Minkowice, 9 October 1945.
Izabella Rek, born on 26 July 1922 in Suchedniów, daughter of Jan and Maria née
Markiewicz.
I was arrested on 9 May 1941 at 5 a.m. Eight fully-armed Gestapo men came for me, the ninth was a translator (I was living in a village). There was no search conducted in the house. They took me to the municipal office, where they had organized a rallying point for all people arrested that day. After a couple of hours, having recorded all personal information, we were sent away in groups of 50 to the Lublin prison in the Castle.
After a thorough personal search, I was placed in prison cell 38. Most of the women staying there were charged with criminal offenses. The cell elder had been frequently sentenced for street fights, frauds and thefts. Before the war, she was doing her time in correctional prison in Nowy Sącz. I was moved from cell 38 to cell 44, to the first floor (38 was situated in the basement). In cell 44, the company was quite different. Thanks to various favorable circumstances, we – the political prisoners – managed to get away from that horrible underclass, without the authorities realizing.
But that “joy” didn’t last long for me. After two weeks, I was taken to the hospital. After barely a couple of days there I had contracted a typhus rash. Along with the typhus, I suffered from meningitis and pneumonia. Thanks to a very strong body, and the exceptionally good care of Dr. Stefan Cybulski, [who was also] a prisoner, I went through the illness without any serious complications. My parents provided me with medicines illegally.
During my illness a transport of women went off to Ravensbrück. That was on 22 September 1941. I was assigned for the transport too, but due to severe illness I wasn’t deported at that time, as I was lying in bed unconscious. I learned about the transport later, from my friend, who stayed in the hospital with me, but her typhus symptoms were much milder. As a result of the typhus I had a phlegmon on my left thigh. They incised the leg without any anesthetic, and a short time after, with the wound still unhealed, I was sent back to the cell.
After two months in the cell I became ill with scarlet fever. My condition was almost hopeless, by then I was already nineteen years old. My friend (a prisoner working in the hospital) later told me that nobody thought I could be saved. The jailer from the hospital would always call me “the one who escaped from under the gravedigger’s shovel”.
Three weeks after the scarlet fever, and thirteen months after being arrested, on 30 May 1942, I was deported to Ravensbrück camp in a transport of 55 people. In Warsaw we were joined by [others from the] Pawiak – 254 people. The journey to Ravensbrück took two days and one night.
At Ravensbrück station there were SS women with dogs awaiting us, who led us to the camp right away. After a long wait our details were taken, and we were counted and then bathed and dressed in groups of 20.
Fully uniformed, we received light summer dresses with short sleeves, aprons and scarves. Including underwear, of course – shirts and drawers. We weren’t given any shoes. Until September, we walked barefoot.
Roll calls that lasted for hours were the biggest drag. We would be freezing. By the middle of September we were provided with wooden clogs, stockings and short, striped jackets. These were winter uniforms.
Right after arriving at the camp I was placed in block 13, where I stayed for five months. Throughout this time I worked in a remote work column [kolumna wyjazdowa] in Hohenlychen in an SS sanatorium. We were used for road construction. Later I worked at a straw shoe factory, sewing soles.
Five months after arriving at the camp, on 31 October 1942, I was subjected to experimental surgery. On that day I was examined, bathed, dressed in new underwear and sent to room no. 4. Next day, an SS nurse came. She shaved our legs and gave us morphine to drink. When we refused, she said: “Don’t be afraid, it’s just morphine.” There were five of us in that room (me, Zofia Baj, Barbara Pietrzyk, Stanisława Śledziejewska, and Barbara Pytlewska). On the afternoon of 2 November I underwent my first surgery. An SS nurse gave me 2 cm of morphine in an injection (she told me that when I asked), after several minutes I was put in a wheelchair and taken to the operating room. The butcher – Dr. Fischer – was waiting for me at the door, in a white apron and with his sleeves rolled up. A tall, handsome blonde with a hooked nose and the eyes of a vulture. The nurses who had brought me there saw to putting me to sleep. One grabbed my hand above the elbow with a rubber, while another, having popped an ampule of evipan open (10 cm) and filling the syringe with it, plunged the needle into the vein and ordered me to count aloud. I counted up to seventeen and fell asleep.
When I woke up, I was in room no. 4. The lights were on, the windows were closed. The surgery took more than two hours. Both my legs were in plaster casts up to my groin. I felt an overwhelming pain throughout my legs, so I couldn’t say where the incisions had been made. After the cast was taken off before the second operation, I noticed that there were incisions on both my shanks along the shin bones, each about 12 cm long. After the second surgery, my right leg was bleeding.
After 28 days I was taken for another operation. During the third surgery, when the third stitch was being ripped open, I was poisoned with ether. Apart from morphine and evipan, a mask with ether was put on my face during the operation. While intoxicated, I was suffocating, my tongue collapsed. Nothing was being done to save me, only my desperate companions - unable to use anything else - pulled my tongue out with a fork. It wasn’t until later that one [of my campmates] working in the Revier [hospital] staff managed to “steal” or “get hold of” an injection of cosamine [dopamine?], which she gave me right away. She saved me with it.
I was operated on four times. I lay in the Revier for 5 months. Back in the block, I had the so- called bet karta for two months, which excused me from going to work. After the bet karta expired, I was knitting stockings.
On 4 February 1945, a list of operated prisoners to be examined was sent to our block, and we were told not to leave the block after the next day’s roll call. We knew what that meant. We knew exactly what was going to happen to us. On 4 February in the morning, we gathered together and resolved not to follow their orders. We said to each other they wouldn’t get us alive. We decided that at the last moment we would attack whoever was going to take us, and defend ourselves even with a weapon like [illegible] until we died. It drove us to desperation, but it stimulated us to act.
From 4 February until the end we didn’t live at our block. We hid in all possible and impossible corners of the camp, dressed in horrible rags, disguised, dirty (on purpose), spending nights under beets, on attics, in toilets etc. While we were remaining hidden using fake numbers, winkiels and surnames, horrible things were happening within the camp, with masses of women being taken to gas chambers every day.
We made it through to the end, when we were rescued, in such conditions. Just before that we had been driven out of the camp to the west on foot. They hustled us for five days and four nights. The weak and the ill were shot in the ditches by the road.
The food rations in the camp were as follows: half a liter of rutabaga soup with unpeeled potatoes, 1/5 of a bread loaf, and half a liter of black coffee. For the last two weeks, we didn’t get any bread.
At the time of our arrival there were 22 residential blocks and from eight to ten thousand female prisoners, more than a half [illegible] being Poles. Criminals of different categories were staying in the camp apart from the political prisoners. At the time of our departure, there were 32 residential blocks and from forty to forty-five thousand dwellers.
I myself did not notice any sexual abuse on the part of the SS.