Narrative - A Look into the Past

On March 23rd, 2010 ASW’s eighth grade class interviewed several World War II and Holocaust survivors. That day was Living History Day. The meaning of this day is to educate ourselves about World War II by interviewing a survivor so that history won't repeat itself in the future. The survivor we interviewed was Tomasz Prot. Sitting down in his chair, and thinking deeply about his words, Mr. Prot tells that unlike the horrific stories of thousands of Jews during World War II, his story wasn't as tragic as some of the Jewish stories. However, we thought that his experiences are unique and inspiring. As he continued to reveal more about his childhood during the war, he said, "You never know what a war is like unless you have experienced it." This is his story...

            In September, 1930, Tomasz Prot was born to a Jewish Polish family in Warsaw, Poland. Even though he had Jewish roots, his family previously converted to Catholicism due to anti-Semitism. When Mr. Prot was around 9 years of age, World War II broke out. Tomasz Prot’s father left Poland to work in other countries. It was only after the war that Prot learnt about his father’s experience. The rest of the Prot family decided to leave Warsaw to avoid being placed in the existing ghetto. Tomasz Prot went into hiding along with his mother and sister in Laski, a village in the outskirts of Warsaw. There his mother had contacts, including friends in a convent which took care of blind people (and still exists).

            After one-and-a-half years of hiding in the convent, the remaining Prot family has realized that they were threatening the safety of the people around them. That is when the Prot family decided to split in different directions. Tomasz Prot’s mother sent him to Żoliborz. There he lived with his mother’s friend and their two older children. He spent 3 months there. He said it felt like he was hiding away from the forces instead of just living in the apartment. Mr. Prot was prohibited from leaving the apartment or coming up to the windows. His caretaker knew it was a huge risk keeping Mr. Prot in her house but felt it was her responsibility to do this. While telling this part of his story, Mr. Prot said, “I respect her greatly for this.”

            Later on, Tomasz Prot was sent to an all-boys boarding home. It was run by the only charitable organization in Poland at the time which was called Rada Główna Opiekuńcza (RGO). The boarding house was run by a woman who was a scout for Armia Krajowa (AK). Her way of running the house was very militant,, making the school very nationalistic and religious. While his friends went to school outside of the boarding house, Mr. Prot would stay in the boarding school as his very Jewish features could pose danger for the people around him. Instead, Tomasz Prot would stay and read books or participate in lessons which were forbidden at the time such as Polish history. But, he didn’t attend only one boarding house. On the contrary, he frequently moved from one boarding house to another. Some of them were in places such as Żoliborz and Kraków.

            When the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising started in mid-spring, 1943, Tomasz Prot was absent because he wasn’t in Warsaw at the time. However next year, Mr. Prot took part in the Warsaw Uprising. Being part of Szare Szeregi, he was willing to fight for the freedom of his home. Unfortunately, the Polish Underground rejected him, because he was a Jew and could be easily recognized as one which posed a threat to the fighters around him. Instead, while many of his friends went to fight for their country, Prot was sent to work in a kitchen. The kitchen was run by the same organization that ran one of his boarding schools, RGO. The kitchen was supposed to provide food for the soldiers and fighters combating against the Nazis. Grievously, the kitchen he was working in didn’t have the capability of helping the Polish Underground a lot because of its location. The RGO kitchen resided right between the Polish side and the Nazi side of the city making access to it very difficult. Looking back on the Warsaw Uprising, Tomasz Prot states that it was “a huge mistake” and it should have never happened. This event turned over 85% of the city of Warsaw into rubble, because the Uprising “destroyed and burnt down the city at the same time”.

            After the end of the Warsaw Uprising, Mr. Prot was sent to a boarding school in Kraków. It was in that city where he was reunited with his mother and sister. Together, they decided to move to another Polish city, Wrocław, where all three of them waited for the Soviets to come and defeat the Nazi power. He found out that after the family separated to go in hiding, Tomasz Prot’s sister was also in hiding. She managed to graduate from her school, and after that she went to nursing school. With her nursing skills, she joined the Polish Underground working as a nurse.

When the war ended, Tomasz Prot’s father returned to Poland. He told about how he travelled to Hungary, France, and the UK. After leaving Hungary, he worked in a factory, belonging to the Curie family, as a chemist. When France surrendered to the Hitler and his army, Prot’s father escaped to the United Kingdom where he worked to Edinburgh, Scotland and London, England. He first got a job in an ammunition factory. Afterwards, he became a college professor teaching chemistry. During his stay in the United Kingdom, Prot’s father managed to earn his PhD in English. Following his return to Poland, Tomasz Prot’s dad continued to live with his family until his death in 1957.

Even though Tomasz Prot was overjoyed about reuniting with his family, there was also some disastrous news. The majority of his family from his mother’s side had died during the war. They all died in different ways: some were shot; some perished in ghettos; some died in concentration/extermination camps. However, there was a very curious case which was the death of his uncle. It happened when one night, his uncle went out to the streets for a walk but never came back; no one knows to this day what happened to him, but Prot’s family believed that he was shot.

Even though the worst was already behind him, Tomasz Prot had to face another anti-Semitic act which was part of 1968 Polish political crisis, a conflict about politics, races, student protests, and such. Our interviewee described the anti-Semitic action as very brutal and upsetting because all of the surviving Jews in Poland thought that anti-Semitism was a thing of the past. All of the anti-Semitism in Poland was considered so horrible that many Jews immigrated to different countries. Tomasz Prot’s sister is an example of someone who emigrated from Poland. It wasn’t because she felt forced just like the majority of the Jews in Poland but because it annoyed and upset her seeing this absurdity. She moved to Seattle, Washington in the United States where she now lives with her husband and children.

Unlike his sister, Mr. Prot didn’t want to leave Poland due to the anti-Semitic protests because he already had a wife and daughter here in Poland. As the anti-Semitic action continued to brand him as simply a Jew, Tomasz Prot thought to himself that if everyone wants him to be a Jew then he will be a Jew. Now whenever people ask him about his origins, Prot clearly states that he is both a Pole and a Jew.

Today, Tomasz Prot is 79 years old, retired, the vice-president of an organization called “Children of the Holocaust”, and has a family. He leads a content life trying to put the tragic war memories behind him. But whenever he walks on the familiar Polish streets, the same ones where many, many people have fought and died for their country, he still remembers when he walked on them as a little boy, fearing death at all time.