Death Marches from Auschwitz via Wodzisław Śląski and Gliwice

The transcript of the podcast

On January 17, 1945, SS men began the evacuation of the Auschwitz camp. Approximately 56,000 prisoners – men and women marched, under armed escort, from different parts of the Auschwitz camp complex, towards Wodzisław Śląski and Gliwice. Thousands of people, during the so-called Death Marches, lost their lives. Dr. Jacek Lachendro and Teresa Wontor-Cichy from the Research Center of the Auschwitz Museum talk about details of those tragic events.

Can you tell me about the route and number of prisoners in the section of the march leading to Wodzisław Śląski?

Roughly 25,000 prisoners were led to Wodzisław Śląski. The route ran first in the south-western direction, towards the cities of Brzeszcze and Jawiszowice. There, it was already turning west towards Pszczyna, and in this city the prisoners' columns were separated and walked along two roughly parallel roads. Let's call it the southern route towards Pawłowice and Jastrzębie to Wodzisław Śląski and the route located more north through Żory, Świerklany, to the already mentioned point of the destination. This route was passed by male and female prisoners led out of the main camp, some from Birkenau, as well as from several subcamps located mainly to the south, southwest of the main camp, and such agricultural subcamps as: Plawy, Harmense, Raisko, Budy or the Jawischowitz subcamp located at the Brzeszcze mine. While the entire Auschwitz camp complex including its three parts, namely the main camp, the Birkenau camp and the Monowitz as well as subcamps were evacuated from 17th to 21st January, the prisoners followed this route from the early hours of the morning, January 18 to the morning hours of the next day.

What did it look like for this group of prisoners heading towards Gliwice?

As the great number of prisoners heading towards the west and further into the depths of the Reich probably needed to be distributed, it is estimated that about 16 thousand of prisoners were directed on another route leading to Gliwice. It were the inmates of the Monowitz camp, and also several subcamps together with roughly 3 thousand prisoners from Birkenau. Inmates were moved from the subcamps and subsequently joined the marching ones. The idea was to maintain some intervals, and so to make feasible the transport of the prisoners. The second objective was that the groups were supposed to move along roads and therefore would not block military transports. According to the memories of prisoners, the columns were usually two to three days on the route. It was the time necessary for them to get through one section of the route. In theory, prisoners should be transported by rail deep into the Reich once they reach Gliwice. But not for all prisoners, who entered Gliwice, their journey ended this way. A group of prisoners experienced a more dramatic and prolonged march.

Death marches were generally similar. The SS was in charge of the columns, but there were events that witnesses and survivors remember in particular directions. As the marches lasted several days the stops were their important components. How can you describe the stops on the route where prisoners spent the nights between marches? How was it in case of Wodzisław Śląski?

According to the regulations, the prisoner groups were supposed to stop for a rest after walking about 20 km. And it actually happened on the route to Wodzisław, because the reports show that the first stops took place in Pszczyna and in the whereabouts of Pszczyna: some 23 kilometres from Auschwitz. Groups stopped for several dozen minutes in order to rest for a while. But most of the reports describe such stops as those for an overnight stay. Due to the fact, that the distance from Auschwitz to Wodzisław was over 60 km, the prisoners were not able to cover this distance in one march only with short pauses, therefore they stopped for the night. As the witnesses recall, the first accommodation on the route from Pszczyna to Wodzisław Śląski was frequently arranged in the outbuildings of private estates, farms: for instance, in Pszczyna shelter was provided in the outbuildings belonging to the estate of the Dukes of Pszczyna. Further such places to spend the night were offered in Poręba and also in other cities like Pawłowice and Jastrzębie. Male and female prisoners of some groups were allocated exactly in such kind of housing. If the space was scarce there, then they were sent to the surrounding houses or farm buildings belonging to the local peasants. And if there wasn’t enough accommodation, then they were forced to spend the night outdoors. After a few hours of rest and sleep, columns were formed again, and the SS-staff led the prisoners towards Wodzisław. Prior to that, the SS checked the place in order to make sure that the prisoners did not hide in straw or haystacks in the barns, stables or some other nooks and crannies of the farm buildings. If they were satisfied with the number of the prisoners, the columns set off for the further journey in the direction of Wodzisław.

It's probable that the way prisoners were handled during the march to Gliwice was similar. Do we know where the prisoners halted for the longer stops? What is known regarding the way the SS handled the task of leading a march?

Their way of task completion was very characteristic, because most often in the places where the prisoners stopped, graves in cemeteries were left behind. These were the bodies of those who died either after reaching this place of accommodation or bodies that were collected along the way. It wasn't always like that. Sometimes these tombstones are still in the towns, that the columns of evacuated prisoners passed by. The city authorities were obliged to gather the bodies quickly and to arrange a burial. In the case of evacuees to Gliwice, the first place where they stopped for a little longer was Mikołów. And here, before the columns reached Mikołów, not far behind Auschwitz, in the suburbs in Bieruń an execution was carried out in the vicinity of a brickyard, which no longer exists today. It's probable that those who made an attempt to flee or were too weak to catch up with the column were shot. Their bodies were laid in such a grave and then covered with slaked lime. After the war, the remains were exhumed and burried in a municipal cemetery. Regarding the next towns where they could rest, a larger group stopped in the vicinity of Borowa Wieś. And later, in the case of the route to Gliwice, just on the section from Mikołów to Gliwice, the stops became different, because the columns passed a number of various smaller towns, with fewer possibilities to gather prisoners for the night, for instance in some manor, in some larger barns or other buildings. So, the groups were a little more dispersed. This made it possible to search for somewhere to hide and escape. And that is how we know from those who succeeded, about the circumstances, about the conditions in the time when the prisoners were detained. We learned also about the situation of prisoners who were detained in Mikołów in a large estate belonging to the Lubień family. For coincidence, the father of this family was himself a former prisoner of the Dachau camp, released couple of years earlier, still during the war. As he saw the prisoners, this camp experience somewhere in his memory, made him very eager to provide them with some slices of bread or meals for the individual groups located in different buildings. The escorting staff didn't like it very much, they detained and threatened him. He gave up because he was afraid of his own life or the family's life. But his daughter replaced him in his efforts and provided the prisoners in a very cunning and discrete way with basic supplies like water or bread. During the stops, there was not always the same level of bravery and sacrifice. On the basis of the testimonies, we can observe that the inhabitants of the towns developed various attitude towards the passing columns. In the communities with the predominance of Polish population the tendency to courage and sacrifice could be observed more frequently. Again, we are talking about very simple things, such as a cup of water, a slice of bread, some considerable basic help. Prisoners recalled a woman who appeared on the route with a milk can full of water, and the escorting staff asked her in German: „Wollen Sie mit?”: (do you want to join them?) So, it was heroic, it was a risk. Prisoners also recalled the attitude in towns where the Germans constituted the majority of the population. Yes, they appeared on the street, looked with disbelief and one could hear a comment: “Das ist unmöglich” (It is impossible). Therefore, this knowledge, they had gained somewhere from their own sources, was suddenly confronted with the appearance of exhausted, poorly dressed and rushed people with the SS shooting at them. Moreover, it was not permitted to provide any assistance to these individuals. Apparently, it was undoubtedly quite a shock for these residents.

Basically, we have here two issues: on the one hand escape possibilities, on the other hand, whether prisoners could count on the help of the inhabitants of the towns the marches passed through. Were there any confrontations during this part of the march to Wodzisław Śląski?

Yes, also on the route leading from Auschwitz to Wodzisław, according to testimonies both survivors and residents, some of the locals tried to help the prisoners. Even though the SS chased them from the side of the road, that the prisoners were walking through, and shouted at them or sometimes even shot in the air, some residents tried to render help by sharing some bread or giving away water or milk in various containers. Some residents also aided the fugitives from the columns marching towards Wodzisław, sometimes simply indicating a further escape route, the direction of escape towards Pszczyna and further east, to the east, or by providing some shelter in outbuildings for a longer time and later sharing food with the fugitives for some time until the arrival of Soviet soldiers. Not all prisoners tried to escape, but some did and managed to escape from the marching columns. Here they exposed themselves to shots from the escorting SS, as the SS guards had orders to shoot prisoners trying to escape. Some prisoners tried to hide during stops and to wait out until the columns set off, so that later the situation would calm down and they would be able either to return on their own hand towards the east, opposite to the direction of the march of the prisoner columns, or simply to seek help from the local population. Several women escaped while on their way to Wodzisław and wrote about their experiences in the camp after the war. One of them was Sonia Landau, who was in the camp on the so-called Aryan papers and was registered as a Polish woman Krystyna Żywulska. Passing through Brzeszcze, a few kilometres from the camp, she noticed a fallen hay cart next to the road and using the moment of distraction of escorting SS personal, she jumped into the hay. A fellow prisoner noticed it and kicked a bundle of straw to cover her completely. Krystyna Żywulska waited there in the straw until of the prisoners' columns passed by and then she went towards the nearby town of Jawiszowice, where she found shelter in the house of the Szczerbowski family. Later, after the war, she wrote the famous memoirs „I survived Auschwitz”. In the settlement of Brzeźce, located in the outskirts of Pszczyna, the Jewish woman Olga Lengyel escaped. She ran away with two friends, and they were helped by the Paszko and later the Goćko families. Thanks to their help, she was also able to survive. After the war, she emigrated to the United States and wrote her well-known memoirs „Five chimneys”. Finally, Seweryna Szmaglewska escaped in the area of Jastrzębie, also with two friends. They managed to leave the evacuation column and the SS men did not notice them. Before the march, they took white blankets from the warehouse and laid down in the snow, allowing them to cover themselves. They waited until the prisoners' columns passed by and then headed in the direction opposite to the direction of the evacuation marches, and thus towards the east with the help of many people, who either took them overnight, or served or shared food, or showed the right direction of the march. The three women reached Dziedzice, where they separated. Seweryna Szmaglewska and Wanda Kacperek made it to Andrychów, where they stood patiently waiting for the frontline to arrive. A few months later Seweryna Szmaglewska wrote her famous memoir book „Smoke over Birkenau”. Not always escape attempts succeeded. In Brzeszcze near the mine one female prisoner escaped and just ran into the front desk by the gate leading to the mine, where she met a German who called the German gendarmes. They came to pick her up and took her to the police station. According to two accounts, they raped and then murdered her; her body was buried in the cemetery in Brzeszcze. Similarly, in places of hiding during overnight stays, some prisoners were not lucky and such an example was the tragic death of the Polish prisoner Aurelia Piękosz, who hid in Jastrzębie, somewhere in hay or straw. And when at the end of the night before the march, the SS guards stabbed the hay and straw with bayonets and bullets they just pierced Aurelia Piękosz so that she died there under quite dramatic circumstances.

During the examination of the history of these specific sections of the death marches, were there any special events mentioned by survivors or preserved in documents? How was it in the case of the march to Gliwice?

Almost every town has preserved unique memories. In fact, each stop is a separate group and a separate story. I mentioned earlier the stop in Mikołów. A group of prisoners was located in another part of the city and the situation there was far different from the one previously mentioned, that is, such of cordial help. Namely, a group of p risoners hid there in the buildings of the mill. They were probably going to wait out to the departure of the column and try to escape in this way. A resident noticed one of the prisoners and reported it on the Gestapo. The police arrived there very quickly, surrounded these buildings and thirteen prisoners were led out. In the forest, in a ditch, they were shot and buried in that pit. After the war, the bodies were exhumed and moved to the cemetery. The memory of this execution and the desperate attempt to save the lives of these 13 men remained among the residents. To this day, the place of this tragedy is commemorated. There is a grave with information that it was the place where the prisoners of Auschwitz were shot. As this is a region with numerous recreational plots, residents and allotment owners take care of this area, making sure it is always clean and tidy. Flowers and candles are placed there, indicating the commemoration of such a dramatic event. Different situation took place in Borowa Wieś, where also a group of prisoners tried to escape and find a shelter. The prisoners were of various nationalities. A Jewish prisoner from Warsaw Leon Stasiak coordinated the place where they were hidden. Here, the Kostka family was particularly involved in this help. Of course, hiding and all the logistics were very successful. Wincenty Kostka was honoured as a Righteous Among the Nations after the war. It should also be mentioned at this point what happened in the small town of Książenice in the area behind Gliwice. It is important in the memories and in the analysis of the route to Gliwice as the prisoners who reached Gliwice had already travelled by train. It was a group of probably about 3,000 people. The train departed from Gliwice but was halted several dozen kilometres behind the city and the prisoners were ordered to get off the wagons and to march towards Rybnik. After passing literally a few kilometres, the escort staff began to shoot at prisoners, hence exactly in this area of Kamień near Rybnik, numerous of them were murdered. In the midst of this shooting, in such a chaotic situation, many tried to escape. Some managed to arrive in the village of Książenice and there they were helped by the family of Jurytko. Their names were Brunon and Bronisława. In an interview, the wife described the encounter with the escapees: „We have already prepared for sleep. My husband came back from the barn when a knock on the glass sounded. ‘Germans or Russians’ – he said, but I thought that the soldiers would not knock on the window only on the door or enter the room immediately. Therefore, I thought it wasn't the military. Brunon went out into the hall, opened it, and in a moment a swarm of people entered the room. I was terrified when I saw them, but my heart was in pain. Frozen, cold bruised, emaciated, some barefoot, legs red as blood, eyes shining with fever, heads shaved. I made a sign of the Cross reflexively, and some of them whispered at the sight in a broken voice: ‘Praise the Lord’. As I heard them speaking, I knew right away that they were not locals. Each of them wanted to stand as close as possible to the furnace, it was a lot of them I would say probably twenty. They were wearing camp garments, some of them had some additional jackets, coats or shawls. One of them has just his trousers on, so I fetched him something to put on. I grab some bread, two warm loaves, as we were just baking bread. The bread was still warm, so I cut in in thick slices. They thanked us, I didn’t understand all of it. They started to talk, and one of them began to recount: they had escaped from the transport; they were on their way out of the camp for several days, then they travelled by train and got expulsed, so they marched in the column again. Those, who were no able to catch up with the column, got killed. In the afternoon the staff started shooting at them, they ran away and hid in the forest, as soon as it was getting darker, they set off on the road and can no longer go. “Please give us a shelter, save us.” They started to beg us. Somebody was crying, I burst into tears as well. My husband sat in a chair, he only lowered his head, and then got up and limped to the other room. He brought some tobacco, rolled some cigarettes, and gave them, and then he told me to take my son, go to the other room and to pretend I didn't know anything. I finally heard some shuffles, and they started coming out of the kitchen. In the morning, my husband told me to cook a soup, we prepared a large pot, then I took out a large piece of meat, groats, potatoes and prepared the soup. As it got dark, we took the soup to the barn where we kept the grain. It was the place, where the fugitives were hidden. When they smelled the soup and groats, their heads suddenly slipped out from all sides. I didn't even have so many plates, so they ate with the bowls straight from the pot. Every day I baked four loaves of bread and cooked a full pot of soup. They had been hiding for seven days. I did not count those days; they wrote about it later. One day before noon I heard the sound of the engines. A German patrol arrived; my husband came out in the front of the house. Upon hearing 'Haeftlinge, Jude' (prisoners, Jews), my legs began to tremble, preventing me from making a step. Perhaps I was praying, maybe I was standing, like a walled up; I don’t know. I was too scared to approach the window and to have a look. I don't know how long it took when I heard the engines growling again. And then one of the neighbours came and announced that there were no Germans in Leszczyny and Książenice any more. Then my husband took out a razor and shaved each of the fugitives. They washed themselves a bit and thanked us in different languages and finally one in Polish asked for a piece of paper and a pen. Then they began to write something down”. What did the prisoners leave behind for the Jurytko family? They left a note with the following content: „We the undersigned, the escapees from the Auschwitz camp, declare hereby, that the Jurytko Brunon from the village of the Książenice, had been hiding us for eight days endangering thus his own life and the life of his family, he was feeding us, providing shelter and accommodation, and rendering all the help possible. All this he did at a time when German and SS troops were chasing fugitives all over the area. In this way he saved our lives, doing so without material gain as a decent man”. And here followed the signatures, these were the names of male prisoners of Jewish origin from virtually all occupied Europe.

What special events do we know about when it comes to the march which from Auschwitz towards Wodzisław Śląski?

In Brzeszcze near the coal mine there was such an unexpected situation. The prisoner column was just passing by the mine, just when the miners after finishing work were leaving through the mine gate heading towards the streets and these two groups, on the one hand, the prisoners on the other side of the miners mixed with each other, then some of these miners took some prisoners from the prison column and simply led them towards the village, thus saving their lives. Later they were hiding in this town. A slightly different, but very unusual incident happened in Ćwiklice in the vicinity of Pszczyna. During the funeral of prisoners, victims of the death march, gathered on a section roughly from the town of Miedźna to Ćwiklice, a resident of Pszczyna, photographer – Michał Święch was present and he photographed the burial itself and the bodies of the victims. In fact, this is the only event on the route we know of. He took dozens of pictures, as far as we know. Unfortunately, only a few of them have survived, but still, they are a unique documentation related to the evacuation of Auschwitz prisoners. Another unique event occurred in Poręba behind Pszczyna, involving one of the prisoners, Leokadia Rowińska, brought from Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising. She was already pregnant at that time, and it was during the stop in Poręba that she began giving birth. The birth ended happily. Later she baptised the son she gave birth to. She gave him the name Ireneusz. Unfortunately, the boy died after nine days. The mother, having no other option, inserted her son's body in a box and buried it in Poręba under the chapel of Saint Joseph. At a later date the tiny body of the baby boy was exhumed. He is buried in the cemetery in Pszczyna.

Tragic events happened as the prisoners' columns approached the areas that once formed the border between the Polish Republic and the German Reich. The events happened in the town of Przyszowice on January 27, which was quite a characteristic date, because on this day the Auschwitz camp was liberated. Several units of the Red Army had just reached a small village of Przyszowice. Soviet soldiers received information that this village was already the territory of the Reich. Therefore, they were allowed to retaliate against the residents, the Germans for all the atrocities the German soldiers had committed, especially on the eastern front. Meanwhile, Przyszowice was the last Polish village. Just behind Przyszowice there used to be the border between the German Reich and the Polish Republic. In this village, four prisoners escaped from the evacuation column hid in the teacher's home. When Soviet soldiers appeared in the village in the morning, the residents heard gunshots. Somewhere flames, screams and commotion were also seen. The prisoners came out of hiding, the teacher warned them to stay at home or in places where they were safe, because they did not know what was happening in the place. It was strange, because as the Germans had just left, the Russians behaved so violently. But the unfortunate thought they were their liberators. One of them even began to explain that he knows Russian a little, so he should somehow communicate with them. Consequently, they actually came out of their hiding place and were walking down the street heading towards a group of soldiers. As soon as they got close enough to them, they began waving their hands to express their joy at seeing them. However, the soldiers of the Red Army perceived it as some form of attack, and they were shot in front of the residents and the very teacher who hid the unfortunate prisoners for so many days. In this town, many people were shot. Today, this grave with the names of these prisoners is right next to the graves of the inhabitants, including also mass graves, where up to 40 people are buried, just murdered by the Red Army soldiers these days. Not all prisoners who successfully arrived in Gliwice were included in the further evacuation. For one group, it was another drama. Namely, the train was stopped for unknown reasons, prisoners were taken out and they were shot at. There was a terrible massacre, so the group of inmates dispersed seeking shelter, but again it was such a vast area, quite extensive, therefore, such a quick access to the buildings was not easy for everyone. It hast to be considered, that these were people who already had to overcome this almost sixty-kilometre distance to Gliwice, so they were quite exhausted. Residents of the surrounding towns were ordered to collect the corpses and bury them in the surrounding cemeteries. At one of the cemeteries in Książenice, where the inhabitants were carrying bodies, the local gravedigger, who was going to bury them, noticed some characteristic numbers on the camp stiped uniforms. He told the parish priest about it and asked him to write down these numbers. Therefore, when after the war a tombstone was built, on the basis of the notes of the gravedigger, the camp numbers were also indicated. After the war, the residents took care of these graves. Also, historians who are interested, including local historians, have conducted research on these events. Since the late 90s, we also started to come there with our seminar groups, who come to the Auschwitz Museum in the summer, especially from Yad Vashem. And it was this grave that drew their attention, especially that thanks to the work of Dr. Andrzej Strzelecki, it was known, in a certain percentage of course, who was buried in this grave, simply the names were known. And it was thanks to the initiative of these Israelis that this tombstone was rebuilt, to the list of the numbers, the names of people, who rest there, were attached. It is also a symbol of remembrance about these events and about the people who lost their lives in such tragic circumstances.

We have mentioned many tragic incidents that occurred during this part of the evacuation of prisoners from the Auschwitz camp. Over 40 thousand prisoners went on the route to Gliwice and to Wodzisław Śląski. Are we even able to estimate the number of victims who were murdered along the way or died of exhaustion?

About 450 prisoners died on the route to Wodzisław Śląski and they are buried in many places, mainly in cemeteries currently in individual towns on the route. Earlier, just after the march of these evacuation columns, they were also laid in such mass graves dug somewhere near this route. Later, their bodies were step by step exhumed and moved to nearby cemeteries.

As for the number of victims from marches in Upper Silesia, Opole Silesia, this number is estimated at about three thousand. However, the number of all victims of evacuation from Auschwitz also here in Lower Silesia and in the Czech Republic and Moravia, where transports of prisoners by rail were transported, can be estimated in total of at least 9 thousand. Probably this number was much higher, it could reach almost 15 thousand. The vast majority of those who died during the evacuation of the camp were Jewish prisoners since when the evacuation began, Jewish prisoners constituted the majority of all prisoners in the camp. In these places of burial on the evacuation route, Jews also were the majority among the victims, but among them there are were Poles, there were also people from the then Soviet Union.