The interview was recorded by the PILECKI INSTITUTE as part of the WITNESSES TO THE AGE project.
Welcome to the Witnesses to the Age channel. If you consider this material to be valuable, please click the THUMBS UP and watch other videos on our channel. SUBSCRIBE to help us grow the channel and share more fascinating stories with you. Leave a COMMENT below. If you know someone who would like to share their story with us, contact us at swiadkowieepoki@instytutpileckiego.pl
Our today’s interviewee:
Bogdan Bartnikowski (born 1932), a colonel, pilot of the Polish Army, writer, witness and participant of the Warsaw Uprising, prisoner of KL Auschwitz-Birkenau. After being sent from Warsaw to the concentration camp, he was separated from his mother and placed at a quarantine block. He and other boys were now being “looked after” by the Kapo nicknamed “Bloody Olek.” The boys asked the him when they would be free again, but the man told them that the only way out was through the crematorium chimney. That’s how Bogdan Bartnikowski and his friends learned about the purpose of these chimneys. Older Polish prisoners would sometimes visit them in order to bring them some food and raise their spirits. The boys complained to them about a barber who was stealing food from them and abusing them for fun. The man received a warning, but he failed to change his ways, so he was eventually brutally beaten by the Polish prisoners and consequently died in the camp hospital. Most of the boys from Bogdan’s block did not work, but several slightly older among them were finally selected to push a cart that was normally drawn by a horse around a camp. Thanks to this task, Bogdan Bartnikowski was able to see his mum for the first time in three months, while transporting clothes to the women’s camp. The mother and son had only a brief moment to say hello and exchange a few words. Later on, Doctor Mengele selected several boys from among Bogdan’s colleagues who were then subjected to pseudo-medical experiments - he administered substances into their eyes that cause a burning sensation and discharge. The Germans eventually chose a group of eight boys, which included Bogdan Bartnikowski, and sent them to a bath house. The boys feared the worst, but it turned out that they would be sent away from the camp along with their mothers and another group of women and girls. The group numbering over a hundred people was sent through Mysłowice and Berlin to the forced labor camp in Blankenburg. They were still prisoners and their future was uncertain, but the horrors of Auschwitz were luckily behind them.
Copyright by Instytut Solidarności i Męstwa im. Witolda Pileckiego.