I got to know Basia Wajszczuk before the war, in primary school in
Krasnystaw. My father, a civil servant, was moved there from Siedlce. In
Krasnystaw, he worked in a tax office. The school was situated in a one
storey building in Zakręcie street; there was a large square in front of
it. I greatly enjoyed going to school and I liked studying. There was
one special person among the teachers – Mr. Niewidziajło. He war the
greatest personality and the person we turned to with all questions.
Rather short, dark-haired, well-built, he had keen black eyes and his
hair was slightly silvery. He did not have to ask for authority, he just
had it. He had high requirements for pupils and he was always just. As a
great patriot and a vigorous activist, he took part in preparing the
society for war. He was the father of six children. One of them – Alicja
Joanna – was my classmate and her father treated her with the same
strict justice as all the other children.
My closest friends were three girls: Joasia Niewidziajło, Teresa
Borkowska and Basia Wajszczuk, whom I sat with in the same bench for
some time. Basia was a simple, modest girl with long brown hair in
plaits, green eyes and peach-coloured skin. Like all children, she was
always dressed in a black school uniform with a black collar. I
sometimes visited her at home, in the main square. The square had four
lines of mostly two-storey houses and a little place in the middle. The
flat where Basia lived was on the first floor and was very large. I
always became shy when going there, realising the high social status of
this family. Basia’s father was a well-known doctor. We would cross a
large, dark kitchen, where Basia’s mother often worked, and enter a
large drawing room, full of light from windows that overlooked the
square. I got to know Basia’s older sister, Danusia, a student of
pharmaceutics, her older brother Antek, a tall, dark-haired young man,
and her younger brother Wojtek, a primary school student, who was a
plump little boy.
On the 1st of September 1939, my Mother was preparing the children
for school. She was ironing my navy-blue uniform with a blue badge. I
was proud as a peacock of this uniform; I was simply filled with pride,
that I shall be a high-school student, for I had completed six classes
of primary school. Suddenly, our house shook, a crash was heard, a cloud
of dust rose outside and broken windowpanes rattled.
We all fled downstairs and tried to hide in a potato patch in the
backyard. As hard as I could, I tried to keep close to my mother. For
me, this guaranteed that nothing bad would happen. A small bomb fell
into a garden near the house, making a large hole in the ground. We
could hear the crash of bombs falling somewhere and the noise of bullets
fired from low flying German aeroplanes.
It was the first day of war. Soon after that, many horse-carts pulled
along the street, carrying light-coloured coffins, made of unprepared
wood, to the cemetery. Some time after that, my mother said that she had
dreamt of counting to five and that the war would last five years. But
my sister, my brother and I, indignant at this, loudly, all at a time,
strongly assured her that within three months at worst the Germans would
be got rid of (this was a common belief then).
The war thrust my two school friends and me in different directions.
In different moments we lost sight of one another. Mr. Niewidziajło was
one of the first people in town to be arrested and sent to death. His
wife and six children were left alone. In the first years of war,
winters were severe. I remember the creaking of trees breaking from the
freezing temperature. There was hardly any coal for the Poles – enough
only to light a stove and cook something. Food was lacking. I will never
forget my joy, lifting my heart to the clouds, when I woke up in the
mornings and realised that there would be bread in the house that day.
One would go to the shop, stand in a long, long queue, and buy red
beetroot marmalade and a dark, sticky, clay-like loaf of bread, with
bits of straw sticking out, everything for coupons. There were only a
few decagrams of this bread. We usually ate it all the same day, though
it was a ration meant by the Germans for a week.
I became ill and my parents thought that my life had come to an end.
I remember that someone (my father?) carried me in his arms to a
hospital room. I heard someone protesting against bringing dying people
to the hospital. I received the sacrament of extreme unction from the
priest. Doctor Wajszczuk visited me, he came several times a day and I
remember it very well. In the night he appeared quietly and looked at me
in silence. At night he would leave his house to visit the severely ill,
even though there was a curfew. The doctor might have had a permit but
there were times when Germans fired at Poles walking in the streets at
night, without checking their permits. I had two diseases at a time:
typhoid fever and spotted fever. A young woman lying in the bed next to
me hid the bread she received under her pillow. She knocked on the wall
unconsciously, calling her family, and after three days, she died
quietly. No one visited me, as this was an isolation ward. Only nuns
looked after us, they were angels with gentle smiles and good hands that
brought relief. They cut my hair and brushed it. There was also the
quiet doctor Wajszczuk, inseparable from the hospital, looking after the
ill with care. I was in a room on a high ground floor and one day I was
astonished to see Basia Wajszczuk’s head trying to reach as high as
possible. I heard her cheerful voice. He came to the hospital for a loaf
of bread that doctors sometimes received. I don’t know how she managed
to climb that high. She was happy and she stretched her hand towards me,
with a bit of dark bread in it. She recommended it as fresh and still
warm. But I could not get up. At that moment, the doctor entered. Basia
heard her father’s strict words. He informed us about how dangerous it
would have been, if I had eaten even the smallest slice of this bread.
One day, when I was already back home, Mrs. Wajszczuk visited us. She
modestly sat down on a chair in the kitchen and asked my mother if she
would let me go with Basia to the country, to Żółkiewka. The Wajszczuk
family owned a house there (or a part of that house), in someone’s farm,
I think. I went there with Antek and Basia. It was a large wooden house,
painted in a dark colour. In front of the house there was a driveway and
a large lawn. Basia washed my clothes and fed me, giving me all the best
pieces of food. When I refused to eat, she declared that, if I would not
eat it, she would throw it away, for she herself could not eat. I had no
toothbrush, so she brushed my teeth with her own brush. We spent only a
little time in Żółkiewka.
A Gestapo officer came to live with the Wajszczuk family, depriving
them of part of their flat. The children, that is Antek, Basia and
Wojtek, went to Warsaw to go to school there. The only high school in
Krasnystaw had been closed and most of the teachers were taken away.
There were more possibilities for studying in Warsaw. My mother
sometimes went to visit her family and passed through Warsaw. The
Wajszczuk brothers and sister invited her, received her in Warsaw, they
greeted her and bid her farewell with tears in their eyes. Mrs.
Wajszczuk and Danusia went to visit the children, from Krasnystaw. Once,
when they returned, they found the doctor dead, lying on the floor near
the door. Maybe he tried to go out and search for help?
In July 1944, Polish and Soviet troops entered Krasnystaw. On the
first of August, the Warsaw Uprising began. The church was open all day.
The priest asked the people to pray for the participants of the uprising.
When Mrs. Wajszczuk went to Warsaw, the house where her children had
lived did not exist any more. Warsaw did not exist any more. It was said
that searched everywhere for her children and she did not find anyone.
She left notes asking for information; she looked for the slightest
traces. It is said that when she got to know their fate, her hair turned
grey within several hours. They all died, fighting for the freedom of
Poland.
I do not remember thanking the doctor for saving my life. I don’t
remember if I thanked Mrs. Wajszczuk or Basia. It all seemed ordinary
and natural to me. It is sad that we often are unable to see the value
of people we meet in the way of our life. Only after many years, from a
different perspective, often – when they are gone, their outline becomes
clear and unmistakable. We finally know what they were like and who they
really were for us. As I got to know people and the world they built, I
realised that in the Wajszczuk family I met good people, my private
saints. I cannot think of them without tears in my eyes. Today there are
two graves I cherish more than others – the grave of my Mother and
Father and the grave of the Wajszczuk family.
Piotrków Trybunalski 4th of August 2004