15. The Family Who Lived on the Other Side of the Wall | Part Two
As I delved deeper into Polish history, a surprising fact emerged: the very building where my grandfather had worked for two decades—and where he'd secured a job for his son, Edward, as soon as he graduated—was far more than a simple courthouse. It was the heart of a clandestine resistance, a place where Poles risked everything to aid Jews trapped behind the walls of the Warsaw ghetto. Now I understood my father’s cryptic reference to ‘the dangerous activity at the courthouse on Leszno Street.’
In late 1940, the Nazis constructed the Warsaw Jewish ghetto, an area of hundreds of city blocks surrounded by a tall brick wall topped with razor wire. The local inhabitants, numbering about 100,000, were evicted, and almost the entire Jewish population of Warsaw, totalling 350,000, was forced to live within the walls in crowded and deplorable conditions. Soon, Jews from neighbouring cities were brought to the ghetto, swelling the population to 450,000.
The courthouse had two entrances: one on Leszno Street in the Jewish ghetto and the other on Ogrodowa Street, outside the ghetto walls. This unique location allowed for the smuggling of food, medical supplies, arms for a revolt, and even people through the building. Those who worked there knew about these activities, but they were carried out in secret.
I wonder if my grandfather, Piotr, wanted to protect his son; the less Edward knew about the clandestine activities, the better. In the face of Nazi atrocities, many Poles risked their lives to aid or hide Jews. But even acts as seemingly small as throwing food packages over ghetto walls carried the death penalty.
In the course of examining old maps of the ghetto boundaries, I made, what was for me, an even more startling discovery: Mirowski Square, where the Switocz family lived, was surrounded on three sides by the ghetto walls. The square itself, a few apartment buildings on the square, the Hala Mirowska, and the Leszno Street courthouse were excluded, forming a small peninsula jutting into the ghetto. All the streets of Edward's childhood—Elektoralna with his friend Chaim's home, Chłodna with the bread shop, and Ogrodowa with his aunt's tailor shop—were inside the ghetto walls.
As more Jews were deported to death camps, those remaining in the Warsaw Ghetto staged an uprising that started April 19, 1943, which lasted four weeks. The Jews had no hope of victory; they fought because the alternative was boarding trains to death camps. Just before the Germans brutally suppressed this uprising, families along Mirowski Square, including the Switocz family, were evicted. They sheltered with others in a courthouse basement on Miodowa Street and never returned to their apartment with the green brocade curtains, abandoning a lifetime of possessions—the stamp collection, everything—taking little more than the clothes they wore. One day, their home was theirs; the next, it wasn't.
The Germans destroyed the ghetto and Mirowski Square, bringing Jews from several countries and housing them in a local jail to clear the rubble. During the last talks with my dad, I was unaware of the ghetto boundaries or how close they were to the Switocz home. I never pressed my father about life on Mirowski Square. All I knew was that my father had said they were evicted in May 1943. I had assumed perhaps the Germans wanted the central Warsaw property for their own use.
The more I researched and read, the easier it was to understand why my father never spoke about the war and why memories of this period were locked away. To this day, I can't fathom what living so close to the ghetto walls must have been like. Beyond the atrocities inside the ghetto, Poles themselves lived in constant fear. Random arrests, street roundups for forced labour, food shortages, and public executions were frequent occurrences.
Faced with such relentless cruelty and the systematic destruction of both Jewish and Polish communities, many young Poles like my father felt compelled to act. For Edward, joining the Home Army—the underground resistance—offered a desperate way to resist the occupation and fight against these unspeakable atrocities.
My father's experiences in Warsaw were part of a larger tragedy unfolding across Poland under the brutal occupation of two totalitarian regimes: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union.
Western Poland was annexed directly to Germany as the Incorporated Eastern Territories, where Nazis planned to eliminate or expel Poles to create 'living space' (Lebensraum) for Germans. Eastern Poland, occupied by Soviets until 1941, saw similar tactics of cultural suppression and mass deportations of Poles to Siberia.
The situation shifted dramatically in June 1941 when Hitler violated the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union, with the incursion taking place through the territories the Soviets occupied in eastern Poland. Now Hitler controlled all of Poland.
By July 1941, Churchill had signed a treaty with Stalin, and the Soviets became the “brave” partners of the Allies. The Polish government-in-exile based in London, pressured by the British and Americans, signed a Polish-Soviet pact a few weeks later, but not before several government members resigned.
The Nazis implemented a five-tier social hierarchy in occupied Poland. Germans from Germany enjoyed full rights at the top, followed by ethnic Germans in Poland. Slavic minorities initially held a middle position, though this changed after the Soviet invasion, and they joined the Poles on the lower rung of the ladder. The Poles were considered subhuman or Untermensch and subjected to slave-like treatment and exploitation for labour with few exceptions, like people deemed suitable for Germanization. At the bottom were Jews, Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, disabled individuals, and homosexuals, all facing systematic elimination.
This system was enforced through hundreds of labour, concentration, and extermination camps across Poland. Hitler's goal was not just military conquest but the destruction of Polish people and culture. The term genocide had not yet been articulated, but when it first was, it referred specifically to the tragedy of what took place in Poland.
Looking at my dad, I saw an old man hunched in his wheelchair, with wisps of white hair on his nearly bald head and softness around his eyes. I saw a man who was content and at peace. I often questioned why I was stirring up unsettling memories.
Increasingly, I came to understand the significance of the silence surrounding the past. This silence spoke volumes about what he and so many others endured. The unspoken experiences formed a language of their own, telling stories too profound for words.
I remember studying "4'33", the composer John Cage's conceptual piece to be performed using any instrument, but at its premiere in 1952, by a pianist. The musician sat in front of the piano not touching the keys for four minutes and 33 seconds. This composition known as the "silent piece" was created to make people listen, and as they did the music occasioned by the ambient wind, rain and human noises became apparent, and for some, a deeply felt melody. Cage said "there is no such thing as silence". Your father's silence speaks so loudly, so powerfully through the generations - you have given him the words to shape the horrors he and too many others endured. It is a symphony not to be forgotten.
What a remarkable story. I am so glad the history is alive in you.