Narrative of  Danuta Wochnik-Dyjas

After the war can we meet again?

"People never forget about Poland, never forget about culture... or about freedom.” These are the words of Danuta Wochnik-Dyjas, an everyday person, who fought for her country, who was ready to die for it, someone who was ready to give up everything for freedom.  Mrs. Dyjas was part of the Warsaw Uprising, an uprising where thousands were killed: Fathers and sisters, mothers and brothers, sons and daughters, She had survived this ordeal to tell this tale another day, but not without a cost.

Danuta Wochnik-Dyjas starts her story with telling the history of Poland. To understand the present you must study and understand the past. About 1000 years ago Poland was constantly in turmoil, at some point was even the largest kingdom in Europe, but all pleasant things must end and the grand kingdom was split in 3 parts. Even under occupation, when Poland was wiped out of the European map, Polish people preserved their culture, never forgetting about their home country, and with that little spark of defiance also preserved some of their freedom. With the taste of freedom there were numerous uprisings. “Whenever Poland was occupied there were uprisings,” Dyjas said in our interview... Soon enough WWI came along and Poland was freed from foreign captivity. Poland had its freedom again! The entire country was jubilant; to be free was everything the country was hoping, fighting and dreaming for, even though most people never knew the real meaning of the word “Freedom” until that moment. The freedom continued for 20 years; Poland was rebuilt to its former glory, culture flourished... the country was reborn. But again, all pleasant things must end; in the early fall of 1939 Poland was invaded by Germany closely followed by Russia, starting the Second World War.

Danuta Wochnik-Dyjas was born in 1930 in Warsaw; she had a joyous childhood, loved to laugh and go on adventures throughout the city. Believing that Warsaw was her one and only home, she didn’t leave Poland much. 9 years later in 1939, just a few weeks after the Germans attacked the western front of Poland she was helping her mother who took care of wounded soldiers who fought for their country in the western front. There she saw her first death. “When the soldiers had horrible wounds, when they knew they would not live they gave us letters for their mothers and wives.......It was hard not to show emotions, not to cry because showing emotions was forbidden,” recalled Dyjas. These events were traumatizing for a 9 year old girl, who had seen people suffer and die in a hospital. This effort was, so to speak, almost inhuman to comfort these dying men, and in some horrible situations even use Euthanasia, to stop their pain. Little did she know that there were a lot more horrors in store for her later in the war.

“When Warsaw was captured all of Poland was captured... It was the last line of defence,” explained Dyjas. In 1939, after a few weeks of fighting, the “heart” (Warsaw) of Poland was captured. Almost immediately after Poland was captured a resistance started. After only 20 years of freedom, Poland had gotten only a small a taste of what it was like to be free; now after being captured yet again the nation was hungering for more of the sweet freedom they had just barely tasted. The Germans had banned all schools theatres, radio stations, and all public buildings with significance to the Polish people; any sort of media was controlled which caused some resistance to spring up almost immediately. Soon enough Polish culture prevailed again as underground schools sprung up. People were educated the Polish language and Polish history, culture had prevailed under captivity again. Dyjas attended a so-called underground school; she could recall whenever someone who was not invited came through the door, the students would take their bags and cover their Polish textbooks with German ones. She was in a room with 50 other students, some of whom would become her close friends. But soon enough Germany tightened its grip on the citizens of Warsaw and Dyjas was feeling a bit rebellious.

“My friends and I heard of underground sabotage, the resistance blowing up a bridge or a Nazi factory. These acts of resistance were great acts of sabotage. This was real sabotage,”  Dyjas observed. She heard stories of these amazing underground resistance movements and, compelled by these actions, she and her friends decided to do some minor sabotage. She and her friends decided to do things in the middle of the night, hoping to spark some patriotic support from other Polish people. She and her friends wrote slogans like, “Hitler Kaput” or drew a “P” with an anchor at the bottom to represent a free Poland. However drawing slogans on Nazi posters would not free Poland. They would have to be more extreme if they wanted to make an impact!

Hearing of some of their acts of resistance the AK army (Armia Krajowa), or the home army, contacted Dyjas and four of her friends to join the girl scouts. The girl scouts organized groups of girls who delivered messages between other groups of the AK army. They were in constant danger of being caught and executed. As time went on Dyjas delivered messages and things in the city became increasingly worse. When people went missing in the night they were presumed dead, or their family would look at a list of people listed for public execution. These atrocities only proved that the AK army had a reason to fight, a reason to free Poland from the clutch of the Nazis. But later on, when the tide started to turn for Germany her scout squad was called to a political prison. The date was July 27, 1944. The squad was told that the uprising was going to start. They were to wait until a signal was sent and then they were to free the prisoners so they could help the uprising. The squad waited for hours in the woods near the prison, but the signal never came. Soon enough a member of the resistance told them the uprising was called off. Dyjas said that they called the uprising off because, “they knew that Stalin would not help us”.

After days, weeks, and even months of waiting for the day Polish people had anticipated since the cancellation first uprising, the day had finally come: The day that would decide it all, the day the AK army would rise up from German occupation. That date was August 1, 1944 and Uprising was just about to begin. Dyjas recalls that she was overjoyed; people could hang Polish flags from balconies and be proud of their country again. Most of the uprising failed, many AK army members were killed or wounded but they had managed to free central Warsaw and some other districts. There were some other problems that were happening around. She had found out that a district “Ochota” was completely cut off from the Resistance; the AK army had no way to communicate with the district. Even worse one of her friend’s mothers was in the district. Soon after the start of the Uprising Dyjas had gotten a disease, Gangrene, on her face. She was in danger of dying.

Due to the fact that there was no such thing as antibiotics in that time Dyjas visited a doctor to help her. The doctor gave her some medicine that made her temperature rise over 42 degrees Celsius. This sickness continued for 2 weeks. She had a fever and was barely able to move when she finally got out of the makeshift hospital. She was shocked at what she had found. The Uprising had taken a turn for the worse, there were thousands of people dead or missing, barely anybody had supplies and, worst of all, Dyjas could not make contact with the Uprising.

After desperately searching she had found her scout leader and the leader told Dyjas horrifying news. Within the first hours of the Uprising her best friend had been killed and another friend’s leg was blown off, with the consequence of her death. She later found out that a German sniper had killed her friend after her friend’s body was recovered. He had been aiming down the street and killed her. She also found out the fate of her other two friends who were also in her scout group and had helped her when she was sick and recovering, but then after a while stopped. The first one was wounded in the chest while the other wanted to find out whether her mother was alive or not, so she went with the squad leader to the cut off district Ochota. Her squad member insisted on going with the squad leader to find her mother who went into Ochota and after a while he obliged. When Dyjas wanted to Help the squad leader evacuate the wounded form Ochota He Replied, “You are not strong enough to carry the wounded”. Dyjas also reflects that when she joined the Girl Scouts she wanted to be transferred to the AK army but she was considered too small and weak.

On Sept. 8 1944 Dyjas found out that her brother had been killed. His squad had been storming a cinema but the Germans out numbered them. While they were fighting he was injured and with no time to bring him back, his squad abandoned him. He then started to call out for help, a desperate plea for life. Unfortunately this was heard by the Germans and they killed him. A few days later she witnessed the Americans dropping supplies into the city. She said that the Polish soldiers were overjoyed and that this boosted morale. However she also added that over 90% of the supplies landed in the German hands. Later she was transferred to a workshop that made guns and explosives. She made Molotov cocktails, grenades, and guns. She recalls that the workers took unexploded shells or “duds” and used the gunpowder to make grenades. Later, near the end of the Uprising, she says that she delivered food to Old Town, where something along the lines of a last stand was taking place. She said, “In one house there were German soldiers, in another there were Polish soldiers. “Everywhere there was fighting”. She said that she had to go in a zigzag pattern and go over mountains of rubble and craters to deliver food. Almost when the Uprising ended her squad leader took her aside, looked deeply into her eyes and said to her, “Maybe after the war we can meet again.”                 Dyjas was a survivor, a liberator and a hero. She had fought for her country to make a life for her children and all her children that came after. She said, “I never regretted anything, everything was done with my free will”. She had believed in her country because she was a part of it, and her country was a part of her. This was what she wanted to defend, a piece of everybody was in Poland and a piece of Poland was in everybody. Even though the Uprising failed and thousands were killed, the Uprising had left behind something just asimportant- a legacy.important- a legacy.