“I was in a concentration camp”: Zbigniew Muszyński

Zbigniew was born on August the 13th (in some documents the date shown is September) 1926 in Jaworówka (many documents give this as Chorostów) near Włodzimierz Wołyński in a wealthy, landowning family. His father, Marcel, ran a food wholesale business in Włodzimierz. Emilia, his mother, came from the noble, rich family of Rogucki. They possessed property, including the orchard (Spasczyzna, Chorostów). He had an older brother, Leopold, and three Sisters, two older (Irena and Janina), one younger-Teresa.

Before World War II, the wife of a Russian colonel, who fled from the Bolsheviks, lived in their home. From her, Zbigniew learned Russian. His mother took care of three homeless, orphaned boys (surname Dubiel). This meant that she looked after eight children.

When Poland was under Russian rule, Emilia worked in the office at a Russian prison. Sometimes, she forwarded letters to and from prisoners. After the outbreak of the October revolution, the NKVD wanted to shoot Emilia. She was saved by her Russian friend who, rescued her from being put against the wall of death and shot (Emilia had forwarded her correspondence).

As the war rolled back and forth across Zbigniew’s home, the area was, in turn, controlled by the Poles, the Russians and the Germans. The young Zbigniew attended three primary schools and a gymnasium. A Polish school between 1933 and 1939, a Russian school from 1939 to 1941 and German school from 1941 to 1944. As a result, he was fluent in three languages, Polish, Russian and German.

After the invasion of Poland by Soviet Russia on the 17th of September 1939, some of the Ukrainians from Volyn (Wołyń) put on red bands and created the communist police. Later in the September campaign, the Polish army ousted the Soviets and reoccupied the Bieliński Forest, taking with them the Ukrainian communists.

The families of the Ukrainian prisoners pleaded with Zbigniew’s father, Marcel, to rescue their fathers and sons. Marcel went to the woods and pleaded with the Polish commanders to release the Ukrainians. He then led them from the woods to Vladimir (Włodzimierz). This was probably what later saved the Muszyński family from the exile to Siberia.

After the Soviets recaptured Volyn, the Muszyński family were warned that they were on the list of people to be exiled to Siberia. One night the Soviets came to their home and gave a woman with children, who lived in their home, half an hour to pack up. Desperate, the woman cried and screamed. Not being able to think logically, she did not pack things that could be useful later. The next day, Zbigniew’s mother, Emilia, sent Zbigniew with shoes for these children, who were in railway carriages destined for Siberia.

After that, Emilia prepared a bundle for each of the eight children whom she nursed. Their luggage lay, ready to take, next to their beds. The children knew that, if the Soviets came, to take their bundle with them. Happily though, the Muszyński family was not exiled.

In 1941, Germany invaded Soviet Russia. Zbigniew’s family home in Włodzimierz Wołyński on Topolowa str. no 21 was hit by an artillery shell. Though the upper floor was partially damaged, they still lived in it. They had a shelter in the basement. On the captured Polish lands, the Germans formed the state of Ukraine.

In the Bielin forrest about 10,000 Polish partisans were stationed. Later these became Underground Home Army soldiers. They began to form the army on the estate of Zbigniew’s family in Spasczyzna. Formation of the army was assisted by the arrival of Polish Special Forces personnel from the UK. Then, the headquarters was transferred to Bielin and forces stationed in the forests of Bielin and Kowel. Zbigniew’s brother Leopold was a partisan.

Since 1941, 15-year-old Zbigniew had worked with Polish partisans as a link between the city and the partisan groups. On horseback, he passed important information. He also ferried weapons from a nearby barracks to the partisans on a horse cart, buried under dung. He used the pseudonym 'Pirat'. One day he brought shoes to cadet Tadeusz Turzyniecki (brother of his sister’s husband) in the village of Anusin. The next day Tadeusz was killed.

He witnessed the 'carnage of Volyn '. From his family, 16 people were murdered. He saw Polish villages going up in flames. The Muszyński family were protected from attacks by Ukrainian neighbours by a machine gun placed in the window on the second floor of their home.

The abandoned barracks of the Polish Army-Artillery division, near the Zbigniew’s house at Topolowa str, was full of ammunition. There were about 20 cannons in his orchard. The Russians and Germans did not touch the ammunition, because they feared that it was mined. But, the Polish partisans used it. More than once Zbigniew ferried ammunition on his horse cart, under dung, to the Bielinski forest for the soldiers.

There, the boys from Vladimir learnt how to shoot, usually at birds. One day, Zbigniew fired a canon he was toying with. The projectile fell near his aunt’s house, luckily nobody was killed and nothing was damaged.

In the spring of 1944 year, when the Soviet army re-entered the territory of Volyn, Zbigniew with the partisans went across the Bug river to Poland. Under fire, the partisans spread out, each trying to reach Poland on their own. Those who went to the right, were betrayed by the Ukrainians and fell into a German ambush. Zbigniew went left with two captured horses, and went to his sister in Hrubieszów.

From Hrubieszów, he travelled to Warsaw, where the Polish Home Army (underground) arranged for documents and work in the warehouse near Marszałkowska str. He learned with whom he could talk and who was a traitor. The Home Army initially proposed to send him to partisans in nearby woods, but Zbigniew wanted to see Warsaw.

He lived in the Catholic sisters Ursuline home on Dobra Street in the Powiśle district. The day before the uprising, he met a colleague Janusz Słotkowski, a partisan from Bielin.

On August 1, 1944 the Warsaw Uprising began. Zbigniew was assigned to the Krybar Home Army group in the Powiśle distrct. Under the pseudonym ' Little’, he fought until the last day before the capitulation of Powiśle. His task was to observe the Kierbedzia Bridge, which was in the hands of the Germans. The post was located at the Ursuline Sisters on Dobra Street on the top floor. Zbigniew, as an 18-year-old, was the oldest of the observers and commanded them. Daily, he made a report on movements on the bridge by a courier, who arrived from the Krybar district headquarters at the power plant. At other times, he was a courier in the Old Town district, and the Mariensztat district (here was almost shot dead). He also collected items dropped from allied aircraft and fought at the post on Dobra Street.

They read the Polish Home Army news bulletin and listened to the Polish radio station. One day, a few of the Polish soldiers saw some English planes. One of them flew from the Poniatowski Bridge towards the Kierbedzia Bridge. It did not drop anything but, was shot down by the Germans. Zbigniew saw the plane falling on the German side of the bridge.

The Russian Army stood on the other side of the river and watched the burning and fighting in the town. Stalin did not allow English planes to land on their side. English planes often carried weapons and food for Warsaw fighters and civilians from the UK or Italy. One day, Polish soldiers from the Russian Army of Polish Generl Berling’s division, swam the Vistula river to help. They asked the Home Army soldiers what kind of weapons they had for attacking tanks. When Zbigniew’s men showed them their Molotov cocktails, they said 'Kiss our arse’ and returned by the same path to their own side. Such was the meeting of Poles from the Red Army and Zbigniew and his Home Army colleagues.

The Ursuline Sisters nursed children and the injured and, fed all who were hungry. As a result, Zbigniew was well nourished by the end of the uprising. He said that been an anaesthesiologist, that is, he helped by holding down patients while they were operated on without anaesthesia. He also helped putting out fires after German bombardments.

The civilian population moved through the cellars and, had dug from the Ursuline Sisters in the direction of the Poniatowski Bridge. At one point, stuck in the congestion in the narrow corridors, people asked Zbigniew for help, he had a rifle with a single cartridge. They let him through and, it turned out that in one room a woman with a large dog sat and wouldn’t let anyone to pass. He ordered her to remove herself and her dog.

He went further and, at the exit of the cellar tunnel, encountered three Germans who were stealing from the civilians all they had, taking watches and rings. The square was filled with hundreds of civilians.

Zbigniew’s colleague shot one of the Germans. The other held a hand grenade. Zbigniew aimed at him with his rifle. Neither fired as there were too many civilians around. Suddenly a German plane flew in and dropped a bomb close, on the right. The Germans fled and the civilians ran out to seek refuge.

On the right side of Karowa Street was the hospital. The Home Army ordered the evacuation of their wounded from the hospital at Ursuline Sisters. Zbigniew with his colleagues moved them and put them in the square in front of the building. There was no place inside. Lying there, the sick and injured asked them to kill them.

The partisans defended themselves to the last bullet, showing huge heroism during the defence of the power plant, which was regularly bombarded by the Germans. They only surrendered after orders were issued by the Home Army on the 7th of September 1944. They went out to the square, and handed over their remaining weapons. The Germans ordered them to go in the direction of train station.

He was put in a transitional camp in Pruszków, from where Germans loaded the whole group from Powiśle into freight wagons. They were told that they were going to Vienna. A couple days later they got out in Dachau concentration camp. After surrender, the Home Army soldiers should have been treated as prisoners of war. Instead, they were treated like bandits.

Zbigniew, along with other soldiers from Powiśle, was taken to the camp’s so-called quarantine area. On the 12th of September 1944 he was given the number 104884. There he met for the first time a priest Gajkowski, who distributed to newcomers ‘Stripe clothing’, the infamous stripped uniform worn by concentration camp inmates.

On the 27th of September about 400 of prisoners were transported from Dachau to the concentration camp in Sandhofen in Mannheim. This camp was a sub-camp of the Natzweiler concentration camp. There they were forced into slave labour at the Daimler Benz car factory, manufacturing gearboxes. The prisoners were initially guarded inside and outside the factory hall and, in the camp, by armed SS men from the SS Commando. Then troops from the Luftwaffe took over.

One day the commander of the camp announced at the roll call that the prisoners had been registered as prisoners of war in Geneva and, that they would receive food packages from the Red Cross.

The prisoners were delighted, but they received nothing. They lived in a school, in classrooms which were filled with bunks. Zbigniew slept at the top. On the lower bunk slept a prisoner, Strasburger (he had a wife and children in Poland), who said he had someone in the family in the Government in Exile in London government.

As an inmate of the Natzweiler concentration camp, Zbigniew had the number 30082. One Sunday, Zbigniew did not go to work because he did not hear or recognize his number being called out. For a few hours, he was made to squat, with his hands held out front, in the square in front of the school. They threatened him that they would kill him for sabotage. At one point, he and his guard were approached by an officer of the camp (a Luftwaffe captain) who asked the sentry why Zbigniew was squatting. The sentry did not know. The captain went to guardhouse and ordered them to let him go. Polish chefs called him to the kitchen, where they gave him something to eat. He was lucky.

One day, when Zbigniew went to the toilet, he found it full of other prisoners. They were taking newspapers from the factory and going to the toilet to put them under their ‘Stripe clothing’ because it was so cold. The Germans from the office were watching them. Seeing the congregation in the toilet, they came and beat the prisoners. While fleeing from the blows, Zbigniew fell down the stairs and damaged his ribs. The old German civilian who supervised him in the factory, did his work for him when he could not move from the pain. Sometimes he put a sandwich for him on the production line when no one could see it. He felt sorry for him as his son was fighting in the German Army against Soviets.

The prisoners were mostly brought by train to the plants of Daimler Benz, but a few times they had to go on foot about 10 kilometres, after bombardments.

After the bombing of the camp in Sandhofen when they were at work, Zbigniew and others were transferred to the concentration camp at Buchenwald on the 26th of December 1944. Along the way, they sang Polish Christmas carols. At Buchenwald they changed his number to 46868. There he got sick and wanted to go to the hospital. The elderly, Polish prisoners told him to stay away from the hospital, or the German doctors would do experiments on him, especially as he was young.

Around the 23rd of January 1945, after a few weeks of quarantine in Block No. 25 at Buchenwald, they were transferred to a concentration camp at the Adlerwerke factory in Frankfurt, to do forced labour. They were kept in the same group. Twenty of them were selected and taught how to weld and, then put to work on the production line. He worked with a Dutchman making the chassis for transport vehicles.

He lived in nightmarish conditions for about two and a half months. They slept in rooms next to the factory halls, they were often bombarded and had to flee down to the shelters, all the time watched by SS guards. One day the Germans gave the prisoners blankets, because a delegation had come from the Red Cross. The following day, after the departure of the Red Cross Commission, the Germans took blankets away. One of the brothers Strasburger, Goliath, died in the camp at the Adlerwerke factory. He was one of the first to die from exhaustion. As a result of the lack of food, the cold winter and exhausting hard work, Zbigniew’s health began to decline.

The Germans separated the weak and sick prisoners and told them that they were to go to a rest camp. The prisoners were informed that they were going to a sanatorium. Zbigniew was put in a group with around 200 other prisoners and, this group was sent around the 13th of March 1945.

Far from a sanatorium, the very weakened Zbigniew was transported to the concentration camp at Bergen- Belsen. The Germans loaded them into three freight wagons, around 60 people in each one. They rode jammed, standing, for five days, without food or water. Some of them drank their urine. Zbigniew was lucky, he stood next to the window. Many of them died on the road. Wagons with prisoners were attached to a train transporting V1 and V2 rockets. American planes (Squadrons of 8 to 9 aircraft) attacked the train, initially they fired at the fleeing German guards, then, when they spotted the prisoners in their striped uniforms, they stopped shooting and flew off.

Zbigniew said Dachau was the best camp. It was clean and the prisoners did not fight for food. In Buchenwald on the quarantine it was also clean and organised. In Mannheim, and especially in the Adlerwerke in Frankfurt, it was cold, food was lacking, they worked too hard and there were lice. But the worst was Bergen-Belsen, it was a “camp of Death and hell on Earth.”

Bergen-Belsen proved to be an extermination camp, where prisoners were sent to be killed. There were different nationalities. On the left side were permanent barracks for men, on the right for women.

The conditions in the camp were so terrible that cannibalism happened there. Some of the corpses were missing a calf. Deadly hungry prisoners ate them. One day, Zbigniew was invited to a “feast”. Lice were everywhere; in Bergen-Belsen bodies were black with lice. Some extremely hungry prisoners, raked them with hands from their bodies put them straight into their mouth and ate them.

Soon after the arrival, the transport of the weakened prisoners from Adler's plants was assigned to barracks without any beds. They slept on a dirty, wet floor. The only bunks in the corner were the for block-person and Kapo. It was crowded and dark, if someone wanted to go to the toilet, he would have to walk on the bodies of other prisoners. Often, the prisoners defecated where they were lying. Most of them had bladder complaints from the cold and were incontinent. They were not allowed to leave the barracks at night. The stench was unbearable. Every day fewer and fewer colleagues rose for the morning roll call.

Bodies of dead prisoners lay in piles on the left side of the barracks. Removing them was done by another commando of Russians.

When he arrived at Bergen-Belsen he met a Jewish girl. She told him that she was being treated well, as the Germans intended to trade her for money and favours from the allied forces. Fortunately for Zbigniew, she decided to be kind to him and gave him some water.

The next morning, an SS-man picked six of them, including Zbigniew, and moved them to the No. 1 working block. Prisoners in this block cleaned the camp. They had bunks, were able to clean camp baths and, got a bowl of soup as a reward. He feels that he was selected because the water he had been given improved his appearance and, made him look fitter than many of his comrades.

The prisoners from working blocks were allocated a bowl for themselves, the others, the inoperative prisoners, had to share a bowl. They were so hungry that, when they got their soup, the one with a bowl fled to eat the whole lot while the other prisoner chased him. The soup was often spilled. You had to protect your very small food portions and often fight for them.

Initially, Zbigniew had to chop a tree to get a bowl of soup. He was so weak that he couldn’t lift the axe and chop. The Kapo secretly gave him a few chips, so the SS guard would not kill him. The next day, the Russians carried him on a wheelbarrow because he could no longer walk and, took him to clean the baths. They liked him, he spoke very good Russian and, they respected him for fighting against Germany. They called him 'Polish partisan' and asked him ‘How many Germans he killed?’.

Bored gestapo men invented ‘fun games’. Cooks would call the prisoners to the kitchen, offering food. Around the corner, hidden SS men beat up the arrivals.

Once the SS guards gave them bread to celebrate a German holiday. Zbigniew was in the front row, from behind hungry prisoners pushed them forward. SS men beat with sticks those at the front. His head was severely beaten and, he was swollen all over.

In April, artillery shelling was heard. Josef Kramer, the commander, decided to clean the camp. In front of the barracks lay piles of corpses. He ordered to the prisoners to dig a very deep pit and, all alive to carry corpses. They were very weak; it took four to pull a single corpse. They had to be careful not to fall into the pit. Those who fell in were unable to get out.

On the 15th of April 1945 Zbigniew stood at the gate of the camp, holding it with his right hand. Suddenly an English motorcycle patrol drove by. Zbigniew went to the Russian prisoners and told them that the English had arrived and, then fell over and fainted from exhaustion. British Royal Artillery liberated the camp.

The Russians, thinking that Zbigniew was dead, threw him on a pile of bodies of dead prisoners. There he was found by two female prisoners he had met in the camp. They had been paramedics in the Warsaw Uprising. They drew him from the pile of bodies (he moved his hand) and, with the English organized to transport him to the hospital in Bergen (unfortunately he does not remember their names). He was there for a few months. The English nurses called him prisoner 'X' because he had lost his memory completely and, did not know who he was. He learned to walk, slowly coming back to health, but his memory did not return. After leaving the hospital, he moved to a camp in Celle.

He wanted to go back to Poland and got into a car with some Russians. But on hearing what they had planned for the Poles, he fled the car. They sang about Stalin, by whom Zbigniew was forced to flee from his family properties in Volyn. For some time, the Germans from the surrounding villages fed him. Then he returned to the camp in Celle, where he was recognized by a colleague from the camp, Paszkowski, who told him his name and who he was. He returned to the hospital, where he was well-nourished and treated, this time as Zbigniew Muszyński, a prisoner of war. His memory happily came back.

After his return to Celle he joined the Polish army operating at the U.S. Army base in Mannheim Kaefertal. The commander was his colleague from Buchenwald Capt. Cuber. He completed several courses of military studies and commanded a Polish guard platoon operating with the U.S. Army. Among other things, he commanded a platoon of sentries, who led a column of German prisoners to the Dachau camp. A year earlier, as a prisoner in Dachau, he dreamed that he had wings and flew out over the gate from the camp, and, then that he led a column of German prisoners into the camp, passing through the gates of Dachau.

Colleagues woke him, because he was screaming and he told them what he dreamed. This dream came true.

Zbigniew decided to study. He paid his cigarette allocation to German professors to teach him mathematics and physics, he learnt about integrals and differentials. In August 1945 a letter came to his company saying that, anyone who had a high school diploma, could start studying at the Polish Academy of Technology in Esslingen Neckar. As he didn’t have diploma, he decided to pass the entrance examination. He passed an examination in Stuttgart (where he was the only candidate) with a very good result. He worked at the Polish Guards Company in Ludwigsburg and began studying. Every day he commuted by train from Ludwigsburg to Esslingen and back to work in the office of PGC. He studied three years while serving in the Guards company. In Ludwigsburg he met one of the Dubiel brothers, who returned to Poland and informed Zbigniew’s mother that he was alive.

When he served in the Guards Company in Ludwigsburg, four companies guarded several thousand German prisoners. They had about 60 machine guns. One day an American captain came and asked for an allocation of five German prisoners to work on a cleaning job. One of his sentries took the five prisoners to the city to work. In the crowd, the whole five fled. They all returned with food baskets in the evening.

Zbigniew was so pleased that he did not have to report the escape that he let the prisoners keep food. If Zbigniew had escaped the year before, he would certainly not be alive. The Germans would not have had any qualms in shooting him.

As the security guard at Ludwigsburg, he drove the German prisoners to the Nuremberg trials and interviews.

Zbigniew believes that his life he is watched over by St. Josaphat Kuncewicz, his ancestor. Born in Włodzimierz Wołyński (Vladimir Volynsky), he was murdered in 1623 years because of his faith. Beatified in 1643 by Pope Urban VIII, he was canonized in 1867 by Pope Pius IX. Since 1949 his relics have laid in the Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican next to St. John. As five-year-old, Zbigniew dreamed about a saint playing with him. He remembered the image of this person. In 1949, when the relics of Saint Josaphat were moved to the Vatican, and the family found by the Red Cross, they sent him an image of St. Josaphat. Zbigniew recognized him as the 'Jezus who came to him in his sleep ' when he was five years old. He told his mother about his dream at that time.

Zbigniew emigrated to Australia in 1948. Here he had to work for two years clearing the forest and, then as a railwayman on the Perth-Geraldton route. For five years he worked in Narrogin as a dental technician in Dr. Marian Brzeziński’s office. Afterwards, he worked in Perth in the McGibbon dental office. One of his employers was L. Trotter, a pilot in the war, who flew over Warsaw dropping supplies for the Polish Home Army during the Warsaw Uprising.

Zbigniew's passion was horses. He bred and trained them. His best horse won races in Australia and America. While in Australia, he met priest Gajkowski, a colleague from Dachau.

Zbigniew married a beautiful Polish girl, Zofia, Miss Polonia, in Perth where they live happy and prosperous lives to this day. Zofia (Sophie), also comes from the east of Poland (before 1939). Today, these parts of Poland are in the Ukraine and Belarus. She and her family were deported by the Soviets to Siberia. She was lucky to come out of Siberia with Gen. Anders’s The Polish II Corps in 1943. In 1950 she was accepted by Australia from camps in Africa set up for families of Polish soldiers fighting with the English army at Monte Casino, Tobruk etc.

After the fall of communism in Poland, in April 1995, Zbigniew Muszyński was awarded The Auschwitz Cross, the Cross of the Polish Home Army and the Warsaw Uprising Cross, and, in March 1999 he was awarded the Medal of the Warsaw 1939-1945 and the Partisan Cross.

In February 2002, Zbigniew was promoted to a second lieutenant and in March 2004 to lieutenant of the Polish Army.

 

Discussions led by: Urszula Celińska-Mysław and Anna Lilpop
Written by Anna Lilpop
April 2017 – November 2018