18. Letter from Lamsdorf

With über efficiency, the victorious Germans began moving 11,000 Home Army insurgents to various prisoner-of-war camps across Poland and Germany within a mere two days of their surrender. Among these insurgents were hundreds of young women who had fought alongside the men, compelling the Germans to establish separate camps for them in compliance with the Geneva Convention.

Twenty-three-year-old Edward, along with 6000 others, found himself in a rail boxcar bound for Stalag 344 Lamsdorf. This large and notorious camp, located near the village of Łambinowice in western Poland—Lamsdorf, as the Germans renamed the village—would be where they remained until the Germans began moving them out a few months later in the last weeks of the war.

Lamsdorf was a vast, low-lying complex surrounded by walls topped with razor wire. It housed a Babel of thousands of POWs of diverse nationalities enduring overcrowding, limited food rations, and deplorably unsanitary conditions that contributed to the spread of disease and death.

"I was prisoner number 102902."

"I'm surprised you still remember that," I said as we chatted in the long-term care residence.

"Alinka, how could I forget?" my father replied, using the diminutive of my Polish name, as he always did. “It was the worst place I have ever been to. It lacked blankets, mattresses, windows, doors, and heat. We were hungry and cold.”

Indeed, food was a reported meagre daily ration of watery soup with a few pieces of potato floating in it and stale bread.

Although Edward’s experience as a POW involved harsh conditions, hunger, cold, and boredom, it did not include physical violence. According to documents received from the Arolsen Archives, he worked in the camp’s post office and storage facility. As a non-smoker, he told me he bartered the cigarettes he received in a Red Cross package from Canada for sausages from the German guards.

“One night, we made the mistake of pouring too much instant Nescafé, which we got in our first Red Cross package, into our lukewarm water. We had no idea how much coffee we should use, and we put several spoons into one cup. A few of us spent a sleepless night,” my father said, chuckling.

He also shared a memorable story about the guards forcing them to search for a wooden table and two chairs that had mysteriously disappeared. Despite knowing it was futile, the POWs searched for the items they had burned the night before to keep warm.

Growing up, I had, on rare occasions, already heard these lighthearted stories from my father. They represented the more comical side of his internment, the only aspects he permitted himself to share. In these rare recountings, my father always used the Polish word niewola (which translates into English as captivity), which to me never carried the same grave connotations as the term 'prisoner of war.’ His stories, the Polish word, still don’t totally explain why I never asked questions.

Edward spent three and a half months at Lamsdorf—a short stay compared to thousands of Allied POWs interned there since the early years of the war—before the Germans evacuated the camp and forced the POWs to march westward. His story of the death march before he died, had initiated an extended conversation and finally my interest in exploring more.

We talked for quite a while that day at the long-term care home, and at some point, I saw it was time for a break. Curious to see what information we could find online about the Warsaw Uprising, I proposed moving to the lounge, which had a communal computer.

The Warsaw Rising Museum had recently opened. We scanned their website, where archival photos had been posted. We saw my father’s name on the list of combatants, along with his date of birth, nom de guerre, unit name, rank—corporal—and the name of the POW camp where he was interned. His eyes brightened, but he didn’t say anything. I could sense he appreciated that his role was acknowledged and that it was part of history.

That afternoon, we also visited the website of the Polish Central Prisoner of War Museum. I knew that my father had donated a letter to the museum in 2008. It was one he had mailed from Stalag 344 in late 1944 to his father, Piotr, who was incarcerated at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. We found the donated letter on the museum’s website.

The letter is written on the form conveniently provided by the camp. In the space allocated for the sender’s name, he has written his name and nom de guerre: Edward Warda Switocz. Using his Home Army code name was a small act of defiance and pride. He also included his rank and prisoner number, as required. It is a tender, carefully worded communication to avoid censorship, filled with great respect and concern for his father's fate.

Dear Father

With great emotion, I received the package from Józio, and then, with a lump in my throat, I read his letter. The evidence of his friendship is touching, and I wrote to him about it. I was happy to hear that you are well and alive, but at the same time I am saddened that fate has brought you, at your age, instead of a well-deserved peace and rest, hard living conditions beyond human measure. Perhaps the good Lord will soon allow you to reunite with your family, for whose sake you have devoted your entire life. Write back quickly. What about Gorzkienicz? Wiesiek Polkowski is with me and asks about Durkowski, Kutkowski and Bazanski’s in-laws who were at the court with you. Write me a lot about yourself. I am healthy and feel fine. I am leaving for a permanent camp.

Edek

It was returned to the sender with a stamped message in German: Return ! Impossible to deliver as the addressee is not in the camp. Edward carried this letter in his small satchel, and its sad confirmation that his father must have died in Gross Rosen, on the death march. He held onto it for sixty-three years until he donated it to the Polish Central Prisoner of War Museum.

What strikes me are these words: “I am leaving for a permanent camp.” Edward had just turned twenty-four, and he thought his fate was a permanent camp where he would be forced to toil for the German master race.

The contrast between my father's life at twenty-four and my own experience at that age is humbling. At twenty-four, I was married, living in Ottawa in a white stucco house with green trim that we had just bought, working for a Member of Parliament, and studying for my Master’s part-time. I have no words.

Edward carried this letter and one other keepsake as he trudged along on the gruelling death march. He clung tightly to a precious possession that connected him to his past: a photograph of his family taken in Warsaw before the war ravaged their lives.

This cherished image captured a moment of complete normalcy. In the photo, Julianna, his mother, radiates confidence as she strides closely beside her younger daughter, Jadzia, who appears to be around thirteen. Jadzia sports a pair of charming Mary Janes, while her mother has a striped summer dress and a hat tilted at a jaunty angle. Walking slightly behind them is Edward's father, Piotr, dressed in a dark suit and tie; his more serious face is punctuated by a small, neat, dark moustache. With his broad face full of youthful promise and a shock of blond hair pushed casually back from his forehead, Edward pops his head up behind his mother and sister. He has a slightly mischievous smile. I see in his face the father I know. It’s a beautiful, average working-class family. Most likely, they are returning from church on an ordinary Sunday.

My father, and so many others just like him, are not considered casualties of the war. But what do you call someone who lost his parents, education, the only life, home and city he had ever known, and all of his material possessions because of war? How does one encapsulate such life-altering losses? Words fail me again. Yet, despite these immeasurable sacrifices, and whatever I think, my father would have used the word fortunate.