Bombed building at 46 Krakowskie Przedmieście, corner of T. Kosciuszki Street, 1939.
Author: Ludwik Hartwig. Marek Pluta Collection.
9 September 1939 was completely calm, and suddenly all hell began. The planes were coming. My mother was standing in line for bread at the time. Someone shouted that they were our planes, others that they were Germans. And then the bombing started.
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Danuta Strzelecka, born 1932 Niedrzwica Kościelna, recording 2012.
When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, it began a brutal occupation linked to its colonial ambitions. On 17 September, Poland was also invaded by the Soviet Union and subsequently divided into a German and a Soviet zone. German-controlled areas were either annexed, such as the Wartheland, or occupied, such as the General Government.
Postage stamp with an image of the Brama Krakowska in Lublin issued in the General Government.
Lublin, bombed at the beginning of the war, became the centre of the Lublin district in the General Government, a fact highlighted by German street names, flags displaying swastikas and Wehrmacht soldiers marching in the streets.
Building of the Loan Fund of Lublin Industrialists (today the Lublinianka Hotel) turned into the Deutsches Haus. Photo from an ‘Guide to Lublin’ published by the Germans in 1942 to emphasise the ‘Germanness’ of the city.
There was hunger. It was difficult to get bread, so we got up at four in the morning and stood in line. We bought bread with bran. There was also a cup of beetroot marmalade and sometimes that was enough for the whole day. We often cooked dumplings from frozen potatoes, which had a sweetish taste. Sometimes we ate these dumplings or frozen potatoes several days in a row just to survive.
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Maria Pietraszewska, born in 1929 in Lublin, recorded in 2010.
The Nazi occupation instilled perpetual fear in the civilian population. Oppressive laws provided the framework for racist policies against Poles, Jews, Sinti and Roma and others. These measures ultimately facilitated the murder of elites, confiscation of property, strict food rationing and concentration camp imprisonment.
A Gestapo unit arrived in Kamionka. They arrested three teachers, the community mayor, the community secretary, the parish priest, the vicar, the school manager – a dozen people. They were put on trial. On 6 January 1940 they were executed.
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Krystyna Potrzyszcz, born in 1933 in Kamionka, recorded in 2019.
Ruins of Jezuicka Street after the bombing of Lublin on 9 September.
Photo: Ludwik Hartwig. Marek Pluta’s Collection.
Extras:
Danuta Strzelecka
Maria Pietraszewska
Krystyna Potrzyszcz
Marek Pluta’s Collection
‘A guide to the city of Lublin’ 1942
Danuta Strzelecka, née Rynkowska, was born in Niedrzwica Kościelna near Lublin in 1932. She had two older sisters. She lived in the countryside until the age of four. Her parents worked as agricultural labourers. The family moved to Lublin in 1936 or 1937 and lived in a tenement house at 7 Górna Street, where her father had got a job as a caretaker. He also worked casually at construction sites. Her mother ran the house and occasionally did additional work, and during WWII, she traded in food products imported from villages outside Lublin.
Danuta started attending primary (common) school on Dolna Panna Maria Street at the end of September 1939. She finished school (seven grades) in June 1946 and continued her education at the girls’ Union of Lublin Gimnazjum (or junior high school). She joined the school scout troop (the so-called Thirteen) in September 1946 and took the scout pledge in December of the same year. She was an active member of her scouting unit until September 1949, when the authorities dissolved the Lublin troop. She then became involved in the creation and activity of an underground youth organisation called Trójki (or Triplets), the aim of which was self-education and opposition to communist indoctrination and propaganda.
Danuta passed her school-leaving exams in June 1951 and applied to university, but was not admitted, even though she had completed her secondary school as a top student. She was arrested in mid-November 1951, along with others involved in the Trójki. She was initially placed in the Security Office remand centre on Chopin Street and then transferred to the Lublin Castle prison, where the investigation continued. She was charged before the Military Court with striving for a violent overthrow of the Polish state system (art. 86, par. 1 and 2 of the Penal Code) and sentenced to two and a half years’ imprisonment. She served out her sentence (shortened later under an amnesty to fourteen months) in the Lublin Castle prison and in Chełm, and was released on 15 January 1953.
After her release, Danuta, thanks to the help of her acquaintances, Stanisław and Danuta Magierski, was employed at the Lublin Herbal Works, and later at the Permedia Workers’ Cooperative, established on the basis of Stanisław Magierski’s nationalised pharmaceutical wholesale warehouse. While working there, she completed a pharmaceutical technical high school in Wrocław. She worked at Permedia until January 1981, when she retired. She was active in the underground Solidarity movement (dealing mostly with the purchase of paper, distribution of independent publications and postage stamps, and organisation of live and dead drops). She was involved with the Polish Association of the Blind from 1981 to 1992. After the political breakthrough of 1989, she became involved in the work of the Association of Political Prisoners in Lublin. She had three children. She died in 2019.
Maria Pietraszewska, née Ślusarska, was born in Lublin on 11 April 1929. Her father Władysław worked as a mechanic at the Plage & Laśkiewicz Aircraft Factory in Lublin. Her mother, Aleksandra, née Prędkiewicz, worked as a shop assistant, but later left her job to run the house. Maria had a sister, Teresa, two years her junior. The family lived on Ogrodowa Street, and later on Leśna Street and Skibińska Street.
Maria spent the German occupation in Rury Jezuickie. She remembers her grandmother’s flat on 3 Maja Street [the Third of May Street] and then the formerly Jewish flats on Kowalska and later on Rybna Streets, where her grandmother was resettled after the Germans began to liquidate the ghetto. She remembers the liquidation of the ghetto and the horrific scenes of that time.
Maria completed the 9th Narcyza Żmichowska Primary School in Lublin, and enrolled in the Chemical Gimnazjum (or junior high school) in Lublin in 1944. As part of her apprenticeship, she worked at a paint and varnish factory in Pszczela Wola, as well as a chemical reagent factory in Częstochowa and a sugar factory in Włostów.
Having completed her secondary school, Maria got married and moved to Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, where she began working at the local sanitary and epidemiological station. Following a few years of parental leave break, when she raised her daughters, she returned to professional work, finding employment at the food testing laboratory at the Społem Consumers’ Cooperative. She then returned to her native Lublin, where she worked as deputy manager and manager in the laboratory of the meat processing plant of the Społem Lublin branch. She retired in 1978. She participated in classes organised by the University of the Third Age. She lives in Lublin.
Krystyna Potrzyszcz was born in Kamionka near Lubartów on 16 Octobr 1933. She was an only child. Her father ran a tailor’s shop in the family home.
Krystyna attended primary school in Kamionka already during the German occupation. She left Kamionka in 1947 and started secondary school in Lublin, where she rented a room. She completed the Union of Lublin Liceum (or high school) in 1951 and began working at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University human resources department, where she spent two years. She got married and moved with her husband Henryk to live with her in-laws, in a flat on the corner of Okopowa and Narutowicz Streets. After the birth of her first child, son Andrzej, she moved with her husband to Poniatowa, where her husband had found work. She completed her extramural degree in history there and worked in educational institutions. Her daughter was also born in Poniatowa.
Krystyna returned to Lublin thirteen years later and lived in the Słowacki housing estate. She worked as a history teacher at the 35th Primary School in Lublin and retired in 1991.
Krystyna has been a member of the Retired Persons Section of the Polish Teachers’ Union since 2006 and has kept its chronicle since 2008. She is an active member of its board, organising monthly meetings, trips and two-week holidays. She currently lives with her granddaughter and her family in Lublin.
Marek Pluta’s Collection
Photographs depicting the destruction resulting from the bombing of Lublin on 9 September 1939 were taken by Ludwik Hartwig. The reports he produced suggest his photographic documentation was made on 11 and 12 September 1939 on the orders of the Commandant of the Public Security Guard. Hartwig was assisted in photographing by Stanislaw Pappe, a member of the Public Security Guard. Among the photographed images, Hartwig lists: Litewski Square, the Europejski Hotel and its adjacent buildings, Wyszyński (now Niecała) Street, Szopen Street, Kościuszko Street, Kapucyńska Street, Narutowicz Street, the Cathedral, Jezuicka Street, Bramowa Street, Nowa Street, Łokietek Square, Centralny Hotel, as well as the Krakow Gate, Lubartowska Street, Ruska Street, the Victoria Hotel, 62-64 Krakowskie Przedmieście, Staszic Street, Świętoduska Street, 1 Maja Street, Bronowicka Street, Wesoła Street, Podwale Street, and the Town Hall.
Photographs documenting the destruction, together with manuscripts of the reports, come from the collection of Marek Pluta. A photo album containing a full documentation of the destruction is also in the possession of the State Archive in Lublin, and most photographs are prints of the same negatives.
Marek Pluta’s Collection
‘A guide to the city of Lublin’ 1942
In 1942, the Propaganda Department of the Lublin Governor’s Office (Abteilung Propaganda im Amt des Gouverneurs Lublin) published the guide ‘Führer durch Lublin’. Its authors were Fritz Schöller and Max Otto Vandrey. It was printed by the Deutscher Osten G.M.B.H. publishing house in Krakow.
Its main aim was to emphasise the ‘Germanness’ of Lublin through a properly prepared historical overview. This was to be confirmed by the documents used, e.g. a page from the town book with German names or a page from the 1713 merchant book written in German.
The booklet contained 26 pages and 25 contemporary and archive photographs. The guide also included a list of German offices and official institutions and a city plan with German street names, e.g. Pl. Litewski was named after Adolf Hitler, Radziwiłłowska Street was named Kommandanturstr., Świętoduska Street was named Robert Kochstr.
The foreword was written by the Governor of the Lublin District, Ernst Zörner:
The ‘Guide to Lublin’ is intended to make all Germans who visit or work in Lublin aware of the German past and present of the district capital.
The work of German craftsmen and merchants began here six centuries ago. Around the middle of the 15th century, old Lublin still had a predominantly German majority, a German council at the head of the city and lived according to German law.
I hope and wish that this small publication will help to bear witness to the importance of German labour in the East, both then and now.
‘A guide to the city of Lublin’ 1942