Hitler's youth prevention camp at ul. Przemysłowa in Łódź is sometimes called Little Auschwitz for a reason. The surviving children recalled the dramatic conditions, forced labor beyond strength and the exceptional brutality of the supervisors. The worst was to be Genowefa Pohl aka Eugenia Pol. Although she herself insisted that she was innocent. This is how she defended herself in court ...
I got a note and went to Przemysłowa Street, where in a correctional facility - yes, I was fully convinced that it was a correctional facility - I was supposed to watch over and supervise the work of Polish girls . I knew I was a Overseer, Deputy Sydonia Bayer, not a police officer. There was a sign on the gate:"Polen-Jugendverwahrlager". Only now, nearly 30 years after the war, I learned that it was not a correctional facility, but a camp.
"If I beat, it was only on command"
I didn't wear a uniform or a forage cap because it was a disgrace to me. I didn't have any weapons or any training, not even in air defense. When the planes were coming, we entered potatoes, we lay down in furrows. There were no airline alarms, no taking the children to the square at night.
An appeal at the youth camp at ul. Przemysłowa in Łódź, where she worked as a caretaker, Eugenia Pohl.
The youngest children were two years old, the oldest sixteen. Their parents were usually already in concentration camps. For being partisans or communists. For refusing to accept a Volksliste or for fighting with the Germans. Children considered homeless by the Germans or caught theft. Bayerowa told me that this camp was built as an educational facility for children to adapt them to work and submission to the Germans. I know cases where if a family member signed the Volkslist, the child was released immediately.
The girls' hair was cut, but I was also cut. I had to wear a turban.
I swear to God that I haven't hurt anyone. That I didn't hit the children enough. If I hit them, it was only on orders and so as not to hurt them much. I had no conscience. I carried a rod every day, but only so that the Germans would not see that I was too good. I hit it lightly so it wouldn't hurt. Or I was hitting wood, stool, board, knee, and not the body.
The girls wanted me to do the flogging because I told them to put something on, such as a sweater, or even give them a pillow. The girls pretended to hurt them, shouted to make everyone think I was beating them. I made them soak their eyes with water so that others would see them cry. I prayed silently that everything would work out. Seeing his wet face, Fuge said, "See, you're not going to sleep at work." Then the punished girls went behind the barn and laughed to tears.
"Sometimes they ended up in punishment"
I was good to them. I organized trips to the forest for them. I tried not to let them suffer from vermin. I left after my shift to smear their beds with disinfectant liquid. I searched their heads for lice so that they wouldn't get lashed. They often wetted while sleeping. As soon as I noticed this, I woke them up. More than once they were jealous that I gave one food and not another. For the prisoner of Dolińska, my brother, a tailor, made a checked dress. I protected them, and they made me happy on my name day. I risked losing my job. I thought it would work. I was doing it for them, not for the good of the Reich.
Sometimes they ended up in a prison, a room in a brick house, a darkroom without a window. There was no floor or water. There was only a straw bunk on the cement.
Polish girls in the German labor camp in Dzierżązna near Zgierz, the female branch of the Łódź facility.
The girls worked:peeling potatoes, weaving baskets, creating flower arrangements, straightening needles. I straightened these needles with them. In the sewing room they sewed clothes, pouches, haversacks, and knitted holes for gas mask straps. They did not study. I know nothing about whether they were taken to brothels. Bayer chose them for Germanization to the "house of the race." They were sent to German families.
In March, after the typhus epidemic, I left for a few months to Dzierżązna near Zgierz, a female branch of the Łódź camp, fifteen kilometers from Łódź. Its commander was Hans Heinrich Fuge. He lived in the manor of the former farm, and I - with the second supervisor, Rösler - at the school, in the room upstairs. There were girls downstairs.
I was very happy, because the girls were not locked there, no one guarded them, the gate was open. A wire mesh fenced off the school. There was a forest around. Beautiful surroundings. The girls weed vegetables, collected stones from the fields, and made straps for backpacks. But what was it for? I don't know.
"I always used to win"
I punished Maria Delebis with fifteen lashes. But it wasn't cut skin, just redness. What did I beat her for? For your ingratitude! I gave her bread and trinkets for her name day, I thought she would not tell anyone, and she made a mess. She reported. Fuge had been yelling at me since six in the morning. How dare I give bread to the prisoners ?! I thought he was going to tear me apart. That the whole school would fall apart from that scream.
Plan of the camp at ul. Przemysłowa in Łódź.
I was confronted with Delebis. She denied it. She said that I punished her for bringing the girls cigarette butts. I've never seen girls smoke.
Others were not beaten. Fuge took pictures of us together. I took my guitar to Dzierżązna, so on Sundays, free from work, we went to the forest, sang songs and danced. "Oh, how nice it is to swing among the waves." "It is sad to be a prisoner, to live in the hands of the Gestapo, to sleep on a hard piece of furniture, to stand for a roll call, but close the door for a moment and let me dream, I know that this will come soon. great thing ” . Or:"Link, link, green link." Who, my friend, will mow you if I carry the shotgun? ”.
I diversified their time. I organized games. We liked to play stalking and the king. One group had their king, the other group chose me as their king. I always happened to be victorious.
On Sundays, parents also came to visit the girls. The visits took place in a rather relaxed way. The mother took her daughter and went wherever they wanted:to the forest, to the pond. The area was not closed. In this pond, the girls were fishing, they were standing in the water. Once in the summer I was walking across a field and they called out to me, "Mrs. Geniu, fish, fish!".
"We lived like in a family"
Last day in the camp at Przemysłowa? It was winter, January 1945, I think. I could hear shots from afar, but I didn't know what was happening. Enders rang on my extension phone last night. He called me over, but he spoke German, so I could only understand lowly words. He ordered the truck to be entered. It was quiet and empty in the streets of Łódź. We drove up to the Lodz criminal police. They went in there, but I didn't want to be with them anymore. I ran away from them. I went straight to my house. I was wearing a gray jacket and a waterproof coat. The uniform was left in the correctional facility. Behind the gate.
Why, Your Honor, do these people, after so many years, accuse me of terrible crimes? Why are they slandering? Maybe they are counting on compensation from Poland for the stay in the camp? How can you slander a man for what he has not done? I can't believe ex-prisoners say it on their own. Someone made them do it?
I cannot explain it to myself, because we lived with these people as if we were in a family. Nobody was afraid of me. I was the one who suffered from Bayer because of them. And now this is my reward for my good. In 1946, the prosecutor shook my hand, so I don't know why I'm being charged now. Some say I'm sitting here unfairly. During all the trial steps, I felt as if they were talking about another person, not me. The witnesses are lying. I am very sorry because I am telling the truth. As it was.
Testimonies of surviving children
Gertruda Skrzypczak: When one girl in the infirmary was groaning in pain, she stripped her blanket with her whip, said "you pig" in Polish and ripped her skin scabs off her body. Weinhold lay unconscious, pus was oozing from her ears, rotting. She died soon.
Kazimierz Stefański: She hit me on the head with the pot. Until today I have a trace.
Maria Prusinowska-Migacz: I got a food package from home. Pohl called me to her room. She said I would get the package if I crawled from the front door to her feet and kissed her legs. I didn't want to, so she beat me over the body with a stick especially on the head. At one point I grabbed a piece of cake lying on the table and started to run away from the room. She kicked me so hard in the back that I fell into the snow and crushed the dough.
Zofia Jaworska: She beat wherever she fell. On the head, back, hands, stomach.
Nelly Pielaszkiewicz [in the camp Halina Pawłowska]: She required to pass by "at attention", and you could address her only in German: Bitte, Frau Aufsehrin .
Krystyna Wieczorkowska-Lewandowska (u weighs that Genowefa Pohl was the biggest monster in the camp ):At the first hearing in Łódź, one of the girls, already an adult woman, hit her in the back with a shoe, a high heel, while she was leading Pohlowa into the courtroom. Then the bodyguards were more effective, because we, as witnesses, were led in through a side entrance.
Alicja Kwaśniewska-Krzywda: We were afraid of Pohlowa, we trembled eternally lest she reached us. Pohlowa… A monster! There was a tip on the whip - when it hit, the skin cracked.
Alicja Molencka-Gawryjołek: She beat, kicked with shoes and even hit with bricks. For one Polish word or for taking a rotten potato. She had a kidney failure. We were even afraid of her eyesight.
Maria Wiśniewska-Jaworska: She was able to lock the child in a wardrobe for the night, and it fainted because it was out of air. She would say to us, "You'll all die anyway."
Teodor Tratowski: She doused the children washing in the tub with so much hot water that their skin blistered.
Gertruda Skrzypczak: Bad, cruel. She beat what fell. I've never seen her without a whip. We were knocking out.
Krystyna P .: We were afraid of her. She had the SS mark on the flaps of her uniform, and two lightning bolts. On the officer's legs and a whip in her hand. Sometimes she wore a whip in her shoe. She beat him for the slightest offense or for no reason. Once, during a meal, I chose lice for my friend. Pohila started hitting me with her whip. I covered my face, but look, I have a scar above my right eye.
I also witnessed how Pohl and Bayer chose girls to military brothels . They were looking for fair and dark blondes with blue and black eyes. Pohl explained to them that they would have good food, plenty of food, and that they would not work hard. Then they were loaded onto trucks and taken out of the camp. The day has come when I was also elected. I didn't want to, so I got beaten.
Helena Leszyńska: Hearing the name Pohl makes me faint.
Wiesława Skibińska-Skutecka: The beating made her happy. She laughed while hitting.
Gertruda Piechota-Górska: She was terrible. She beat everyone, even soup spoons. She beat both the older and the younger girls if she didn't like one of them.
Source:
The text is an excerpt from the book by Jolanta Sowińska-Gogacz and Błażej Torański, “Mały Oświęcim. Children's camp in Łódź ', which was published by the Prószyński i S-ka publishing house