Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust

Adolph Pilch

137 Adolph Pilch residents, I constructed another hiding place for the Szapiro family in 1943. This time the hiding place was located under the cellar. Under the first cellar, I dug out another one. The access was under a workbench with locksmith's instruments in the upper cellar. In the floor of the upper cellar were found ideal movable boards, opening the way to the hiding place. The Szapiro family spent the night in the apartment, but during the day they sheltered themselves under the cellar. This situation continued from April 1943 to July 1944. From July to September 11, 1944, the day of liberation of the Praga section of Warsaw from the Germans, the Jews remained constantly in their hiding place. The sons of Kaufman and Ela Szapiro live to this day. Marek lives in the United States, and Jerzy Szapiro is a professor of medicine in Warsaw. Petri worked in communications after the war. He died in 1987. ADOLPH PILCH During the tim~ of the Warsaw Uprising, in August and September 1944, I was commander of the Palmiry-MXociny Regiment, one of the largest units of which was the Kampinos group, whose commander was Major Alfons Trzaska-Kotowski, known by the pseudonym OkOll. . On August 21, our security forces around Modlin informed us that the commander of a Hungarian detachment had asked for permission to pass through the Kampinos Forest to the south, to reach Laski. I sent an officer to explore what was going on. I received a report indicating that this was a detachment of Hungarian Jews, numbering around two, hundred, who were escorted by twenty armed soldiers. The comm,ander of the convoy was Lieutenant Zelinka Sandor Josef. I agreed to let th~m pass on the condition that the armed escorts lay down their arm,s on a wagon, which would be guarded by our partisans. When th~ detachment arrived at our location in the forest, 138 Out of the Inferno the Jews were separated from the escorts and received food. Everyone was very hungry. I was able to speak freely with them. They were for the most part around fifty years of age; there were not many young ones. They included industrialists, directors of businesses, bankers, and professors. When the Jews were asked if they would like to get rid of their guards, they excitedly said no because they did not wish to be responsible for their lives. When asked if they wanted to remain with us, only a few indicated agreement. But when the detachment left, the Jews started to corne out of hiding. Forty-six of them stayed with us. They were divided among various companies and squadrons and became regular soldiers. Unfortunately, the uprising was corning to a close and the Germans began the liquidation of units in the Kampinos Forest. Major Okon decided to move the group to the south, to the Kielecki Woods. En route to Jaktorow, the group was destroyed. Over 200 men were killed, and approximately 150 were taken prisoner. About 250 joined smaller groups in the south, and over a hundred returned to the Kampinos Forest. One of the Hungarian Jews, Stevan Istvan, who was about twenty years old and carne from Debrecin, carne with us to the south. He participated with the unit in several battles. Later he got sick and we left him for treatment near the village of Adam6w. This was not easy because he did not speak Polish, and any stranger could see that he was not a resident of the village. And this was dangerous. He waited for the arrival of the Soviet army, receiving from us a pass in three languages-Polish, Russian, and Hungarian. The pass indicated that he was a Polish partisan and requested help to return to Hungary. We were not able to find out what happened to his countrymen whom we had assisted. Many times I asked myself what had happened to Istvan. Did he get back to Hungary? Then in 1968, in a Warsaw periodical, For Freedom and Nation, there appeared an interview with Istvan Garami, by then doctor of economics and director of supply of Budapest's department stores, on the theme of his struggle and adventures in Poland in 1944. He praised us highly, commenting on how humane we were and singling me out as the best partisan commander he had met. My former partisans in Poland established contact with him, and from that time he often carne to Poland with his...