The Ukrainians and Russians enjoyed killing and robbing Warsovians1. Even the Germans shown them disregard. Gen. SS Mieczyslaw Kamienski, a head of the Russian-Ukrainian Army RONA (Russkaja Oswoboditielnaja Narodnaja Armija) was shot by order of Gen. Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski, a head of the German Army. From my Mother’s and my point of view,it was too late. What a coincidence, two “Polish” sounding names. Gen. Bach-Zalewski, who could even communicate in Polish, was a distant cousin of Gen. T. “Bor” Komorowski, the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish insurgents. Supposedly, after the capitulation was signed in a saloon carriage, both Generals discussed their family.
The nurse station was located in the Niepokalanki Convent. It was a lucky coincidence. The Sisters knew me from kindergarten and my Mother comes from the family of Mother Marcelina Dabrowska – a founder of the Convent (beatified by the Pope in 1996). The Sisters immediately took exceptional care of my Mother, who did not show any signs of life. The Head Sister, Maria Wanda (nee Gorczynska) quickly recognized that her wounds were serious and ordered the transfer of Mother and me to a hospital at Chocimska Street. My leg was wounded and covered in blood, mostly belonging to other people. Transferring Mother was complicated by the presence of Germans, who were everywhere. If not for such speedy care, Mother would not have survived. Mother was a liaison soldier of the Home Army. She had two pseudonyms, first Junczyk (from a crest) and second Paznokciowa (Nailova), since she always had perfectly manicured nails. Since she was active in the underground, she knew Sister Wanda and Father Roztworowski, both active conspirators. In the hospital I sat either at my Mother’s bedside or in a doctors’ room, where I read a book on the Roman Legions. I was surprised that the Roman soldiers used sandals and skirts. Nobody had time to explain it to me. I was absorbed in a child’s world, a million miles away from the things that were going around. The Niepokalanki Sisters somehow led by bad intuition, sent somebody to the hospital to pick me up. Very soon the Germans evacuated the hospital to Okecie (southern suburbs of Warsaw) and those who could not move were killed. Mother left the hospital in the last truck, her body resting on its steps.
I returned to the care of Sister Bernard (living in Szymanow) and with all remaining Sisters we moved to another building at the Rakowiecka Street, since the Germans told the Sisters that their building would be destroyed. In a new location we laid down on the floor, since in the adjacent backyard (of the former Reytan School and now the Township Office) the Germans were executing men. Just 10 years later I earned a secondary school certificate from that school, but I did not mention to anybody my war experience in this neighborhood. After the war, so many people had similar experiences. (Incidentally, I was transferred to this school from the Gorski School in 1953 as punishment for shooting at pictures of state officials with an air gun to celebrate the death of Stalin).
With Mr. Wierzbicki’s help and a good kickback provided to the Germans (from the Wehrmacht Staff at Rakowiecka Street) by a Sister of German origin, we left Warsaw by truck with a German in the driver’s cabin, for Szymanow, the Sisters’ headquarters, 30 miles outside of Warsaw. We drove through the dead streets of Warsaw. The ominous silence poked our ears. At the corner of Rakowiecka and Niepodleglosci streets, a tramway was overturned and the electrical wires hung from the poles.
After arriving in Szymanow, it seemed that it would be more peaceful than in Warsaw. The Sisters hosted a few hundred people from Warsaw. Again I had peers to play with, among them the Komorowski children from the family of Br. Komorowski, f. Secretary of Defense after 1989. But the peaceful climate expired when first the guerrilla forces, and later the Russians, fought with the Germans in the Sisters’ forests.
As Sister Maria Ena writes in her memoirs; “The occupation, from outside primitive, simple and stripped of splendor, was full and deep, and therefore left inerasable traces in your mind. From one side, terror raged; from another side, people provided so much mutual love, that it is unknown what was stronger. Perhaps love was stronger, since goodness won.” The Sisters were afraid that after the Russian entry into Poland, religion would be prohibited. Hence, they organized for me a very ceremonial First Communion in Szymanow, where my Mother soon arrived. My father, Stanislaw Targowski did not join us, since in March 1945, he was hanged for organizing the sabotage of V2 production in the concentration camp Dora Nordhausen. My father, raised on the tradition of previous uprisings, survived 3 years of Auschwitz (including Pavilion 11), Gross- Rossen, and at the end of the war sacrificed himself to save Londoners from V-1 and V-2 rockets. Do the English have any idea about that kind of sacrifice?
After the Uprising, we returned to Warsaw. Our apartment was burned and valuables we had saved in the basement were stolen. When the authorities discovered my mother’s membership in the Home Army, she was given a reduced pension, notwithstanding that she was 85% disabled. This paper is not a venue to illustrate my family’s fate in Postwar Poland.
TO BE CONTINUED
To those interested in this topic, I can offer my memoirs, “Informatyka Without Illusions (Informatics Without Illusions)” Torun: Adam Marszalek, 2001.
Himmler ordered that all Poles, insurgents or not, should be shot and during the first five days more than 40,000 Poles were massacred. These orders were quickly modified by Gen. Bach-Zelewski and the mass executions of unarmed civilians ceased.
