Abstract
We arrived in Stróżze on the same day we left Osiczyna, that is, on July 11, 1942. At the station a lad offered to take our luggage to Berdechów1 in a hand cart. On the way we met a couple walking in the opposite direction, towards Stróżze, who turned out to be Tadeusz Cieluch and his wife, the son and daughter-in-law of the owners of the farm where we were to stay.
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Notes
- 1.
About 12 km from the station at Stróże.
- 2.
Steinhaus’s mother-in-law.
- 3.
Wincenty Witos (1874–1945), a prominent member of the Polish People’s Party from 1895, member of parliament in the Galician Sejm 1908–1914. Thrice prime minister of Poland: in 1920–1921, 1923, and 1926.
- 4.
This camp, planned by SS leader Heinrich Himmler himself, was located near the village of Ravensbr¨uck, about 90 km north of Berlin, and was operational from 1939 to 1945. It is estimated that over 130,000 female prisoners, from almost all European nations (Polish women accounting for around 25 %), passed through the camp, of whom only between 15,000 and 30,000 survived. Medical experiments were conducted on the inmates. (See Stasia’s report below.)
- 5.
“Nutrition Office”
- 6.
“Smith”
- 7.
“The Kraków Times”, a German-language newspaper published intermittently in Kraków from 1799 to 1945. Over the period 1939–1945 it was controlled by the occupying Nazis.
- 8.
“living space”
- 9.
Heinrich Hamann (1908–1993), Border Police Commissioner in Nowy Sącz from late 1939 to mid-1943, whence he was transferred to Jasło to work with the Security Police. Sentenced to life imprisonment in 1966 by the District Court of Bochum for the murder of hundreds of Jews and others, and for the deportation of people living in the ghetto in Nowy Sącz to Bełżec extermination camp in August 1942.
- 10.
Possibly in the AK.
- 11.
In Ancient Greece, a sacrifice of a hundred cattle to the gods. It now means any large-scale slaughter or massacre.
- 12.
A village about 7 km from Berdechów.
- 13.
Felicja’s married name was M¨uller.
- 14.
“Operation Torch”, begun on November 8, 1942.
- 15.
“work card”
- 16.
Heron’s formula for the area of a triangle with sides of lengths a, b, c is \(\sqrt{s(s - a)(s - b)(s - c)}\) where \(s = (a + b + c)/2\), the semi-perimeter. Heron of Alexandria lived around 60 AD. However, the rule attributed to him was actually discovered by Archimedes (287–212 BC).
- 17.
The Battle of Stalingrad fought by Germany and its allies against the USSR for control of Stalingrad (formerly Tsaritsyn, and subsequently Volgograd) lasted from August 1942 till February 1943. The German defeat was a turning point in World War II, rendering a German victory in the East impossible. Considered among the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare, with an estimated two million combined casualties.
- 18.
Rome fell to allied troops, mainly American and British, but including those of several other Allied nations, on June 4, 1944, after an extremely arduous nine-month push up the peninsula from Sicily.
- 19.
The solution is essentially as follows: Someone slowly moves a knife over the surface of the cake until one of the contestants thinks the portion thus far demarcated represents at least 1∕n of the whole; at this moment he calls a halt, takes this part as his cut, and the division continues with the remaining n − 1 contestants.
- 20.
See Chapter 10 Steinhaus and his wife had stayed with the Blumenfelds in Lwów for a short time after they fled their own apartment.
- 21.
Zenon Klemensiewicz (1891–1969), Polish linguist, specializing in the Polish language. Professor at the Jagiellonian University of Kraków. Fought in both world wars, and participated in underground education in Poland during the German occupation.
- 22.
Zdzisław Żmigryder-Konopka (1897–1939), professor of ancient history at Warsaw University, and senator in the Polish parliament in the interwar period.
- 23.
The reference might be to the influential American journalist Walter Lippmann (1889–1974), but nothing is known about his being a special target for Nazi hatred. More probably Steinhaus meant to refer to Frederick Lindemann, First Count Cherwell (1886–1957), English physicist. As scientific advisor to the British government during World War II, he strongly advocated “area bombing” of German cities. In this case the other person cited might well be Sir Arthur Harris, First Baronet (“Bomber Harris” ) (1892–1984), Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command during the latter half of World War II. It was he who was given the task of implementing Churchill’s policy of “area bombing” of German cities.
- 24.
From September 1939 Hitler had repeatedly proposed that aerial bombing be restricted to zones of military operations, in accordance with president Roosevelt’s proposal that civilians and unfortified cities be excluded as targets of aerial bombardment.
- 25.
And the bombing of Guernica in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.
- 26.
The “Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of prisoners-of-war”, effective as of 1931.
- 27.
The author’s wife, n´ee Stefa Szmoszówna.
- 28.
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884–1941), prolific English writer. A best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s, his works have since fallen into neglect.
- 29.
The Vlachs, or Wallachians, were a people stemming from the latinized population of the Balkan Peninsula. In medieval times, groups of Vlach shepherds settled in various regions of the Carpathian Mountains, e.g., in Moravia, Slovakia, Poland, and Ukraine. The modern Romanians are of Wallachian origin.
- 30.
Where Stefan Dobrzański was living at the time.
- 31.
A traditional, hearty, long-simmered meat-and-sauerkraut stew, considered the national dish of Poland. Variation is possible: fresh cabbage instead of sauerkraut, and the addition of mushrooms, for example.
- 32.
A drink made with eggs, sugar, vanilla, schnapps, cognac, and sometimes cream or milk.
- 33.
“Helm”, the official German newspaper published in Polish in the Generalgouvernement. Himmler had ordained that the non-German population in the East should not be educated above the fourth grade of elementary school. Above that level only education in trades or factory work was on offer. All Polish institutions of higher learning were closed, and their facilities either exported to Germany or converted to military barracks or offices. Teaching in Polish was punishable by death.
- 34.
“These lands were never governed in so clear and clean a manner as now.”
- 35.
Presumably by the “Secret Teaching Organization” (Tajna Organizacja Nauczycielska) responsible for most of the underground elementary and secondary education conducted during the German occupation. It is estimated that by 1942 about a million and a half children were being educated by such organizations, as well as certain adult individuals, at the elementary level, a hundred thousand at the secondary level, and ten thousand at university level.
- 36.
“Lower Stróże”
- 37.
Town in the Silesian Voivodship, on the border with the present-day Czech Republic.
- 38.
Stalin broke off relations with Sikorski’s government in 1943 when Sikorski asked the Red Cross to investigate the Katyń Forest massacre. In July 1943, a plane carrying Sikorski plunged into the sea after takeoff from Gibraltar, giving rise to a number of conspiracy theories relating to the circumstances of his death.
- 39.
“Why does the USA make war?”
- 40.
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon (1897–1977), British conservative politician. British Foreign Secretary during World War II, and Prime Minister 1955–1957.
- 41.
In the aftermath of World War I the victorious powers had established what was to be called a “Polish corridor” between Germany proper and East Prussia, allowing Poland access to the Baltic Sea. The city of Danzig (now Gdańsk) was designated a free city, under the protection of the League of Nations and independent of both Poland and Germany.
- 42.
“Even if two do the same, it isn’t the same.”
- 43.
During the German invasion of the USSR Stalin, realizing that, despite the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church by the Soviet authorities from immediately after the revolution, that institution still had a strong hold on much of the populace, began to make concessions to religion. From that time the Russian Orthodox Church was administered as an official arm of the Soviet state, although severely restricted in its operations. During the period of de-Stalinization following Stalin’s death, many of the concessions were withdrawn, and anti-religious propaganda re-intensified.
- 44.
“[Religion is] for the Polish peasant.”
- 45.
Starting in late March 1944, over 400,000 Jews were transported to Auschwitz from Hungary over a period of 2 months. Most of the deportees were gassed immediately upon arrival, following selection by doctors such as Mengele and Thilo. See: Holocaust: A History by Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan Pelt, W. W. Norton & Co., 2002.
- 46.
In Polish, Zbrucz, a left tributary of the Dniester forming part of the border between Poland and the USSR established by the Treaty of Riga following the Soviet-Polish war of 1919–1921.
- 47.
Ethnic Germans originally invited as immigrants to Russia in the eighteenth century, living along the Volga around Saratov and further south. In tsarist Russia they had been allowed to maintain their German culture.
- 48.
The Kalmyks are a western Mongolic people, now forming a majority in the autonomous Republic of Kalmykia on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. In Polish common parlance, Kałmuk refers to Asiatic people generally.
- 49.
“Wolf’s Lair”
- 50.
An attempt by the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) to liberate Warsaw as the Red Army approached the eastern suburbs of the city. The Soviet advance halted on the eastern side of the Vistula until, after 63 days of fighting, during which about 16,000 members of the Polish resistance army and some 180,000 civilians were killed, the uprising was put down. Before retreating west, the Germans systematically razed over a third of what was left of the city, block by block. The Red Army entered the city only in January 1945.
- 51.
Part of Stróże.
- 52.
Wife of a neighboring farmer, whose sons Steinhaus was teaching. See above.
- 53.
Since “D-Day”, June 6, 1944, when a vast Allied armada landed American, British, Canadian, and Free French troops on the beaches at Normandy.
- 54.
A town very close to Warsaw.
- 55.
Since at this time there was no postal service, presumably such communications were effected via contacts travelling to and fro.
- 56.
Stanisław Mikołajczyk (1901–1966), Polish politician, Prime Minister of the Polish Government-in-Exile 1943–1944, and Deputy Prime Minister 1945–1947 in postwar Poland before the USSR took full political control of Poland.
- 57.
V-1 rockets were used to bomb southeast England from June 1944, and, towards the end of the war, sites in Belgium. They were a pulse-jet-powered archetype of what would later be called “cruise missiles.” The V-2 rocket, a ballistic missile, and the prototype of all modern rockets, was first used against London in September 1944. Over 3000 V-2s were launched by the Wehrmacht at Allied targets, mostly London and later Antwerp, causing the deaths of an estimated 7250 people. It is estimated that some 12,000 forced laborers died working at the production sites.
- 58.
“party member”
- 59.
Wilhelm Koppe (1896–1975), German Nazi Commander responsible for numerous atrocities against Poles and Jews in Reichsgau Wartheland—the region of west-central Poland annexed by the Germans in 1939, with Poznań as its chief city—and the Generalgouvernement during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. In October 1943 he was made H¨oherer SS- und Polizeif¨uhrer in the Generalgouvernement, with headquarters in Kraków.
- 60.
Koppe ordered all prisoners executed so as to avoid their being freed by the advancing Red Army.
- 61.
Fritz Sauckel (1894–1946), Nazi politician. Hitler’s chief recruiter of slave labor during World War II. Sentenced to death by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
- 62.
A prison built in 1835, used by the occupying Germans as their largest political prison and as part of the Warsaw concentration camp system. Some 37,000 prisoners were executed there and another 60,000 sent to extermination and concentration camps. Shortly before the Warsaw Uprising 2000 men and the remaining 400 women prisoners were transported to Gross-Rosen and Ravensbr¨uck. The prison was destroyed by the Germans in 1944.
- 63.
A town on the Vistula, 25 km east of Kraków.
- 64.
“What are you doing here? Go home at once.”
- 65.
A friend from Lwów; see Chapter 10
- 66.
Polish policemen of the Generalgouvernement wore a navy blue uniform, whence their nickname the “Blue Police” (Granatowa Policja).
- 67.
Possibly Alfred Borowicz (originally Horowitz) (1909–2006), brother to Olga Pamm and Irena Beczkowska (n´ee Horowitz).
- 68.
A two-wheeled or four-wheeled public carriage.
- 69.
“All is in order.”
- 70.
Ujazdowskie Avenue, a street parallel to the Vistula, belonging to the “Royal Route” in Warsaw.
- 71.
Yiddish for “Woe is me”.
- 72.
Traditional Catholic prayers.
- 73.
Possibly Kazimierz Władysław Wóycicki (1807–1879), Polish ethnologist, folklorist, writer, and publisher. Historian of Warsaw.
- 74.
Jerzy Zagórski (1907–1984), Polish poet, essayist, and translator. Published in the underground magazine Kultura Jutra during World War II. He and his wife Maryna, also a translator, fought in the Warsaw Uprising in different units. Jerzy Andrzejewski (1909–1983), prolific Polish writer. Joined the communist party in 1950, but left in 1956 at the time of the uprising in Hungary. From the 1960s a strong supporter of Poland’s anti-communist movement.
- 75.
Joseph Conrad (originally Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) (1857–1924), Polish-born English novelist. Considered one of the greatest novelists writing in English.
- 76.
Marie-Henri Beyle (pen-name Stendhal) (1783–1842), French realist writer, known for his acute analysis of his characters’ psychology.
- 77.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus (AD 56–AD 117), Roman senator and historian of the Roman Empire. His Annals and Histories span the period from AD 14 to AD 96, that is, from the death of Augustus to the death of Domitian.
- 78.
Polish novelist, playwright, journalist, and political activist. Lived from 1890 to 1960.
- 79.
Tadeusz Kotarbiński (1886–1981), Polish philosopher and logician. Studied under Kazimierz Twardowski. A representative figure of the Lwów-Warsaw school. Created a philosophical theory called “reism”.
- 80.
Zofia Kossak-Szczucka (1889–1968), Polish writer—mainly for the Catholic press—and World War II resistance fighter. Co-founded the wartime Polish organization “Żegota” set up to assist Poland’s Jews escape the Holocaust. She was arrested and sent to Auschwitz in 1943, but survived the war.
- 81.
Mieczysław Karol Rettinger (1890–1944?), Polish literary critic and political activist. Frequenter of the “Scottish Caf´e” in Lwów.
- 82.
Term applying to “eastern Catholic churches”, in Poland meaning mainly the Ukrainian-Greek Catholic Church or the Slavic Catholic Church.
- 83.
The Dachau concentration camp, the first of the Nazis’ concentration camps, located near the south German town of Dachau, began operating in 1933. Originally intended for political prisoners and Jews, it came to be used for prisoners from all German-occupied territories, but mostly from Poland. It is estimated that from 1933 to 1945 between 200,000 and 250,000 prisoners passed through the camp, with the number of those killed there anywhere from 33,000 to 148,000 (if those perishing in sub-camps are included).
- 84.
Halina Krahelska (1892–1945), Polish writer and political activist. A member of the early Polish Socialist Party, she took part in the 1917 Russian Revolution. She returned to interwar Poland where she was active in supporting measures for social improvement. During World War II she was in the Polish resistance. She perished in Ravensbr¨uck concentration camp.
- 85.
Marceli Handelsman (1882–1945), Polish historian at Warsaw University. In hiding during World War II because of his Jewish background, he took an active part in underground education, serving as a professor of the underground Warsaw University. Also served in the AK. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, he was murdered at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp on March 20, 1945.
- 86.
Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (National Armed Forces), an anti-Soviet, anti-German paramilitary organization forming the right wing of the Polish resistance during World War II, and taking part in the Warsaw Uprising.
- 87.
Feliks Młynarski, a Polish economist, was appointed head of the Emissionsbank in Polen (“Issuing Bank in Poland” ) by Hans Frank, the Generalgouverneur of German-occupied Poland, in 1940, answerable to the representative of the Reichsbank Fritz Paersch.
- 88.
Janusz Korczak (pen name Henryk Goldszmit) (1878 or 1879–August 1942), Polish-Jewish pedagogue, children’s writer, publicist, pediatrician, and social activist. During the Grossaktion Warschau (July 22 to September 21, 1942) he refused to forsake his orphans, staying with them when they were sent from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp. Over the indicated period approximately 300,000 Jews were removed from the Warsaw Ghetto, most to Treblinka. When the Nazis entered the ghetto in April 1943, the Jewish remnants staged a revolt, lasting a little under a month. The ghetto was then liquidated, with a further 49,000 being transported to camps, and around 7000 shot on capture.
- 89.
Zygmunt Henryk Berling (1896–1980), Polish general and politician. Fought for Polish independence in the early part of the twentieth century. During World War II, after deserting the Polish Army of General Władysław Anders, he later became commander of the 1st Polish Army in the USSR. Played a secondary role in the postwar Polish government.
- 90.
The losses to Polish mathematics—and to Polish science generally—have never been fully evaluated. Such an evaluation was rendered especially problematical by the annexation of a large part of eastern Poland by the USSR following the war, and subsequent Soviet politics inimical to Poland. However, a few times attempts were made to estimate losses of mathematicians, in particular in Fundamenta Mathematicae 33 (1945). See also below. Note added by Roman Duda, editor of the second Polish edition
- 91.
A northern suburb of Warsaw, on the left bank of the Vistula.
- 92.
A town on the western boundary of the Warsaw urban area. During World War II, a large transit camp was organized in the Train Repair Depot there to house evacuees expelled from Warsaw, many of whom were subsequently sent to concentration camps.
- 93.
An enteric illness related to typhoid fever, but caused by a strain of salmonella.
- 94.
A Third Reich civil and military engineering organization founded by Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi figure. It was responsible for a wide range of engineering projects both in pre-World War II Germany and in the occupied territories during the war, when it exploited forced labor. When Todt was killed in a plane crash in early 1942, the organization was absorbed into the renamed and expanded Ministry for Armaments and War Production (Reichsministerium f¨ur R¨ustung und Kriegsproduktion) with Albert Speer as minister.
- 95.
“work camps”
- 96.
Aachen, or Aix-la-Chapelle, is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, along the German border with Belgium and the Netherlands. It was the favorite place of residence of Charlemagne.
- 97.
Meaning that he would give them up, or openly use them for himself?
- 98.
Jan Emil Skiwski (1894–1956), Polish writer, journalist, and literary critic. Collaborated with Nazi Germany, publishing pro-Nazi newspapers in occupied Poland during World War II. Escaped to South America after the war. Feliks Burdecki (1904–1991), Polish writer of science fiction and popularizer of science. Collaborated with the Nazis during their occupation of Poland during World War II. Fled to South Africa after the war.
- 99.
Reichsministerium f¨ur Volksaufkl¨arung und Propaganda.
- 100.
Polish cities and regions occupied by the USSR from September 1939 to June 1941, and incorporated into the Ukrainian or Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republics at war’s end.
- 101.
Andre˘ı Andreevich Vlasov (1900–1946), Russian Red Army general. After distinguishing himself in several critical actions following the German invasion of the USSR, he was put in command of the 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front and ordered to lead the attempt to lift the German siege of Leningrad. However, his army became isolated and was destroyed by the Germans in June 1942, Vlasov refusing to abandon his troops. He was captured by the Germans and, eventually, professing himself an anti-Bolshevist and anti-Stalinist, headed a German-sponsored project to create a Russian Liberation Army in Germany—a project not strongly supported by Hitler since he had other plans for Russia. At war’s end Vlasov was ultimately captured by the Soviets, and after a year’s imprisonment in the Lubyanka, tried for treason and hanged.
- 102.
Tomasz Arciszewski (1877–1955), Polish socialist politician. Prime Minister of the Polish Government-in-Exile in London from 1944 to 1947, the period when the Western powers ceased recognizing this government.
- 103.
The last major German offensive, called by the Americans the “Battle of the Bulge”, lasting from December 16, 1944 to January 25, 1945.
- 104.
A town on the river Raba, about halfway between Tarnów to the east and Kraków to the west.
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Steinhaus, H. (2015). Stróże. In: Burns, R., Szymaniec, I., Weron, A. (eds) Mathematician for All Seasons. Vita Mathematica, vol 18. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21984-4_12
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