They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust

Irene Bau

Irene Bau At night, hiding in a Polish woman’s barn, Irene Landesdorfer and her mother could hear the chilling screams and moans of Jews who were locked in collection points at nearby railroad tracks, waiting to be sent by train to death camps the next morning. But after Irene and her mother, Regina, had been in the barn just two or three days, the woman who owned it ordered them to leave. When this happened Regina could see no alternative but to give up, turn themselves in, and face certain death, too. So, taking no precautions, simply walking along a rural road in the daylight of that cold November day in 1942, Regina and her thirteen-year-old daughter headed toward the police station in the nearby village of Koszyce, northeast of Kraków. They had lived in Koszyce since 1940. Then the Germans ordered them to move at least thirty kilometers from their native Kraków.3 The German order to rid Koszyce of Jews in early November 1942 caused Regina and her daughter to go into hiding. As they walked toward the police station, to their surprise, they saw walking toward them Irene’s friend, seventeen-year-old Zbigniew Bolt, who had a romantic interest in her. Zbigniew, who went by the nickname Zbyszek, was accompanied that day by one of his friends, the son of the local chief of police. And they were looking for Irene and her mother. Zbigniew was shocked to see them walking in the open, knowing full well they were putting themselves in danger. “Where are you going?” he demanded to know of Irene and her mother, as Irene recalled the story.“Are you crazy?” Regina explained that the woman who owned the barn they had been staying in (space the woman offered only because she had been given furniture and other goods from Irene’s mother) had told them to leave because it was too dangerous to hide Jews. Without any alternative, they were heading back to turn themselves in. “No, no, no,” Zbigniew said. “You go back. I will go talk to that woman.” So Zbigniew and his friend went with Irene and Regina to see the woman, who knew Zbigniew because his father was the only doctor in the area and was known by almost everyone. Zbigniew promised the woman that if she would keep Irene and Regina for just another day or two, he would arrange for them to be transported to a safe location elsewhere. Reluctantly, the woman agreed. To find an alternative hiding place, Zbigniew spoke to his uncle Stanislaw Kwiecinski, an unmarried teacher who lived with his two single sisters in the 25 Irene Bau Zbigniew Bolt 26 27 village of Kalembina near the town of Jaslo, almost one hundred miles eastsoutheast of Kraków. Zbigniew also spoke with a cousin who lived in Płaszów, the location of a concentration camp near Kraków. Arrangements were made for Irene and her mother to go to the home of a cousin and aunt of Zbigniew, while his uncle Stanislaw, the brother of Zbigniew’s mother, prepared more permanent arrangements. Zbigniew arranged for a driver with a sled to pick up Irene and Regina at the woman’s barn and take them across the snow to the train station, where they caught a train to Płaszów to stay with Zbigniew’s cousin. They were not yet able to move to the uncle’s house because the space there was taken. The fiancé of Zbigniew’s cousin was Jewish, and he was already hiding there. So, without yet having a permanent hiding place, Regina and Irene were told to head to a mountain village for a week or two and to tell people that Irene had bronchitis and needed mountain air. That was how they wound up temporarily in Osielce, where they rented a room. But Irene needed some kind of documentation of her alleged bronchitis from a doctor, so they made an appointment to see a physician, though they feared how he might treat them, even with their false identity papers. When they got to the doctor’s office they were tired and hungry—so hungry, in fact, that while the doctor was examining Irene, her stomach was growling loudly. “Would you excuse me?” the doctor asked her. Within a few minutes he returned with two bowls of very welcome warm...