What they were forced to contend with would destroy many people. However, they faced adversities. They did not think about themselves, but about the people they lived for - husbands, children, loved ones. It is worth recalling their heroic struggle.
What gave these women the driving force and energy to fight? The fact that they lived not only for themselves but also for their families. It inspired incredible determination and courage in them. Tomasz Kubicki in the book "Women's roads" stated: I quickly discovered that they did not fall to their knees in front of the omnipresent evil. There was some beautiful moral strength in them, but not heroism - this concept was born after the war .
Maria Wawrzyniak
Maria wasn't too bad at first. Despite the war, she had a husband and four daughters with her. One day her family was separated. One round-up and the world turned upside down. Her beloved husband Franciszek found himself in the hands of the Germans, in one of the toughest concentration camps. Meanwhile, she had to bear the full burden of responsibility for the family. She abandoned her children for days, the oldest of whom was 8 years old, and she bent low her neck working for German bauers.
She lived with her daughters in one room, nourishing them and herself with what she got from her employers. In the sweat of her brow, she worked in the field for several hours a day, but even this did not prevent her from being thrown out of the house and from her homeland. They were incorporated into the Reich, so the Poles dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night were put into cattle cars and transported to the unknown. Maria and her children to the camp in Żabikowo, where she was almost separated from her daughters, and later to forced labor.
The hunger was staring at them all the time, the mother was getting weaker, and the children looked like shadows. The wife of an Austrian bauer wanted Maria to pick up one of her daughters, thinking that she would simply be able to bribe a desperate woman. The mother indignantly rejected her offer and redoubled her efforts to save herself and the children. Thanks to her they survived the war and returned home.
Forced laborers (photo:Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1994-090-06A, Dumm, license CC-BY-SA 3.0)
Władysława Pawłowska
Władzia was the wife of officer Janek. When the war broke out, her husband naturally went to the front and… did not come back. He went to Kozielsk. Although today this name of the town sounds truly ominous, at that time it was not known what the fate of Polish soldiers would be there. Meanwhile, Władzia and her little son were waiting for her husband in their parents' apartment in Brody, which had been occupied by the Soviet army. Soon the NKVD started banging on apartment doors at night, spreading terror. The deportations began. The hostile element, which included Władzia and her one-year-old son Jędruś, was to be eradicated.
By a twist of fate, it was possible to hide the child, convincing the people who came after them that the child died of typhus. Władzia found herself in Kazakhstan, where she was to work beyond her strength in the kolkhoz. Contact with my husband suddenly broke off ... Wife sent letters, but Janek did not reply. Writing to her parents, she said that he was certainly better off, because God looks after him, he works several hundred kilometers from her, but he cannot communicate. Like thousands of other wives, she believed and clung to the hope that she would see her beloved soon. She believed that since none of the officers were writing, no news was good news.
All the time she wanted to return to her son, which pushed her to flee from Kazakhstan. Through the Urals it reached the border of "former Poland", as it was called in the East, and ... fell. Captured, interrogated many times, she almost died from a bullet. Finally, however, she managed to return home. It is not known when she found out that Janek died at the hands of the NKVD.
The stories about these wonderful women and mothers were taken from the book "Women's Roads" by Tomasz Kubicki , which has just been released by Bellona.
Maria Krzysztofoporska
When the Soviets entered Lviv, a great hunt began. Rapes, arrests, brutal searches, deportations. The townspeople did not sleep a single night peacefully. In the middle of this madness, Zygmunt, a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Treasury, who came to Lviv in mid-1939, found himself. Soon after, his wife Maria came with their children Ania, Dziunia and little Wojtuś. Together with them is a nurse for an infant and a French teacher.
When the war came, they wanted to get out of town and find them on the German side. Nothing of that. They were to be sent to a primitive settlement lost somewhere in the Urals, where they tried to create for a moment a substitute for normalcy. Then the NKVD, which had come for Zygmunt, pounded on their door again. During the search, they found irrefutable evidence that he was a spy. What? A copy of "Pan Tadeusz" with a map of Soplicowo. Although the amnesty came and Maria was able to leave the exile, she did not know how to rejoice. She knew she might never see her husband. She set out on a hard journey, taking the children with her, weakening more and more and hoping that she would manage to reach the Polish army that was about to be formed.
Along the way, she met the worst tragedy that could befall her mother - exhaustion, malnutrition and illness drained the life of her two children. Maria also fell ill with typhus after many months of wandering and she almost lost her life. Despite everything, she did not lose hope and pressed forward. Ultimately, she managed to survive with one little daughter. Zygmunt also survived, he was released from prison, taking advantage of the short thaw in Polish-Soviet relations, and managed to find his family.
During the war, Poles could not be sure of tomorrow. Hitler or Salin could at any time decide to expel them from their homeland. The photo shows Poles expelled from the Warta Country (photo Bundesarchiv, R 49 Bild-0131, Wilhelm Holtfreter, license CC-BY-SA 3.0).
Emilia Kunawicz
It was mid-1941, Emilia had just given birth, and hell was raging in the Borderlands. Hitler attacked Stalin, and the front swept through her world first, and when the Germans entered, a wave of bestiality began. Emilia saw one of her Jewish students dragged by the hair by the proud Teuton ... In 1942, when her husband and son were deported to work in the Reich, she took the baby under her arm without thinking and did something that for many was simply unimaginable - she followed them .
As a volunteer, she went to Germany practically in the dark, enduring inconvenience, driving in wagons full of feces, blood and human misfortune. Her husband greeted her without enthusiasm. As noted by Tomasz Kubicki in his book "Kobiece roads": After a dozen or so days of wandering, she stood in front of Piotr - “What did you come for? It's awful here! " He replied. Work was a horror - the bauer ruthlessly exploited their slaves, and these slaves were under-eaten and labored all day, regardless of the frost or heat. In addition, Emilia had to leave her tiny baby lying in a pram in their quarters unattended for days and in addition strapped up ...
When, as a volunteer for labor, speaking German at the same time, she decided to put her grief on paper and filed a complaint with the office, it hit her with the force of a hurricane. At the farm, a Gestapo man with a name called Bloody Dog appeared with a few people. The newcomers were to sort out this "obnoxious" complaint. When they heard that the workers were so hungry that they did not have the strength to work, the Pole who spoke these words aloud was tortured and died a few days later. Emilia, the author of the complaint, heard that she belonged to Dachau.
She herself, weighing 46 kilograms and 175 centimeters tall, soon heard a diagnosis from a German doctor that she had cancer. Her daughter experienced a complete mental collapse and fell into apathy. Her husband started getting drunk. Despite all the adversities, by a miracle she and her relatives managed to survive the war.
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The stories of these amazing women were described on the basis of the book by Tomasz Kubicki "Women's roads" . The car decided to tell about the ladies who, thanks to their courage, strength and great determination, won the fight in their own way.
