Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust

Maria Kontowicz Zaremba

184 Out of the Inferno Rowecki's courier and reputedly the last person to see the general alive. Rowecki was betrayed to the Germans by Ludwik Kalkstein, Eugeniusz Swierczewski, and Blanka Kaczorowska. Arrested on June 3D, 1943, Rowecki was sent to Sachsenhausen , where he is believed to have been executed.-Ed. After the Warsaw Uprising, Zaorski was imprisoned at Stalag 11B Fallingbostel and later worked in a copper mine in Bad Harzburg. As the Allied armies approached, he and other prisoners managed to disarm their German guards. Zaorski was a member of the patrol that was met by the United States Third Army. Later Zaorski joined his father in Italy, and they later moved to England, where he worked several years in the hotel business. Retired, he now lives in London. MARIA KONTOWICZ ZAREMBA At the time of the German occupation in 1939, I worked as the administrator of several residences in the Praga district of Warsaw. In 1939, Mr. Mitelberg, a Jew who owned several buildings in Warsaw, came to me and proposed that I look after a house at 273 Grochowska Street that belonged to him. I agreed to the proposal. Not long afterward , eleven other Jews came to me with proposals that I administer residences that belonged to them. In this way I became the legally certified administrator with appropriately drawn documents that also served for German authorities. I had an unwritten agreement with the Jewish owners that I would provide financial help to them from the rentals paid by the tenants of the properties. The residences that I administered in Warsaw were 257, 267, 269, 273, 275, and 283 Grochowska Street; 56 Zlota Street; 24 Zabkowska Street; and 20 Stanislaw August Street. Because of my work, during the entire time of the German occupation I was able to keep in touch with Jews and their families, who lived under assumed names in the buildings administered by me. Being in charge of registration cards and other types of administrative records, I willingly expressed agreement to the leasing of an apartment by a Jew-under a false name, to be sure. More than once 185 Maria Kontowicz Zaremba I registered Jews at addresses where they never really lived. I did this often without the knowledge of the residents at those addresses. During the occupation, the registration card was an important document to German authorities. As I took part in the resistance activities of the Home Army, not only did I know of the existence of stores of arms and ammunition in the houses under my administration, including the house next to mine, but I also had access to false documents. Jews who came to me received documents prepared on underground presses, most often kennkarten (identification cards). They naturally had to have a prior recommendation by one of my friends; there was always the fear of a German provocation. Often I also sheltered Jews. Most of them were recommended to me, but often they were anonymous. In addition to a place to sleep in one of the houses administered by me, they also received food. In these circumstances, Mr. Reichman came to me. He even wrote a poem about me, which I delivered to a museum. My Jewish friend and her children lived with me in my apartment on Stanislaw August Street for many years during the occupation. To everyone on the outside, she appeared to be my relative from outside Warsaw. I not only maintained very strong bonds with Jews during the occupation but also socialized with them. I was very friendly with a Jewish family by the name of Gersznabl who lived next to me on the same floor. One day someone denounced Gersznabl as a Jew, which caused him to flee from the apartment to the woods near Waszyngton Avenue, where he lingered with his wife in the potato fields for many months. Later he came to me. One day while he was staying with me, a German official knocked on the door. I was ill in bed. He accused me of hiding a Jew and then searched the apartment. Gersznabl had hidden under my feather bed, which the German probably suspected, but he left my apartment after I staged an attack of vomiting. A short time later, Gersznablleft my apartment. I also helped Gersznabl in 1944, when I persuaded him to disguise himself as a railroad worker and go to a crowded shelter. Staying outside was dangerous, particularly considering the explosions caused by Soviet bullets...