunt and uncle’s in Lipka, a small village between Wołomin and Tłuszcz. Her parents were in Saska Kępa. At that time, the Soviet army was approaching the Vistula. Fighting continued. The entire population of Lipka and its vicinity was on the front line. Soviet troops, poorly armed, passed through Lipka but were quickly bombed by the German air force. Lipka suffered, it burned down completely. The SS troops came and ordered the entire Polish population to go west.

All the locals took refuge in the forest. However, they needed water, and the well was at a nearby farm where the Germans were stationed. Joasia went to get the water and lost her watch. A young German soldier followed her to the forest shelter and simply took her watch.

Expelled from Lipka, they fled to the next village and spent a few nights in the woods, in barns, and in cowsheds. And it was good that they managed to escape, because soon a tank battle began where they had been hiding.

During the escape they saw the Germans burning the harvested grain in the fields. But soon, when the Germans were fleeing through the same fields, they died, shot by Russian soldiers. It was a sight that gave the Poles watching it a bitter satisfaction.

Another Soviet attack was successful. Liberation came. Lipka was burnt, there was nothing to go back to. Uncle’s family and Joasia went to a nearby village where some friends were staying, but they didn’t stay there for long. Warsaw was practically gone. The house in Saska Kępa had burnt down. Joasia’s uncle went on foot to Lublin, where some Polish authorities had already been put in place. He immediately took part in organizing the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University. He sent a car from there for his wife and his ward Jacek. At that time, Joasia fell ill with jaundice, stayed put, and later went to her friends who lived at Grochowska Street.

Soon, Uncle came for Joasia’s mother, she was needed for work. Before the war, she’d been the head of the secretariat of the National Institute of Hygiene. Joasia didn’t join her mother until January 1945. Her sister Hania also arrived in Lublin. She came on foot from Skierniewice, where she had ended up after the Uprising. She had been taken in by a teacher with whom she remained friends until her final days.

In Lublin, they initially lived in a rented room, which Joasia described as horrid. But later they had better conditions. They lived with a school superintendent who turned out to be her father’s former schoolmate.

This is how Joasia’s story ends. It’s succinct. It discusses no fear, anxiety, poverty, fatigue, waiting for liberation… Joasia omits these topics, because she probably believes that such states of mind were shared by all who survived the war and they’re not worth mentioning. Only once does Joasia say that “it was hard” before the nanny returned, when the house was full of people and everyone needed help.

Joasia’s story resonates with amazement: how did it happen that a family so threatened by Nazism didn’t suffer losses? And the threat resulted from the Jewish origin of her mother and uncle, the status of outstanding Polish scientists fiercely exterminated by the Germans, and finally from numerous contacts with various people and the underground work. Joasia’s parents did take the necessary precautions, but they didn’t hide or keep their children in wardrobes. They lived at Uncle’s pre-war house, they were well known in the neighborhood! How did they manage to survive?

It was probably no miracle. There was some luck. Joasia says that they never experienced the ill will of people around them, neighbors, or other acquaintances. Joasia was accosted only once by a blackmailer on the street, but he got scared when she shouted at him. He said, “I’m sorry, Miss.” Above all, however, the whole family didn’t panic and behaved sensibly. At the same time, they wouldn’t accept that the German occupier had assigned them the role of victims. And that’s how they survived.

When the war ended, Joasia’s family settled in Łódź, where her father, a prominent chemist, took a job as a professor at the Technical University and Medical Academy. Joasia got a degree in biology and worked at the Nencki Institute. Her older brother spent the war partly in Łódź and partly in Warsaw. He was also a chemist. Her younger brother took part in the Warsaw Uprising, returned from captivity, and studied mathematics. Her sister Hania left for Israel in the 1950s but remained a Polish patriot.

Uncle  and  Aunt  settled  in  Wrocław,  where  her  uncle  opened a medical department at the university and became a professor of microbiology there. Moreover, he created the Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy.

In 1999 Joasia went to Israel for her sister’s funeral. There she met a few people, now quite elderly, who had been saved by her father during the war. When they found out that Joasia’s father hadn’t been honored with any decoration for his activity during the occupation, they contacted Yad Vashem. Joasia says that her father wouldn’t have cared about any decorations, but those who survived the war needed to express their gratitude. The “Righteous Among the Nations” medal was awarded to Joasia’s father posthumously in 2000.