The video was recorded by the Pilecki Institute as part of the “Witnesses to the Age” project.
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Our today’s interviewee:
Czesław Lewandowski (born 1928), member of the Gray Ranks, Warsaw Uprising fighter, prisoner of KL Stutthof. During his detention at KL Stutthof, he was assigned to a kommando working at the subcamp in Elbląg. When the prisoners were returning from the factory, several inmates fled from the marching column: they were Kashubians whose families lived close by. The Germans were furious - they immediately started to chase the escapees and rushed the rest of the work details to the camp, where they were forced to stand during 24-hour-long roll-call. They were told that the roll-call would last as long as all of the escapees are at large. Eventually, the Germans brought the bodies of all of the runaways to the camp and piled them up under a huge Christmas tree - as the events occurred around Christmas time - as a “gift” of sorts to other tormented inmates. During that roll-call more than half of prisoners gathered in the square died. Lewandowski’s kommando was soon dismantled and the prisoners went back to Stutthof. Due to the advancing front, the Germans arranged the prisoners into columns and began a death march. Czesław Lewandowski and other inmates marched 10-12 hours a day, with no stops, receiving meals only every 5 or 6 days. The mortality rate was enormous and the Germans continued to treat the prisoners with immense brutality, even though the sound of the oncoming battle front was getting closer and closer. After two months of marching, the column encountered Soviet tanks. Lewandowski and a little over hundred prisoners out of the initial 1,200 were finally free. The Russians killed the German guards on the spot and took Czesław Lewandowski to a nearby house, where he received medical assistance. The end of this hellish experience was over, and Lewandowski was able to begin a long and difficult road to recovery.
Copyright by Instytut Solidarności i Męstwa im. Witolda Pileckiego.