Eyewitness Testimony Janina Przybysz

Experience report of the former Polish forced laborer Janina Przybysz, The hardest thing is to remember past years that one lived through like a terrible black night. After the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, I was taken with my husband and my son to the forced labor camp in the town of Kahla in Germany. How I got there is quickly told. After the surrender of the uprising, we were assigned to the collection point Ursus near Warsaw. From there we were taken to Szczakowa near Czestochowa and further to Erfurt. From Erfurt, we were transferred at the beginning of November to the forced labor camp near Kahla. The living conditions in this camp were terrible. We were housed in various barracks that lacked the simplest hygienic facilities. One room housed 30 people, women and men. There was a lack of water and stoves to heat the rooms, a lack of fuel, of panes in the barrack windows, of straw sacks and blankets on the bunks. There were no tables or benches in the rooms. The inmates were humiliated by the supervisory staff in every conceivable way as well as through insulting remarks. Neither age nor gender was taken into account. In this camp, a person meant nothing; they were a zero. At 4 a.m. we got up for roll call to receive half a liter of bitter coffee and a piece of bread and then at 6 a.m. to go to work in a column. At first, I worked for about a month unloading wagons with bricks and gravel at the Kobeke company. In December, I was transferred to sorting potatoes in the warehouses of the towns Kahla and Orlamünde. Under these conditions, I covered about 16 km daily to work and back to the camp, in addition to 12 hours of work and 2 hours of morning roll call. I saw how one of my fellow inmates was terribly beaten by the German who supervised us because she took some potatoes for her sick son, who due to his illness received only half a food ration daily. We had to carry the woman on a stretcher back to the camp because she could no longer walk. We were also denounced by Germans. For example, one of the Germans supervising us allowed us to take some potatoes for the work done. After we left, he informed the police that we had stolen the potatoes. At the police station, after a personal search in a manner degrading to our dignity as women and human beings, we were insulted. Some of us who had more potatoes than others were slapped in the face. As we left, one of the policemen told us that if it happened again, we would be shot. Exhausted by the work and lack of nutrition, we nevertheless did not lose hope that the moment of liberation was not far off. Despite this joy and visible signs of increasing nervousness of the Germans, the person broke down. I remember how my husband was beaten by supervisory Germans when he was driving a locomotive at the Kobeke company. The reason was the negligence of a supervisory German who had ordered him to take too large a load on the small wagon and drive it downhill onto a side track, which led to the derailment of the train and the collapse of a small bridge. I thought my husband would not return to the camp. I do not know how it happened that it remained only with this severe beating, after which he had to lie sick in the hospital for a week. I also know of another case that shows how Poles were treated in the camp. One of our acquaintances, who worked digging a tunnel, accidentally broke a light bulb with his shovel. This was observed by the supervisory German. The man who broke the light bulb was beaten and then punished by being put in a bunker. When this man returned to the camp after 10 days, he was physically and mentally broken. According to his report, during the entire time in the bunker he stood in water and received only a little hot coffee and some bread as food. He slept standing, leaning against the damp bunker wall. I also know of a case of suicide due to mental breakdown. I no longer remember the name of the person who committed suicide. While I write all this, my husband sits next to me and remembers many details from that time. He tells me, for example, that he himself witnessed how a German named Ebel or Abel (he does not remember exactly), who was a worker at the Kobeke company, led three Italians into a barrack on the company premises and beat them with a wooden shovel handle. After a few minutes, the Italians came out terribly bloodied. My husband witnessed many similar cases involving this German. Special attention deserves the murder of an Italian, carried out at the workplace by a pistol shot to the back of the head, solely because he was walking too slowly. This incident occurred on the premises of the Kobeke company and was carried out by the political leader in broad daylight in front of many people. Every day when leaving work, I saw dozens of dead carried on stretchers into the camp. Only foreigners lived there. Most often Italians, Slovaks, and Poles from the Kielce area died. The physically and mentally broken people were called "Muselmänner" (Muslims). I saw many who had become indifferent to the world around them and only wished to be able to eat their fill once in their life.My husband and my son also went through such a crisis, and only by chance was I able to prevent this condition in myself. In 1945, I was assigned to work in the camp kitchen. Through this work, I was able to take home a few leftovers or some potatoes and thus feed my family. In March 1945, for reasons unknown to me, I was sent by SS men to the camp behind the river, the so-called "finishing station." Along with me, several other Polish women were also sent to this camp. Our barrack was isolated by wire from the other barracks, probably an Italian camp. We were not allowed to leave the camp, and any contact with others was forbidden. Everyone living in this camp received only half a daily food ration. There was a bucket in the tree where we relieved ourselves. It was emptied once a day. When I was assigned to this barrack, I found no one there; the bunks were without straw sacks and blankets. I escaped from this camp one week before the evacuation. The other women fled the following day. Until the evacuation, I hid in the camp, and the other escapees also hid. My son and my husband shared their food ration cards with me. I have so far completely forgotten to mention an important circumstance. Very often, we were woken at night by the German supervisors. They then conducted searches in the barracks for food, fuel, and leaflets in German that had been found on the REIMAHG grounds. During these searches, they also checked if anyone showed swelling or if there had been any deaths. During such visits, no one was spared from beatings and insults. Also noteworthy are the harassments that the political leaders in the river area inflicted on the foreign workers. We returned from work to the camp exhausted, tired, and hungry. The path leading to the camp ran along the foot of a hill. Therefore, everyone sought the shorter and more comfortable way to get to the camp faster and rest. One could shorten the path by using a footbridge over the nearby river that flowed right past the camp. Right under this footbridge, the political leaders hid and shot at the passing foreign workers. They shot with carbines and very deliberately. This trick was not used daily, which makes the sadism of the executioners particularly clear. After this interruption, I return to what I experienced during the evacuation. When the evacuation began, I noticed that our group was surrounded by SS men with dogs. For me and all the other people living in this camp, the evacuation was the greatest and most terrible experience. Amid the shouting of the SS, the moaning of beaten people, and barking dogs, we were divided into groups of 200-300 people and driven toward Orlamünde. This happened on April 9 at 10 p.m. Hellish scenes took place. Dogs jumped on those who fell out of line. SS men beat those who lagged behind with carbines. About 4 km behind Orlamünde, they began shooting at those who lagged behind. Only toward morning, when the SS men, as we noticed, were no longer present and the Volkssturm led us, were we allowed to rest. During the day, we reached the village of Knau. Here I experienced terrible moments. My husband was very weak and could not go on. He simply fell onto the street and lost consciousness. The German who supervised us raised his carbine and wanted to shoot my husband. However, the (German) civilian population did not allow this murder to happen. In this village, we were held back and housed in a barrack of former Soviet prisoners of war. Here we were also liberated on April 13 by the American army. In the second half of April, we returned to the camp to take care of personnel matters. On the way back, we found many graves by the road behind Orlamünde. My husband opened one of the graves with his hands to see who was buried there. We found a man in civilian clothes and wooden clogs with a gunshot wound to the back. This man was probably a member of our evacuation transport. We could not determine the name because we found no papers on him. It can be concluded from this that many of these graves contained people from the REIMAHG camp. When I analyze life in the REIMAHG camp, I come to the conclusion that there was no organized resistance movement among the foreign workers.