Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw
Encyclopedia
Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw were people who, after the end of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising
and the subsequent planned destruction of Warsaw
by Nazi Germany
, decided to stay and hide in the ruins of the German-occupied city. The period of hiding spanned as long as three and a half months, from the day of the capitulation of the uprising, October 2, 1944, until the entry of the Red Army
on January 17, 1945. Most of the Robinsons were Jews, although a considerable number of non-Jewish Poles were also present. The hideaways lived in the ruins of houses, basements, and bunkers which had been prepared ahead of time. They lived in extremely dire circumstances, while the city was being destroyed around them. Some managed to escape Warsaw, many were captured and killed by the Germans, while others survived until the withdrawal of German troops.
The estimates of the number of hideaways vary from several hundred to about two thousand. Even though the majority of the Robinsons perished during the war, most of the information about their circumstances comes from those who survived. The largest group of hideaways consisted of probably around 36 individuals who were led by two medical doctors. The Robinsons also included a group of Jewish Combat Organization (Polish: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB) Warsaw ghetto
fighters, who managed to leave the ruined city in mid-November.
The term "Robinson" for the hideaways appeared almost immediately, and was popularized in many contemporary and later works, including memoirs, newspaper reports and films, by both the Robinsons themselves as well as other writers. The most famous of the "Robinsons" was the composer Władysław Szpilman, whose story was the subject of the 2002 film The Pianist
.
from Nazi occupation in advance of approaching Soviet forces
. The insurrectionists hoped for Soviet and Allied support, but in early August Joseph Stalin
halted the Red Army on the right bank of the Vistula
and denied British and American planes, which carried aid to the uprising, landing rights in Soviet controlled territory. Despite the fact that in September the Soviets captured the Praga
suburb and allowed a few limited landings by Allied planes, the insurrection became more and more isolated and pushed into an ever shrinking area within the city. By early September, without Soviet aid, the uprising was doomed. While capitulation talks were already in progress, the Germans took the suburb of Żoliborz
on September 30. The final surrender agreement was concluded on October 2, by the commander of the Home Army in Warsaw, Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski
, and the German general in charge of suppressing the uprising, Erich von dem Bach
.
The provisions of the capitulation agreement stipulated that the Home Army soldiers were to be accorded full combatant status and treated as prisoners of war
. The civilian population of Warsaw was to evacuate the city, be transferred to holding camps and then released. From the date of the surrender all civilians and soldiers had three days to leave the capital.
Another portion of the agreement, point #10, stated that the German command would ensure the preservation of remaining public and private property as well as the evacuation or protection of objects and buildings of "artistic, cultural or sacred value". However, soon after the fighting was over at a conference held on October 9, 1944, Heinrich Himmler
, Reichsführer of the SS, ordered the total destruction of the city
. Himmler stated: "The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation." The task of carrying out the destruction was assigned to SS-Brigadeführer Paul Otto Geibel.After the war, Geibel was sentenced to five years imprisonment by Czech authorities, and subsequently to life imprisonment by Polish ones, for crimes against civilians committed during the uprising. In 1956, for unknown reasons, he was released for good behavior. Intervention by Polish veterans and survivors of the uprising resulted in his re-incarceration. He committed suicide in 1966 while serving out the rest of his life sentence. Subsequently, the buildings of the city were systematically reduced to ruin, one by one.
About two weeks after the fall of the Warsaw Uprising, on October 17, 1944, the commander of the German 9th Army stationed in Warsaw, Smilo von Lüttwitz
, issued an order in which he informed his soldiers that there was a large number of "sneaky Poles" still hiding in the ruins of Warsaw. According to Smilo, they "posed a threat to the German forces". Von Lüttwitz ordered a large scale łapanka (police action/round-up) to "cleanse the city" of them. The order also sanctioned immediate execution of any individuals found hiding in the ruins. In some rare cases, those found were placed in a specially created concentration camp, and used as manual labor as the German army looted the remnants of the city.
The phenomenon of the hideaways was noticed soon after the Red Army captured Warsaw. On January 26, 1945, a bulletin of the Żydowska Agencja Prasowa (Jewish News Agency) reported that 48 individuals had emerged from hiding and referred to them as jaskiniowcy, or "cavemen". The term "Robinsons" soon became common, a reference to the fictional castaway Robinson Crusoe
in the Daniel Defoe
novel. The Soviet writer and journalist, Vasily Grossman
upon entering the ruined city, described finding four Jewish and six non-Jewish Poles who had just left their hideouts.
The term and the analogy with the castaway has often been made by Robinsons in their own memoirs, as well as by other writers. Dawid Fogelman had been imprisoned at the Gęsiówka
concentration camp. After the camp was liberated by the Polish Home Army, he joined its ranks and fought in the uprising. At the end of the fighting, Fogelman became a Robinson, hiding in a bunker on Szczęśliwa Street, where he began writing a diary. He wrote: "We lived like Robinson Crusoe, with the one difference that he was free, could move about freely, while we lived in hiding." While Fogelman's diary survived, his ultimate fate is unknown.
In his memoirs, Władysław Szpilman also compared himself to Crusoe and, like Fogelman, emphasized the isolation and hopelessness which characterized the Warsaw Crusoes. Szpilman's memoir served as a basis for a screenplay, written as early as 1945 by the Polish writers Jerzy Andrzejewski
and Czesław Miłosz,Miłosz, who had written scholarly works on Defoe's novel, was later awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. entitled Robinson of Warsaw. The movie that was eventually filmed, Miasto Nieujarzmione ("Unyoked city"), was heavily censored by the communist authorities and its original theme changed to such an extentIn the movie the character of the Warsaw Robinson was changed into that of a Soviet parachutist. that Miłosz requested his name be removed from the film's credits. The experience with the film contributed to Miłosz's disillusionment with cinema as an artistic medium.
Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski
, a member of the Home Army who was wounded during the uprising and barely managed to escape the Wehrmacht
's Marymont massacre of civilians and wounded soldiers, hid in the basement of a destroyed house from mid-September until mid-November. Gluth-Nowowiejski wrote several books about his experiences after the war, including Rzeczpospolita Gruzów ("The Commonwealth of Ruins") and Stolica jaskiń: z pamięci warszawskiego Robinsona ("The capital of caves: memoirs of a Warsaw Robinson").
Major Danuta Ślązak of the Home Army, hid out with a group of wounded patients whom she had saved from a hospital that had been set on fire by the Germans during the last days of the uprising. After the war she wrote a book about her experiences, Byłam Warszawskim Robinsonem (I was a Warsaw Robinson). A portion of her group left the hiding place after German troops called out for them to surrender and were immediately executed. The rest remained hidden and escaped detection. Eventually they used the corpses of their murdered companions to disguise the entry to their hiding place.After the war Ślązak married one of her fellow Robinsons that she had rescued.
The name "Robinsons" has also been used to refer to those Jews who hid out in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto
in the aftermath of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
. Uri Orlev
's (Jerzy Orlowski) children's book
The Island on Bird Street
, adapted into a film in 1997, tells the story of a 11-year old boy who hides out in the ruins of the ghetto. Orlev also draws analogies with Robinson Crusoe in this work; in fact one of the few things that Alex, the protagonist of the story, possesses is a copy of Defoe's novel.
Other memoirs by the Robinsons include Bunkier (The Bunker) by Chaim Goldstein, Byłem ochroniarzem Karskiego (Karski's bodyguard) by Dawid Landau, Ukrywałem się w Warszawie : styczeń 1943 – styczeń 1945 (I hid in Warsaw: January 1943 – January 1945) by Stefan Chaskielewicz, Moje szczęśliwe życie (My fortunate life) by Szymon Rogoźinski, and Aniołowie bez skrzydeł (Angels without wings) by Czesława Fater. Many other testimonies and recollections are contained in the archives of the Emmanuel Ringelblum Żydowski Instytut Historyczny (Jewish Historical Institute) in Warsaw and Yad Vashem
in Jerusalem.
. The city's civilians were to be transferred to transit camps and afterward released.
Although the agreement did not stipulate different treatment for Poles who were ethnically Jewish, many Jews feared that the agreement would not be honored in their case. In fact, the Nazis conducted a "medical examination" at the Pruszków
internment camp, in order to "catch out" Jews from among Warsaw's refugees.The medical examination included a communal shower, which was used as a pretext to carry out an examination for circumcision
. As a consequence, a large number of the Jews who where still in Warsaw at the time of the uprising, decided to remain in hiding rather than join the non-Jewish civilians leaving the city.By this time, the overwhelming majority of the city's Jewish population had been taken to death camps and killed. According to memoirs from the period, the choice often came down to whether a particular person "looked Aryan" and could pass for a non-Jewish Pole.
A significant number of non-Jewish Poles also did not trust the Germans and decided not to leave the city. Many wounded Home Army soldiers became stranded during the uprising and were simply not able to evacuate in time. For others, the choice to remain resulted from feelings of despair and hopelessness brought by the fall of the uprising; at least initially, they simply did not have the motivation to leave.
Many of the hiding places and makeshift bunkers were prepared in advance by those anticipating the fall of the uprising. As a result, the sequence whereby people became Robinsons closely followed the military developments of the insurrection. The first groups went into hiding in Wola
during the Wola massacre
, and in Starówka (Warsaw Old Town), while fighting was still taking place in other parts of the city. The majority of the Robinsons hid when German forces captured the Żoliborz
and Śródmieście (Warsaw City Centre) districts from the insurgents.
The largest known group of Robinsons was composed of 37 peopleSome primary sources give numbers as high as 49 or 56 individuals. under the leadership of Roman Fiszer and medical doctors, Dr. Beer and Prof. Henryk Beck. Beck was the director of a makeshift insurgent hospital during the uprising. As it became clear that the insurrection was going to fail, he and Cpt. Władysław Kowalski, a Home Army soldier who also decided to stay, converted two adjacent basements into a well-equipped and supplied hiding place. The group stockpiled water, coffee, medicines, fuel, and various foodstuffs. Additionally, Beck kept a set of watercolors, crayons, ink and paper, which he used to illustrate life in the bunker.The drawings and paintings are now part of collection of the Jewish Historical Institute
. Some of the members having fought in the uprising, the group also possessed a small cache of weapons, unusual for Robinsons. A dog, "Bunkierek" ("bunker puppy"), also stayed with them and, according to the memoirs, did not bark or make any noise.
After their water ran out, the Beck/Fiszer group developed a routine where some of the group worked to dig a well, while others watched out for approaching Germans, and yet a third group ventured outside the bunker to scavenge for useful items. The group eventually dug their way to two water canals and built a well. On November 17, during an excursion outside the bunker, the group made contact with a small partisan unit, also in hiding, led by a Russian soldier POW who had been liberated during the uprising. Subsequently, several of the group would join the partisans for small scale attacks on German troops. The group survived until the entry of the Red Army in mid-January.After the war, Beck continued his medical practice in Wrocław. He was the first director of a newly established women's clinic, associated with the Wrocław University of Technology and University of Wrocław.
Initially, the living conditions of the Robinsons varied according to whether or not they had had time to prepare. There were roughly three days between the signing of the capitulation and the deadline for civilians to leave the city in which those who made the decision to stay could stockpile food and water and camouflage their hiding places. As time passed, supplies ran out and many Robinsons had to change their locations for security reasons; the situation soon became equally desperate for all who remained.
While food was extremely hard to come by, an even more pressing need was obtaining drinking water. Thirst and the search for water are mentioned in most of the Robinsons' memoirs. The most common sources originally included toilet systerns, boilers, and standing water found inside bathtubs. As these ran out, those in hiding were forced to risk sneaking access to wells, often guarded by German soldiers. Some memoirs describe long periods observing a particular well, waiting for a chance to obtain a quick drink. Another method involved obtaining polluted sewer water from the canals, and then filtering it through coals wrapped in rags. Generally, records indicate that whatever scant water supplies existed were shared fairly between individuals hiding as a group. In at least one instance, one person was unable to withstand the thirst and drank the whole group's water supply. As a result, Jakub Wiśnia, a former Gęsiówka inmate and after its liberation, a Home Army soldier, was court-martialed by his fellow group members and sentenced to death. The execution was to be postponed until after liberation, but when that occurred, the Robinsons were so overwhelmed with joy, the crime was forgiven and the sentence was never mentioned again.Wiśnia lived in Warsaw until 1984.
There were numerous instances of death from drinking poisoned or fouled water; there were still many unburied, decomposing corpses inside the ruins. In one instance, desperate Robinsons were driven to drink their own urine and subsequently died.
The coming of winter improved the water situation for some who had access to icicles, but the cold made living conditions worse. It was impossible for those in hiding to build fires to warm themselves; smoke could reveal their location to the Germans. As a consequence, many died of cold.
Unlike the Robinson Crusoe of the novel, who craved human contact, most of the Warsaw Crusoes tried to avoid it at all cost. This contradiction was noted by both the Robinsons and those who wrote about them after the war. Being discovered by the Germans in almost all cases meant immediate death. There were, however, some exceptions, the best known being that of Szpilman's encounter with Wilm Hosenfeld
, a captain of the Wehrmacht
who helped to hide and feed him. In a few instances those captured were first forced to help the Germans with the looting of the ruins of the city, before being either executed or sent to the Pruszków camp.
A few of the Robinsons actually tried to actively take revenge on the occupying forces. The most famous of these was an individual known only as "Ares" (after the Greek god of war), described by Gluth-Nowowiejski, based on interviews with the Robinsons he conducted, who became a local legend. Ares, active in the Śródmieście district, staged numerous ambushes of German soldiers, in at least one case using an improvised explosive device
.In another, perhaps apocryphal, case Ares arranged a group of dead and decomposing German and insurrectionists corpses sitting in a circle around a playing gramophone. When a patrol came to investigate he threw a bunch of tied together grenades at them According to Gluth-Nowowiejski's sources, he would leave behind graffiti of his name, as well as slogans such as "Hitler kaput". Other messages included communications to the German soldiers. In one case he dumped a body of a soldier he had killed with a note "This awaits all of you in Warsaw". In another he wrote "Ares is a ghost, not matter – your search for him is useless". Eventually, Ares met his demise when the Germans left some poisoned food for him to find. Soon they discovered a man in the ruins who was obviously sick from having eaten it. He shot at them before taking his own life. According to some sources, other individuals took on Ares' struggle but used the names of other Greek Gods
as their signature.
Within some of the destroyed suburbs, a limited postal system between various Robinson groups was established. Dawid Landau had served as a bodyguard to the courier of the Polish government in exile, Jan Karski
, while Karski secretly entered the ghetto to gather information for a report on the extermination of Polish Jews by Nazi Germany for the Western allies, in 1943. Later, Landau fought in both of the Warsaw uprising as part of Żydowski Związek Wojskowy
(Jewish Military Union, ŻZW) and afterward decided to stay in the ruins. In his memoirs he reports that the post functioned through the use of empty electrical socket boxes. Various groups would leave notes for others informing them of who was alive and in hiding, news from the front that had been obtained, as well as requests for special forms of assistance. According to Landau, the most common pleas were for doctors or other forms of medical help.
The best known case of post-uprising departure involved a group of Jewish Combat Organization fighters under the leadership of Icchak Cukierman
and Marek Edelman
, who had taken part in both the Ghetto and the Warsaw Uprisings. Originally, the former Ghetto fighters stayed together in a large group, but in the second week of October, some of them moved to a different location. Those remaining stayed in the same place on Promyka Street until mid-November, when they were contacted by Ala Margolis, a courier from the Home Army, who had previously managed to leave the city. Margolis and a "rescue squadron" of five people returned to get the rest of the group out. The Germans had begun a systematic search and destruction of ruined houses near the hiding place, which meant that time was running out. Dressed as nurses and doctors, with clothes and Red Cross IDs provided by Dr. Lesław Węgrzynowski, director of the Home Army sanitation unit, the rescue squadron and the seven in hiding made their way out of the city through two German checkpoints. The group consisted of five men and two women: Edelman, Cukierman, Cywia Lubetkin (later, Cukierman's wife), Tosia Goliborksa, Julek Fiszgrund, Tuwia Borzykowski and Zygmunt Warman. The first checkpoint was crossed during dinner and the Germans did not bother to examine the group, but at the second, an SS officer noticed that Warman, who was lying in a stretcher, was wearing combat boots. He yelled, "These are Polish bandits!" but one of the escorts dressed as a nurse quickly declared that the patients in the stretcher were ill with typhus
. The SS soldiers backed off and the group moved on its way.After leaving Warsaw, the ŻOB fighters moved to Grodzisk Mazowiecki
, where they continued their struggle, collected funds and organized help for Jews still in hiding, and compiled reports which the Home Army passed on to the Polish government-in-exile in London.
In many cases, the opportunity to leave Warsaw came by chance. For example, the hiding diarist Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski was taken out, after he was accidentally found by a woman (name unknown) who had been given permission by the Germans to remove some of her property from the ruins. On their way out of the city the group also had to pass German checkpoints and encountered difficulties similar to that of the ŻOB fighters. A Wehrmacht soldier accused the wounded and sick Gluth-Nowowiejski of being a "bandit" but let him pass after protestations made by his escort.
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance Home Army , to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany. The rebellion was timed to coincide with the Soviet Union's Red Army approaching the eastern suburbs of the city and the retreat of German forces...
and the subsequent planned destruction of Warsaw
Planned destruction of Warsaw
The planned destruction of Warsaw refers to the largely realised plans by Nazi Germany to completely raze the city. The plan was put into full motion after the Warsaw Uprising in 1944...
by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, decided to stay and hide in the ruins of the German-occupied city. The period of hiding spanned as long as three and a half months, from the day of the capitulation of the uprising, October 2, 1944, until the entry of the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
on January 17, 1945. Most of the Robinsons were Jews, although a considerable number of non-Jewish Poles were also present. The hideaways lived in the ruins of houses, basements, and bunkers which had been prepared ahead of time. They lived in extremely dire circumstances, while the city was being destroyed around them. Some managed to escape Warsaw, many were captured and killed by the Germans, while others survived until the withdrawal of German troops.
The estimates of the number of hideaways vary from several hundred to about two thousand. Even though the majority of the Robinsons perished during the war, most of the information about their circumstances comes from those who survived. The largest group of hideaways consisted of probably around 36 individuals who were led by two medical doctors. The Robinsons also included a group of Jewish Combat Organization (Polish: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB) Warsaw ghetto
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Treblinka extermination camp....
fighters, who managed to leave the ruined city in mid-November.
The term "Robinson" for the hideaways appeared almost immediately, and was popularized in many contemporary and later works, including memoirs, newspaper reports and films, by both the Robinsons themselves as well as other writers. The most famous of the "Robinsons" was the composer Władysław Szpilman, whose story was the subject of the 2002 film The Pianist
The Pianist (2002 film)
The Pianist is a 2002 biographical war film directed by Roman Polanski, starring Adrien Brody. It is an adaptation of the autobiography of the same name by Jewish-Polish musician Władysław Szpilman...
.
Background
The Warsaw Uprising, which began on August 1, 1944, was an attempt by the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) to liberate the capital of PolandPoland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
from Nazi occupation in advance of approaching Soviet forces
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
. The insurrectionists hoped for Soviet and Allied support, but in early August Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
halted the Red Army on the right bank of the Vistula
Vistula
The Vistula is the longest and the most important river in Poland, at 1,047 km in length. The watershed area of the Vistula is , of which lies within Poland ....
and denied British and American planes, which carried aid to the uprising, landing rights in Soviet controlled territory. Despite the fact that in September the Soviets captured the Praga
Praga
Praga is a historical borough of Warsaw, the capital of Poland. It is located on the east bank of the river Vistula. First mentioned in 1432, until 1791 it formed a separate town with its own city charter.- History :...
suburb and allowed a few limited landings by Allied planes, the insurrection became more and more isolated and pushed into an ever shrinking area within the city. By early September, without Soviet aid, the uprising was doomed. While capitulation talks were already in progress, the Germans took the suburb of Żoliborz
Zoliborz
Żoliborz is one of the northern districts of the city of Warsaw. It is located directly to the north of the City Centre, on the left bank of the Vistula river. It has approximately 50,000 inhabitants and is one of the smallest boroughs of Warsaw....
on September 30. The final surrender agreement was concluded on October 2, by the commander of the Home Army in Warsaw, Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski
Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski
General Count Tadeusz Komorowski , better known by the name Bór-Komorowski was a Polish military leader....
, and the German general in charge of suppressing the uprising, Erich von dem Bach
Erich von dem Bach
Erich Julius Eberhard von Zelewski or Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski , was a Nazi official and a member of the SS, in which he reached the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer .- Slavic origin :...
.
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
. The civilian population of Warsaw was to evacuate the city, be transferred to holding camps and then released. From the date of the surrender all civilians and soldiers had three days to leave the capital.
Another portion of the agreement, point #10, stated that the German command would ensure the preservation of remaining public and private property as well as the evacuation or protection of objects and buildings of "artistic, cultural or sacred value". However, soon after the fighting was over at a conference held on October 9, 1944, Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, Reichsführer of the SS, ordered the total destruction of the city
Planned destruction of Warsaw
The planned destruction of Warsaw refers to the largely realised plans by Nazi Germany to completely raze the city. The plan was put into full motion after the Warsaw Uprising in 1944...
. Himmler stated: "The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation." The task of carrying out the destruction was assigned to SS-Brigadeführer Paul Otto Geibel.After the war, Geibel was sentenced to five years imprisonment by Czech authorities, and subsequently to life imprisonment by Polish ones, for crimes against civilians committed during the uprising. In 1956, for unknown reasons, he was released for good behavior. Intervention by Polish veterans and survivors of the uprising resulted in his re-incarceration. He committed suicide in 1966 while serving out the rest of his life sentence. Subsequently, the buildings of the city were systematically reduced to ruin, one by one.
Origins and usage of the term
Smilo Freiherr von Lüttwitz
Smilo Walther Hinko Oskar Constantin Wilhelm Freiherr von Lüttwitz was a German general of the Panzer troops, serving during World War II and son of Walther von Lüttwitz...
, issued an order in which he informed his soldiers that there was a large number of "sneaky Poles" still hiding in the ruins of Warsaw. According to Smilo, they "posed a threat to the German forces". Von Lüttwitz ordered a large scale łapanka (police action/round-up) to "cleanse the city" of them. The order also sanctioned immediate execution of any individuals found hiding in the ruins. In some rare cases, those found were placed in a specially created concentration camp, and used as manual labor as the German army looted the remnants of the city.
The phenomenon of the hideaways was noticed soon after the Red Army captured Warsaw. On January 26, 1945, a bulletin of the Żydowska Agencja Prasowa (Jewish News Agency) reported that 48 individuals had emerged from hiding and referred to them as jaskiniowcy, or "cavemen". The term "Robinsons" soon became common, a reference to the fictional castaway Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...
in the Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...
novel. The Soviet writer and journalist, Vasily Grossman
Vasily Grossman
Vasily Semyonovich Grossman was a Soviet writer and journalist. Grossman trained as an engineer and worked in the Donets Basin, but changed career in the 1930s and published short stories and several novels...
upon entering the ruined city, described finding four Jewish and six non-Jewish Poles who had just left their hideouts.
The term and the analogy with the castaway has often been made by Robinsons in their own memoirs, as well as by other writers. Dawid Fogelman had been imprisoned at the Gęsiówka
Gesiówka
Gęsiówka , was a Nazi concentration camp in Warsaw, Poland.- History of Gęsiówka :Before the war, Gęsiówka was a military prison of the Polish Army on Gęsia Street . Beginning in 1939, after the German occupation of Poland, it became a re-education camp of the German security police...
concentration camp. After the camp was liberated by the Polish Home Army, he joined its ranks and fought in the uprising. At the end of the fighting, Fogelman became a Robinson, hiding in a bunker on Szczęśliwa Street, where he began writing a diary. He wrote: "We lived like Robinson Crusoe, with the one difference that he was free, could move about freely, while we lived in hiding." While Fogelman's diary survived, his ultimate fate is unknown.
In his memoirs, Władysław Szpilman also compared himself to Crusoe and, like Fogelman, emphasized the isolation and hopelessness which characterized the Warsaw Crusoes. Szpilman's memoir served as a basis for a screenplay, written as early as 1945 by the Polish writers Jerzy Andrzejewski
Jerzy Andrzejewski
Jerzy Andrzejewski was a prolific Polish author. His novels, Ashes and Diamonds , and Holy Week , have been made into film adaptations by the Oscar-winning Polish director Andrzej Wajda...
and Czesław Miłosz,Miłosz, who had written scholarly works on Defoe's novel, was later awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. entitled Robinson of Warsaw. The movie that was eventually filmed, Miasto Nieujarzmione ("Unyoked city"), was heavily censored by the communist authorities and its original theme changed to such an extentIn the movie the character of the Warsaw Robinson was changed into that of a Soviet parachutist. that Miłosz requested his name be removed from the film's credits. The experience with the film contributed to Miłosz's disillusionment with cinema as an artistic medium.
Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski
Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski
Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski is a former soldier of the Polish Home Army , a participant in the Warsaw Uprising, and after the war, a publicist and author.-Family:...
, a member of the Home Army who was wounded during the uprising and barely managed to escape the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
's Marymont massacre of civilians and wounded soldiers, hid in the basement of a destroyed house from mid-September until mid-November. Gluth-Nowowiejski wrote several books about his experiences after the war, including Rzeczpospolita Gruzów ("The Commonwealth of Ruins") and Stolica jaskiń: z pamięci warszawskiego Robinsona ("The capital of caves: memoirs of a Warsaw Robinson").
Major Danuta Ślązak of the Home Army, hid out with a group of wounded patients whom she had saved from a hospital that had been set on fire by the Germans during the last days of the uprising. After the war she wrote a book about her experiences, Byłam Warszawskim Robinsonem (I was a Warsaw Robinson). A portion of her group left the hiding place after German troops called out for them to surrender and were immediately executed. The rest remained hidden and escaped detection. Eventually they used the corpses of their murdered companions to disguise the entry to their hiding place.After the war Ślązak married one of her fellow Robinsons that she had rescued.
The name "Robinsons" has also been used to refer to those Jews who hid out in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 15, 1940, in the territory of General Government of the German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity...
in the aftermath of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Treblinka extermination camp....
. Uri Orlev
Uri Orlev
Uri Orlev is an award-winning Israeli children's author and translator of Polish-Jewish origin.-Biography:Uri Orlev, born Jerzy Henryk Orlowski, was born in Warsaw, Poland. He survived the war years in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he was sent to after his...
's (Jerzy Orlowski) children's book
Children's literature
Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...
The Island on Bird Street
The Island on Bird Street
The Island on Bird Street is a 1985 semi-autobiographical children's book by Israeli author Uri Orlev, which tells the story of a young boy, Alex, and his struggle to survive alone in a ghetto during World War II...
, adapted into a film in 1997, tells the story of a 11-year old boy who hides out in the ruins of the ghetto. Orlev also draws analogies with Robinson Crusoe in this work; in fact one of the few things that Alex, the protagonist of the story, possesses is a copy of Defoe's novel.
Other memoirs by the Robinsons include Bunkier (The Bunker) by Chaim Goldstein, Byłem ochroniarzem Karskiego (Karski's bodyguard) by Dawid Landau, Ukrywałem się w Warszawie : styczeń 1943 – styczeń 1945 (I hid in Warsaw: January 1943 – January 1945) by Stefan Chaskielewicz, Moje szczęśliwe życie (My fortunate life) by Szymon Rogoźinski, and Aniołowie bez skrzydeł (Angels without wings) by Czesława Fater. Many other testimonies and recollections are contained in the archives of the Emmanuel Ringelblum Żydowski Instytut Historyczny (Jewish Historical Institute) in Warsaw and Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
in Jerusalem.
Reasons for staying
The capitulation agreement between the Home Army and German forces stipulated that insurgents were to be treated as regular prisoners of warPrisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
. The city's civilians were to be transferred to transit camps and afterward released.
Although the agreement did not stipulate different treatment for Poles who were ethnically Jewish, many Jews feared that the agreement would not be honored in their case. In fact, the Nazis conducted a "medical examination" at the Pruszków
Pruszków
Pruszków is a town in central Poland, situated in the Masovian Voivodeship since 1999. It was previously in Warszawa Voivodeship . Pruszków is the capital of Pruszków County, located along the western edge of the Warsaw urban area...
internment camp, in order to "catch out" Jews from among Warsaw's refugees.The medical examination included a communal shower, which was used as a pretext to carry out an examination for circumcision
Circumcision
Male circumcision is the surgical removal of some or all of the foreskin from the penis. The word "circumcision" comes from Latin and ....
. As a consequence, a large number of the Jews who where still in Warsaw at the time of the uprising, decided to remain in hiding rather than join the non-Jewish civilians leaving the city.By this time, the overwhelming majority of the city's Jewish population had been taken to death camps and killed. According to memoirs from the period, the choice often came down to whether a particular person "looked Aryan" and could pass for a non-Jewish Pole.
A significant number of non-Jewish Poles also did not trust the Germans and decided not to leave the city. Many wounded Home Army soldiers became stranded during the uprising and were simply not able to evacuate in time. For others, the choice to remain resulted from feelings of despair and hopelessness brought by the fall of the uprising; at least initially, they simply did not have the motivation to leave.
Number and demographics
Between the end of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (May 1943) and beginning of 1944, there were between 10,000 and 20,000 Jews hiding in the Ghetto ruins. The number of Robinsons after the Warsaw Uprising has been estimated at between several hundred and two thousand, spread across all the suburbs of Warsaw. Another source gives the number as between 400 and 1,000. Most of those hiding were Jewish, including some who had been in hiding since the fall of the ghetto uprising, though a significant number were non-Jewish Poles. Unlike Szpilman, whose case was somewhat unrepresentative, most of those in hiding remained in medium-sized to large groups, often of mixed ethnicities. The majority of the Robinsons were men.Many of the hiding places and makeshift bunkers were prepared in advance by those anticipating the fall of the uprising. As a result, the sequence whereby people became Robinsons closely followed the military developments of the insurrection. The first groups went into hiding in Wola
Wola
Wola is a district in western Warsaw, Poland, formerly the village of Wielka Wola, incorporated into Warsaw in 1916. An industrial area with traditions reaching back to the early 19th century, it is slowly changing into an office and residential district...
during the Wola massacre
Wola massacre
The Wola massacre was the scene of the largest single massacre in the history of Poland. According to different sources, some 40,000 to 100,000 Polish civilians and POWs were killed by the German forces during their suppression of the Warsaw Uprising...
, and in Starówka (Warsaw Old Town), while fighting was still taking place in other parts of the city. The majority of the Robinsons hid when German forces captured the Żoliborz
Zoliborz
Żoliborz is one of the northern districts of the city of Warsaw. It is located directly to the north of the City Centre, on the left bank of the Vistula river. It has approximately 50,000 inhabitants and is one of the smallest boroughs of Warsaw....
and Śródmieście (Warsaw City Centre) districts from the insurgents.
The largest known group of Robinsons was composed of 37 peopleSome primary sources give numbers as high as 49 or 56 individuals. under the leadership of Roman Fiszer and medical doctors, Dr. Beer and Prof. Henryk Beck. Beck was the director of a makeshift insurgent hospital during the uprising. As it became clear that the insurrection was going to fail, he and Cpt. Władysław Kowalski, a Home Army soldier who also decided to stay, converted two adjacent basements into a well-equipped and supplied hiding place. The group stockpiled water, coffee, medicines, fuel, and various foodstuffs. Additionally, Beck kept a set of watercolors, crayons, ink and paper, which he used to illustrate life in the bunker.The drawings and paintings are now part of collection of the Jewish Historical Institute
Jewish Historical Institute
The Jewish Historical Institute is a research institute in Warsaw, Poland, primarily dealing with the history of Jews in Poland.The Jewish Historical Institute was created in 1947 as a continuation of the Central Jewish Historical Commission, founded in 1944. The Jewish Historical Institute...
. Some of the members having fought in the uprising, the group also possessed a small cache of weapons, unusual for Robinsons. A dog, "Bunkierek" ("bunker puppy"), also stayed with them and, according to the memoirs, did not bark or make any noise.
After their water ran out, the Beck/Fiszer group developed a routine where some of the group worked to dig a well, while others watched out for approaching Germans, and yet a third group ventured outside the bunker to scavenge for useful items. The group eventually dug their way to two water canals and built a well. On November 17, during an excursion outside the bunker, the group made contact with a small partisan unit, also in hiding, led by a Russian soldier POW who had been liberated during the uprising. Subsequently, several of the group would join the partisans for small scale attacks on German troops. The group survived until the entry of the Red Army in mid-January.After the war, Beck continued his medical practice in Wrocław. He was the first director of a newly established women's clinic, associated with the Wrocław University of Technology and University of Wrocław.
Living conditions
While food was extremely hard to come by, an even more pressing need was obtaining drinking water. Thirst and the search for water are mentioned in most of the Robinsons' memoirs. The most common sources originally included toilet systerns, boilers, and standing water found inside bathtubs. As these ran out, those in hiding were forced to risk sneaking access to wells, often guarded by German soldiers. Some memoirs describe long periods observing a particular well, waiting for a chance to obtain a quick drink. Another method involved obtaining polluted sewer water from the canals, and then filtering it through coals wrapped in rags. Generally, records indicate that whatever scant water supplies existed were shared fairly between individuals hiding as a group. In at least one instance, one person was unable to withstand the thirst and drank the whole group's water supply. As a result, Jakub Wiśnia, a former Gęsiówka inmate and after its liberation, a Home Army soldier, was court-martialed by his fellow group members and sentenced to death. The execution was to be postponed until after liberation, but when that occurred, the Robinsons were so overwhelmed with joy, the crime was forgiven and the sentence was never mentioned again.Wiśnia lived in Warsaw until 1984.
There were numerous instances of death from drinking poisoned or fouled water; there were still many unburied, decomposing corpses inside the ruins. In one instance, desperate Robinsons were driven to drink their own urine and subsequently died.
The coming of winter improved the water situation for some who had access to icicles, but the cold made living conditions worse. It was impossible for those in hiding to build fires to warm themselves; smoke could reveal their location to the Germans. As a consequence, many died of cold.
Unlike the Robinson Crusoe of the novel, who craved human contact, most of the Warsaw Crusoes tried to avoid it at all cost. This contradiction was noted by both the Robinsons and those who wrote about them after the war. Being discovered by the Germans in almost all cases meant immediate death. There were, however, some exceptions, the best known being that of Szpilman's encounter with Wilm Hosenfeld
Wilm Hosenfeld
Wilhelm Adalbert Hosenfeld , originally a teacher, was a German Army officer who rose to the rank of Hauptmann by the end of the war. He helped to hide or rescue several Poles, including Jews, in Nazi-occupied Poland, and is perhaps most remembered for helping Polish-Jewish pianist and composer...
, a captain of the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
who helped to hide and feed him. In a few instances those captured were first forced to help the Germans with the looting of the ruins of the city, before being either executed or sent to the Pruszków camp.
A few of the Robinsons actually tried to actively take revenge on the occupying forces. The most famous of these was an individual known only as "Ares" (after the Greek god of war), described by Gluth-Nowowiejski, based on interviews with the Robinsons he conducted, who became a local legend. Ares, active in the Śródmieście district, staged numerous ambushes of German soldiers, in at least one case using an improvised explosive device
Improvised explosive device
An improvised explosive device , also known as a roadside bomb, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action...
.In another, perhaps apocryphal, case Ares arranged a group of dead and decomposing German and insurrectionists corpses sitting in a circle around a playing gramophone. When a patrol came to investigate he threw a bunch of tied together grenades at them According to Gluth-Nowowiejski's sources, he would leave behind graffiti of his name, as well as slogans such as "Hitler kaput". Other messages included communications to the German soldiers. In one case he dumped a body of a soldier he had killed with a note "This awaits all of you in Warsaw". In another he wrote "Ares is a ghost, not matter – your search for him is useless". Eventually, Ares met his demise when the Germans left some poisoned food for him to find. Soon they discovered a man in the ruins who was obviously sick from having eaten it. He shot at them before taking his own life. According to some sources, other individuals took on Ares' struggle but used the names of other Greek Gods
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
as their signature.
Within some of the destroyed suburbs, a limited postal system between various Robinson groups was established. Dawid Landau had served as a bodyguard to the courier of the Polish government in exile, Jan Karski
Jan Karski
Jan Karski was a Polish World War II resistance movement fighter and later scholar at Georgetown University. In 1942 and 1943 Karski reported to the Polish government in exile and the Western Allies on the situation in German-occupied Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and...
, while Karski secretly entered the ghetto to gather information for a report on the extermination of Polish Jews by Nazi Germany for the Western allies, in 1943. Later, Landau fought in both of the Warsaw uprising as part of Żydowski Związek Wojskowy
Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy
Żydowski Związek Wojskowy was an underground resistance organization operating during World War II in the area of the Warsaw Ghetto which fought during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising...
(Jewish Military Union, ŻZW) and afterward decided to stay in the ruins. In his memoirs he reports that the post functioned through the use of empty electrical socket boxes. Various groups would leave notes for others informing them of who was alive and in hiding, news from the front that had been obtained, as well as requests for special forms of assistance. According to Landau, the most common pleas were for doctors or other forms of medical help.
Escape
Some of those who had initially remained in the ruins of the city after the uprising, later made attempts to leave. This was particularly true of Robinsons who had stayed, not of their own choice, but due to unfavorable circumstances.The best known case of post-uprising departure involved a group of Jewish Combat Organization fighters under the leadership of Icchak Cukierman
Icchak Cukierman
Icchak Cukierman , also known by his nom de guerre "Antek", or by the anglicised spelling Yitzhak Zuckerman, was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II.Cukierman was born in Vilnius, Lithuania into a Jewish family...
and Marek Edelman
Marek Edelman
Marek Edelman was a Jewish-Polish political and social activist and cardiologist.Before World War II, he was a General Jewish Labour Bund activist. During the war he co-founded the Jewish Combat Organization. He took part in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, becoming its leader after the death of...
, who had taken part in both the Ghetto and the Warsaw Uprisings. Originally, the former Ghetto fighters stayed together in a large group, but in the second week of October, some of them moved to a different location. Those remaining stayed in the same place on Promyka Street until mid-November, when they were contacted by Ala Margolis, a courier from the Home Army, who had previously managed to leave the city. Margolis and a "rescue squadron" of five people returned to get the rest of the group out. The Germans had begun a systematic search and destruction of ruined houses near the hiding place, which meant that time was running out. Dressed as nurses and doctors, with clothes and Red Cross IDs provided by Dr. Lesław Węgrzynowski, director of the Home Army sanitation unit, the rescue squadron and the seven in hiding made their way out of the city through two German checkpoints. The group consisted of five men and two women: Edelman, Cukierman, Cywia Lubetkin (later, Cukierman's wife), Tosia Goliborksa, Julek Fiszgrund, Tuwia Borzykowski and Zygmunt Warman. The first checkpoint was crossed during dinner and the Germans did not bother to examine the group, but at the second, an SS officer noticed that Warman, who was lying in a stretcher, was wearing combat boots. He yelled, "These are Polish bandits!" but one of the escorts dressed as a nurse quickly declared that the patients in the stretcher were ill with typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
. The SS soldiers backed off and the group moved on its way.After leaving Warsaw, the ŻOB fighters moved to Grodzisk Mazowiecki
Grodzisk Mazowiecki
Grodzisk Mazowiecki is a town in central Poland with 26,881 inhabitants in 2006. It is 30 km. southwest of Warsaw.Between 1975 and 1998 it was situated in the Warszawa Voivodeship but since 1999 it has been situated in the Masovian Voivodeship. It is the capital of Grodzisk Mazowiecki...
, where they continued their struggle, collected funds and organized help for Jews still in hiding, and compiled reports which the Home Army passed on to the Polish government-in-exile in London.
In many cases, the opportunity to leave Warsaw came by chance. For example, the hiding diarist Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski was taken out, after he was accidentally found by a woman (name unknown) who had been given permission by the Germans to remove some of her property from the ruins. On their way out of the city the group also had to pass German checkpoints and encountered difficulties similar to that of the ŻOB fighters. A Wehrmacht soldier accused the wounded and sick Gluth-Nowowiejski of being a "bandit" but let him pass after protestations made by his escort.
Individual Robinsons
Of the total number of Robinsons who hid in the ruins of the city only a portion's names and locations are known. The recognized individuals are mostly the ones who either survived the war themselves or who came into contact with other survivors at some point. As such, the list of the known hideaways is not representative; the majority of the Robinsons died while in hiding and hence their identities were never recorded. The table below lists some of those who have been mentioned in the memoirs or other written works on the subject.| Number of individuals | Names | Address | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | Władysław Kobus, Zofia Kobus, 4 unknown. Jakow Mienżycki, Aron Mienżycki, Isaj Dawidowicz, Abram Klinkier | Żelazna 95c | Group encountered by Wassily Grossman upon entrance of the Red Army into ruins of Warsaw. Hideout was a bunker constructed on the fourth story of a bombed out house. |
| 1? | Calel Perechodnik Calel Perechodnik Calel Perechodnik was a Polish Jew who joined the Jewish Ghetto Police in the Otwock Ghetto during the Nazi German occupation of Poland... |
Somewhere on Pańska street | Perechodnik was a former Jewish Policeman from the Otwock Ghetto. After the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising he hid out on the "Aryan side". He took part in the Warsaw Uprising as part of the Chrobry II Battalion Chrobry II Battalion The Chrobry II Battalion was a unit, formally subordinate to the Polish Home Army , which took part in the Warsaw Uprising. It was named after the Polish king Bolesław I Chrobry .-Formation and name:... . After the fall of the Uprising Perechodnik hid in the ruins but died (either by suicide, being burnt to death, or murdered by looters) soon after. |
| 16 | Unknown | Pańska street | 9 of the 16 survived |
| 2 | 13 year old Henryk Kowalewski and his father | Lwowska street | The father left the hiding place one day in search of food and never returned. Henryk survived the war. |
| 1 | Marian Uramowski | Szustra (Dombrowskiego) street | |
| 12 | Jerzy Szajkowski, others | Trębacka 4 | Szajkowski managed to escape from the Grand Theatre, Warsaw Massacre. The other 11 were escapees from a mass murder on Kozia street. |
| More than 10, including one newborn | Józef Dódziński, Witold Łazowski, Jan Fetinger and at least five others including a 3 year old girl and a pregnant woman | Ogrodowa and Leszna street. | The pregnant woman gave birth to a daughter on December 1, 1944. 8 of the group split from the rest in late October. One male died due to an accident while climbing between the ruins, the rest survived until the entry of the Red Army. |
| More than 13 | Jan Gadaliński and family, at least 12 others | Karolkowa street in Wola | Initially the group hid under a wagon in a tram station, later they moved to a burnt out house. All survived. |
| 4 | Fania and Sewek Glazer, Basia and Mietek Chwat. Fania and Basia were the Nowikówna sisters. | Hoża 38 | The hiding place was under a small theater stage |
| 5 | A Jewish Pole whose name is unknown and four Home Army soldiers: Anatol Orwicz-Urbaniak, Władysław Tybinkowski and two unknown | Flora street | Tybinkowski wrote a memoir about his experience where he wrote: "Some have compared us to Robinson Crusoe. To my mind (...) Crusoe faced a much easier task than the one we did in those ten weeks" |
| 2 | Stefan Ślusarczyk, Franciszek Głowacki | Solec street | Both men were running from a German advance during the Uprising and hid in a furnace of a Gilding Gilding The term gilding covers a number of decorative techniques for applying fine gold leaf or powder to solid surfaces such as wood, stone, or metal to give a thin coating of gold. A gilded object is described as "gilt"... factory where they stayed until even after the Russians had taken over Warsaw, afraid to leave the safety of the hiding place |
| 8, later 3 | 14 year old Jewish boy, five women and two men. Names unknown. | Sienkiewicza street | On October 22, the group was caught by a German patrol while trying to get water from a polluted pool. One of the men and the fourteen year old escaped unnoticed. One of the captured women managed to escape and rejoined them later. The three of them survived until the Russians entered Warsaw. |
| 7 | Chaim Goldstein, Ignac ? , Henryk Kapłan, Icchak ?, Daniel ?, Chana ?, Samek ? | Franciszkanska street | The "Goldstein group" had fought in the Warsaw Uprising in Old Town. Daniel was originally from Belgium and had spent time in various concentration camps prior to ending up in Warsaw and being liberated by the Home Army. According to his memoirs, hiding out in isolation in the ruins was far more stressful than any concentration camp he had been imprisoned in. The group survived the war. |
| 1 | Gabriel Cybulski | Ogrodowa street | Cybulski went into hiding as early as early September. In all he spent five months in isolation. He survived. |
| 10 | Dawid and Luba Landau, others | Pańska street | At the end of the uprising Dawid acquired arms from evacuating Home Army soldiers who would "rather give them up to Poles than to Germans". On at least one occasion they used the weapons to strike back at the Germans by capturing, and executing, lone looters. |
- Sources for table: