American Woman Recalls Horrors of Holocaust
She Lived in Poland During World War II
Lwow is located on the southwestern border of Poland and Ukraine, which was an area of conflict between Germany and Russia.
According to Jean (Bohaczek) Swiatnicki, 79, town of Peshtigo, when she was 10 years old, her parents and seven brothers and sisters were informed by a neighbor through the radio about news that would change their lives and millions of others for the next 10 years because of the war and racial persecution.
Swiatnicki Family Captured
As her family was making its way back from picking berries down the river, a neighbor told her family that the Russian army was coming and that they’d better leave or be captured, or worse, be killed.
“We did not have anyplace to go, so we stayed put and hid on the property,” Swiatnicki said.
“The Russian army found us and then confiscated all our personal memorabilia things like photographs, keepsakes and jewelry items. We could not go anywhere. They watched our house like a hawk and took away any freedom we had.”
Famliy Taken to Concentration Camps
The family was eventually shuffled onto labor and concentration camps throughout Europe, where they were put to work in the farm fields or factories.
“We knew nothing of agriculture, but the Russians provided 1 acre of land for us to plant wheat, rye, barley, oats, tobacco and potatoes for them,” Swiatnicki said. “At the same time, my family and others were barely given enough to live on.”
About a year-and-a-half later, the family was pushed closer to the German border and placed into concentration camps to perform manufacturing and hard labor in Blumenthal, Germany.
Swiatnicki vividly remembered how bad the stench was when arriving at the outskirts of the city. The German army and Adolph Hitler’s Gestapo had been killing thousands of Jews and Poles in the area and burying them in large trenches circling the city.
Father Seperated From Family
She also remembered how devastated she was when they took her father away to a distant concentration camp. She feared she would never see him again. It ended up that the family would not see him for three years.
“We didn’t see my father, but knew where he was,” she said. “He was taken to another concentration camp many hours away where he worked cleaning up debris from the bombings.”
Grueling Life in Concentration Camps
Life for the family working in the manufacturing plants were grueling and tiring. Beds of straw were all they had to lie on. Eventually, Swiatnicki caught lice so bad from the unclean bedding that her hair had to shaved off, which was a very embarrassing situation for her as a teenager.
The sores from the lice were so extensive that they ran together, forming a continual patch of raw skin on her head.
She said family members had to walk six miles each way to work every day, and during the evenings they had to contend with the constant bombings from warplanes.
Polish Humiliated by Soldiers
She recalled at times where German or Russian soldiers would walk by Polish people while they were working in the factories and spit in their faces.
“We were just regular people. We weren’t professors or priests or well educated,” Swiatnicki said.
“Doctors and teachers and other educated people were taken to concentration camps where they were killed or left to die I could not figure out why someone could hate a group of people so much that they would make their lives miserable or even kill them.”
While at a burial service for some friends in Poland, Swiatnicki recalled with horror how the Polish people attending the services were hunted down by the Ukrainians and shot at.
She said that the Ukrainians would hate Polish people so much that they would butcher them and mutilate them alive when they had the chance.
Family Reunited With Father
Swiatnicki, age 12 at the time, knew the war had ended when she saw her father walking down the road toward where they were staying.
“I just screamed with joy and cried when I saw my father approaching us,” she said. “I also was so relieved that the war was over.”
After going through a period of time where they were considered displaced people, eventually Swiatnicki’s family members were able to move to the United States. They later ended up moving to the town of Peshtigo to work for a local farmer there.
This is where the family would build their new life. Swiatnicki soon found a new job, learned to drive and fell in love with Richard Swiatnicki, who would be her husband for life.
Remembering/Preserving the Past
Although many people would choose to forget the horrors of the past, Swiatnicki said that she will never stop telling the story of her life in Poland. She believes in remembering the past and preserving it.
A Web site link set up by North Carolina State University that deals with remembering the Holocaust is a source of useful information and allows visitors to post experiences, comments and questions.
What do you think about this article?
More in History
Latest Articles