Warsaw, 6 November 1945
Janina Iwańska
Names of parents: Bolesław Iwański and Felicja née Kamińska,
b. 12 April 1923 in Dąbrowa Górnicza
Testimony
On 6 March 1941, at 10 p.m., I was arrested in Lublin, at Krakowskie Przedmieście Street 26, flat 6, together with my sister, Krystyna Iwańska. We were arrested by two plain-clothes Gestapo men, who locked our entrance door from the inside and when asked, “How can we help you?”, replied by folding back the lapels of their coats, revealing the Hitlerite badge, that is, a skull.
After this kind of a response, everything was clear to us. First, the nature of this visit was explained to us: “You are under arrest for the membership in the Union of Armed Struggle [ZWZ]. After this explanation, one of the Gestapo men proceeded to carry out a thorough search (especially of the documents and books, some of which were “arrested” along with us as suspicious items). The other Gestapo man, who spoke perfect Polish, was watching us so zealously that he did not allow me to get dressed, despite the fact that I already had my nightgown on. At 11:30 p.m., we were escorted at gunpoint to a car waiting outside, which drove us straight to the prison at Lublin Castle. In the prison, after a thorough personal search, during which our IDs and watches were confiscated, I was separated from my sister.
I am placed in a cell in the basement, where 56 women are held, only 2 percent of whom are political prisoners. The conditions in our cell are terrible, with a toilet inside, and we are only let out once a day, for a 10-minute stroll around a small lawn located between the prison buildings. On tenterhooks, waiting for interrogation, on 29 March, thirteen days into my internment, during the morning roll-call, I pass out from a fever, which reaches 40.8 degrees Celsius. The prison doctor, a former prisoner, diagnoses me with pneumonia. After four days of being attended to by fellow prisoners, treated with home remedies and without any medical assistance, I am deteriorating. On the fifth day of my sickness, unconscious, I am taken to the hospital cell for the typhus-stricken. There, after three weeks, as a convalescent from a pneumonia, I am infected with spotted typhus. Infections are nothing out of the ordinary because the place was infested with myriads of lice and fleas.
On 17 June 1941, I give up my bed for a fellow prisoner. At the same time, all prisoners from three other cells are sent to the hospital because the epidemic of typhus breaks out abruptly, especially in the male ward, where the average mortality rate is twenty people daily.
After two and a half months in hospital cells, I return, as a convalescent (weighing 32 kilos!), to a prison cell. Four days after returning from the hospital, on 21 June, my sister Krystyna and I are to be taken for an interrogation. Based on the doctor’s opinion, I am unfit to be interrogated because my condition is severe (due to complications following the typhus infection, paralysis of nerves in the extremities) so I remain in the cell. My sister Krystyna is taken for an interrogation alone, and the questioning takes three days. Upon her return, I am briefed in detail on how to testify. Having received this “training”, one week later, despite the doctor’s opinion, I am taken for an interrogation, which takes place on Uniwersytecka Street. My task is easier and the information I obtained from my sister proves vital. I know in advance what questions they will be asking. Our testimonies are consistent because, knowing hers, I tell them what she did. My interrogation lasts only eight hours and – given the customary Gestapo standards – is conducted in a generously benign fashion: just a few blows to the face and some kicks. Compared to my fellow prisoners, who are carried out on stretchers after the interrogation, I must say I was extremely lucky.
After the interrogation, they had to carry me, too, but only because I was still unable to walk after the sickness. After arriving at the castle, on the evening of the same day, 21 June 1941, I am taken to the cell where they also keep my sister, and we remain together until 21 September: on this day, our transport of 148 prisoners departs, merged on the way with a transport from the Pawiak prison, which numbered some three hundred women. On 23 September 1941, at 6 a.m., the transport of more than four hundred women is unloaded at the Fürstenberg station, where, after two days of hard journey, without being given any hot meals, wanting to have some rest, and hoping the change will be for the better, we are greeted by a pack of dogs and are beaten and kicked by German officials and SS-men. We are loaded onto trucks, fifty people each, and taken to the camp’s yard. It is only then that we realize where we are. Asking people on the columns departing for labor, we ascertain that this is a concentration camp, that people do not get released from here, and that we should eat whatever we have on us because it will be taken away from us anyway.
Confronted with that sort of reality, we are under no illusions; we are facing the irrevocable. The passing columns of women dressed in striped uniforms, all of whom looked the same, having been drained of everything, of their possessions, of individuality, and terrorized by the whip, came across as people who only knew one feeling: fear. Presiding over all their looks and gestures was fear, which was impossible to conceal. At that moment, I felt as if I was spiraling down a well, whose bottom, if I were to ever reach it, would be too far down from the ground.
And so, on the night of 24 September, after a shower, I received a striped uniform and was taken to block 15. I spent six weeks there, in the so-called quarantine, during which we were trained in making up beds military-style or received the roll-call drill for three or four hours. Our transport was assigned numbers and a person now ceased to be a person, instead becoming a number which was to obey the camp regulations.
My number was 7711.
After six weeks in quarantine, the block receives working assignments. We work three shifts, eight hours a day each (we spend the remaining time being drilled in the roll-call) in the so- called straw Betrieb. We manufacture thousands of straw boots for the troops fighting in Russia. The labor is hard, the conditions terrible, and the food meagre: one kilo of bread per person, half a liter of soup, and four potatoes is our daily ration.
The sick receive no assistance. You need to be down with a 41-degree fever to be deemed sick. I feel fine.
I am troubled, as are all my comrades, by the news repeated multiple times by the political department employees, namely that our entire transport, the so called “extraordinary transport seven thousand”, is under death warrants. The news soon turns out to be true: none of the women assigned numbers 7,000 and above may depart on a column for labor and our entire transport is to be given tasks inside the camp.
The first execution of prisoners from our transport, in April 1942, takes thirteen people, mostly young girls, my best friends among them (the executions lists were sent by the Underground to London). At the same time, it begins to dawn on us that the rumors concerning our transport are true. The confirmation of that comes almost every month. The number of the prisoners from our transport is falling fast. Now each of us is awaiting her turn.
This mood continues until 1 August 1942, when news arrives. Six women from among the entire “transport seven thousand” ordered to report in front of the camp hospital are set aside. Their fates are unknown. On the next day, we find out that during yesterday’s lockdown of the hospital, experimental surgeries were performed on their legs. It is difficult to reach them. The rooms they are in are locked and the staff is German. Fifteen days later, I end up in the exact same situation.
On 15 August, I am ordered to report at the hospital block together with eight other prisoners, and on the same day, at 4 p.m., having been dazed with a morphine injection, I am taken to the operating theater, where I receive a sleep-inducing intravenous injection.
I do not know what time exactly I wake up in the evening, lying in a bed, in a room with four beds. Next to me, there is my sister Krystyna, surrounded by doctors and nurses, all of whom are extremely excited and speak loudly, and finally I can discern two words: “weak heart”. However, I am not lucid enough to be able to think and I fall asleep again. On 16 August, we all wake up with a fever of 40 degrees Celsius. I cannot move. Even the slightest move gives me pain. My right leg is in a plaster cast, up to the knee. The knee is literally bulging out of the cast. Red welts run from the knee, or rather the ankle, to the groin. My lymph nodes are enlarged. Changing the position of the leg is out of the question. The entire leg is hot. The organism reacts the way it does during an infection. The headache is excruciating. For a full two weeks, I have a temperature of 40 degrees.
I cannot eat anything. After drinking a few drops of coffee, I immediately vomit. I am in this state of semi-consciousness for two weeks. Then, they remove my cast, put a dressing, without anesthesia, and take out the remaining rotten thread (apparently, the wound was to be sutured but the bacteria cut through the thread). Then, they remove a preparation from the suppurating wound, which is 15 cm long (running along the fibula), 5 to 8 cm deep, so that the calf was hanging formally separated from the bone, which was visible. As regards the preparation, I can only provide the physical description, having seen it for two minutes. It was two metal plates, 2 by 2 cm, connected with a piece of gauze which coiled them very tightly. Between these two plates, there was something I could not clearly see. I do not know if it was the preparation which infected me or some other. I only know that the preparation was collected by Fischer, Gebhardt’s assistant.
Applying subsequent dressings is equally painful, my leg is in a very bad shape, the swelling is not letting up, and the dressing which was changed half an hour earlier is soaked with odorous black and red slime. I cannot bend my knee and the swelling is not letting up.
Watching my fellow prisoners who went into surgery at the same time I did, I am having a torrid time. Eventually, I am the only one from the group of nine left at the hospital block, still unable to bend the knee. A “medical panel” arrives, including Prof. Gebhardt, our chief surgeon, and his assistant, Fischer, who, having examined my leg, conclude that my knee is a hopeless case when it comes to bending it, and I can maybe try to do it forcefully, by weighing it down with a bag of sand. The “medical panel” is operating upon six other comrades of mine on the same day. Thanks to them, I learned to walk. This is what happened: on the third day after the surgery, in the afternoon, they reduced their fever with injections to 36.8 – 37 degrees Celsius. Already around 8 p.m., all the girls passed out: they had a 40-degree fever and no medical assistance, nor even someone to pass them a glass of water. So I got up to help them (I was in an adjacent room), jumping on one leg, but I concluded that I was disturbing the sleeping girls. Consequently, shuffling half a meter forward with one foot and then the other, I started to walk. An so, by dawn, I could move my leg, only slightly limping. I learned to walk, but I would feel the consequences of the bacteria spreading across my leg long after, because every month or sometimes every two weeks my fellow prisoners would carry me to the hospital, my fever shooting up to between 39 and 41 degrees. There, the girls either made a new incision to evacuate the pus or, if the wound had opened, put some tampons inside, trying to provide maximum relief to my leg. Dr. Zofia Mączka, who worked at our hospital block operating the X-ray machine (she is currently still in Sweden and has already told our story, speaking to Swedish doctors in Stockholm), and prisoner Iza Siecińska, a former medical student from Warsaw, who worked in the operating theater, were of course not allowed to participate in our surgeries. The other two girls working at block 9 as orderlies, Jolanta Krzyżanowka and Ryszarda Kuszel, a former a first- year medical student from Kraków and the latter a third-year medical student from Warsaw, helped me a lot, but unfortunately nobody knew what I had been infected with and what to administer to stop the process of muscle decay. Periods of high fever became more and more frequent but Dr. Treite, our camp doctor, refused to help in any way, saying, “I’m not meddling with these surgeries because I’m against them”.
This was a German doctor’s stance, while Halina Chełmicka, aged around 23, a former political prisoner, denies us any help, saying that for the sake of science Prof. Gebhardt has the right to operate on us.
I will discuss Halina Chełmicka at length because presently this is the only person whose whereabouts are known to us who could provide our doctors with invaluable information concerning our surgeries. Halina Chełmicka begins to cooperate with doctor Gebhardt already during the first surgery, that is on 1 August 1942. She contributes by compiling charts, very artistic ones. We approach her for the first time, asking her to fill us in on “what the goal of the surgeries is and what they are injecting us with”. We approach her because the German doctors will not answer us. Halina Chełmicka promises to tell us, but unfortunately we have been waiting for three months already. Consequently, I decide to speak to her openly. Because Halina’s grandeur already means she is unavailable, I have been waiting for three days to speak to her. The conversation is short: “Halina, you do realize that the information about what we are infected with could save the lives of a few girls because we can get the medications, but if we don’t know the condition, treatment is difficult. Please, tell us”. Halina’s response is short: “I won’t tell you”. “Why?”, I ask, and she says, “Because I’m the only Pole who knows it so if it ever came out, it would be clear I was the source”. I say, “And if I give you my word that nobody will know, except me?”, to which she replies, “I won’t tell you anyway because it’s the question of professional secrecy between myself and Professor Gebhardt”. I say, “Then your stance is the same as his”, and she replies, “If you work with the man, you can’t but be awestruck by his ingenuity, so how come you, who I thought of as an intelligent girl, fail to understand that for the sake of science he has the right to operate on you, all the more since you’re under death warrants anyway”. Then, I say, “Let me only tell you that the word has come out about the surgeries anyway, and now I’ll also try to tell people about where you stand”.
The conversation was over.
A few days after this conversation, Halina Chełmicka is transferred to Prof. Gebhardt’s private clinic in Hohenlychen (30 km from Ravensbrück), where she is preparing charts pertaining to the surgeries for a congress of German doctors, during which Gebhardt discussed the outcomes of his experiments.
My leg is getting worse: the wound opens, and chipped bone is excreted with pus. Prisoner Eugenia Biega, a former dentist, collects a pus swab, and once again, through a working unit assigned to Hohenlychen, sends it to Halina Chełmińska, who tarries for a few days, makes promises, and finally refuses to help. In light of such a hopeless situation, on 1 January 1943 we decide to communicate through the Underground with the Polish government. On 2 January 1943, together with prisoners Wanda Wojtasik and Krystyna Czyżówna, we send the first messages written in invisible ink on the regular camp paper, covertly instructing our families to heat the letter with an electric iron. This is how the information about the executions and surgeries got out. After a few months, a thought occurs to me that the inside of the envelope provides more space than a sheet of paper, all the more that we have now received a new batch of writing paper which did not help us at all because it was glossy and, when it was held against the light, the invisible ink could be seen. Thanks to that scheme, we save our lives and the lives of our comrades because in July 1944 my sister Krystyna and I are arrested after secret correspondence is found in a parcel. During the evening roll-call on 12 July, after a thorough search of our beds, SS-man Ramdohr, who had a reputation for being a brutal interrogator, takes me and my sister to the bunker. On the first night, during my sister’s interrogation, I develop a 40-degree fever and the wound on my leg opens along the whole length of the incision. Both towels are soaked with blood. Eventually, groping in the dark, I find the toilet bowl, on which I place my leg and keep it there until the morning, pus with chipped bone flowing profusely from it. A detailed account of our political trouble will be provided by my sister Krystyna Iwańska.
From my side, I can just add that we only survived the bunker (which served as a prison for camp offenders) thanks to the adroitness of my sister Krystyna and extraordinary luck. For instance, the writing papers used at our block for the past month were confiscated but nothing suspicious was found because the invisible ink was on the inside of the envelopes, and even the clever Ramdohr did not think of such a possibility.
Another moment of luck was my leg, which I had to have dressed at the hospital twice a week, and although I was under guard on my way, I could still hide notes concerning our situation under the bloodstained dressing, and when prisoners Izabela Siecińska or Jolanta Krzyżanowska, who worked at the hospital block, changed it, they collected the note and then passed it to girls from our transport to keep them apprized.
On 13 August, we are released from the bunker and return to the block, receiving an enthusiastic welcome from our friends.
On 15 August, after a mass protest against resuming the surgeries, we are locked for three days in block 15, where the weaker individuals faint from lack of air, while the stronger ones try to lift the other’s spirits.
Despite the single setback, we continue sending out our messages and we receive confirmation of receipt.
In the meantime, the numerical strength of our transport is decreasing, either due to regular mortality rate or executions (fifteen or thirteen a month), or surgical fatalities.
We are all losing hope, convinced that they will manage to execute us even on the last day before the Allied troops come. Our predictions materialize soon because toward the beginning of March 1945 (I do not remember the exact date) we survive the night of death. In the evening, it was announced to us that next morning we were to stay at the block, and our predictions are confirmed by the political department: “they want to eliminate you to erase the evidence of the surgeries”.
There are different reactions among us, but the entire camp agrees: the war is about to end, so no way, you are not dying now. Consequently, our entire group of former patients, commonly referred to as “guinea pigs”, is hidden by other prisoners until the end.
On 16 March, using a different prisoner number, I escape on the transport of Auschwitz women headed for the aircraft factory in Neustadt-Glewe, and then, on 26 March, I escape from a labor column of ten. I am spotted by some Arbeitsdienst soldiers on military exercises and one of them fires a shot from a revolver, hitting me in the right arm below the elbow. Nevertheless, my escape is successful. After a few days, I get within 30 km of Hamburg, where, after a “credible testimony”, I get a job as Maria Ivanova, a Ukrainian evacuee from Szczecin. Working for a month, on 1 May 1945, I can finally greet the English.
This is what my life in captivity looked like, in brief, of course. In a while, once the emotions have settled and the memories are thus less painful, I intend to write a book to let the people know what a concentration camp is. Also, aside from describing German crimes, I would like this book to tell the story of strong people, who were stronger than their perpetrators, even if they met their death. In this book, I would like to emphasize the value of humanity and human life and prove that only strong will can tear down the walls.
My book will be entitled Haftling 7711 [prisoner 7711].
Janina Iwańska
(The testimony was written nine days after I returned from the English occupation zone. I gave my first deposition in English, to one of the propaganda officers, who released it on 27 May 1945 at 16:15 on Radio London.)