15. The Family Who Lived on the Other Side of the Wall | Part One

At the break of dawn on Friday, September 1, 1939, life for Warsaw’s 1.3 million inhabitants split in two: the ordinary before and the harrowing after. The familiar rhythms of Edward’s days vanished, replaced by an unimaginable nightmare. In a single day, the freedom he knew simply ceased to exist.

The scene I imagine unfolding in the Switocz family’s apartment on the fourth floor at 16 Mirowski Square was likely replicating in countless homes throughout Warsaw.

"Jesus, what was that?" Edward's sister, Jadzia, screams, sitting half-up in her bed across the room from her brother.

Their father, shirt half-buttoned and face smeared with shaving lather, stands frozen in the doorway. Their mother rushes in, bread knife in hand, the eggs sizzling untended on the stove in the kitchen where she had been slicing rye bread.

The early-morning music program on the radio in the kitchen is abruptly interrupted by the resolute voice of the mayor of Warsaw, Stefan Starzyński. His news is grim. This is not a drill; the Germans are bombing Warsaw.

It was a Blitzkrieg—a lightning attack—from the air and on the ground. The Germans aimed to quickly crush the vastly outnumbered Polish forces before France and Great Britain could deploy their troops, as expected after their declaration of war on Germany three days later.

Eighteen-year-old Edward and fifteen-year-old Jadzia rush to the window, pulling back the heavy brocade curtains. In pyjamas, they peer out in horror. Against the blue sky, smoke plumes rise as buildings are set ablaze. Air-raid sirens wail. There is a great deal of commotion as everyone hurries to the basement shelter in the neighbouring building.

As I picture Edward and Jadzia peering out the window, I can't fathom how they feel. Is it possible at a moment like this to sense that everything in your life is about to change?

The barrage of German bombs continues to pummel Warsaw for three days. An estimated 1,500 bombs fall. The incessant noise and the chaotic descent to the basement shelter are all my father remembers. The rest, well, I have had to imagine it.

In what is sometimes described by the Poles as a short-sighted decision, the French and the British never sent in troops. The Polish people felt betrayed by the two countries they had signed treaties with earlier that year—their “supposed” Allies—who had pledged mutual assistance in the event of armed aggression.

The Soviets invaded the eastern part of Poland seventeen days later. Surrounded by Germans from the outset and completely encircled when the Red Army joined the aggression, the Polish Army and the citizens of Poland fought valiantly. However, the Polish armed forces were at a severe disadvantage, with only limited air power and a minimal number of tanks and armoured vehicles.

As the onslaught continued, Poland's situation became increasingly dire. Five weeks after the initial invasion, the last major Polish military unit surrendered to the invading forces of the two totalitarian giants. Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland according to a secret protocol, an important component of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty their foreign ministers had signed a week before Germany invaded. It was a deadly coalition, and although Poland's government never formally capitulated and continued to resist from exile, the two leaders had effectively decided that an independent Poland would cease to exist.

When the Poles surrendered, 25,000 lay dead in the streets of the capital. German bombs had gutted buildings across the cityscape, their eviscerated rooms now open-air exhibits of private lives suddenly made public. The shops were nearly empty, and people were hungry. There was no running water or electricity. A typhus epidemic had broken out, adding to the misery. But the worst was still to come.

Hitler's plan for Warsaw was to keep eighty thousand of its inhabitants as slave labourers, exterminate the Jewish population, and forcibly resettle the rest. Warsaw would be reconstructed as a small German town of not more than 130,000 inhabitants brought from the Third Reich to live in a new, ideal German city with wide boulevards and monumental structures in the Nazi architectural style built over the spot where the beautiful Polish capital had been. The increasing demands of the war prevented the Nazis from fully executing this plan. What they eventually did to Warsaw was far worse.

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Under German occupation, central Poland around Warsaw and Kraków became known by the nondescript term General Government, administered by Hans Frank, a governor appointed by Adolf Hitler. He acted like a despotic sovereign of a penal colony. Polish citizens lost control over their lives.

Life in Warsaw and throughout the General Government was affected at every level. Only Germans were allowed to sit in the front compartments of the tramcars. Residential districts, parks, and cafés were set aside for Germans. People had to step aside to make way for Germans on the streets and remove their hats in their presence. A show of disobedience toward the orders of the German authorities was punishable by death.

The Polish language was curtailed, and German was imposed in many aspects of life—names of streets and buildings, administrative matters, and posted announcements. Cities and towns were given German names.

The Nazis determined the best way to destroy Poland and its culture was to remove the elite and intelligentsia—the latter being a broad term that does not have an English equivalent and simply put refers to an influential group of educated individuals who, throughout Polish history, have been instrumental in preserving and promoting Polish culture, language, and national identity, especially during periods when Poland lacked sovereign statehood. This group was seen as a threat by the Nazis because of their potential to resist occupation and maintain Polish identity and unity.

As a first step, the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing squads of the SS (Schutzstaffel), swept across Poland in a spree that targeted the Polish elite and intelligentsia: teachers, professors, lawyers and judges, clergy, physicians, landowners, industrialists, politicians and government officials, and even persons with high school degrees. By the end of 1939, the Germans had killed 50,000 Polish citizens, including approximately 7,000 Jews, all members of the intelligentsia. This campaign intensified in 1940 with the AB-Aktion (Extraordinary Pacification Action), specifically targeting Polish intellectuals and upper classes. By the war's end, Poland had lost more than half of its lawyers, 45 percent of its physicians and dentists, and almost as many university professors, clergy and teachers.

The next step for the Nazis was to curtail education to prevent the rebuilding of the Polish intelligentsia.

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In 1930s Poland, the educational system was well-developed, with secondary education divided into the gimnazjum— lower-level secondary school providing a broad general education—and the liceum—upper-level secondary school offering a more specialized and advanced curriculum to prepare students for university studies.

The German invasion and occupation dramatically altered the educational landscape for Polish youth. The Nazis believed the Reich's future slave labour force—an underclass to serve the German master race—required only a basic education. Within weeks, they closed numerous primary schools, most secondary schools, and all universities and higher learning institutes, retaining just a few technical and vocational schools. In response, the Polish underground began running an extensive clandestine educational system.

When the first German bombs fell, Edward had completed his gimnazjum and finished his first year at the Technikum Chemiczne Nr 3, a highly selective, specialized chemistry liceum in Warsaw. He worried whether his classes would continue.

Fortuitously, his chemistry liceum remained officially open. To fly under the Nazi radar, the prestigious school began operating as a vocational institution with an official vocational curriculum alongside secret classes in Polish, history, geography, and literature, sometimes held in teachers' homes. With the University of Warsaw closed, prominent chemistry professors started teaching at the liceum. While this allowed Edward to continue studying and graduate, the broader context was grim, as the war ended his and many Polish youths' dreams of higher education.

The clandestine educational system represented a massive act of resistance by the entire Polish population, with teachers and students risking severe punishment, including imprisonment and death, to continue education secretly. I can only imagine that attending or teaching secret classes under such risks was a significant character-building experience.

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The Nazi occupiers immediately decreed that all Poles from eighteen to sixty, who were not in technical and vocational schools or gainfully employed, had to register at one of the local German labour offices (Arbeitsamt), which quickly sprung up. By December 1939, the age was lowered to fourteen. By 1943, all Polish children of twelve years of age had to register and receive work papers like adults.

Finding work and having proof of it was essential to avoid deportation to Germany for forced labour. However, jobs in the General Government, particularly for members of the intelligentsia, were scarce because schools, businesses, libraries, and other institutions were closed. Professionals took jobs as cleaners and factory workers to keep their families fed.

My father spoke about what it was like for him: "To avoid the łapanki (mass roundups) and being sent to work in Germany, you had to be employed and have the proper identification and work papers. As soon as I graduated from the chemistry liceum in 1941, I got my Kennkarte, the German identification card. It had my name, address, date of birth, and a photograph. You had to show it if you were stopped. I also had to have work papers, so my father quickly got me a job at the Leszno Street courthouse, where he worked. Most of the time, I didn't have much to do. Sometimes I wrote up court proceedings. But there was a lot of activity at the courthouse."

"What kind of activity?" I asked, ignorant about what he might be alluding to.

"Helping different people," he replied. "My father knew what was happening, but we never spoke about it. It was dangerous. And I only worked there for a short time."

It was only after my father died that I stumbled upon the activity that was carried on in the courthouse (I write about it in Part Two of this chapter).

"My next job was at Klawe Pharmaceuticals, a successful family business in Warsaw that the Germans took over during the occupation. I was the manager of the supply warehouse. I would order what the company needed for their production lines and fill German supply orders," my father said. "My personal form of resistance was to shortchange or contaminate what we sent from the warehouse to the Germans."

I gave him a thumbs-up. Good for you, I thought, not yet realizing this was a dangerous national pastime and that most Poles working for companies and factories during the occupation engaged in economic sabotage as best they could. Men and women working in factories surreptitiously poured sand into the gears of machinery to bring it to a halt. Peasants in the countryside, commanded to deliver grain to the Germans, operated under the slogan: as little, as late, and as bad as possible. Even Boy Scouts participated, painting over German slogans and posters on the streets. Poland developed an extraordinary culture of resistance, with most citizens considering it their civic duty.

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In May 1943, Edward began working at Phillips Electric as their warehouse manager. Within a month, he made what was possibly his most important decision: he joined the Polish Home Army, the primary organization of the underground resistance movement.

The Polish Underground State, with the Home Army as its military arm, was remarkably well-structured. The Home Army had a command structure mirroring the Polish Army and was part of an unparalleled clandestine network. This shadow state included a government-in-exile, secret courts that passed sentences on traitors and those who denounced hidden Jews, and an extensive web of covert schools and publications.

Like all members of the Home Army, Edward had a nom de guerre or a code name—Warda—a version of his first name. He knew only those in his own unit, the Barry squad, a communications group named after its commander's code name. This compartmentalization was a safeguard; if captured and interrogated, a member could reveal little.

"We used planks of wood or broom handles for drill practice," my father recalled. For months, his squad met secretly, usually in homes, preparing for the moment they would strike against the occupiers.

By June 1944, the Home Army had swelled to 380,000 members, the largest resistance force in all of Europe. Active since the war's start, it had been sabotaging German troops and supply lines to the eastern front. It also gathered crucial intelligence for the Allies, infiltrated German communications, and supported a network of underground news outlets. These efforts kept Polish citizens informed and encouraged further resistance. Their crowning endeavour, the Warsaw Uprising, would be a defining moment in my father's life.