Narrative of Andrzej Kazmierczak

"Through the Eyes of a Survivor"

Birth - the start of a new life. How can new lives start at a place where so many end? Andrzej Kazmierczak was born at a concentration camp, Stuthoff. During his life people had lied to him, treated him badly, beat him - he lost trust in human beings. “I’m a strong person. But I’ll tell you one thing... I’m scared to die,” he said and laughed. On March 22nd, our group had the amazing opportunity to meet and interview him, a survivor of the Holocaust. He seemed to be a positive, talkative and cheerful person with a great sense of humor and a mile wide smile on his face. He showed us the pictures of his wife and children, seeming to forget about all of the terrible things that he saw. He didn’t seem affected by the war in any way even though the memories will stay in his heart forever.

Andrzej Kazmierczak was born on August 17, 1944 in Stuthoff, a concentration camp near Gdansk in Poland. His mother was a French Catholic prisoner of a Jewish origin with false documents. His father was a French officer, imprisoned in Stuthoff where he was executed by the Nazis. “I don’t remember the concentration camp itself,” Mr. Andrzej said, “but my body does.” When we asked him what he meant, he said that it was a miracle that he survived. When he was just a small baby, he had tuberculosis, black pox, typhus, and other diseases caused by different injections tested on him by the cold hearted SS doctors. Besides being underfed, he was completely innocent, relying on people who could die any moment.

After his birth, Mr. Andrzej was moved around in a laundry basket by imprisoned nurses. Then, in secret agreement with few SS officers, he was driven out of the camp along with the laundry. Germans who hadn’t known anything about his Jewish origin - he didn’t have the characteristics of a Jewish citizen - had considered a child of a French officer high-ranked enough for “Germanization” so, Mr. Andrzej was driven to a Catholic orphanage for boys operated by a group of German nuns. Here they took care of him until 1946 when he then was adopted by a Polish family. He wrote in his autobiography: “When I saw my future father’s hands reached out to me, I clung to him without any hesitation - it was love from first sight.” His foster father was very important to him. He died after a serious illness in 1985; Mr. Andrzej couldn’t accept his death for a long time. When he told us about his death, he stared at a point in the desk and fidgeted nervously in the chair.

His father was a documentary director and editor, so they had a comfortable and rather extravagant life. But was Mr. Andrzej delighted? He wasn’t. In fact, he wrote: “My mom treated me like a toy, she didn’t show me any feelings and she beat me. My dad was busy with work and he didn’t realise that I was being raised by housekeepers.” 

As he grew older, he became more and more interested in his origin. He noticed the differences between himself and his parents and noted odd behaviours; he knew something was wrong. He was 16 when one day he insidiously asked one of his aunts; “So how was it with my adoption?” Thinking he already knew about his adoption, she casually replied that some other aunt knew more about the adoption so, without hesitation, he proceeded in asking more about himself. He couldn’t deal with this information and his situation. While the atmosphere at home became worse and worse every day, he looked for support in girls a lot older than himself. He showed us a photo of himself when he was 17 years old and he looked much older than his chronological age.

Mr. Andrzej wanted to become independent from his parents as quickly as possible and escape from home, so he volunteered to serve in the military but was rejected. Then he started a job while he was still underage. He said, “Since I became working at the age of 17, I haven’t taken any money from my parents. Even if I did, I would always pay them back.” Later his mother made him pay her all of the money it cost her to raise him for the past 15 years. When his father found out about this, he fought with the mother, but Mr. Andrzej still gave the money back.

After various jobs, he went through different studies and schools which led him mainly to film directing and editing, working as a cameraman and sniper most of the times. Then he worked as a craftsman for 7 years. He said that he had many different jobs because, “life forced me to be flexible in my professions.” They ranged from photography to ironwork to engineering techniques. When he was older, he became involved in secret underground operations. In 1979, he was arrested for conspiring against the government and was put in jail for a minimum sentence of 15 years. Luckily, he knew Pope John Paul II well, from several years of friendship together, and with the Pope’s blessing Mr. Andrzej was released.

Out of curiosity we asked, “What was the most terrifying moment you have had to live through?” He rubbed his forehead and after a while of deep thought he said that first of all,  there were many attempts to shoot him; some were successful. Once he was shot in the calf and another time the bullet came millimeters above him. This attempt caused the skin on his head to be razed. Another attempt was when he and his family were driving someplace and several people where shooting at their wooden car. He said, “I can still hear the sound of the wooden parts coming off.” Also, he was a witness to a human being hanged when he was only 4 years old, then another time when he was a few years older. He said, “My dad made a huge mistake and took me on his back to let me see better.”  The last, he says, he witnessed as a little boy when he saw dead bodies of Germans in the forest in Hel (a city in Poland). He wrote in his autobiography: “Memories of times and places are beginning to blur, but even today I still have nightmares including the terrible things I saw as a boy...”

He also wrote about what has happened to his parents in Mr. Andrzej’s adulthood. On the deathbed of his father, Mr. Andrzej said to him, “Dad, you were, are and will be my father, but our blood type says that you aren’t my biological dad. Is it true that I was born in Stuthoff?” His father confirmed and added that he didn’t remember Mr. Andrzej’s surname and didn’t want to talk about the past anymore. The following day he passed away. Mr. Andrzej took his father’s death rather seriously and couldn’t accept it for a long time. Two years after his father died, his mother died. He was desperate to find his biological parents. 

It took him a lot of time to find his biological mother. He came back to Stuthoff and met a lot of survivors and witnesses who helped him find her, too. Thanks to a lot of people and the  Polish Red Cross, he found out that she got out from the concentration camp alive and lived in France for 15 years after the war. She later died at the age of 75 before Mr. Andrzej actually found her, so they never got the chance to meet again. He wrote: “I never had the chance to see her and ask: ‘Mom, what is my name?’” He is still searching for his biological father. 

Mr. Andrzej had three wives: the first one with which he was married for 11 years and had a baby boy, born in 1972, who is now serving in the army; the second one with which he was married for a few months and had no children - he referred to this marriage as a “mistake”; the third one he is still married to and had a baby girl who is just finishing high school. Mr. Andrzej told us a story that his life was read from the palm of his hand twice by a mysterious gypsy when he was a teenager and, surprisingly, all of what he heard turned out to be correct.

Even though his childhood was very dramatic and difficult, Mr. Andrzej somehow made it through because he was tough and never gave up. He knew he has something to live for: his heritage. He now joins a lot of societies such as “The Children of The Holocaust” which help the survivors of the Holocaust deal with their pasts. He lives a great, peaceful life with a wonderful family. He wrote: “I have my own family, who I try to protect from the worse. And I’m left with a feeling that memories and friends pass like through a mist, taking a piece of my heart along.” 

Nadia