Polish heroes of WW2

[Bonobo]

Local Man Details Journey From Guerrilla Fighter to Priest
By CASEY HICKS
Wheeling Intelligencer, WV
December 21, 2008

WHEELING - For some, the horrors of war can diminish faith, but for
the Rev. Marian Mazgaj, his military experience in Poland during
World War II helped lead to his spiritual calling.

In Mazgaj's new book, "In the Polish Secret War: Memoir of a World
War II Freedom Fighter," Mazgaj reflects on the Poland he knew as
a child, the sacrifices of war and his journey from guerrilla fighter
to priest.

Born Dec. 8, 1923, in Gaj, Poland, Mazgaj was only a teenager when
Germany invaded Poland in 1939, marking the beginning of World
War II. As Nazi troops approached a town only miles away, Mazgaj,
a cousin and a friend decided they would try to join the army.

"We wanted to get uniforms and weapons to fight the Nazis when they invaded Poland, but we were told we were too young," Mazgaj said.

Mazgaj was discouraged, but he still sought to aid the resistance in
any way he could. Even if he couldn't be a soldier, Mazgaj joined an
underground organization that gathered arms and ammunition and
distributed an underground, patriotic newspaper called "Odwet," which is Polish for retaliation. Soon he joined the Home Army, another underground group coordinated by the Polish government-in- exile, based in London.

"By 1944, we already had battalions, regiments and divisions," Mazgaj said. "We were at that time a formidable force, and the Germans had to be scared."

But "In the Polish Secret War" is not just the story of Mazgaj's
years away from home scavenging weapons, defending his country and narrowly avoiding death on the battlefield. The memoir emphasizes the heroism of the everyday Polish citizens who fed, clothed and sheltered militants like Mazgaj, deceived the Nazis, cleaned up all evidence of a skirmish or sacrificed their own lives.

Though Mazgaj and his fellow fighters did their best to push back the invasion, German and Soviet troops were too powerful. Poland lost a greater percentage of its population than any other country in World War II. More than 7 million Polish citizens died, nearly half of whom were Jewish.

Mazgaj's own family had given him up for dead, and when he returned home in January 1945, he sent a friend inside to inform them he was alive.

"I should never have survived the war," Mazgaj said. "I felt that my
life no longer belonged to me but God."

That calling led Mazgaj to return to high school in spite of his age,
dedicating himself to earning good grades so he could join the
seminary and become a priest. Religion brought Mazgaj a sense of
peace and gave him the chance to dedicate himself to spiritual and
academic pursuits. Mazgaj was ordained a priest on May 25, 1952, and he moved to the United States in June 1957 to continue graduate studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Mazgaj's first book in English, "The Communist Government of Poland as Affecting the Rights of the Church from 1944 to 1970," was his doctoral dissertation at Catholic University. Mazgaj said he always intended to write a memoir about his experiences in World War II, but teaching and religious duties always kept him busy. Now semi-retired and serving as a pastoral associate at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, Mazgaj has more time to dedicate to writing.

"People of my kind are getting rare, the veterans. There are just
three of us left from one of the units," he said.

Mazgaj said he hopes his work can add a first-person perspective to
all the information available about World War II. Through sharing his own experiences, Mazgaj gives life to some of the individuals who have since become statistics in a long, difficult war.

When reading history books, "it's like you have a tree with the main
branches," Mazgaj said. "I go into the small branches that justify
the big branches. ... In my book, you see why certain things
happened."

"In the Polish Secret War" is published by McFarland & Co. Inc. and
has been selected to be available as an e-book on the Internet. Words and Music at Stratford Springs is planning a book signing with Mazgaj after Christmas.

[tomek]

I afraid that I donnot understand this text. Does they mean that the priest was a soldier in army in war worlds 2? That is improper... if so is truth.

[jeanne]

Jan 4, 2009 14:55:00 GMT 1 tomek said:

I afraid that I donnot understand this text. Does they mean that the priest was a soldier in army in war worlds 2? That is improper... if so is truth.

Tomek,

He didn't become a priest until after the war. It says his experiences during the war helped him to make the decision to become a priest.

[valpomike]

Please fill us in after this investigation is done, as to more on this.

Mike

[tomek]

Jan 25, 2009 13:39:29 GMT 1 jeanne said:

Jan 4, 2009 14:55:00 GMT 1 tomek said:

I afraid that I donnot understand this text. Does they mean that the priest was a soldier in army in war worlds 2? That is improper... if so is truth.

Tomek,

He didn't become a priest until after the war. It says his experiences during the war helped him to make the decision to become a priest.

Thanks Jaenne. This is familiar to Polish pope John II. He also becoeme a priest after WW2 bkoz he has so many bad experience.

[Bonobo]

Another famous armed stunt in the streets of Warsaw is called Akcja pod Arsenałem - Action at the Arsenal.

Jan Bytnar, codename Rudy - Redhead. He was a boy active in Warsaw underground/resistance during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. He made his name with several dangerous stunts against Germans (painted underground symbols in public areas which was punishable with death at the time!). Tortured and beaten almost to death by Gestapo, he didn`t give away the names of his friends from the organization. Amazing power in such a frail-looking boy..

Jan Bytnar codename: Rudy, Czarny, Janek, Krokodyl, Jan Rudy (b. May 6, 1921 in Kolbuszowa - March 30, 1943 in Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish Scoutmaster (harcmistrz), Polish Scouting resistance activist and Second Lieutenant of the Armia Krajowa during the Second World War.
He was arrested by the Germans on March 23, 1943 and rescued by the Grupy Szturmowe of the Szare Szeregi three days later during the so-called Arsenal action on March 26. He died on March 30 of injuries sustained during interrogations by the Gestapo.
The extremely brutal interrogation of Jan Bytnar was conducted by SS Rottenführer Ewald Lange and SS Obersturmführer Herbert Schultz. Both of them were assassinated by Grupy Szturmowe of Szare Szeregi. SS Obersturmfuehrer Herbert Schultz was shot on May 6th, 1943 by Sławomir Maciej Bittner “Maciek” and Eugeniusz Kecher “Kolczan”. SS Rottenführer Ewald Lange was shot on May 22nd, 1943 by Jerzy Zapadko “Dzik”.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Bytnar





See the action at the Arsenal during which tortured Bytnar and other prisoners were liberated from Gestapo`s hands:

In the 1970s Polish film


Two Gestapo torturers, Lange and Schulz, were later assasinated by Bytnar`s friends from resistance. At 5:15



One of Rudy`s stunts was painting an anchor, the symbol of underground Poland, in public places frequented by many people. E.g., on the Airman Monument. He put the symbol 15 feet from the ground, using a special fountain pen which he had invented himself.
The symbol survived the war (wasn`t removed by Germans) and it was communists who removed it in 1940s. Sons of the p r e g n a nt d o g!!!!!




The wartime picture with Bytnar`s original underground grafitti


The Anchor - a symbol of the Polish underground during German occupation. The anchor is made of two intermingled letters - PW - Polska Walcząca - Fighting Poland.


On February 18, 1943, the Armia Krajowa's commander, General Stefan Rowecki, issued an order specifying that all sabotage, partisan and terrorist actions be signed with the Kotwica. On February 25, the official organ of the Armia Krajowa, Biuletyn Informacyjny, called the Kotwica "the sign of the underground Polish Army". Soon the symbol gained enormous popularity and became recognized by most Poles. During the later stages of the war, most of the political and military organizations in Poland (even those not related to Armia Krajowa) adopted it as their symbol. It was painted on the walls of Polish cities, stamped on German banknotes and post stamps, printed in the headers of the underground newspapers and books, and it became one of the symbols of the Warsaw Uprising.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotwica


Warsaw has many streets dedicated to fighters, soldiers, heroes.
Bytnar has his street too.

[Bonobo]

General Nil
Polish Radio
16.04.2009



A long-awaited movie is out honoring the memory of General August Emil Fieldorf, one of the most heroic and steadfast fighters for Poland's independence, mastermind of the Polish underground army in World War Two, acknowledged worldwide as a Polish patriot, who fought nobly to defend his country from the Nazis. General Fieldorf was hanged by communists after the War, after they absurdly accused him of collaborating with fascists in a fake trial.

General August Emil Fieldorf will remain the legend of Poland's fight for independence forever. Born in 1895, in his teen years he joined a paramilitary scouting organization. At 19, he volunteered to the newly-formed 1st Brigade of the Legions under Józef Pi³sudski and heroically fought throughout World War One. He graduated from military schools and continued to develop his skills and qualities as a soldier, receiving orders for his already noticeable steadfast character and heroism.

When Second World War broke out, he was 44 years old. Having been made a colonel, he made his way to France, where he helped organize Polish troops. Fieldorf wanted to return to his homeland as soon as possible and was finally made the first emissary of the Polish government in exile to Poland. He returned home to train young fighters, and later worked in espionage using the name "Nil". Soon he became the mastermind of the underground resistance, planning and carrying out hundreds of subversive operations against German Nazis.

When the war ended, Soviets invaded Poland and introduced a new form of occupation. They imposed a communist government, which tracked down and eliminated Home Army leaders, whom they saw as a potential threat to the communist monopoly on leadership in the country. In 1945 Fieldorf was arrested by the Soviet NKVD, misidentified under a fake name, and sent to a forced labor camp in the Ural Mountains. When he returned to Poland two years later, the country was under firm socialists control. Fieldorf settled in £ódŸ and did not return to underground activities.

When a year later the socialist government offered amnesty to Home Army fighters, General Fieldorf outed himself to the authorities. He was then arrested. Communists used torture to force him to collaborate, but he never gave in. So they put him on a kangaroo court trial and sentenced to death. The general was hanged on the 24th of February 1953 and buried in a location unknown to this day. In 1989, 36 years after the execution, the General was rehabilitated.

[valpomike]

Thank you, I did not know of him, and he was a great man, one of many.

Poland can be proud of her people, and how they worked together during the war, and after.

I don't know that our people here in the U.S.A. could or would do the same.

Mike

[Bonobo]

The Greatest Escape - war hero who walked 4,000 miles from Siberian death camp

by Dennis Ellam and Adam Lee Potter

Mirror.co.uk

5/16/09
Told for the first time the incredible story of Witold Glinski's escape from the Russians across the Gobi desert and through the Himalayas to freedom in India.. a journey that took him 11 months.
Glinski (pic: John Dyson)


It was an epic feat of courage and strength. A triumph of human spirit over tyranny.

Witold Glinski is the last survivor of World War Two's greatest escape.

As he lovingly crafts another willow basket in the shed at his seaside bungalow in Cornwall, it's hard to believe that this modest man walked 4,000 miles to freedom… all the way from a Siberian prison camp to India.
He trekked through frozen forests, over mountains and across deserts on a journey that took 11 months.
Seven men were in the break-out, in February 1941. Only four reached safety, at a British base over the Indian border, the following January. And Witold, 84, has now emerged to recall their astonishing story. "It's time to tell the truth," he says. "It's time people knew."
Witold has waited more than 50 years for this moment. In 1956, a book called The Long Walk claimed to tell how seven prisoners escaped from a labour camp in Siberia… and walked to India.
It was every bit Witold's story and became an international bestseller, but the man who claimed to have made the epic journey was Slavomir Rawicz, a former Polish officer.
After Rawicz died in 2006, a BBC radio documentary uncovered proof that he was a fake – military records showed that he was serving in Persia (now Iran) at the time of the escape.
The likeliest explanation is that Rawicz read Witold's genuine account of the escape, in official papers that he found in the Polish Embassy in London during the war.
Witold knew his story had been stolen. But he never protested because he wanted to forget the war and concentrate on his new life.
Then, by chance, writer John Dyson heard of Witold, a former construction worker who had retired to a Cornish bungalow, and persuaded him to revisit his past.
Even Joyce, his wife of 59 years, had never heard the whole account. But gradually he retraced the Long Walk, in harrowing detail…
How he endured the deep freeze of a Siberian winter, the thin air of the Himalayas and the stifling heat of the Gobi desert, learned to live off the land, battled against disease and avoided hostile tribes of nomads in China and Mongolia, to reach sanctuary.
Witold was a teenager living in the Polish border town of Glabokia when he was arrested with his family by the invading Russians – at the time, in 1939, allies of Hitler.
Separated from his parents, he was taken to Moscow's notorious Lubianka Prison and, aged just 17, condemned to 25 years hard labour, one among a million-and- a-half Poles sent to Siberia. It might as well have been a death sentence. So, he could either wait to die, or try to get away. Witold began plotting his escape as soon as he arrived, shackled in chains.
He volunteered to work as a lumberjack, and secretly carved signs on the trees, pointing the way to the south, and the free world.
Then he was befriended by the camp commandant's wife. "She asked me to fix her radio," he remembers. "She rewarded me with sweet tea and a slice of bread. But the best thing was that, above a desk, there was a map of Asia."
Already a daring plan was forming as he tried desperately to memorise the details.
But commandant's wife Maria Uszakof – even after all these years he remembers her name – read his mind. "She told me, `You'll need good clothes and sensible shoes.' She gave me a parcel of dried meat, new shoes, hand-knitted socks and long underwear."
At midnight, with a savage blizzard howling around the camp, carrying a haversack that was a blanket tied at the corners, he tunnelled under the wire.
But when he made it through he turned to find six men had silently followed him.
"They were coming out of nowhere, like cockroaches in a bakery," Witold says.
"I told them, we'll walk for 20 hours a day, is that agreed? If they didn't like it, they could sit down and wait for the Russians.
"The weather was too bad for patrols to operate, no animal or human would stick a nose out of the door, so this was our only chance. Our immediate aim was to get out of Russia. The border was 1,600 miles away. I pointed south – `That way!'"
The walkers set up a pattern. One man in front, forming a trail through the forest, two at the back sweeping over the footprints with pine branches.
He never discovered much about his comrades. They dared not trust one another. Their relationship was built on silent suspicion, not conversation.
Smith was a mysterious American who had been working as an engineer in Moscow when he was arrested.
Batko was Ukrainian, wanted for murder in his homeland, muscular and fiercely determined. Zaro was a café owner from Yugoslavia, and the others were Polish soldiers.
They would have to rely on one another as their struggle to survive got tougher. Witold took charge. Growing up in the country, he had learned which plants and fungi were edible and how to cook them, how to hunt fish and trap animals.
Once they found a deer trapped in a ravine. They feasted on it for days afterwards and used pieces of the hide to bind up their thick felt prison boots.
Days before they reached the border with China, they had an encounter which is still vivid in Witold's memory.
On the path was 18-year-old Kristina Polansk, a terrified young Polish girl who had fled barefoot through the forest from the Russians, who had killed her family and tried to rape her.
"She was very lonely and distressed and when I inspected her foot I knew straight away she had gangrene," Witold says. "I didn't want to be saddled with a sick girl, but what could we do?
"I made moccasins for her with the rest of the deer skin, and we carried her on a stretcher of poles with dry grass.
"But every day she got worse. Her leg turned black and the skin swelled and burst, it was terrible to watch."
They crossed the Trans-Siberian Railway line, pushed on into Mongolia, and there Kristina became ravaged by fever. She shook each of the men's hands, then closed her eyes and died.
They buried her in a shallow trench and covered her body with stones. They wept, he remembered, but they didn't say a prayer.
Gradually fields and forests gave way to sand dunes and bare rocks, and the marchers came to their toughest test, sweltering in temperatures of 40ºC in daytime, freezing at night, and ravaged by dust storms.
"We walked in the dark, and sheltered from the sun under our ragged clothes propped on sticks," Witold says. "Wolves and jackals would circle around us.
"For water, we sucked frost from stones in the early morning, then turned them over and found moisture below. We got so thirsty we even sipped our own perspiration, and some drank their urine.
"We were desperate. Every activity all day was a hunt for things to eat. There were lots of snakes, up to a metre long – each of us had a walking stick, so we used them as prongs.
"You would stab the fork down to catch the snake, then cut off its head. It would continue to wriggle for hours. Then we cut a ring around the body and peeled off the skin, rubbing sand on our hands to get a better grip.
"Next, you had to take out the spinal cord, carefully because it's poisonous, chop the body into pieces and boil it. We couldn't bring ourselves to eat snake, until finally we had to."
The first to die were two of the Polish soldiers. Witold watched them deteriorate and recognised the signs of scurvy.
"They walked more and more slowly, their legs swelled up and they could pull out teeth with their fingers," he says. "They died on the same day. By the time we had buried the first, the second was almost gone."
The two men had always walked side by side. Now they were laid side by side in graves.
As they moved through Tibet and the Himalayas, they helped out on farms in return for food and shelter. But in the climb, the next man perished – another of the Polish soldiers, who stood on a ledge that crumbled under him.
In the final two weeks of their march, Witold had become ill and weak, and he can remember only snatches of images.
Their shoes were still holding together, remarkably their tough prison trousers had survived, but the limping, bedraggled group were a strange sight.
Witold's blond hair had grown long and flowing, so he tied it up in buns during the heat of the day, and wrapped it around himself like a scarf at night.
A local guide took them through the mountains, along paths so narrow they had to go sideways, to a pass that led down into the area that is now Bangladesh.
Witold can recall a steep, dusty track, a military vehicle approaching, and then men in uniform, armed with fearsome-looking knives. "I thought to myself, `This is the end!' Then I realised these men were well dressed, well disciplined, definitely not Russians."
In fact they were Gurkhas, waiting with a very British welcome – a jug of tea and a plate of cucumber sandwiches.
The Long Walk was over. The greatest escape was complete.
It wasn't the end of Witold's war, though. When he came to Britain, he enlisted with the Polish forces, served at D-Day and was injured by shrapnel.
Back in civilian life he met and married Joyce and became a construction worker, helping to build the M5 and M50 motorways.
Then he retired to his bungalow, keeping his memories to himself. Until now.

-Witold Glinski's story, as told to John Dyson, appears in the May issue of Reader's Digest, out now.

[Bonobo]

A hero general

General Mikołaj Bołtuć died in action on 22 September 1939. The bloody battle at Bzura was coming to its end. The Polish troops had been massacred by overwhelming German tank forces and constant Stuka bombers attacks.

The general decided to gather the remaining survivors and break through the German lines towards Warsaw. He picked up a carbine of a killed soldier and led the bayonett attack. He was killed. Germans were amazed to see the body of a general who fought like a simple soldier.

[Bonobo]

Remembering Jan Nowak-Jeziorański
18.01.2010 08:54

Observances commemorating the fifth anniversary of the death of Jan Nowak-Jeziorański begin today.The journalist, writer, politician, and a long-time head of the Polish section of Radio Free Europe died on 20 January 2005.A mass will be held at St. John’s Cathedral in Warsaw and flowers will be laid at his grave during a special ceremony. Commemorations will also include a series of film screenings and other events at the Museum of Warsaw Rising.

Jan Nowak-Jeziorański was an emissary of the Home Army and the Polish Government in Exile in London. The legendary ‘Courier from Warsaw’ was the last envoy from the British capital that made his way to Warsaw before the Warsaw Rising in 1944.

Nowak-Jeziorański received the Order of the White Eagle, the highest distinction of its kind in Poland, in 1994. Two years later, he was conferred the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. His honours also include the military decorations Virtuti Militari, and the Cross of Valour.







Jan Nowak-Jeziorański (October 3, 1914 Berlin – January 20, 2005 Warsaw) was a Polish journalist, writer, politician, social worker and patriot. He served during the Second World War as one of the most notable resistance fighters of the Home Army. He is best remembered for his work as an emissary shuttling between the commanders of the Home Army and the Polish Government in Exile in London and other Allied governments which gained him the nickname "Courier from Warsaw", and for his participation in the Warsaw Uprising. After the war he worked as the head of the Polish section of Radio Free Europe, and later as a security advisor to the US presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.

He was born Zdzisław Antoni Jeziorański, (Jeziora Coat of Arms) but used a number of noms de guerre during the war, the best known of which was Jan Nowak which he later added to his original surname.

Zdzisław Jeziorański was born in Berlin . After finishing his studies in economics in 1936, he worked as a teaching assistant at Poznań University. Mobilized in 1939, he fought in the Polish Army as an artillery NCO. He was taken prisoner of war by the Germans in Volhynia, but managed to escape and returned to Warsaw. Most of his colleagues were taken prisoners of war by the Soviets and later killed in the Katyn Massacre.

He quickly joined the Polish resistance. After 1940 he became the main organiser of the Akcja N, a secret organisation preparing German-language newspapers and other propaganda material pretending to be official German publications, in order to wage psychological warfare against German troops.

He also served as an envoy between the commanders of the Home Army and the Polish Government in Exile and other allied governments. During his first trips to Sweden and Great Britain he informed the Western governments of the fate of Poland under German and Soviet occupation. He was also the first to report of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. During one of such missions, in July 1944, he returned to Warsaw only a few days before the Warsaw Uprising broke out.

During the Uprising he took an active part in the fights against the Germans and also organised the Polish radio that maintained the contact with the Allied countries through daily broadcasts in Polish and English. Shortly before the capitulation of the Polish capital, he was ordered by Home Army's commander-in-chief Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski to leave the city and find his way to London. He managed to evade being captured and reached Great Britain, bringing with him large quantities of documents and photos. For his bravery and his travels through the German-occupied Europe he was awarded with the Virtuti Militari, the highest Polish military medal.



After the war Jan Nowak-Jeziorański stayed in the West, initially in London and then in Munich and Washington. Between 1948 and 1976 he was one of the most notable personalities of the Polish division of the BBC radio agency. In 1952 he also became the head of the Polish section of the Munich-based Radio Free Europe. Through his daily radio broadcasts he remained one of the most popular radio personalities, both in communist-held Poland and among the Polish diaspora in the West. After giving up his posts in 1976 he became one of the most prominent members of the Polish American Congress and headed the organisation between 1979 and 1996. He was also working as an advisor to the American National Security Agency and the presidents of the USA Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Through his contacts with many notable politicians in the USA, he was one of the proponents of Poland's membership in NATO (achieved in 1999).

In the 1990s he started his cooperation with the Polish Radio and wrote a series of broadcasts titled Polska z oddali (Poland from Distance). Since 1990 he was also present on Polish television as writer/presenter of monthly programs. In July 2002 he returned to Warsaw for the final time. He was an active supporter of Poland's entry into the European Union. Most of his books, published abroad as well as those published in Poland after 1989, were best-sellers and gained him even more popularity.

For his writings he was awarded some of the most prestigious Polish literary awards, including the Kisiel Award (1999), Ksawery Pruszyński Memorial Prize of the Polish Pen-club (2001) and the Superwiktor award for television personalities. In 2003 he was also awarded the Człowiek Pojednania prize by the Polish Council of Christians and Jews for his part in the Polish-Jewish dialogue. Finally, he was made the doctor honoris causa of many Polish universities, including the Warsaw University, Jagiellonian University and his alma mater, the University in Poznań.

He died in Warsaw on January 20, 2005. He donated all his archives to the Ossolineum institute.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Nowak-Jeziora%C5%84ski

[Bonobo]

The Extraordinary Story of a Polish Resister
Sheldon M. Stern | 11th November 2010


The amazing tale of WWII survivor Christina Pasternak

In the months following the collapse of Hitler’s thousand-year Reich, Allied intelligence officers worked to identify and remove Nazis from positions of authority in occupied Germany. Among those active in the U.S. Office of Military Government in Germany (OMGUS) was a 34-year-old Harvard PhD, fluent in German, Captain Samuel H. Beer.

Beer was particularly interested in documenting the attitudes of the German people toward the Nazi regime. He interviewed political leaders of small towns and villages, clergymen, judges, lawyers, resistance fighters, and academics.

From 1964 to 1968, I had the privilege of working as a teaching fellow in Sam Beer’s now legendary undergraduate general education course at Harvard, “Social Sciences 2: Western Thought and Institutions”. Sam always included material in his lectures from the interviews he had conducted in Germany in 1945. One interview in particular had an immense impact on the 300-plus students in the lecture hall; it was the story of young woman named Christina Pasternak.

Pasternak was born in Poland in 1911. She earned a doctorate in child psychology and wrote articles for magazines and newspapers. In 1935, she decided to become a nun and entered a convent in eastern Poland. The convent was taken over by the Russians in 1939 and turned into military barracks. Christina later moved to Krakow in German-occupied Poland.

She became involved in an espionage network supplying information to the Allies about “what was being made in certain factories, what routes munitions trains took, etc.” The organization operated successfully for most of 1940 but she was eventually betrayed by several people who were subjected to harsh Gestapo interrogation. She was arrested in the middle of the night and sent to a Gestapo prison in Krakow - but she refused to supply the names of other members of the network. She was interrogated 31 times in three-and-a-half months, "sometimes for as long as three days without stop. She was terribly beaten, with sticks and pieces of iron. So badly that today she cannot remember her address in Poland and cannot remember much of the English language, although at one time she translated Oscar Wilde into Polish."

She was then told that she would be shot. “She, as a good Catholic, prepared herself for death.” Five prisoners were shot around midnight that night, but Christina was instead taken by the Gestapo for trial in Berlin. There she was again interrogated and beaten.

Finally the Gestapo said that they had a cell in which no one ever managed to stay more than 24 hours - if they did they would certainly go mad. She was put into this cell. It was a large room with about 20 straw pallets on the floor, and a chair and a table in the middle. In the pallets and on the furniture were not thousands but millions of bed bugs (Wanzen). She had not sat down for ten minutes before these bugs were all over her, on her legs, in her underwear, biting her and sucking the blood. She reached down on her leg and it was a mass of blood. The stench was terrible The itching was unbearable. She sat up for two days, but then was so tired she fell on the floor. Now the bugs were everywhere, in her ears, her mouth, around her eyes. When she scratched she opened wounds on her body and the bugs flocked into the open wounds. She became so swollen that she did not look like a human being.

A new matron, an older woman, took pity on her and had her removed from the room. The matron bathed her and treated her wounds. Christina slept for 48 hours and eventually recovered.

She was told, nonetheless, that she would be tried before the notorious Volksgerichtshof and was questioned yet again. “She told them that if the Gestapo couldn’t get anything out of her in seven months, these investigators couldn’t hope to either. They did not beat her.” She was then transferred to a prison in Ansbach from which she was eventually liberated by American troops.

Christina told Captain Beer that she did not know what to do or where to go. She did not want to stay in Germany but had little desire to return to Soviet-controlled Poland. Nonetheless, she conceded, “there are some good Russians as there are some good Germans”.

At that point, Christina Pasternak, only 34 years old, disappears from the historical record. Perhaps today, through HNN and the new possibilities opened by the Internet, someone will be able to tell us what happened to this courageous woman after 1945, thus providing her with at least a small measure of the place in our historical memory that she deserves.

This article first appeared here on the History News Network.

Stern served as historian at the JFK Library from 1977 through 1999. He is the author of Averting ‘the Final Failure’: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings (2003) and The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis, (2005), both in the Stanford University Press Nuclear Age Series.

Photo: Members of the notorious Volksgerichtshof in 1944 / photo courtesy Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)