Many books have been written about the atrocities that occurred at the notorious Auschwitz Concentration Camp during the German occupation of Poland in WWII. Survivors of Auschwitz and the death march west in the dead of winter have shared their heartbreaking stories, and each one holds a valuable lesson for readers. But one Auschwitz prisoner who was chosen for execution managed to escape.
Klara Lutkovits was a teenager from Sighet, Hungary (part of Romania before the war). She, her parents, and five of her siblings lived in the Sighet ghetto, which was formed in early 1944. One very hot day in May, Klara and her family were told to pack a few clothes and some food—they would be taken to a work camp and would not return home.
The Hungarian police loaded Klara, her family, and hundreds of others into railroad boxcars, and the Nazis transported them to Auschwitz, just one year before Germany’s surrender. They reached the notorious camp on the third night of travel. Dr. Joseph Mengele, a medical officer at the camp, met them on the selection ramp. He was tall and handsome, only thirty-three-years-old, and resembled the Hollywood actor-type. He had a magnetic personality. Mengele talked and joked with the deportees and then sent them to the gas chambers.
Because Klara’s transport arrived during the night, German soldiers grouped their flashlights around Mengele, and he made his selections. He sent Klara’s sister and brother and her parents to the right and Klara with her two other sisters to the left. He smiled and said they would see their family members the next day. The guards led Klara, Rose, and Hedy to a barracks in B Camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The rest of the family went immediately to the gas chambers.
Auschwitz-Birkenau 1944. Selection of Hungarian Jews for work or the gas chamber. Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Over the next several months, Klara and her sisters worked eleven-hour shifts in the surrounding fields and factories. They were fed three meager “meals” a day. The girls endured the cold and SS beatings and observed hundreds of new arrivals herded into the gas chambers daily.
Klara’s mind as well as her body began to break down, and she stopped eating. In November, Dr. Mengele announced that he would conduct a selection among the prisoners. After he viewed Klara’s emaciated body, he chose her and others in the same condition to die in the gas chambers.
The Nazis knew they were losing the war and needed to eliminate the evidence of their atrocities, so they pushed their extermination efforts to the maximum. A backlog of prisoners awaited execution, and Mengele could no longer send those housed at Auschwitz directly to the gas chambers whenever he wanted. New arrivals had priority. Klara and the other women selected were taken to the bath house, given black dresses to wear, and told to wait. Klara wanted to die rather than continue suffering in the camp. Her sisters, Rose and Hedy, came to the window of the bath house to comfort her, but they were pulled away and beaten for their efforts.
The guards moved Klara’s group to another holding room, a smaller brick-style building next to the gas chamber. Once the others fell asleep, Klara inspected her surroundings. The walls were made of inferior brick, and she noticed someone had dug around the bottom of one of the bricks. She pushed and pulled until she freed it and then used the brick to chip away at the others. After pulling out more bricks, she slipped through the small passage and into the night. The fresh, cold air and Klara’s newfound freedom awakened her. She decided she wanted to live.
Klara moved through the camp, staying close to the buildings. The wet, snowy rain and very cold weather, kept the guards indoors. She noticed lights on in the bath house. Thick steam covered the windows. Klara found an open window and climbed inside, hidden from detection by the steam. After taking a shower, the girls were given dresses and shoes and were told to line up outside—the Nazis has chosen one hundred young women to work in a factory in Czechoslovakia. The guards counted one hundred and one prisoners and started to drag the last girl in line away. She objected, so one of the other girls volunteered to stay behind with her family and returned to the barracks.
After traveling for three days and three nights, Klara’s train arrived in Weisswasser, Czechoslovakia, the home of a Nazi slave labor camp and the privately owned Telefunken Company. Klara lined up with the other girls but collapsed before making it to the camp gates. She awakened later in a hospital bed in the infirmary, where a female Jewish doctor nursed her back to health.
After six weeks, Klara went to work in the town factory, putting wire transmitters and radio relay systems together. She began to eat again, but the process was painful. Those in charge fed the workers three meals a day, including bread and meat with each meal.
A few months later Klara and her co-workers were ushered to their job site as usual but nobody brought work for them to do. The girls discovered the Germans and their soldiers had left. They were free! The next day Russian soldiers arrived, and their captain arranged transportation for the girls to the nearest operating trains—two days away. The girls were all allowed to board without paying, and Klara traveled home to Sighet.
Several weeks later her sisters, Rose and Hedy, arrived home. They thought Klara had died in the gas chambers. What a reunion of crying, laughing, and screaming took place!
Klara met Ezra Wizel in Sighet, and they married in 1947. Having no desire to live under communism, the Wizel’s escaped and emigrated to America. They eventually settled in Los Angeles, California. Source: Auschwitz Escape – The Klara Wizel Story by Danny Naten and R. Gifford, 2014.
Source:
Auschwitz Escape – The Klara Wizel Story by Danny Naten and R. Gifford, 2014.
Eastern Europe was heavily impacted by WWII. Millions of civilians and soldiers lost their lives when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union initially invaded and then reconquered these lands later in the war. Both countries massacred many civilians and soldiers and deported hundreds of thousands to either Germany or Siberia, where the deportees often died of starvation.
What was the emotional and spiritual state of the general population in these countries prior to WWII? Did the people expect such widespread devastation, and were they prepared for the suffering ahead? Did they think about their spiritual welfare?
It so happens that a great spiritual awakening took place across denominational lines in Eastern Europe in the 1930‘s and continued into the war period. God, in his love and mercy, sent witnesses and opened the windows of heaven prior to the great calamities which followed.
In 1934 a young evangelist from Scotland traveled to Riga, Latvia, a small northern country bordered by the Baltic Sea on the west and the Soviet Union to the east. Even though he didn’t personally know anyone in the country, James Stewart clearly felt God had called him to this land. He arrived almost destitute and penniless, his clothing inadequate for the harsh winter weather. He found refuge in the home of Pastor Robert Fetler and held a revival campaign in Fetler’s church. Twelve hundred people attended the meetings nightly, which often lasted until three o’clock in the morning.
Fetler’s brother, William, pastored the Salvation Temple Revival Church, also in Latvia, and the church was holding a revival convention the week Stewart arrived in the country. The congregation had prayed for revival for many years and hundreds of believers participated in a twenty-four-hour-a-day prayer circle for that purpose.
Stewart preached in the Salvation Temple’s services where over two thousand people gathered every day for weeks and months. The meetings continued sometimes all day and all night, and those attending attested to the “awful sense of the majesty and holiness of God.” The Russian, German, and Polish churches which met in the building were “touched by the power of God.”
ESTONIA
Physically exhausted from ministering daily in Latvia, Stewart went north to the little country of Estonia to rest. It wasn’t long before he made contact with a pastor whose people had also been praying for revival. They began gospel meetings and soon had to move the services to the largest Protestant building in the capital city of Talinn. They ran out of space in that church and asked church members to stay home to make room for the visitors. Then it became necessary to rent the largest public hall in the city, which seated thousands.
Stewart arrived at the new location one night and found a crowd waiting outside. When he asked the people why they hadn’t been allowed inside, they answered that the hall was crowded and there wasn’t any more room.
During the course of the meetings, Stewart lost his voice and went to another town to rest. After his voice returned, he conducted meetings entitled “Lectures on the Bible” and gave each attendee a New Testament. As he both taught and preached from the Scriptures, the listeners gave their hearts to Christ, including his interpreter, a university professor.
POLAND
Creative Commons
In 1935, James Stewart left for Warsaw and met with the Russian Missionary Society to receive instructions on how to assist pastors ministering in the small towns and villages among the Russians of eastern Poland. Stewart visited and encouraged these pastors, arranged for the systematic distribution of Scriptures in the villages, and conducted evangelistic meetings in rented public halls and theaters.
Stewart was especially burdened for the large number of Jews he encountered, so he held special meetings for them. Both orthodox and liberal Jews attended, packing the buildings so tightly that the gas lamps went out for lack of sufficient oxygen.
The films of actor James Stewart played in the same cities and towns where missionary James Stewart led people to Christ. Some folks traveled to town to watch the movies but went to the wrong hall by mistake. After listening to the gospel message, they gave their hearts to Christ. Stewart held ten-day campaigns in the larger towns of Rowne, Baronowicze, Vilna, Pruzana, and Lutsk, and the rented cinema buildings filled to overflowing.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Map of Czechoslovakia and northern Austria, 1928-1938. Created by PANONIAN [public domain] via Wikimedia Commons
James Stewart returned to Warsaw, and an associate asked him where he planned to go next. “Czechoslovakia,” he said without a pause. His friend asked if Stewart knew anyone there. No, he didn’t. But that same day, Mr. Zdened Koukol, a chocolate manufacturer from a town near Prague, Czechoslovakia, walked into the associate’s office. He met Stewart and asked him when he planned to come to his country and hold revival meetings.
Stewart traveled to Czechoslovakia and, under Koukol’s sponsorship, held meetings starting in October of 1936. After two weeks of speaking to a cold and unresponsive congregation in Kutna Hora, the young preacher packed his bags, planning to move on. Koukol urged him to stay longer. James prayed and the Lord convicted Him for his impatience.
Koukol encouraged the believers in the towns of Kutna Hora and Kolin to pray and believe that revival was possible, starting in their own hearts. Koukol rented a large public hall in Kolin, and young people flocked to the meeting. No one responded the first night. However, very late that same night, a Christian woman who held an important position in the Kolin church appeared at Koukol’s home.
The woman feared that sin in her life had prevented God’s blessing upon the revival meeting. Stewart counseled with her, and she left determined to make things right. A very different atmosphere was evident at the meetings in the following days. Many heard the gospel for the first time and accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
Source:
Stewart, Ruth. James Stewart Missionary, A Biography. Revival Literature, 1977.
Poland became a killing ground for both Jewish and non-Jewish citizens during WWII, but the Germans specifically targeted Poland’s three million Jews. Those who weren’t immediately shot during the German invasion in 1939 were relocated from the countryside and placed in dozens of ghettos in cities all over Poland. Gradually the SS death squads emptied the ghettos by deporting the residents to death camps or by shooting them on the spot.
On July 26, 1942, an unusual confrontation took place between German Wehrmacht officers and SS troops in the city of Przemysl in southern Poland.
General Curt L. Freiherr von Gienanth, district commander of the Wehrmacht (regular German troops) had just appointed Major Max Liedtke to command the German garrison in Przemysl. Liedtke, a WWI veteran and son of a Lutheran pastor, was opposed to the Nazis and their treatment of the Jews.
In civilian life, Liedtke had lost his post as editor-in-chief of a daily German newspaper and was blacklisted because of his stand against the Nazis. In spite of this, in 1939, Liedtke was recalled to serve as a major in the Wehrmacht. He’d most recently served in Greece.
At Przemysl, Major Liedtke promoted the humane treatment of Jews. General von Gienanth supported Liedtke’s position and put four thousand Jews from Przemysl to work in local armament factories, protecting them and their families from the SS.
Liedtke’s adjutant, Oberleutnant Albert Battel, also despised the Nazi persecution of Jews. Battel was a middle-aged attorney and veteran of WWI who’d been reprimanded by the Nazis for befriending Jews and for treating the Jewish leaders of the Przemysl ghetto with respect. On July 26, 1942, Battel informed Liedtke that a large death squad of SS troops was approaching the bridge over the San River for the purpose of rounding up Jews.
Liedtke and Battel devised a plan to delay the SS long enough to rescue the Jewish workers and their families and to notify General von Gienanth of the situation. Liedtke hoped the general would agree with their plans not to cooperate with the SS death squads. Under Liedtke’s orders, Battel sent Wehrmacht troops to the bridge, erected barricades, mounted heavy machine guns, and put a tough army sergeant major in command.
Truckloads of SS troops arrived at the bridge and halted. Their commanding officer was told that no traffic would be admitted because the city was under a military emergency. The commander protested and ordered that the barricade be removed, but the sergeant major stood firm. He informed the SS officer that he would order his troops to fire on anyone attempting to break through the roadblock, so the SS left.
Major Liedtke ordered Battel to lead Wehrmacht troops into the Jewish ghetto, load the Jewish workers and their families onto trucks, and bring them to the Wehrmacht garrison for protection. Battel succeeded in moving more than one hundred families before new orders arrived from headquarters. General von Gienanth had argued with the high command that the Jews were needed for war labor, but Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler overruled him.
Himmler’s response was ominous. “‘I have ordered that ruthless steps be taken against all those who think that they can use the interest of war industry to cloak their real intentions to protect the Jews.’”
SS troops arrived at the Przemysl Ghetto the next day and deported more than fourteen thousand Jewish men, women, and children to death camps. Eventually the Jews at the Wehrmacht garrison were shipped to death camps as well.
The Nazis forced General von Gienanth to retire. They discharged Oberleutnant Albert Battel from the Wehrmacht and drafted him into the German homeguard, the Volkssturm. They sent Major Liedtke to the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union. He was captured by the Soviets in 1944, declared a war criminal, and sentenced to life in prison. He died in a Soviet labor camp. The stand taken by these officers is the only known time that German regular army troops stood up to SS troops to protect the Jews.
Source:
Gragg, Rod. My Brother’s Keeper. Center Street, 2016.
Germany and the Soviet Union defeated and divided Poland between them in September of 1939. The Soviets quickly arrested and deported University professors, police officers, border guards, lawyers, doctors, pastors, priests, physicians, engineers, journalists, pilots, teachers, landowners, writers, chaplains, civic leaders, and any other person deemed a threat to the establishment of a communist society. The Soviets arrested anyone wearing a uniform, even boy scouts!
A column of arrested Polish police officers, civilian public servants and other “enemies of the people,” being escorted by the Red Army in “liberated” Eastern Poland in September 1939. From the Soviet Cinema Newsreel.
The fascinating story of Mietek Rymaszewski begins in the small town of Malkowicze in Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland during the winter of 1940. Mietek belonged to a youth cadet organization but had been too young to fight at the outbreak of WWII. After a number of families from his town were deported to Siberia in February, word came of his own impending arrest due to his youth organization ties.
Mietek packed underwear, food, and a little money, bade farewell to his mother and younger brother and left during the night with two female school friends. He never returned to Malkowicze. The train ride toward the border was interrupted twice by NKVD (secret police) passenger checks. At the first check he was questioned about the contents of the suitcase he carried for one of his friends.
Mietek replied that he was taking the items to his sister at college, and the NKVD let him pass. The two girls said they were traveling to college, and they were allowed through. At the next passenger check, Mietek and his friends moved to a group that had already been processed, avoiding another search. The threesome arrived safely in the city of Łomża, near the border between Soviet occupied Poland and East Prussia (Germany).
Mietek and his companions went to a prearranged address where they waited for an opportunity to cross into German-controlled territory. The moon was full and the nights were too light to avoid detection in the open, flat country covered with deep snow. Growing impatient, Mietek left with a guide who took him to within three kilometers of the border. Before parting, Mietek questioned his guide thoroughly about nearby villages, landmarks, woodlands, and the best places to cross the border. Later when he was intercepted by a Russian soldier, he posed as a local citizen, accurately describing the area. The soldier let him pass, but Mietek returned to Łomża because of the impossibility of successfully crossing the border. The Russian patrols were too active at the time.
Łomża, Poland
Mietek’s two schoolmates sold some of their jewelry and returned home, but the jewelry dealer sold out the owner of the house and the other potential escapees. The NKVD surrounded the house, arrested everyone, and took them to the NKVD station in an old seminary. The officers plied the prisoners with questions. Who were they? Where were they from? And what they were doing in Lomza? The prisoners were put in separate cellars at the old seminary so they couldn’t talk with one another but not before Mietek let his companions know he had changed his name. He was determined to protect his mother.
Fifty men shared the cellar with Mietek, including smugglers from Warsaw who bragged about their exploits. They described their route in detail, and Mietek memorized everything he heard. Since the penalty for those coming into the Soviet occupied section of Poland was less severe than for those caught escaping, Mietek prepared his story. When he was questioned, he said he had come from Warsaw and was headed to Bialystok (about 80 km/50 miles away) to find his uncle. He described his journey, including a detour at the river Narew where the bridge had been blown up. He had crossed an improvised bridge and took another train.
When Mietek’s interrogators asked him how he had crossed the border (from German-occupied territory into Russian-occupied territory), he claimed he didn’t know he’d crossed the border. The NKVD believed him. An army officer came in to report the arrival of new captives, and the NKVD berated the officer for not having stopped Mietek at the crossing.
Mietek’s interrogation lasted for several weeks, and the NKVD officers used a variety of methods to coerce confessions from the prisoners for whatever they were accused of committing—usually spying. The prisoners were forced to sit on a small stool with sharp edges and corners, which cut into their spines. The NKVD used special handcuffs, tightening them until the prisoners’ hands turned blue, causing pain and then numbness. They stood the prisoners against a wall and pointed a gun to their heads. Another interrogator would enter and gently question the prisoners and then pretend that he was going to shoot them also. Prisoners were pulled in for questioning at two o’clock in the morning, submitted to a volley of rapid-fire questions, and suffered if their answers were inconsistent.
A well-known engineer in Mietek’s cellar was accused of spying, and the NKVD tortured him for hours at a time. He would come back covered in bruises, bleeding, and unable to walk.
Someone scratched a hole in the wall, allowing communication with the women prisoners in the next cell. The women collected a matchbox full of lice, and when an inspector visited, they complained about the conditions. The inspector said the lice problem was their own fault, so they threw their collection at him, and he raced out of the cellar.
Mietek was transferred to the Łomża Prison and later taken with hundreds of other prisoners to the railway station and loaded into cattle trucks. Destination – Siberia.
The next morning the train pulled out of the station headed east. The prisoners united to sing a patriotic Polish song, vowing to “defend the Polish spirit” from the Russians. The guards riding between and on top of the cattle cars unsuccessfully tried to quiet the prisoners.
After passing through five cities and into Byelorussia, the train stopped at Gomel near the Ukraine, and the prisoners were escorted in groups of fifty to the local prison. Mietek saw the largest rats he’d ever seen. They ran along the top of the wall and fed on corpses in the mortuary.
Fifty men shared the 4 by 5 meter cells (13 x 16 feet). They were only allowed to exercise in the yard for ten minutes each day. As they marched down the winding stairs, a number of prisoners committed suicide by jumping down head first, forcing the Russians to install netting on the bannisters to prevent these deaths. One prisoner hid in an outbuilding and escaped over the wall after dark. Dogs tracked him, and the Soviets beat him up, put him in a penal cell, and reduced his food allotment.
An epidemic of dysentery passed through the prison—those with the worst cases went to the hospital on the ground floor. They were stripped and given only a blanket so they wouldn’t climb out the bathroom window, jump onto the wall and attempt to escape.
In August of 1940, the NKVD (Soviet Secret Police) sentenced Mietek to serve three years in corrective camps of the Northern Railway in Kotlas, Northern Russia. He refused to sign the paper, so the NKVD officer signed the documents for him, using Mietek’s false name since the NKVD had never discovered his true identity. He was taken to a new cell, and one of the occupants jumped up calling out Mietek’s name. To everyone’s surprise, Mietek’s cousin Edward was also a prisoner. The two remained together for the rest of their captivity.
Again the Soviets separated the prisoners into groups of fifty, escorted them to the railway station, and loaded them in cattle trucks. They traveled through Minsk and then Smolensk where Mietek’s grandfather had been wounded during WWI.
Soviet Deportation Train
Between Leningrad and Kotlas, a Bielorussin cut a hole in the floor of a cattle truck with a piece of flint and dropped between the rails. Unfortunately the guards saw him, stopped the train, and beat the prisoner black and blue.
They arrived at Kotlas to find a camp holding a few huts, a high barbed wire fence with a tower in each corner, soldiers brandishing rifles and machine guns, and knee-deep mud. There were two ditches – one for drinking water and one for a latrine. After a short time at this camp, the prisoners were taken in groups of fifty about eight kilometers through the taiga to the Northern Dvina River. They sailed north on barges for a few days, stopping at night. They were given 300 grams (10.5 oz.) of bread and a small piece of boiled fish during the journey.
The new camp was a completely empty square piece of ground, so Mietek and his fellow prisoners used tools lent to them and cut down trees to build shelters and fires. Since Mietek had grown up in the forest, he built a safe shelter for himself and a small group of fellow prisoners; however, others built inadequate shelters which collapsed during the night, killing the occupants.
Mietek and the other prisoners decided to escape while they were out of camp collecting firewood, but on the planned day Mietek woke up with legs so swollen his flesh hung over his boot leggings. He had scurvy and the escape was called off. The prisoners later learned to boil pine and spruce needles and drink the brew to fight scurvy. They boiled willow bark and twigs to make a drink substituting for aspirin. They also boiled the twigs of bilberries to cure diarrhea. The water in the ditches overflowed and mixed with the drinking water, causing dysentery, so the prisoners learned to only drink water from melted snow.
After a few weeks the prisoners moved to a new camp where they found marquee type tents pulled over a wooden frame-work with a small metal stove and firewood inside. A group of Estonian sailors shared Mietek’s tent. These strong, healthy, intelligent, and good-looking young men needed lots of food, but they didn’t get it and were the first to die. The old and weak perished next. A group of Lithuanians in the tent also died – the last one with his head frozen to the tent. From November, 1940 to February, 1941, 300 of the 360 captives died.
The prisoners built a railway line from Kotlas to Vorkuta by digging soil from the hillside and taking it in wheelbarrows to the embankment. If they didn’t obtain the required cubic meters of soil each day, their food rations were reduced – 300 grams (10.5 oz.) of bread and some watery soup twice a day.
A Russian railway supervisor, also a prisoner, asked to buy Mietek’s jacket and boots – hunting boots with high leggings made of very good leather. Mietek agreed, although the items were worth much more than the supervisor paid for them. But he did reward Mietek with a new job – measuring and recording the soil in each man’s wheelbarrow. It was wise Mietek was meticulous in his measurements because a supervisor checked his work. Later he heard that six million cubic meters had been overlooked and two Russian engineers were shot for it.
One morning after a heavy snowfall in late December, Mietek strode to his worksite in the frigid temperatures and worked up a sweat. Finding a hole that had been chiseled in the ice of a nearby river, he drew a cup of water and drank from it. A nasty chill resulted, and by the end of the day, a 102°F fever gripped him. On December 31st, Mietek was taken to the hospital, a deep dugout located outside the prison camp. At first he was delirious, but soon he lost consciousness.
Sometime later, Mietek awakened but couldn’t lift his head. After drifting off, he woke again and asked how long he had been at the hospital. The doctor pointed to a calendar tacked to a post. The day was February 5th. He’d been unconscious for thirty-six days! Lena, a nurse and also a prisoner, brought bread, dipped it in tea, and fed Mietek by hand. She had kept him alive in the same way all the weeks he was unconscious.
Mietek gradually gained strength and helped the nurses by carrying food to the other patients. Later when the doctor examined him, the doctor told Mietek he was all right but just needed food. To help solve the problem, the doctor hired Mietek to keep a fire going in his dugout at night. When the doctor came in, he shared food brought from the kitchen with Mietek.
On May 11th Mietek was escorted back to camp and returned to work the next day – cutting firewood for locomotives. A nasty blizzard struck and left a case of frostbite on Mietek’s face. The male sickroom nurse provided him with a mixture of surgical spirit and glycerin, and his skin began to heal after a few weeks.
Mietek and his fellow prisoners moved on to build an embankment to support bridge timbers for a rail line spanning a deep river. Next, they relocated to a camp on the River Pechora where they pulled timber out of the river, cut it, and rolled it to a small sawmill to be cut for railway sleepers. Here Mietek saw eskimos and reindeer for the first time.
Many young Russians lived in this camp, and some of them stole whatever they wanted or took the items by force. One Russian demanded Mietek’s soup, so he quickly drank it and rammed the bowl in the Russian’s mouth, causing his mouth to bleed. The same fellow approached Mietek as he was lying down that night, so Mietek struck him a few times with a stick, and the Russian walked off holding his ribs. The fellow didn’t bother Mietek again.
After the ice on the Ust Usa River melted, the prisoners sailed up the river on barges and crossed the Arctic Circle. They passed an area where many human bones protruded from the melting snow. Some of the Russians thought these were the remains of eight hundred slaves who’d been trapped by an Arctic storm while they were marching on foot to Vorkuta (an area where prisoners slaved in the uranium mines).
It was thought that the whole convoy had frozen except for the escort commander who’d escaped with a pack of dogs. Since Mietek and his fellow prisoners were heading to the same place, he expected the Soviets to force them to work the mines until the radiation finished them off. Meanwhile, the men in his convoy continued to die from malnutrition.
But . . . another miracle transpired.
Before arriving in Vorkuta, an official boarded and pulled all the prisoners from Poland off the barges. Because Germany had invaded Russia, the Soviets were joining the Allies in their fight against the Germans and had agreed to release all Polish citizens held in the Soviet Union. They released Polish POW General Anders from prison to immediately gather and train a Polish Army in the east to aid the Allied fight.
The Soviets sent Mietek back to camp and tried to persuade him to join their army, but he carefully responded that he hadn’t been educated in Russian and wouldn’t feel right in the Russian Army. Instead, Mietek and a group of other former prisoners boarded a cattle truck and rode south to join the Polish Armed Forces in the East. They rode the same rail line they had previously built and relished the freedom of traveling unguarded in Russia for the first time.
Obtaining food became an immediate priority. Along the way, the former prisoners were occasionally given boiled fish and a piece of bread, and at some stations they obtained all the boiled water they wanted. At one stop Mietek exchanged his shirt for a small bantam hen and a few potatoes. He plucked and cleaned the hen, confiscated a large can by a well, gathered nettles, and made four gallons of soup. Since the train never stopped for long, Mietek built a fire at each stop, gradually cooking the broth until it was ready to eat.
Mietek traveled from Kotlas in northern Russia through Svierdlovsk and Kyubishov to Buzeluk on the southern Russian frontier, each time expecting to find a Polish recruiting station but only to discover the offices had moved. He and his companions traveled through the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan and entered Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, also under Soviet control.
While waiting at a stop further south, Mietek attempted to do some trading. He went to the closest hamlet and knocked on a door. He was invited in and discovered a poor Russian family of three sharing a meal of tiny potatoes. Observing their plight, Mietek only asked for water, but after the family learned that he had been recently released from the labor camps, they insisted he share their meal. With tears in her eyes, the Russian woman gave Mietek a half glass of milk from their meager stores.
Continuing south, Mietek and his companions arrived in Samarkand (outer Mongolia) and slept outside for a few nights until barges arrived and took them to Nukus near the Aral Sea. They walked behind an Uzbeki riding an oxen-driven cart to a collective farm 120 kilometers away and stayed with the Uzbeki families. They slept in a tent-like accommodation covered with homemade felt, ate sesame flat bread, rice and sesame meal noodles with some meat, and drank boiled water. Mietek’s host was the local school teacher who was embittered because the Red Army had killed his father, confiscated his father’s lands, and eaten his herds of livestock without compensation. He vowed to one day get it back.
After news arrived that the Polish recruiting office had reopened in Bukhara, Mietek and his fellow travelers spent a day and a night walking back to Nukus where they soaked their blistered feet in the river. They sailed on barges down the River Amudarya to Farab near Samarkand and were encouraged by the majestic flight of three white eagles above the river. Mietek also witnessed the reunion of a Polish husband and wife who’d been separated since 1939 and had survived the labor camps. In Farab, they stayed in rail trucks and were given a dead dog to eat. While Mietek was with an NKVD officer getting soup (boiled water with a few green tomatoes), some of his companions stole millet. After he returned, they were all arrested by the local militia and sent to the Samarkand Prison.
A number of Russians and Uzbekis shared Mietek’s cell. One Russian was imprisoned for being fifteen minutes late to work (his wife was sick). Mietek and his companions went to court where his charges were dropped, but three others were given the maximum sentence (death penalty). Then a man spoke, pleading that the men had been brought up in a capitalist country and didn’t know the difference between right and wrong, and they should be allowed to repay their crime by joining the army. The court released them with a warning to be out of Samarkand within twenty-four hours.
Mietek and a friend walked to Bukhara, surviving on weeds and desert tortoise eggs. When they arrived, the recruiting office was empty, but after two days a Polish 2nd lieutenant arrived and took them to the railway station. He shielded them from Soviet agents who were in the area conscripting the local men for the Russian Army. They traveled to Kermine where the Polish garrison was stationed, and Mietek gave his true name for the first time since he had been captured by the Soviets in Poland. Despite reaching the Polish Army, forty men died daily from the prolonged starvation they had endured. Even Mietek collapsed and spent two days in the hospital where he was put on a special diet.
As the Polish recruits gained strength, their military training increased. For a time, the Soviets refused to provide the Polish garrison at Kermine with transportation to Persia (Iran), where they planned to connect with the British Army. Instead the Soviets tried to persuade them to fight on the Eastern Front with the Russian Army. The Polish military leaders objected, and the troops prepared to march out. The Soviets didn’t have enough forces in the area to stop them, so they provided transportation to Krasnovodskon on the Caspian Sea.
The Polish troops and civilians at Krasnovodsk crossed the Caspian Sea on rusty, old ships, fighting dysentery and dehydration. One day while standing in line for his water ration, Mietek noticed a pair of bright, young eyes watching him through the gaps in the steps. Then he heard a young voice say, “Mum, it’s Mietek.” The girl’s mother appeared and greeted him. She was the daughter of the station master from his home town in Poland! She shared that they had been deported to Siberia with his mother, brother, and grandfather. She gave Mietek his mother’s address, and he was able to later make contact with her.
In Pahlavi, Iran, the troops showered, obtained haircuts, and were powdered with insecticide. They burned their uniforms and were issued new tropical uniforms. Mietek was posted to Iraq, where he defended a refinery and later an airport and served as a driving instructor. His unit transferred to Palestine and then North Africa. In Egypt, Mietek volunteered for the infantry and fought in Italy. He was wounded in a battle on the the Kenti River and was hospitalized in Taranto and in Scotland. He recuperated and returned to Italy, where he guarded German POW’s following the war.
After his time of service, Mietek settled in England and worked for the forestry commission. He married Stephanie Burnett, an English widow. The Soviets resettled Mietek’s mother in western Poland, but Mietek didn’t see her again until she visited him in England in 1963, twenty-four years after parting. They didn’t recognize each other after all that time, but she stayed for five months. When Mietek visited Poland in 1988 (after a 49-year absence), he was disturbed by the moral scars caused by the communist domination of the country.
In late September 1939, the Soviets and the Nazis officially divided Poland. The Soviets occupied the eastern section of the country. Before WWI, this area had belonged to Russia but was awarded to Poland following the war. Polish settlers, Ukrainians, and Russians lived in this territory.
The Soviets exiled the Polish settlers in mass to northern Russia, Siberia, and other far flung locations to work in labor camps. The exact number of people transported will never be known, but estimates indicate the Soviets forcibly removed at least one million Polish men, women, and children. Later, the Soviets also exiled Ukrainians.
After the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Soviets allied themselves with England and consequently with the Polish government-in-exile in London. Stalin agreed to release the Polish captives held in the Soviet Union and allow the Polish Army to re-organize to fight the Germans. This army initially formed in Uzbekistan but later moved to the Middle East. Polish civilians left the Soviet Union along the same path as the newly formed army (Anders Army).
A small portion of the former captives successfully escaped the Soviet Union and arrived in the west where they shared their stories.
Fourteen-year-old Danuta Maczka lived with her family on a farm near Rowne in the Eastern Borderlands of Poland, now part of Ukraine.
In October of 1939, the local Ukrainian Committee, established by the Soviets, evicted her family from their home. They were allowed to take food, some furniture, their two dogs, and a few personal possessions with them. They rented an apartment in a Jewish house in a small town nearby, but the Soviet Secret Police (NKVD) continued to harass them.
At 6:00 AM on February 10, 1940, the NKVD and Ukrainian police awakened the Maczkas and gave them a two-hour notice to pack. Their destination—northern Russia. In icy cold temperatures, they traveled for two hours by sledge through deep snow to the railway station where they boarded a cattle truck with many other Polish settlers.
A few days later they transferred to a Soviet cattle truck, holding seventy-two people. Double bunks lined the sides of the car, a stove occupied the center, and one tiny grilled window admitted a little light and air. A hole in the floor provided for hygiene needs. Danuta and her family rode in this locked car for sixteen days. Occasionally they were given food, water, and coal for the stove.
The Maczkas reached Kotlas in northern Russia, and Danuta’s stepmother contracted pneumonia. She was taken to the hospital where she recovered. Meanwhile, the rest of the family traveled twenty-five kilometers by sledge during a huge snowstorm while the temperature was -40° Celsius.
For the next twenty-two months, the Maczkas lived in various huts and barracks and worked deep in the forests. They were paid for their work, which involved felling trees, removing branches, working in a sawmill, stripping bark, sawing wood, and building small wooden houses. Danuta’s younger brother and sister, Tadzio and Zosia, attended school, but Danuta, her father, and her older brother, Bogus, worked.
In the summer and fall, Danuta was allowed to leave the camp and collect berries and mushrooms in the forest. In a small plot of soil, they planted vegetables, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, and beans, which grew rapidly in the almost twenty-four-hour-a-day sunlight. Everyone worked in the forest, the saw-mill, or on the collective farm. If they refused, they didn’t receive their bread ration. Many were struck with sickness and died.
Danuta’s little sister Zosia caught the flu in October, was hospitalized for two weeks in December, and died alone in the hospital on Christmas Eve. Tadzio broke his leg in school, and it didn’t heal properly because of the lack of adequate medical treatment.
On June 22, 1941, the Germans invaded Soviet territory, initiating the German-Soviet War and the Soviet alliance with the Allies. On July 31, the Maczkas learned that the Soviets had signed a treaty with the Polish government in London, granting amnesty to all Poles on Soviet territory. Danuta and her family rejoiced that God had answered their prayers.
Although the first discharge papers for Polish citizens were issued on September 5th, the Maczkas didn’t receive their papers until December 27th. With the Soviets at war, the exiles were no longer paid for their work, and food was rationed. Christmas dinner consisted of a few pieces of dried bread and hope that they would soon leave the Soviet Union.
With great joy, Danuta and her family boarded their train to freedom on January 1, 1942. Impatient to join the Polish Army before receiving his papers, her brother Bogus had left with friends in November.
Danuta’s Route Map
After many weeks of riding the rails, on February 22nd the Maczkas arrived in Guzar, Uzbekistan, the location of the 7th Division of the Polish Army. Although only sixteen, Danuta claimed she was eighteen so she could volunteer for the Polish Women’s Auxiliary Service. The army issued her a man’s military uniform many sizes too big, a rifle with no bullets, and a bayonet. But she was proud to be in the Polish Army!
Danuta’s father found Bogus in the hospital recovering from typhoid. He and his friends had faced a very difficult journey. Without government papers, they had not been allowed to obtain rations at the railroad station canteens.
All the Maczkas traveled by train with the Polish Army to Krasnovodsk near the Caspian Sea and by boat to Persia. Many passengers suffered from typhoid and dysentery, and some died on the trip.
The Maczkas arrived in Teheran in early April. A Polish doctor operated on Tadzio’s leg, and Danuta’s father and older brother departed with the army. Danuta was doing a nursing course in the 4th hospital (Red Cross) and contracted typhoid fever. She nearly died.
After a two-and-a-half-month hospital stay, Danuta recovered and joined the transport office. She drove heavy vehicles, delivering supplies to military units in Egypt and later Italy.
During the Italian campaign, she met 2nd Lt. Jerzy Gradosilski and married him after the war. They settled in England and had six children. Danuta’s stepmother and Tadzio remained in Palestine until the war ended. Her father and brother also survived the war.
What: In a surprise move on the seventeenth day of the German invasion of Poland, the Soviet Union invaded from the east. The Nazis and Soviets had secretly agreed the month before to divide the country. Because the Polish military leadership had ordered the Polish forces not to engage the Soviets, the Red Army advanced rapidly with little opposition.
Problem: Stalin and the NKVD (the secret police and forerunner of the KGB) planned to quickly transform the eastern portion of Poland into a communist society and incorporate it into the USSR, but the educated classes stood in the way.
Lvov, the third largest city in Poland, was under German attack when Soviet troops arrived on September 19, 1939. Polish General Langner rejected German demands to surrender and abdicated to the Soviets instead. The negotiated agreement called for the 30,000 Polish troops in the city to surrender at 15:00 hours on September 22. The agreement allowed the soldiers to return home and the officers to cross the border into Romania or Hungary.
The Polish officers assembled at the designated time and laid down their arms, but the Soviets marched them off and transported them around the country for four days without food or water.
At station stops the soldiers scrounged for roots in unharvested gardens, and strangers thrust food at them. They eventually landed in prison camps to the east.
Polish prisoners of war captured by the Red Army after the Soviet invasion of Poland – Wikipedia
Before the war, the Polish government had required every non-exempt university graduate to join the military reserves. University professors, physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers, journalists, pilots, and chaplains made up the pool of reservists mobilized when Germany invaded. Those that weren’t captured in the initial surrender were easily rounded up later and transferred into the custody of the NKVD. This included police officers, border guards, landowners, refugees, and a prince.
From October 1939 through February 1940, the soldiers endured lengthy interrogations and constant political agitation in concentration camps established on the former grounds of orthodox monasteries in the western USSR. If the captives resisted the Soviet government, they were condemned to die as enemies of the state.
In March of 1940, Stalin signed the death warrant for over 20,000 officers, soldiers, and civilians. They were secretly shot and buried in mass graves. One such grave site was in Katyn, Russia. Although the captives were executed and buried in various locations, Katyn Forest became the symbol of the atrocity. In all, the NKVD annihilated almost half of the Polish Officer Corp.
Professor Stanislaw Swianiewicz was condemned to die at Katyn, but a NKVD colonel pulled the professor out of line while he waited to board a bus to the execution site. Swianiewicz had studied in Moscow before the Russian Revolution, was an internationally recognized expert on forced labor in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, and had written books on the Soviet economy. He was sent to various prisons, interrogated, and eventually incarcerated in Siberia.
Another officer, General Wladyslaw Anders, had commanded a cavalry brigade which had engaged in heavy fighting with the Germans. While fleeing to the Hungarian border in late September of 1939, he and his troops fought the Soviets. He was injured, captured, and eventually sent to prison in Moscow, thus avoiding the same fate as his fellow officers.
The NKVD arrested, tortured and killed thousands of other Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, and Belorussians from 1940 to 1941. Estimates vary among historians, but it’s believed that 300,000 to 1.2 million Poles were deported to Northern Russia, Siberia, and Central Asia during this time period.
Many died in transit or in exile.
After the Germans overran Eastern Poland and attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the Soviets formed an alliance with Great Britain and the Polish government-in-exile in London. As part of their agreement, Stalin released all surviving Polish prisoners with the understanding that they would assist in the fight against the Nazis.
General Anders was freed and given command of the Polish Army in the east. It was his responsibility to gather and train the recently released Polish prisoners to form the new army. When inquiries were made regarding the whereabouts of the thousands of missing Polish officers, Stalin claimed that he had lost track of them in Manchuria.
Germany uncovered and exposed the Katyn atrocity to the world in 1943. The Soviets denied responsibility, claiming the Germans had killed the soldiers found in the mass graves. The Polish government-in-exile objected, so Stalin broke off relations with them. Great Britain and the United States chose to accept the Soviet explanation of Germany’s guilt rather than rouse the ire of their ally.
General Anders led his freed Polish troops through Iran and Iraq to Palestine where he successfully organized and trained them to fight the Germans. The Anders Army went on to fight in the Italian Campaign, capturing Monte Cassino in 1944. He and his soldiers engaged in other major battles before the war ended. Anders died in London in 1970.
Professor Swianiewicz was released from Siberia, and left the Soviet Union in 1942. He worked with the Polish government-in-exile in London and informed them of the number of Polish officers that were held in the Soviet Union in the spring of 1940. Later he wrote about the Katyn Massacre and lectured at numerous universities around the world. He died near London in 1997 at the age of 97.
The Soviets also released thousands of previously deported Polish civilians, including many women and children who left the Soviet Union with the Anders Army.
It wasn’t until 1990 that Russia admitted responsibility for the massacre and expressed “profound regret” for its actions.
Sources:
Williamson, David G. Poland Betrayed. Stackpole Books, 2007.
Today is the 80th anniversary of WWII – the day Germany invaded Poland. Six months prior to the invasion, Hitler had encouraged an event which he later came to regret. An event which saved tens of thousands of lives and aided the Allies in their future victory.
What big mistake did Hitler make in 1939 that contributed to his eventual defeat?
The map below illustrates the boundaries of European countries in early 1938 before Hitler began his conquests. Notice that Poland is sandwiched between Germany to the west and the USSR to the east. It was bordered by Czechoslovakia and Rumania in the south.
Before the end of 1938, Germany seized Austria and the mountainous area of western Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland) without opposition. Hitler then devised a way to take possession of the rest of Czechoslovakia and her iron works, armament factories, and huge supplies of modern military equipment. First, he encouraged the Hungarian government to invade the eastern tail of Czechoslovakia and reclaim the territory of Carpathian-Ruthenia lost after World War I.
So, in March of 1939, the Hungarians acted upon Hitler’s suggestion and repossessed their former lands in the Carpathian Mountains. This distraction allowed the Germans to march into Prague and seize the whole western half of Czechoslovakia unopposed. The middle of the divided country became “Slovakia” and a protectorate of Germany. The rest of the world responded with outrage but didn’t move to stop these advances. As seen on the map below, Hungary gained a common border with Poland.
Courtesy of Professor John L Heineman, Boston College
And then almost 6 months later . . . on September 1st . . .
the Germans unleashed the German army, the Wehrmacht, on Poland, giving birth to the blitzkrieg, “lightning war.” In the days leading up to the invasion, the English and French had urged the Polish government not to mobilize its troops so they wouldn’t further enrage Hitler. The Poles had ignored the warnings and secretly mobilized half of their armed forces by August 31st. Unfortunately, the German air force, the Luftwaffe, bombed trains, train stations, and rail lines, preventing many of the remaining troops from reaching their battle stations. Refugees clogged the roads, making it even more difficult for defense forces to engage the enemy.
What the Polish soldiers lacked in numbers and equipment they made up for in bravery and sheer determination. They held the enemy back longer than Hitler had expected. However, armed with the most modern equipment (including the newly acquired arsenal from Czechoslovakia), the German troops attacked from multiple points, broke through weak spots where the Polish Armies were spread out, and encircled hundreds of thousands of troops. The Poles tenaciously fought an army almost twice their size and an air force five times greater.
By September 9th, Hitler was impatient to finish the Polish campaign. The Germans asked the Hungarian government for permission to transport soldiers to Poland on a rail line through Hungary. The Hungarians denied passage. Even though they had signed a trade agreement with Germany, the Hungarians considered Poland their friend. If German troops set foot in Hungary, the government would consider it an act of war.
Nevertheless, the Germans advanced across Poland, and on September 11th Polish Commander-in-Chief Marshal Rydz-Śmigły ordered his remaining troops to retreat to the Romanian border in southeast Poland. He expected new military equipment to arrive from France and England via Romania. He also planned to organize a counterattack from the east when France opened an offensive from the west as they had promised.
Then on September 17th, the unthinkable happened . . .
The Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east and captured Polish troops. Upon hearing the news, Rydz-Śmigły ordered all remaining Polish units to cross the border into Hungary or Romania by any means possible. Although many soldiers, airmen, and civilians escaped into Romania, the Soviets quickly sealed the Polish-Romanian border, leaving Hungary as the only other escape route in the south.
The Hungarians officially opened their border with Poland on September 18th, and tens of thousands of Polish soldiers and civilians entered Hungary safely despite a lack of passports and visas. This allowed many military units and future soldiers to escape to fight another day.
Polish Soldiers. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Both Romania and Hungary followed the Geneva Convention and established refugee camps for civilian refugees and internment camps for soldiers. Refugees who could fend for themselves passed through Hungary and Yugoslavia to Italy and France. Hungarian citizens housed civilians in their homes and transported them to the Yugoslavian border where they found transportation further west. The Hungarian government didn’t stop “refugees” dressed in civilian clothing from leaving the country. In fact, the Hungarians sent civilian clothing to the Polish Embassy in Budapest, and this enabled tens of thousands of soldiers to make their way to France and rejoin the Polish Army and Air Force.
Graves of Polish Soldiers (1939) By Сергей Семёнов User: Stauffenberg via Wikimedia Commons
The Polish Armed Forces joined the Allies and became the fourth largest Allied military force to serve in World War II, and they served with distinction. If the escape route through Hungary had not been available, how many more Poles would have been captured or killed? How much longer would the war in Europe have lasted? How many more civilian lives would have been lost?
Used by Permission from Budby via flikr
Sources:
No Greater Ally (Kenneth K. Koskodan) Poland Betrayed (David G. Wiliamson) Man of Steel and Honour: General Stanislaw Maczek (Evan McGilvray) Hungarian History
With the outbreak of WWII, submarine warfare took on new dimensions. Many heroic battles occurred “under the sea.” The adventures of one particular Polish submarine received international attention and provided inspiration to those at war.
Where? The Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Finland, and the North Sea
Poland’s submarines were commissioned to protect the 90 miles of Polish coastline on the Baltic Sea. The Orzel had only been at sea for about twenty months when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and World War II began. At first, the Polish submarine fleet carried on very low-key operations, observing and reporting German naval activity, but on the seventh day of the war, the fleet was ordered to return to the Central Baltic region.
Poland’s submarines weren’t prepared for battle—they’d missed their May maintenance because of the seriousness of the international situation and had been at sea for nearly twelve months without an overhaul.
At first, the Polish submarine fleet carried on very low-key operations, observing and reporting German naval activity, but on the seventh day of the war, the fleet was ordered to return to the Central Baltic region.
On September 14th, the commanding officer of the Polish submarine division ordered the sub commanders to carry out patrols and thwart enemy shipping for as long as possible. When they could no longer continue, they were to sail to the United Kingdom. If that wasn’t possible, they were to seek internment in Sweden.
When the Polish submarine Wilk attempted the long journey, the Germans attacked with depth charges and dropped thirty-eight bombs from the air. Despite the opposition, the Wilk made it safely to the rendezvous point at Rosyth, Scotland on September 20.
The Orzel’s adventure lasted much longer . . . After patrolling the Baltic Sea for nine days, the Orzel landed at Talinn, capital of Estonia. The captain needed medical treatment for stomach pains. Officially neutral, but sympathetic to Germany, the Estonians insisted upon following international law. They required the Orzel to leave port within twenty-four hours but not until a German freighter already in port departed first (also international law). The German vessel didn’t sail, so the Orzel missed her departure deadline.
The Estonian government then interned the Orzel and her crew. They removed the ship’s charts, the sailors’ small arms, the breach locks on the ship’s guns, and fifteen of twenty torpedoes. They stationed two Estonian guards on the ship to conduct surveillance. But, undetected, the Polish submariners partially cut through the thick ropes mooring the ship, leaving the sub attached to the jetty by a single strand.
On the night of September 17-18, two Polish sailors crawled ashore and cut the lines powering the jetty searchlights. The sailors severed the last rope tying the Orzel to the jetty and overpowered the two Estonian guards, taking them aboard the sub. At the mouth of the harbor, the ship hit a rock, but the crew trimmed the tanks, and the sub floated free.
While the Estonians fired on the sub with rifles and artillery from the small fortified islands outside the city, the Orzel submerged and fled. The sailors steered blindly with no chart for soundings. At dawn, they lay down at the bottom and waited as the hunters passed over them and depth charges burst around them.
At midnight, the Orzel cautiously rose, and the submariners discovered they were at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland. Nothing was in sight, so they remained surfaced and recharged the sub’s batteries.
Meanwhile, the Orzel’s escape from Estonia became an international incident, and Germany accused the Estonians of complicity with Poland. The Soviets, who had invaded Poland on September 17th , patrolled the Gulf of Finland with cruisers and six destroyers, looking for Polish subs. The Orzel’s crew dropped off the Estonian guards on the island of Gotland, Sweden, leaving them with money, cigarettes, and a bottle of whiskey. The Orzel then cruised the Baltic for two weeks, evading the Soviets.
The Orzel in English Port, 1940 – Public Domain Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
With their water supply running low and their cook suffering from an infected finger, the crew of the Orzel decided to proceed to Scotland. On the way, they sighted a flotilla of German destroyers, so they dove to a shallow bed and avoided detection. After dark, they surfaced to periscope depth, ran aground, floated free, and crept along until reaching deeper water, all while the German flotilla continued to patrol.
The Orzel traveled up the narrow waterway between Denmark and Sweden and arrived at the North Sea where she was vulnerable to German attack and “friendly fire” from British patrols. On October 14 at six o’clock in the morning, a British shore naval station picked up a faint transmission from the Orzel, and a few hours later a Royal Navy destroyer escorted the sub into Rosyth.
The arrival of the Orzel shocked the Royal Navy—the British had presumed the ship was lost at sea. The Orzel went on to serve the Allies, sinking the clandestine German troop transport, Rio de Janeiro, in southern Norway in April 1940. During the sub’s seventh patrol in May-June of 1940, the Orzel disappeared and was never heard from again. To this day, her fate remains a mystery, although the Polish government has made repeated attempts to locate her final resting place.
