Insurgent`s Polish Radio broadcast on the liberation of Jews by the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) from Gesiowka

(Koncentrationslager Warschau at Gesia Street).

Warsaw, 18 August 1944

POLES - JEWS 1939-1945
Selection of Documents
Edited by Andrzej Krzysztof Kunert
Foreword by Wladyslaw Bartoszewski
RYTM, Warszawa 2001

5 August , 1944, Warsaw. On the fifth day of the Warsaw Uprising soldiers of the Home Army (AK battalion "Zoska") set free 348 Greek, Hungarian, Romanian, French, Belgian. Dutch and Polish Jews.

On the photo a group of over twenty rescued Jews
- Wladyslaw Bartoszewski`s collection

A series of green barracks surrounded by a green wall, spiked with watchtowers and the grey gravel of the courtyard create the mood of a stolid, monotonous torment.

We are on the premises of the concentration camp located in the ghetto. Just two hours ago our forces, in a bravura attack seized the camp with 350 prisoners - Jews. Five accurately placed strikes from our captured tank "Panther" opened the door to freedom for Jews from Poland, Hungary, France, Greece, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania.
"We still cannot believe we are free" - says a young Jew with an expressive , intelligent face. "It seems as though we are dreaming or else have gone completely crazy" - says another.
"During the attack we lay on the floor. The SS-man did not allow us to raise our heads, threatening to shoot, and threw grenades.
"Mademoiselle" - says another to one of our girls - "when the guards saw the tank, they thought it was Germans coming to aid them. Only after it began shooting did they begin to flee;.
More heads begin to appear in the windows of the barracks. In the courtyard about me, an ever-larger group collects. I am surrounded by a multi-lingual mass, attired in prison stripes, shouting one above the other, gesturing, drunk with joy,

"We were still in action, the Germans were spraying gunfire from beyond
Pawiak prison, while here the barracks opened and the crowds began to embrace us, kiss us. They kissed our rifle butts.

The honest, bright face of a soldier of Armia Krajowa (Home Army) - a boy scout - smiles at me from under a captured German helmet now marked with a Polish eagle, recounting the attack.

"Sirs, where are you from?" - I turn again to the newly liberated Jews.
"We are from France, Mademoiselle, Paris, Brest, Nantes, Cherbourg" - they list the cities.

"How did you get here, Sirs?"

"We were lied to. In 1942, we were sent to decent labor in Silesia. "We left with our families, with all our belongings to Auschwitz."

"In the camp we were separated from our families, each was separated, the elderly, the mothers with small children,, the employable men. The first to go to the gas chambers were the elderly and the pregnant women. We had to write notes to our neighbors that all is well. As our return address, we did not list Auschwitz, but the less known Birkenau. Instead of a prison block, we wrote maison".

"The German extermination machine functioned perfectly" - says a doctor from Paris - currently an electro-technician. "The train with its victims pulled up the gas chamber. They were ordered to strip, to enter the bathing chamber. They entered not expecting any evil, The gas chamber was linked to the crematorium. Afterwards a vehicle took away only the clothing".

"I worked in the crematorium. When they brought up a pile of corpses, there was a living girl in it, I wanted to hide her, to rescue her. The SS-man saw her, threw the living child into the oven. He threatened me with his pistol, but somehow, he did not shoot me".

I walk over to the Greeks. They are from Salonika. They too left willingly for the work assignment. Eighty thousand of them died in Auschwitz. The same story repeats itself about the incredible Gehenna they endured.
Jews from Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania were forcibly removed.

Ich muste selbst meine Kinder und meine Frau in Krematorium verhennen (I, myself, had to burn my wife and children in the crematorium)" - says a Jew from Czechoslovakia.

"What I have lived through seems so horrible that I barely can believe in it myself" - says another Jew from Budapest.

"Sirs, when were you brought to Warsaw?"

"The entire transport arrived here ten months ago. \I was comprised solely of specialists, craftsmen - a total of 4,500 persons, but just before the start of the uprising the Germans killed 4,000."

"How was it In Warsaw?"

"Much better than in Auschwitz. The Polish workers helped, they brought food".

"Polen sind feine Leute" - throws out a small 16 year old boy from Clui with certainty.

Here is a small group of Polish Jews. They were brought here from Pawiak a couple of days before the outbreak of the uprising. They are impatient.
‘When will we leave here? We cannot stand idly by, seeing you fight. We want to fight with you.".

I calm them down saying that the Command will direct them to appropriate labor, that in this struggle , which the entire country is involved ,no pair of hands will go unused.

There are 29 women in a separate barrack. They worked in the sewing factory of Pawiak prison,. They knew about the start of the uprising.
"Day and night we prayed that you would come and liberate us, we knew that you would come".

And so, all of these tormented and suppressed people, driven here innocently from different parts of Europe, finally awaited the day when a Polish soldier and his rifle opened the road to freedom for them. Poland fights for the freedom of all European nations.

Soldiers of the "Zoska" battalion of the Armia Krajowa (Home Army) effectuated the liberation of 348 Jews from Greece, Hungary, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Poland.