Narrative

Marian Tyrowicz: Living a Lie

On March 23rd 2010, the eighth graders of the American School of Warsaw (ASW)  were lucky enough to interview people who survived the Holocaust, each with a story of their own. Our group was lucky enough to interview an amazing man, named Pan Marian Tyrowicz. He told us about his struggles and challenges surviving World War II as a young child, until his early adulthood. The events of the war gave Marian a strong opinion of war: “War is the most horrible and dirty thing that exists on Earth". The most challenging and devastating times of his life were during this period of dreadfulness and pain. His life was immensely impacted by the war and affected his life negatively. Throughout the interview pan Marian continuously told us that there are no benefits from war; even if something decent may happen, more damage has been done. This is the rest of his story.

Pan Marian Tyrowicz was born in 1928, and grew up in Lwów, a city which is now located in Ukraine. Although he lived only a small portion of life during World War II, he described this time as the most devastating part of his life. When the war started, it didn’t have many effects on him or his family. Although the family was Jewish, they celebrated Polish traditions.They knew what was going on in the rest of the world, but they remained in their house, together.

Two years into the war, the Jews of Lwów were forced into a small piece of land which was called the Lwów ghetto, also known as the Lemburg ghetto. Lwów had the third largest Jewish population in Poland before the war, and they were forced in to land about one tenth of the size of Lwów city.The ghetto conditions were terrible, and people were starving. Marian explains his life in the ghetto as if the Jews were "Hundreds of rats being trapped in a small cage" because of the poor conditions. An advantage that Marian and his family had was that his parents worked outside the ghetto, meaning that the family could occasionally evade the walls enclosing the ghetto, enabling them to access much better food and more freedom than that inside the ghetto. The process of going outside the ghetto was extremely challenging; the Jews went to the gate at 3 A.M and waited until 7 A.M to actually be let out because every Jew had to be counted, and if anyone was missing during the counting process, the time of this process would increase.

Because Marian's parents worked outside, they managed to get illegal false documents for each family member so they then had the potential to move away from the ghetto. First his older brother moved away and went to Warsaw by train. The rest of the family was to meet him there. Marian was the next to get the train to Warsaw where he met his brother who would work to earn money.

At first, the two brothers had nowhere to live and so their only option was to use the forest as a habitat. It was the middle of June so the weather was fortunately bearable. In the forest, a German lady spotted the two brothers. Marian and his brother quickly ran away and it turned out that two minutes later, the lady had alerted the Nazis and they were searching the forest. He says the two minutes in between the time they escaped and the time in which the Nazis came actually saved his life. The brothers rented out an apartment afterwards, where they lived for quite a while. It was unsafe to leave the apartment for the risk of being found and shot.

During his life in Warsaw, Marian saw two Nazis beat up a Jewish-Pole because he had walked past the officers and saluted them. It angered the Nazis to think that this man was trying to act friendly to them especially because he was of less importance. Another Jewish-Pole came along soon and did not salute the officer to try and avoid being beaten. The Nazis beat him up anyway because he did not salute. This makes us understand that the Jewish did not know how to act and that the Germans beat people for their enjoyment which upset Marian when he saw the violence. He said that the Germans always thought that they were the supreme race. It is referred to as 'Herrenfolk'.

During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, Marian did not fight or play a major role, but he helped with small jobs such as deliveries. He explained his fear for fighting and he was scared to play a major role in the Uprising. On January 13 1945, German soldiers selected strong men Jewish or not and Marian was one of them. This group of people was sent to a labor camp because the Soviets were fighting close to Warsaw, and the Germans tried to avoid the Liberation of Warsaw. Eventually the Jews, as well as Marian, were rescued by the Soviet Army. When liberated, Marian says he met a Polish soldier and being able to see him made him feel safe at last.

Marian Tyrowicz’s life was greatly affected by the war in many negative ways. Basically, he was all alone in a world where nothing was joyful anymore. All of his close family members were dead and he had nowhere to turn  when in need as his brother died. To make matters worse he was no longer staying in Lwow but in Warsaw, a city that he was unfamiliar with in many ways. After the war concluded, Marian was in his early adulthood and had only been through three years in school. He felt quite primitive having a young mind and wanted to continue his education.

During the post war time Marian visited Lwow, where he used to live and spent his childhood (which  is now part of Ukraine). Unfortunately, he was unable to get into the town because the trains were no longer going that far. A while after the war had ended, he did manage to go back but was on a tour around the city rather than actually being able to recall any memories.

Marian Tyrowicz is now 82 years old. After the war, he was determined to finish his education, and managed to do so until he got his Master's degree. He became involved in social politics and then became an an economist, which in our opinion is a great achievement for someone who finished his education late. He was married 60 years ago, and had one child and two grandchildren. He worked for 50 years after the war, but is now retired. He believes that there is absolutely no good in war, despite people saying that it helped the development of technology and other items. His thoughts about looking for good in war; "...looking for something positive, during something like war, is impossible."

Marian had points during the Holocaust in which he thought he would give up, and he said that the true heroes were the ones who believed in surviving the whole of the war. He made a point that responsibility is very important and everyone is responsible for their own actions, and also what may happen to others. He says that people can't imagine how hard his life during the war actually was, and he didn't understand how people could be treated so badly. Marian told us that he enjoyed seeing the four of us because we were all from different nations and were all friends and could sit together; however in the War there was so much discrimination that made him very sensitive towards the separation of people because it reminds him of how devastating his life was and for the people around him during the war.

After all this, Pan Tyrowicz is branded with memories that he will not be able to delete from his mind. Those years were the worst of his childhood if not his whole life. We, the eighth graders of ASW, are very proud to have interviewed a survivor of the war who had an amazing story to tell.