Wiesław Bieniek, born in 1935
My Father and the Wartime “Businesswoman”
I was born on September 14, 1935, in Warsaw, at 58 Chmielna Street. My father, Wacław, a Polish non-Jew, was a civil engineer who earned his degree in Berlin. My mother was Jewish. My maternal grandfather was a trader, Grandma Róża—his wife—ran the household. Julian, my mother’s younger brother, also lived with us. In August 1939 my whole family went to Urla near Warsaw on holiday. The last one in free Poland. There were four of us, along with my stepbrother, fourteen-year-old Ryszard.
When the war broke out, we returned to Warsaw. I don’t remember that moment. I remember a bomb hitting the building at 5 Widok Street. At that time, I was with many people on the ground floor of this building, in one of the apartments. I survived the raid because the bomb hit the front façade. The building only partially collapsed. Two women who were directly within the range of the exploding bomb were killed. Many family photographs have survived. One of them: 5 Widok Street. Rubble—that was all that was left of our pre-war apartment after the bombing.
My father insisted that he must stay in our apartment to fix a suit- case. My mother, stepbrother, and I went downstairs to our neighbor’s. An air bomb, hitting the façade, pierced the main wall, two side walls, then exploded. Two old ladies were killed on the first floor. The wall fell on my father, but he was saved because he was holding a hammer in his hand and his arm was stretched up at the moment of the explosion. He was then a 45-year-old man. He miraculously survived and slid down the downspout. I owe my life to my father, who, almost by force, made the three of us go downstairs before the bomb hit.
After the capitulation of Warsaw, I moved in with my Jewish grandparents at Chmielna Street in Warsaw. Unfortunately, I can’t reconstruct this period. Later, my grandparents and uncle ended up in the Warsaw ghetto. I can’t remember whether they took me with them and my father took me out of the ghetto later or if he did it right away. I had the so-called good look, and therefore I didn’t have to sit in a wardrobe or under a bed, like my “racial” peers, which doesn’t mean that I wasn’t in danger.
I don’t remember when I found myself at 3 Widok Street, surrounded by nothing short of the motherly love of Mrs. Anna Choynowska, my father’s friend, and the owner of the restaurant “Pod Cyranką”. Mrs. Choynowska was a woman of extraordinary kindness and a charming smile. Most likely aware of what she risked by hiding a Jewish child, she still decided to keep me safe. Unlike my Jewish peers, I lived like Polish children. I would pop into the restaurant, walk around Warsaw, often stopped by German officers. They patted me on the head and offered me sweets.
Pod Cyranką—Cyranka—teal, a species of wild duck.
Aunt, because that was what I called Mrs. Choynowska, wanted to save my mother, Elżbieta. She rented her an apartment at 8 Widok Street. Food was brought to her from the Pod Cyranką restaurant. But my mother wouldn’t listen to good advice and despite her “bad look”, she often came to the restaurant. This led to her arrest in 1942. In the meantime, the Gestapo arrested my father. He was imprisoned in the Pawiak, where he spent about two months. During one of the prison exercise walks, he saw my mother. They exchanged a few words. Father returned from the Pawiak, Mother, unfortunately, did not. The circumstances of her death remain unknown. After his release from prison, my father continued to help Aunt in running the restaurant. He received information that Mother had died. He met a lady and married her. His wife lived at Wilcza Street in Warsaw. Father moved in with her. He came to work at Cyranka every day.Pawiak—the Pawiak Prison—after 1939, it became a German Gestapo prison where many people were tortured and murdered.
One day, two Gestapo officers appeared and asked about my father. Aunt didn’t give them his address, explaining that she didn’t know where my father lived. They went to the superintendent of the building, he probably gave them the address, because soon they got a rickshaw and we went to my father’s. He opened the door. They talked to him for a while, I remember that they asked my father about his previous wife. He said: my wife was Jewish. The Gestapo said goodbye to my father, then we got back into the rickshaw and, as if nothing had happened, the Germans left. What happened shortly thereafter could be linked to the previous event. It was evening, my aunt put me to bed. I heard the doorbell and some German gibberish. The Germans came for me.
My aunt began fighting for me with great determination. The fight was long and almost hopeless, finally the Germans were bribed with gold. I was saved. My aunt would do anything for me, and I was too young to realize how much she loved me. Soon after this incident, having left a café in Krakowskie Przedmieście, we ran into a patrol comprised of an SS-man and a navy-blue policeman. They told me to go into an entryway and take off my shorts. I was circumcised. My aunt stated that I had problems with phimosis and during the procedure, it turned out that the foreskin had to be removed, which was done by a surgeon. The policeman (navy blue) convinced the German that the story held up, and we managed to get out of trouble again.
My father took part in a few “aid” actions during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Once he took me to the ghetto, which was breathing its last. There was no problem getting in, the gate was open, no one was guarding it, and after a while we were in ghetto territory. I saw flames: they were coming out of buildings. I saw a group of Germans leading “civilians”. And there was fire all around. A fighter was firing at himself. My father could see the turret of the tank with the barrel facing back.
It blasted the fighter. Years later, my father recounted: “I saw women jumping from windows with their children. The Germans shot them like ducks.” I remember: suddenly, not far from us, a “bathtub”—a German combat car with a machine gun on the hood—appeared on the right. And I remember that a German officer shouted “Raus” at us. My father grabbed my hand and immediately we reached the wall with a group of Poles. My heart was pounding with fear. I was waiting for the deadly series…
Meanwhile, the Germans left without using their weapon. My father and I went to the tram stop: it was already outside the ghetto, and we went home. My aunt’s apartment was a place of meetings of the underground AK group Kedyw. The members of the group came out from there for actions disguised as chimney sweeps, or as workers smeared with lime. Once, a member of this group was cleaning a gun when we heard a doorbell and then: “Police, open up!”
“and we went home”—from the editor: when we are surprised by some facts from Wiesław Bieńek’s biography that differ from the version given by historians, he replies: “History is one thing, real life another.”
Kedyw—an acronym of Kierownictwo Dywersji (“Directorate of Diversion”)—a Polish unit of the Home Army that engaged in operations against German forces.
Mima threw the gun under the couch and waited. Two navy-blue police officers asked about my half-brother, Ryszard. When they found out that he was in Germany doing rural work, they said goodbye and left. Mima could easily take care of the gun and prepare it for the next actions.
Mima’s mother, a woman whose last name was Skorynina (I don’t remember her first name), was a friend of my aunt’s. Mima, her son, was a lieutenant in the Home Army. The Gestapo caught him in Warsaw, on Czacki Street. (He was handed over to the Germans by a friend). A car with the Germans pulled up at Czacki Street and Mima hit one German. One of Mima’s friends, who was there at the scene, managed to escape. They didn’t shoot at him. Mima was injured and taken to the hospital. He told the doctor: “Don’t try to save me.” Severely wounded, he died. Mima’s mother went with us to the dissecting room. We saw her son’s body—it was mangled. Mima’s comrades from the Home Army decided to bury him solemnly. My father and I attended the funeral. We managed to exit the cemetery safely. A few minutes after we left, the Germans surrounded the cemetery, but they didn’t catch us.
Attended the funeral—at the Powązki Cemetery.After the war, I read the book by Ryszard Podlewski, Droga przez piekło [Road Through Hell], describing the fighting for the Old Town during the Warsaw Uprising. I found there the chapter “Sergeant Pietrek survived”. Pietrek (a pseudonym) was stopped by a German patrol. They wanted to kill him. He drew his gun, shot two Germans dead and ran into the entryway of our building (3 Widok Street). He got into the yard and then up the side staircase to reach the roof. But no one wanted to open the hatch for him, so he decided to shoot the Germans, several dozen of whom poured into the yard to capture him alive. He fired at them a couple of times, and when he assessed his situation as hopeless, he released a grenade, which exploded, tearing off his hand. The Germans took the wounded man to the hospital (along with the torn-off hand!). In a few days, his mates from the Home Army rescued him. He fought during the Uprising. He was at our apartment, talked to my father, and showed us where he lost his hand.
In June 1943 my father wasn’t at home; suddenly, we heard a doorbell and shoes kicking our door. We were the three of us, that is, Aunt Anna, Helena, and I. Three goons entered the apartment. After searching the place and finding a lipstick made of a bullet cartridge, they led us out of the building and took us to the police station in Krakowskie Przedmieście. Aunt and Helena were interrogated in other rooms than me. I dealt with a German officer. He asked what newspapers my father read. I replied that my father spoke German perfectly and only read German newspapers. The officer who questioned me behaved decently and never hit me. We were led out into the yard and ordered to get into a car similar to our Nysa. Once we were in the car, they tossed in shovels and we were told: “We’re going to Tłuszcz”. The women started crying. I was completely indifferent. At one point Helena said, “We are at Szucha.”
Tłuszcz—a town in the Mazovian Voivodeship, where the Nazis formed a ghetto in 1940.
The car stopped and we were led to the basement of the Gestapo headquarters. The cells there were called “trams”. The cell chairs were lined up in rows. I remember something was going on all night. Either they threw people who had been beaten during the interrogations into the cells, or they took people out for interrogation. Beyond exhausted, we survived until morning. In the morning, a Gestapo officer read out our names and we were ushered into the interview room.
There were whips and other torture devices on the table. The Gestapo man checked whether we could pray, and when we passed the test, he said that we were free. When Aunt began to thank him, the torturer replied that it was a higher-up’s decision, and he was only executing it. And he remarked: “If it was up to me, I would show you what I can do.”
We still had to go back to the cell for our personal belongings. On the way, we got a few secret messages, which my aunt took to the address indicated. And we were released. We looked to the right: a horse-drawn carriage was standing a hundred and fifty yards away, and my father was sitting on the cart, next to the coachman! At that moment, I felt that I had gotten a second chance at life. Leaving Szucha, the death row, was practically impossible. I felt the determination with which my father fought for my life, and, also, for the lives of my aunt and Helena.
…practically impossible—from the editor: Gustaw Kerszman, a Jewish boy, also happened to be released from the death row on Szucha Avenue. Gustaw Kerszman, Jak ginąć, to razem. Książka i Wiedza, Warszawa, 2006. Halina Szostkiewicz and her mother were also released from Szucha Avenue, delivered there by gendarmes—https://zapispamieci.pl/halina
Two days before the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, my aunt and I went to the National Museum, where we enjoyed the so-called microclimate; there was a swimming pool built by the Germans in case of hostilities (and the need to extinguish fires). On the way back, at Krucza Street, we saw two Gestapo men with machine guns and a dog. My aunt, at first impulse, wanted to turn left into Jerozolimskie Avenue. I reacted immediately (just in time!) and it was a correct move, because the Germans passed us calmly. It turned out that a German soldier had been shot two doors down. We went to our apartment while the Germans took the soldier’s body. (There were no reprisals.) The Warsaw Uprising broke out two days later. On the day of the outbreak, my father made it to Widok Street around 5:30 pm. We stayed with my father, aunt, and her ward, Helena, in the basement until October 4, that is, until the surrender of the Uprising. Despite the bombing, our building didn’t suffer any damage. During the Uprising, my aunt “fulfilled” herself amazingly—she fed soldiers and numerous refugees from Wola and Powiśle with the broth of her own production, “Nina Bór”. After the Uprising, we walked to the Western Railway Station. We reached Pruszków by freight cars.
I’ve reconstructed the biography of Anna Choynowska from the stories she passed on to me—a child, and later, a young man—between 1946 and 1965. She was born in the late 19th century, probably in 1893, and died in 1983, in Rzeszów, at the age of 90. She was born in Volhynia to the landed gentry of the Lipkowski family. It was a wealthy family, they owned thousands of hectares of fertile land. She received a typical gentry education, which involved savoir-vivre and a good knowledge of French and Russian. Wonderful parties were held at her family home. She had noble relatives.
When she met her future husband, Bronisław Choynowski, life took her to Kiev. The October Revolution found her in Kiev. Back then, each day brought terrifying news. It was summarized in the words: “The Reds are wiping the nobility out.” Choynowska lived in Khreshchatyk, the main street of the city. Horrified by the enormity of the Reds’ crimes, she took refuge in the hospital.
After paying a bribe, she was put to bed as sick. A Red Army soldier burst into the hospital, wielding a Nagant revolver; she approached the women lying in beds and killed them with a shot in the head. When she came up to Aunt’s bed, an elderly man appeared, her “guardian angel”, and told the female soldier not to shoot, because the woman was dying and it was a waste of a bullet. The old man saved her life.After this incident, she escaped from the hospital, left Kiev, and ended up in Warsaw. During the war with the Bolsheviks in 1920, when opposing the “red plague” (as she put it), she worked as a nurse in a field hospital. Heavily wounded young boys fighting against the Bolsheviks were brought there. As a volunteer, she not only devoted all her time and energy to the wounded, but also donated her savings for the purchase of dressings. She assisted the surgeons, Professor Orłowski and Doctor Szarecki. She was proud of this work. She had no children of her own, her children were the badly injured.
After the Russians were expelled from the Second Polish Republic, she left with her husband, Bronisław Choynowski, to the Borderlands, to Davyd-Haradok. They bought a “resztówka” with a manor to work and enjoy life and the charms of nature. The lands in the Borderlands were fertile, so the crops grew. The ponds provided fish. Her husband liked horses. One of the Radziwiłłs came down for hunting. Lots of ducks were killed on each hunt. Radziwiłł left them there “for farm use”. Aunt wondered whether it would be possible to make broths from the teal meat (a kind of wild duck) for sale at home and abroad. A woman without a polytechnic education independently developed the stock production technology. She bought used vacuum equipment into which the cleaned parts of the ducks were thrown so that, after some steps, they could be turned into cubes à la Maggi. Aunt hired an operator of this vacuum equipment and girls to process poultry, and serious work began. Anna Choynowska came up with the logo and name of the factory herself. The staff literally adored her.
Resztówka—the land remaining after the parceling of a private land estate.
In the 1930s, Anna was in her 30s and was at the height of her success. She earned it with her competence and reliability. Each of her employees, upon getting married, got a cow, pigs, and two hectares of land. Yet, a man came along who set fire to the factory one night. The plant was insured, the losses were reimbursed, but there was no point in rebuilding the factory. War loomed on the horizon. Anna Choynowska sold the property and moved to Warsaw with her ward, Helena Konopko, with whom she would stay until the end of her days. In Warsaw she decided to set up an eatery specializing in pâté, which, after many years, turned into a restaurant called “Pod Cyranką”. She could never sit with her arms folded. At the restaurant, hungry guests were greeted by a duck cut out of a tin sheet (discreetly attached to the window), and there were several stuffed ducks in the restaurant. In the cloakroom there was a painting by the famous painter Teodor Axentowicz, Pan w Kontuszu. The restaurant was famous for its good cuisine. A nominal zloty could buy you a tasty and hearty dinner.
Cyranka was frequented by the representatives of aristocracy, such as the writer Dołęga-Mostowicz or the actor Adam Hanusz. The restaurant ran efficiently almost until the Warsaw Uprising.
Two German officers, regulars at the restaurant, Gustaw and Hans (my father didn’t remember their surnames), became friends of my aunt and father. They rescued many people out of the hands of the Gestapo, and, surely, they also saved me.
However, my aunt, tired of rather unpleasant inspections of the occupier and low profits, leased Cyranka to Mrs. Chądzyńska. She managed it until the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising.
My father, who saved Poles from German hands, didn’t always succeed. Sometimes even an intervention with a high-level German wouldn’t help. The family of one of those whom father failed to save (he died in Oświęcim) vowed revenge. And they kept their word! Let me say that during the Warsaw Uprising, my father was told to go to the Home Army Headquarters. He did and was cleared of all charges.
The Warsaw Uprising found Anna Choynowska in her apartment at 3 Widok Street. Apart from her, her ward—Helena Konopko”—and I were also staying in the apartment. My father went downtown and when the “W” hour struck, he was by the Main Post Office. A fifteen-year-old insurgent armed with a machine gun approached him and told him to go home because “the Polish-German war had begun”! My father got home without any problems and we spent sixty-four days there. My aunt played a role in the Uprising, feeding not only soldiers but also the migrants from Wola and Powiśle. She managed to do this thanks to the stock cubes she owned! Those, split into pieces and thrown into the cauldron, turned into thick sauces that went with pasta and groats or dried potatoes.
We left Warsaw after the surrender of the Uprising on October 4, 1944. In a long procession of silent, battered people, we reached Nowowiejska Street. At the end of the street we said goodbye to the Home Army soldiers who were dismantling the last barricade and we got under German supervision. The Germans stood every fifty yards on our way to the West Railroad Station in Warsaw. We reached Pruszków by freight trains. We spent the night in the rolling stock repair hall. The next day the Gestapo divided us into groups. Anna Choynowska, my father, and I got into one group, and Helena Konopko into the other. My father spoke perfect German. A supply of black coffee also supported his case. And so all four of us ended up in one group.
A German guard showed us the train, which we all caught and after two days found ourselves in the Kraków voivodship. In the village of Sadowie (the municipality of Goszcza) we were hired as agricultural workers. Father ended up with the Sart family, and the three of us went to the Doniec family. Aunt and Helena carried several dozen buckets of water for farm animals and they helped cook meals for the host family and for us. In the spring of 1945, the troops of the Belorussian Front attacked Krakow. They captured the Goszcz municipality. A small division was stationed in the village of Sadowie and seized the local manor. The lady of the manor was murdered, pigs and cows were slaughtered, and the horses were taken for the army. When General Konev’s troops seized Krakow, my father went there. He got a job at the Provincial Road Department. There was no point in staying any longer in degrading conditions in the countryside. We all went to Krakow, and from there, in an open carriage, on top of coal, to the “land of happiness”, which
Rzeszów would turn out to be for us.
The Krakow trains were run by Soviet crews. (It wasn’t until 1947 that the Polish State Railways took over the rolling stock from the Soviet authorities). In Dębica, Soviet soldiers got on the train and ordered us to leave the car. My father, who spoke Russian well, contacted the commander. He presented a letter about his employment in Rzeszów. The Soviet commander agreed for us to continue our journey to Rzeszów. In Rzeszów we got a small room with a large kitchen, no bathroom. Two years later, my father was allocated an extra room. We had to live in these conditions until 1966.
In 1947, Aunt’s health deteriorated significantly. Her hard work in Sadowie was a factor. My father used a company car that was going to Krakow. The trunk was cleaned up, a bed was constructed. My sick aunt, whom the local doctors were unable to help, traveled in it. In Krakow, she got an appointment with Professor Szczeklik, a wonderful doctor. He made an accurate diagnosis. Not only did she survive this difficult period, but she lived to the ripe old age of 90.
The difficult times for our family had only just begun, when in 1946 my father was arrested by the officers of the Security Office and imprisoned at the headquarters of the Office, at Jagiellońska Street. Later he spent three weeks in prison at the Lubomirski Castle in Rzeszów, in the Ubów torture chamber. He was suspected of taking part in a conspiracy against Karol Świerczewski. He had nothing to do with it.
Aunt Anna had to go back and forth for visitations. She brought care packages for my father and ran the household. She wanted to save me from another trauma and she succeeded. Father’s case was “adjourned” for four years. Security Service officers appeared again and after plundering our apartment, they took my father, this time for three years. He was taken to Warsaw, to the Mostowski Palace, although nothing suspicious was found in our place during the search. They arrested him when he was going to work, we weren’t informed about it for a long time. We only had contact with him through an attorney.
Aunt Anna got sick and couldn’t work so I had to get a job. My aunt had hired a lawyer to save my father, and he, in exchange for the hope that my father would be released soon, forced my aunt to sell the last valuables. In 1954 I passed my final exams in a high school for working people.
A year later I was accepted at the Warsaw Agricultural University and became a student at the Institute of Agricultural and Food Technology.
At that time, my father returned from the Security Service prison and immediately took up responsible work. A year later, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and after struggling with the terminal disease for three months, he passed away on August 31, 1957.
After my father’s death, my circumstances forced me to quit my studies and take up paid work. Aunt Anna and Helena didn’t want to take advantage of me, so they opened a franchised newsagent. I enrolled in a Road Technical School for adults and in 1962 I passed the final exams at the technical secondary level. In the Rzeszów region of public roads I worked in the operation department. I was also a construction manager. In 1965 I began my studies at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the College of Engineering in Rzeszów.
In 1966 I married a student in the Medical University of Krakow. And I moved to Tarnów. We kept in touch with my aunt: I helped her financially, although I wasn’t doing well myself. At least once a month, until my graduation, I went to Rzeszów for consultations and then I visited her.
In 1977 Anna Choynowska fell ill with Alzheimer’s. She died in 1984. Her death was a shock to me. The greatest person I’ve ever encountered was gone. Not only did she save me from the Holocaust: she was my mentor for as long as she was responsive. For the last five years, she lived in a “different world”—the disease wreaked such havoc.
She had only one request: she didn’t want to be buried in Rzeszów, a city she hated. She wanted to be laid to rest in Krakow in the Lipkowski family grave. I took her dear remains to Krakow.
According to her last will, she was buried in the Rakowicki Cemetery.
In 2009, through the Israeli embassy, I asked the Yad Vashem Institute to award Anna Choynowska posthumously with the title of the “Righteous”. She fought a heroic fight for my life. She never had a child of her own. I became her dream child. I will add that she was a wonderful, normal person and everyone who met her had to fall in love with her.
