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Pozawarszawska konspiracja więzienna na terenach okupowanych przez Niemców 1939-1945. (Udział polskiego personelu)

100%

Bedyński K.

Archiwum Kryminologii

1998

issue XXIII-XXIV

167-212

In 1939-1945, the Nazi invaders organized over 1300 prisons and jails in the occupied territory of Poland. The institutions were instrumental to the policy of extermination the Polish nation which was among the aims of the invasion. Prisons and jails were places where Polish people were isolated, tortured and slaughtered. Inmates were transported to places of mass execution and to concentration camps; during evacuation in January l945, route columns were sent on ,,death marches”. The prisons where such genocidal practices were particularly intense are still present in Polish historical consciousness as places of torture and martyrdom. A symbol of this kind is the Pawiak prison in Warsaw where the Nazi confined over 100 thousand persons; 37 thousand were put before a firing squad, slaughtered, or tortured to death, and 60 thousand were sent to concentration camps. The Pawiak prison was also the site of the inmates' incessant struggle for freedom, survival, and preservation of dignity. In their struggle, the prisoners were assisted in a variety of ways by many Polish members of the staff compulsorily employed by the Nazi out of necessity especially during the first months of occupation. The assistance was both material and spiritual. The Staff would hand over to inmates articles such as food, drugs, cigarettes etc., and to confined priests - the Host. The Polish prison staff smuggled messages, contacted the prisoners' families, disclosed informers, warned against the Gestapo and helped to escape. Their acts resulted from patriotic, humanitarian and religious values. Attitudes of a considerable proportion of Polish prison staff who sabotaged the rulings of Nazi administration helped to accomplish intelligence operations started in prisons as early as the autumn of 1939 by underground independance organizations. In December 1939, Warsaw District Headquarters of Siuïba Zwycikstwu Polski [Service to Poland’s Victory, SZP] recruited three prison guard officers who were ordered to organize intelligence divisions in each of the Warsaw prisons. In the Pawiak prison, the structure continued to operate till July 1944; it based on the work of Polish staff duty prisoners, and a group of outside liaisons. Participation of the prison staff in intelligence operations undertaken by independence organizations broadened the notion of prison conspiracy, adding to it a variety of actions directly related to struggle against the invaders. Symbols similar to the Pawiak prison were also other institutions in Nazi-occupied Poland and in Polish territories included in the Reich. On the local scale, the prisons were symbols of particular torment of their inmates and of underground involvement of the Polish staff. The actual possibility of forming a prison conspiracy in Nazi-occupied territories depended on many factors. This was related to differences in the functioning of prisons systems in different regions. Individual administrative districts in territories included into the Reich differed in this respect from the occupied regions and from the eastern borderland of Poland, Nazi-occupied since 1941. The basic factor that determined the nature and intensity of underground activities was the size of Polish staff and their individual motivation resulting from the system of values professed. In territories included into the Reich, the prison system subordinated to Ministry of Justice controlled 142 formerly Polish prison institutions. Their arrangement in individul administrative districts was as follows: Warta Land - 49, Gdansk and West Prussia - 28, Silesia - 12, East Prussia - 6, and Białystok - 4. Among those taken over by Nazi invaders, the largest in respect of inmate population were the prisons in Sieradz (capacity of 1,146), Rawicz (1,075), Wronki (1,016), Koronowo (562), Poznań (464), and Łódź(420). Some of the prisons were taken over together with their inmates and Polish prison staff who were ordered to work on. This corresponded with the order that all inhabitants of invaded territories return to work on pain of severe sanctions, the death penalty included. The order applied also to prison staff who stayed on in their original place of residence or returned from evacuation or POW camps. Among those returning to work were guards who on the day of evacuation had been given secret orders to stay on and to take a job under occupation (Cracow, Wronki). In some localities, during the first weeks of occupation, there was a shortage of candidates for prison guards among both the Polish population and the local German community. The invaders thus had to hire German-speaking Poles with some knowledge of prisons, as e.g. court ushers. In November 1939, the process started of Polish staff being removed from prisons, in Warta Land in particular, and replaced with German guards brought in from the Reich, local Germans, and Poles who had signed the German nationality list. In 1943, the front situation becoming worse, some of the German prison staff were mobilized. Vacancies were filled with forcefully employed former Polish guards. Thus according to the changing staff conditions, also the possibilities of clandestine assistance to inmates changed. The possibility of intelligence operations in prisons in territories included into the Reich depended also on the functioning of independence organizations. The extent of repressions suffered by Polish people in those territories made it impossible to develop regular underground activities in prisons. In some prisons in the Gdansk and West Prussia district where Polish staff were left on the job (Grudziądz, Koronowo, Starogard Gdański), the guards immediately started helping prisoners: they contacted the families and smuggled packages, letters and messages. Most important was assistance in organizing escapes, saving persons from transports to concentration camps, putting them in the infirmary, or finding them a job in the prison. The Koronowo prison had special conditions for development of underground activity: throughout the period of occupation, its Staff included 44 Poles, 39 of them among the guards. Most guards became involved in various forms of assistance to prisoners; they cooperated with an inmate self-defense group and with an underground group of Koronowo women who rendered material assistance to inmates and helped their families coming on permitted visits. They also helped to find shelter for escaped prisoners. The only Polish woman guard in the Fordon women’s prison was only employed in 1943. From the very start, she rendered material and moral assistance to political prisoners, and organized a local group who gathered food and drugs for the inmates. Most limited were the possibilities of assisting prisoners in the institutions of Warta Land. The conditions were favorable during the first months after the invasion only when the invaders were forced to employ Polish prison staff and the system of internal and external supervision and surveillance had not yet been introduced to the full. In this situation, Polish guards mainly assisted inmates materially and morally and served as liaisons between them and their families. For example, a guard in the Leszno prison smuggled farewell letters of hostages wainting for execution; another one in the Rawicz prison orsanized a contact station for prisoners’ families in his own apartment; and a guard in the Kościan prison help priests to say masses in secret. Later on when few Polish guards were still in service, they could only assist inmates on a limited scale and with extreme caution. But even in this situaion, they were still willing to help. During the first months after the invasion, a Polish clerk in the Kościan prison not only assisted the inmates but also documented Nazi crimes: among other things, he kept lists of the executed. In prisons of the Warta Land district involvement of Polish prison staff in underground intelligence was practically non-existent. This was due to a rapid replacement of Polish guards and to organizational difficulties encountered by the underground in that district. Favorable conditions could be found in the Wieluń prison which had a large group of pre-war Polish Staff throughout the period of Nazi occupation. Moreover, one of prison staff leaders, reserve oficer of the Polish Army, was sworn as agent of Sieradz and Wieluń Inspectorate of the underground Armed-Struggle Union - Home Army (ZWZ AK). In prisons taken over by the invaders in Silesia district, the Nazi administration created a climate of mistrust, suspicion and intimidation with respect to Polish staff temporarily left on the job. This limited and in some cases precluded the guards’ secret contacts with inmates and their families. A special role in prison conspiracy in Silesia was played by Emil Lipowczan, forcefully recruited to the police and delegated to work as guard in Gestapo remand prison in Mysłowice. Acting for patriotic, humanitarian and religious reasons, he rendered comprehensive material and spiritual assistance to prisoners. He reached their families and warned persons threatened with arrest. He was assisted in this work by his entire family. Starting from 1943, he worked for Home Army intelligence. Once the Nazi-Soviet war broke out in June 1943, the eastern territories of Poland - previously occupied by USSR – were taken over by Nazi administration. Extremely few Polish prison guards could actually be used by the new invaders as the staff had been pacified by NKVD in 1939-1941. For this reason, prisons of Białystok district were staffed with various persons; some of them were subsequently recruited by ZWZ AK intelligence. Many a time, ZWZ AK would also appoint its members to take a job in prisons and Gestapo remand prisons and to carry out information and intelligence tasks there while at the same time assisting detained AK soldiers. Such guards only rendered material and moral assistance to other prisoners with utmost caution as a side-activity which they pursued for humanitarian reasons. In Nazi-occupied Poland (Generalgouvernement), the conditions were entirely different and more favorable for prison conspiracy. Nearly all prisons, also those subordinated to security police (except the Montelupi prison in Cracow), had Polish staff throughout the occupation. Besides, operating in ihe neighborhood of individual institutions were numerous legal, semi-legal and illegal organizations assisting prisoners and their families. Through persons who stayed in touch with the inmates, SZP-ZWZ AK would penetrate prisons on regular basis. The prison staff (pre-war guards forcefully reassigned to the job) not only assisted the inmates but also became involved in intelligence work. Tasks of this kind were performed mainly by guards purposely sent to the prison by an independence organization. Prison conspiracy has a variety of organizational forms. In Tarnyw, there was an highly centralized prison section; Lublin, instead, had several active but independent small groups of guards and duty prisoners. In Cracow, Częstochowa (prison in Senacka Street), and in a few other smaller prisons, the structure was atomized and based on independent underground work of individual guards. The extent of assistance rendered to inmates and of intelligence tasks assigned often depended on the committal and personality of the head of AK prison section; this can be said e.g. of the prisons in Jasło, Pinczów and Rzeszów. Significant was also the contribution of intelligence officers who supervised the prisons sections e.g. in Biała Podlaska, Siedlce, Wiśnicz and Zamość. Added to Generalgouvernement in August 1941 was Galicia district. Polish guards were but a small group among the prison staff of that district; they were supervised by Germans, Ukrainians and other nationalities. In such conditions, the scope of assistance to inmates was extremely limited. Yet ZWZ AK intelligence officers would get in touch even with those few Polish guards and gain them over for cooperation. Prison conspiracy in Galicia and in the remaining eastern territories consisted first of all in individual guards’ committal and performance of tasks assigned by his superior intelligence officer. This form could be found in Lvov, Pińsk, and Równe. The Nazi prison administration mistrusted Polish staff who were submitted to everincreasing surveillance by the Germans and other nationalities, and also by few quislings among Polish guards and informers among the inmates. Yet neither persecution nor repression (arrests, executions, confinements to concentration camps) applied to Polish staff could reduce the extent of assistance to political prisoners or check intelligence work in prisons.

Warszawska konspiracja więzienna 1939-1944 (udział polskiego personelu)

61%

Bedyński K.

Archiwum Kryminologii

1995

issue XXI

191-220

Taken over by the Nazi in September 1939, Polish prisons became not only the gallows of many thousands of Poles but also the site of heroic struggle against the invaders ‒ a struggle in which both the inmates and the Polish prison staff were involved. Warsaw prisons, especially the Pawiak prison, became symbols of martyrdom of the Polish nation and of persistent struggle fought by soldiers of the underground Polish State. The Polish prison staff were obliged to stay in service during the Nazi occupation of Poland for two reasons. The first one resulted from the Nazi authorities’ order that all Polish employees should resume work; acts of sabotage carried severe sanctions. The other reason was related to the policy of the Penal Department, revived by the invaders in the territory of Nazi-occupied Poland and renamed the Central Prison Administration in 1940. Its rudimentary powers included, among other things, the staffing of prisons in the Warsaw district. In October 1939, the institution summoned the prison staff to resume work: this staff policy was designed to improve the psychological situation of inmates, to facilitate material assistance to prisoners, the political ones in particular, and to help create in the future, basing on the Polish staff, the structures of prison intelligence service of underground organizations. The actual decisions of individual members of the prison staff were prompted by a variety of motivations: a fear of the consequences of sabotaging the Nazi orders; a sense of being subordinated to Polish prison administration; and a need to secure one’s own source of maintenance. Many functionaries were also ideologically motivated: by a wish to help imprisoned Poles or subordination to suggestions or orders coming from persons involved in the arising structures of anti-Nazi conspiracy. Having made up his mind to work in a prison under Nazi administration, each and every member of the prison staff faced the problem of defining his attitude towards prisoners in general, and political prisoners in particular. Under Nazi occupation, the actual contents of the notion of “political prisoner” did not correspond with its former statutory definition. The need for a different attitude to political prisoners, against the prison regulations and the orders of Nazi authorities, resulted from the situation of occupation, the ever-intensifying terror, the Nazis’ attitude tu prisoners and to Polish staff, the pressure from society, and the cxpectations formulated in this rcspect by the first underground organizations. In this situation, most of the Polish prison staff developed a protective attitude to political prisoners, aimed at the greatest possible liberalization of provisions of the prison rules and, to an extent determined by reasons of their own safety, actually sabotaged Nazi instructions. Such attitudes could be found as early as October 1939 in a prison in Daniłowiczowska street and in “Serbia” (women’s ward of the Pawiak prison); they persisted till the closing of Polish prisons, whatever the restrictions imposed on Polish prison staff during the occupation. The most widespread form of assisting prisoners was to pass on news from inmates to their families or other persons and vice versa. The staff also secretly supplied inmates with food, medication, cigarettes, and books. Also religious practices were permitted against the regulations, and imprisoned priests could say masses and render religious assistance and services to their fellow inmatess. This attitude of Polish prison staff was reinforced by the activities of newly- formed underground organizations which tried to get in touch with the inmates by winning over the Polish staff members. Organized intelligence in Warsaw prisons started in early November 1939 when the Headquarters of Poland’s Victory Service were notified by a prison staff member of the imprisonment of the Mayor of Warsaw Stefan Starzyński in the Daniłowiczowska street prison. Having received this signal, an Headquarters oflicer Emil Kumor started winning over the staff of the succession of prisons in which the Mayor of Warsaw was kept. Regular activities towards the building of prison intelligence structures were started late in November 1939 by the head of Information and Propaganda Department of Poland’s Victory Service Warsaw Headquarters, Zygmunt Hempel. In each of the prisons, he managed to win over an officer of the prison staff; sworn under the organization’s bylaws, those officers, were charged with the task of forming prison intelligence networks in their respective institutions. A special stress on the building and functioning of this type of network for communication with inmates was laid in the Pawiak prison, a security police jail. The prison intelligence network included internal network (function holders among the inmates, members of prison staff); external liaisons (prison staff); and external network (persons in charge of contact points, liaisons). This communication network was io acquire information about the circumstances of detention, the course of inquiry, the degree to which the entire organization was endangered, etc. Instructed by the organization, the intelligence network members among the prison staff passed on information, supplied food, medication (poison in some cases), things to help organize an escape, and underground press. They also prepared copies of lists of new admissions and of persons transported to concentration camps, executed, or murdered. They warned prisoners against Nazi agents and other dangers, and facilitated contacts between partners. Till mid-1942, there operated in Polish prisons, the Pawiak prison in particular, numerous structures of communication between inmates and underground organizations; they were independent of one another and varied as to the degree of organization. Acting as their liaisons were many a time the same members of prison staff; many of them only learned after 1945 for which underground organization they had been working. Beside performing the organizational tasks, those same functionaries often undertook, for humanitarian reasons, to establish illegal contacts with individual prisoners upon request of those persons’ families. Ultil mid-1942, the underground communication with inmates was spontaneous, largely improvised, and chaotic, and those involved in it tended to ignore even the basic principles of safety. Nazi counteraction took place as early as July 1940 when the first group of prison staff were arested and transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. They were accused of helping the prisoners and involvement in the underground activities of one of the organizations that struggled for the country’s independence. Thereafter, the prison staff were more and more often put under surveillance, searched, and detained. In the winter of 1941/1942, the Nazi succeeded to introduce their agent, Józef Hammer, into the prison intelligence structures of the Armed Struggle Union. Hammer established co-operation with a group of the most ideologically motivated prison staff; through their activity, the Nazi intelligence gained access to materials possessed by underground organizations. As a result of this activity, 33 functionaries of the prison staff were arrested in March 1942; most of them were subsequently killed in concentration camps. In April, furher 9 officers were executed. The repressive measures towards Po1ish prison staff continued in 1943, when further arrests and executions took place, and in the early half of 1944 when Polish functionaries were dismissed (the Pawiak prison). The staff of prisons in Daniłowiczowska and Rakowiecka streets were much less affected by the Nazi repressions as there were practically no political prisoners in those two institutions. On 30 June 1942, the death penalty imposed on Józef Hammer in an underground trial was executed; it took the counter-espionage of the Home Army Headquarters a mere several weeks to clear his associates of the charge of intentional co-operation with the provocateur. Instead, it was manifested in an inquiry that the men had been completely devoted to the cause of struggle against the invaders and motivated by patriotic reasons. The underground movement’s battle against the Nazi for channels of com- munication with prisoners finally won, the period of consolidation of the prison intelligence headquarters started, especially in the Pawiak prison. As a result of actions undertaken by the Home Army Headquarters, the whole of this sphere was taken over by its counter- espionage division. By way of the sole exception, the Home Representation of Polish Ęmigr Government were permitted to organize their own network for communication with prisoners. Starting from mid-1942, the internal and external networks were reorganized and adjusted to new conditions resulted from Nazi policies, reflected first and foremost in intensified repressions of Polish prison staff. Heads of the Home Army Headquarters counter-espionage division compared the participation of that staff in anti- Nazi prison conspiracy to going to the front; they stated at the same time that the prison staff actually encountered a more dangerous situation. In their case, the enemy was the Nazi political police; they paid with their own life and health for any mistake, unguarded moment, or forgetfulness of dangers. If we take just the staff of the Pawiak prison into consideration, 62 of its members were arrested, l0 of them were executed , and a few only of the 45 confined to concentration camps managed to survive the gehenna.

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2 Archiwum Kryminologii

2 Bedyński K.

1 1998

1 1995

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Pozawarszawska konspiracja więzienna na terenach okupowanych przez Niemców 1939-1945. (Udział polskiego personelu)

Warszawska konspiracja więzienna 1939-1944 (udział polskiego personelu)