Narrative

World War II in Jadwiga Mączyńska Eyes

Ten year old Jadwiga  Mączyńska lived in Podlasie close to Siedlce when World War II began in 1939. In such a young age, Jadwiga was living in a condition when one of the largest genocides were happening in Poland. The living conditions were horrible for such a young girl to live in because being able to hear the sounds of gunshots, and seeing death of many people was a complete shock for her. This is a story of a young girl who lived in hard conditions and suffered because of many shortages and her dangerous surroundings of her environment.

There was no way to stop the war. At the age of 10, Jadwiga Maczynska had to face challenges of the weather and starvation because many people had a lack of money and weren’t able to have jobs. The foods produced from the Polish farmers were half taken away from the Germans, leaving the families with almost a piece of bread every day. From the lack of food, some people were doing everything to get food such as going to the countryside, taking bribes, and also they sometimes sold their properties in order to get food. If the Germans caught you from smuggling food they would’ve automatically killed you, or have sent you to a concentration camp. As much as food was scarce, clothing’s were scarce as well which made her end up in living in such a cold weather without any heat. Sometimes people would sacrifice their furniture’s to make heat and make themselves warm.

She started her story talking about how hard it was to live during these times that people were starving, there it was freezing outside, people had no jobs. Ms. Mączyńska told us that half of everything that was produced by the farmers was taken away by the Germans. People were selling as much as they could just to get food. They were doing everything to get food such as going to the countryside and taking bribes. If Germans caught you and saw that you were smuggling food they would’ve automatically killed you. Ms. Jadwiga told us that people were bribing the Nazis; she opened her jacket imitating how Poles concealed meat inside, saying in German “Gut, gut.” The kind woman mentioned also that Nazis didn’t allow almost anything, and if they felt the need to kill they would have killed. The brave lady said that the Jews and Gypsies were treated even worse. Ms. Jadwiga took a deep breath and seemed to look back at her past. If a Polish person was found helping a Jew or a Gypsy they would have been killed; they were considered lucky if they had been taken to a concentration camp.

Ms. Mączyńska told us that when the Nazis invade Soviet Russia in 1941 the Russian army was not prepared they were fleeing. The Nazis created camps for the Russian prisoners, they received nothing to eat from the Nazis, they were desperate for food they were even eating grass. These captured knew that they were going to die, so they started to cut the barbed wires so that they could get out. The woman told us that people were generous enough to help the prisoners. Nazis were checking houses and if in somebody’s house there would be a POW it would be “Kula w łeb.” (which means in Polish a shot in the head). Jadwiga Mączyńska stopped her story and got a little bit tear eyed, remembering how cruel the Nazis really were.

The next topic Ms. Jadwiga took up was school. She knew that this would be something interested to us. Her story about school began with her saying that school was only until elementary school. However teaching geography, history or literature was banned. The Poles organised secret learning, where students took “matura” (IB) This education happened in the homes of people who were trustworthy. Always before people taught literature, geography and history there was one person who would stand outside and would look out for Nazi officers. If a Nazi was approaching everybody would hide everything and pretend that they were just pretending to be having a “party”. This inspiring lady recalls that there were moments when they were able to read the trilogy “Ogniem i mieczem” for the whole day. They were silently singing their national anthem. Ms. Mączyńska says that the teachers who were illegally teaching were truly amazing; she owes a lot to them.  Everything that she is saying Ms. Jadwiga is deeply suffering. These distant memories are something that is hard to go back to.

Ms. Mączyńska finished her topic of school and started explaining “Szare Szeregi”, which was boy scouts for teenagers which did things to help Poles but to annoy and disturb the Nazis. She told us that when the Nazis found out what these boy scouts were doing they would be taking for example ten of them, they would line them up against the wall, and then the Nazis would carelessly execute them. After Ms.Jadwiga finished talking about this incident we asked her how did she contribute in helping these boy scouts?  The woman told us that since she was very young she was in charge of taking illegal documents from one destination to another. She mentioned also that she walked on foot and if somebody found her with these papers she would’ve been killed. We also asked the lady if she was scared when she was taking these documents. Her eyes lit up and the woman said that she was not scared at all she was excited and proud that she could do something to help, she was unaware of the consequences she could’ve had.

This kind woman started remembering that she had an older friend that studied medicine. Something that she slightly recalled was how he died but then she realized that someone had told her that he was in a situation in Siedlice where he was waiting for a train, and he noticed some Russian soldiers bothering a Polish girl, so her friend stood in the girl’s defence and he got shot by one of the soldiers. Nazis started arresting intelligence, strange people and people that they couldn’t trust. Ms. Jadwiga Mączyńska also had a family member who was a priest, a missionary and had tuberculosis. She says that when he went to the US the doctors didn’t believe that he would survive. From the US he flew to Japan where he was working with Japanese teenagers. After that he decided to come back to Poland the first time after he left to the US.

Ms.Jadwiga Mączyńska told us that Poles didn’t care if people were Russians or Germans they every one of them was a person and they deserved to be treated with respect even if they didn’t get treated with respect in return. The lady answered our question of how did an everyday look like for her. She told us that she would wake up, eat anything that her mother would get for breakfast, go to school, at school they would read books and learn literature, after school she would eat again whatever was available, then she would do homework which was a priority, and after homework was finished Ms. Jadwiga would go and play with her friends.

The woman told us that during the winter everything was hard to get. They had no shoes, the clothing they had such as stockings ripped all the time. The stocking had holes all over them so Ms. Mączyńska had to fix them, and she tells us that even after the war she was fixing her own holes in her stockings. Ms. Jadwiga Mączyńska told us that she had one dress, one blouse, and the coats were mostly handed down from others. Everyday people wore the same thing. Those were very tough times, and the woman suffers everything she says.

When Warsaw was liberated she said, with a smile on her face “Wszyscy się cieszyli,” (everybody was happy). People were carrying everything they had. There were people coming back to Warsaw. Ms. Mączyńska also told us that she knew personally General Skaliński whom was a Polish pilot in the Royal Air Force. Ms. Jadwiga said that wherever Poles were “Myśleli o Polsce i o Polske walczyli.” (They thought about Poland and they fought for Poland) .

We asked the lady if she had met a Nazi face to face, and she told us a story about how her father almost got shot. When the Nazis were chasing down the Russian P.O.W an Nazi officer told her father to go look in the fields if they could find any of these prisoners. Her father told this officer that there are no prisoners in the fields, so the Nazi told him that he has to give him one of his horses. Ms. Jadwiga’s dad said that he doesn’t own any horses, and right at that moment a horse carriage pulled from around the corner. That aggravated the Nazi and he pointed a gun toward the father’s head, at that moment the translator who was also present took the officer’s hand and told him that it was just a misunderstanding. After he said that the officer pulled his gun away from her father’s face. Ms. Mączyńska says that she is very lucky that this translator saved her father’s life.

Was there anything that reminds you of World War II, for example and sort of food? She says that there was nothing that remind her of World War II, and people were starving so any sort of food was a salvation from god. Did you ever lose hope? Ms. Jadwiga says that there was not a moment during the occupation that she lost hope, she says that as a young child she knew that the occupation end, and that such cruel people such as the Nazis don’t live long.

Inside her there is something from the occupation that sits in her guts. When Germans came for tours of Warsaw she was urging to show them, were Germans killed so many people. And she would for example say: “A tu waszych czterdziestu zabili naszych czterech,” (CHECK INTERVIEW FOR CORRECTION) (And here fourty Germans killed four Poles.) Her whole family survived the war. When she received a question from us what was she most scared of she sat silent and thought for a moment. Ms. Jadwiga was petrified of the planes, but otherwise there was nothing that scared her, she wanted to live, and the lady knew that if she got caught by the Nazis and she would get beaten she would never say a word. Then we asked what she thought or dreamt of? The woman said that when she was hungry she thought of food, when she was cold she thought of warm clothing, and the one and only thing she dreamt of was a gorgeous dress. She also told us there were families that had shops for example with food and they prospered.

Ms. Jadwiga Mączyńska’s husband was in the army in 1939. He fought in the saving of Warsaw (Powstanie Warszawskie?)

Ms. Jadwiga Mączyńska tells us that when a horse was lying dead on the ground people would be so hungry that they would come up and take pieces of the dead animal to eat. People would help each other and would always share what they had there was no greed among them.  It makes her happy that there are no situations today where children are starving, that today luckily they get to pick what they want to eat in most occasions.