Narrative of Anna Bandon
Walk with your Heads High, and a Hard Step Ahead
Anna Bandon was one of many brave Poles in the war, disregarding extreme danger and excruciating torture, by way of harbouring Jews and helping them survive during World War II. Thanks to people like her, thousands of Jews are alive today. The punishment for any sort of aid to a Jew was the most severe in Poland. In most other German-occupied European countries, the punishment was merely losing a job, or some jail time. In Poland, for even giving a Jewish child a crust of bread, the punishment was death of your whole family. For harbouring Jews one would face great torture, followed by death soon thereafter, and possibly even having the whole village or house in which one was harbouring the Jews in burnt to the ground. That being said, during World War II Poland saved THE MOST Jewish peoples of all the German-occupied countries in Europe. This is the story of one of the people responsible for the 35,000 saved.
Anna Bandon was 10 when the war started, about the age of a fifth or sixth grader, so as one can imagine, the war changed her forever. As was said by Anna wisely, “Children mature fast during war”. She lived with her mother and grandmother in a beautiful and pleasant neighbourhood called Zoliborz, two steps away from central Warsaw. Her mother was high up in the city’s administration, and therefore could get very useful paperwork for the family and different favors. Her job allowed her to have two passes to enter the ghetto. So every few days, after school, Anna, still dressed in her school uniform and backpack, would come with her mother to visit the ghetto and give a little bread, or money to the Jews living in the ghetto. She remembers carrying bread and marmalade in her backpack and giving it out to small children begging on the streets. She also admits that there were in fact moderately wealthy Jews in the ghetto; however they preferred to stay in their rooms and not be seen. Once rationing was introduced, along with the tickets, Anna’s mother could gain access to extra tickets, which would be used to buy food to give away to others.
The first person Anna thoroughly saved was a certain little girl one year younger than her, Liliana. One day, as Anna went with her mother to the Jewish ghetto like usual, her mother informed her that they would be rescuing a Jew from the ghetto. This meant they would be harbouring her and making sure Germans didn’t catch her, letting her live a free life. Coming around the corner of a building in the ghetto, they saw Liliana. Liliana was a small Jewish girl with black hair and green eyes. Her father was sending her to live with Anna’s family, and cried at the separation, for he thought they would never see each other again. Anna’s mother told her to switch clothes with LIliana, so that she would look less like a Jew and therefore less suspicious. As they nervously walked out, Anna’s mother told them to ,“walk with their heads high, and with a hard step ahead”. With her mother’s advice, they managed to escape the ghetto without arousing suspicion. Anna’s mother acquired Liliana false paperwork, and changed her name to Krysia Wojcik. For the duration of the war, Liliana lived with Anna and her family.
The assimilation of “Krysia” into Anna’s family wasn’t too problematic. The family explained the sudden appearance of this small Jewish-looking girl by saying she was simply a cousin staying with the family. Anna suspects that her neighbors figured it out anyway, but didn’t ask about it or report her anywhere they simply minded their own business. Anna truthfully admits there were both pleasant moments, and moments of fear. Smiling, she remembers sledding down a hill in the neighbourhood with her grandma and Liliana (now Krysia). However, as she too said, there were moments of impending fear, being hunted by the Nazis. Anna told us about one of her neighbors, living a floor below, who they called “The German”, although she was most likely from Poznan descent, which used to be German. Because of her ethnicity, she frequently had German officers, Nazis, and SS soldiers at her apartment, partying. Every now and then a drunken German would come knocking on their door. Anna’s family, of course, didn’t know who it was, and as the usual safety precaution, assumed it was a Nazi coming to search their apartment. As Anna hid Liliana, her grandmother threw on a bathrobe yelling “Moment, moment!” pretending she had just come out of the shower. Anna shoved Liliana into a drawer in the kitchen, covered her with jars, pots and pans, after which her grandmother opened the door, and led the drunken man back down the stairs.
Anna also remembers when the Nazis ran raids on the different houses, looking for Jews and Polish resistance movement activists. Anna’s mother managed to get warning of these raids, and in the time before the raid Anna and Liliana climbed up onto the roof and hid between two tall chimneys, sometimes for hours. These moments weighed heavy on Anna, and she remembers them with sorrow. It certainly had been traumatizing, and because of the war, Anna had transformed into a different person.
During the duration of the war Anna helped a few other Jews. Her family helped a Jewish doctor and gynecologist, Dr.Mikolaj Boreau, by getting him forged papers changing his name to Dr. Mikolaj Borenstein. Anna’s family also supported a Jewish activist with a little money, Rysio Gryberg, and he sometimes stayed with them. At one point they also supplied two sixteen-year-old boys with some food tickets, which they needed larger amounts of to support the various people they harboured. The daily calorie intake as dictated by the Germans was 700 calories, which is more than three times less than today’s healthy intake, 2,300 calories. As you can imagine, you might get sick of brown bread and marmalade, and vanishing amounts of it at that. Anna remembers that the brown bread was made with different seeds and grains, many of them tough and prickly, staying in your mouth for extended periods of time. In these conditions, the end of the war approached.
Nearing the end of the war, the famous Warsaw Uprising happened. During the Warsaw Uprising Anna worked as a nurse, and did some inconspicuous work for the underground army. Her innocent appearance allowed her to saunter past Germans without them paying much notice to her. She bought multiple train tickets at one point by saying she had lost the previous ones. But after the Warsaw Uprising unfortunately failed, she was sent with her family to Germany by train in cattle cars. On the way there, World War II officially ended, and Anna and her family were liberated.
Upon return to Warsaw, Anna saw that her block had been destroyed, and only one wall was left standing. Life was uninteresting from that point on, compared to the constant fear and terror during war. Anna had few stories originating from Poland after the war. Post-war, she had worked in a kiosk, earned money by way of selling “Malakultura”, and served in a hospital as a nurse yet again. Liliana and Anna had become close friends during the war, but a short time after the war ended Liliana was contacted by a Jewish agency which helped Jewish children post-war. She was sent to boarding school where her aunt found her and took her back to Paris with her. Anna had contact with the many people who she saved during the war, but today, she only remains in contact with Liliana, and she has no knowledge of the other people. She last heard of Mikolaj Boreau going to Argentina. When asked about the Warsaw of today, she says that she is not against modernization, but she had a strong tie to the Warsaw of old, with all her experiences. Her story reminds us that in war, there are both heroes and villains, and the path of choice determines the lives of many others.