[note: Excerpted from Grandpa George Rynecki’s memoir, Surviving Hitler in Poland: One Jew’s Story]
I was arrested in the Krakau Market in September 1944 and despite my good Hitlerjugend papers, taken to the Krakau Gestapo offices for interrogation. All others, without even being looked over, were shipped to Auschwitz for immediate extermination. I was lucky because the Gestapo thought me a real spy or underground commander. They found on my person two passports; one for the name Jan Trzaska.
On top of that I had true good papers from the headquarters of the Hitlerjugend in Krakau. The Russians were just outside of Krakau, east of the city. Cannon fire could be heard and everybody knew the end was coming. The Germans were a bit subdued. They were trying in the last moment an effort to show how orderly and just they were. After all the senseless murders, here they had a case in me, a justification almost of their existence. They wouldn’t kill me. They would rightfully examine, find out everything about me in a righteous way, and then have a legitimate case. It was a last ditch effort, I believe.
I was treated with courtesy. They have learned that brutality leads to murder, and nothing is accomplished. I became actually a celebrity of a kind. I was manacled and under constant surveillance. A kind of legitimate case. No more hunting Jews, but a real spy case. Higher and higher officers of the SS army counterintelligence questioned me. After a couple of days only colonels as the lowest rank would investigate me. I was offered all kind of goodies: cigarettes, chocolate, coffee. Just talk. I was talking alright. Trying to talk myself out of my dilemma. “Yes,” I would say, “I am a Pole and I am fighting for my country. What would you do gentlemen, if you would be in my shoes, and I in yours?” My interrogators liked my bravado and admittance to a certain status. They just wanted to know details. The point in time saved me. The Russians were just across the river. They had orders to run, to retire to Prague. This is what was decided: To take me with them. I was escorted to a train with an SS man. He took a whole compartment, and told me in course of our journey that his orders were simple. Make sure this guy does not escape. Make sure he gets food and drink. Let him sleep and treat him right. Quite a step for the German security system. Don’t forget my looks; young, wearing a leather coat, high Italian riding boots, Aryan looking, perfect German behavior and expressions. My bluff obviously was working. An entirely different approach brought different results. I never said I was a spy. I never said I was not. I only asked what would they do if they were in my skin. It was taking a chance. It paid off.
When we came to Prague, entirely different people looked me over and interrogated me. The Gestapo in Prague simply put me in prison, and didn’t really know what to do with me. They were interrogating me every few days in the offices in downtown Prague. For hours on end I would have discussions with different officers. This would go on for a long time. I was hungry of course. Food was non-existent. A bowl of coffee-colored water in the morning at 6:00 a.m. A bowl of soup around 2:00 p.m., and a piece of bread the size of two fingers. Before every interrogation I had to go through a shaving procedure. Sheer torture. Dull Gillette knives, no soap. And the so-called barbers, cruel inmates taking off hair with skin together.
I have never seen the officers from Krakau. The ones in Prague didn’t make much sense. At a certain point I was recruited by one of the colonels to go back to Poland and organize resistance against the communists. Go by parachute. On my remark that I don’t know how to use a parachute, he would smile and say we’ll teach you.
One day in February after five hundred to six hundred planes flew over Pankratz, I was taken downtown and the colonel, after offering me a piece of bread and a cigarette, told me this, “For some reason or another we have believed you. Just because you have told us the truth we’ll send you till the end of the war to C.C. Dachau. You’ll survive. Germany will win, and you’ll go back to Poland then.” He even shook my hand. I ascribe my fortune to good knowledge of the German language.