“My Children from Lodz ...” – “Moje Dzieci z Łodzi ...”

“THE ENGLISH ARE COMING TO LIBERATE US”
 

“On the 3rd of September we celebrated the birthday and name day of two of our friends. Outside, we could hear the drone of the aeroplanes. Some of the girls laughed: ‘The English are coming to liberate us.’ We went down into the cellar. Then the bombs began to fall.”[1]

The attack in September marked the end of the Allied preparations, begun in August 1943, for the “Battle of Berlin” and for the saturation and “round-the-clock bombing”, as the campaign was known. The plan was for the British to attack during the night, and the Americans during the day. The Americans focused their attacks mainly on military targets such as armaments factories in the Ruhr region. The carefully collated statistics from that time list the number of people killed in Berlin during this “dress rehearsal” between 23 August and 4 September 1943 as 1,646.[2] It is unclear whether this figure includes the young women from Łódź. 

THEN THE BOMBS BEGAN TO FALL
 

Danuta Bartkowiak recalled her experience that night:

“When I woke up again, it was dark. I could see nothing but smoke and rubble, and I could hear the women groaning and screaming. I was in terrible pain. We called for help. One girl could speak English. Other forced labourers, Czechs, Serbs and French, came running to save us. After about five hours, I was the last to be pulled out of the rubble. Then I was lying outside on a stretcher. It was raining, and I felt so happy. I was alive, and I wanted to go back home to my mother. The ambulance took us to the hospital in Prenzlauer Berg[3]. Our wounds were bandaged and we were wrapped in blankets. I had splinters all over my body, and I was in pain everywhere. I was given 13 days sick leave before I was sent on to another camp.”[4]

The forced labourers were not permitted to use the same air raid shelters as the civilian population. The only exception made was for those labourers who were surprised by an air attack while at work in a factory. 

As Janina Głowacka recalled: 

“And the third [shift] was between 10 at night and 6 in the morning. I really liked this night shift. You never worked eight hours solid, because there was an air raid alarm almost every night and you had to go down into a wonderful air raid shelter. It was situated beneath the factory, below the factory building, and it was elegantly furnished. There, you could just sleep (...). All the forced labourers slept. The Germans didn’t (...).”[5] 

Kazimiera Kosonowska described similar events elsewhere: 

“(...) that the air raids on Berlin began for [the forced labourers] in January. 1943. Then, we really found out what air raids were. Behind the barracks [where they lived], trenches had been dug. There were walls reinforced with boards, and something had been poured into them. (...) as soon as the sirens began to wail, the guards literally drove us into them. With our suitcases, with bundles of clothes, with whatever we had with us. (...) We had 10 minutes to get there from where we were standing. (...) While we were running, we came close to an anti-aircraft battery. Rockets rained down on us like Christmas trees. The bombs howled. We were beside ourselves with fright, and with [the] madness happening before our eyes, we threw ourselves into the dugout. Later, when the air raids began, firebombs were used, and we had to pass burning asphalt on the way to the dugout. The days came and went in this way; that’s how we lived. (...) The air raids were terrible at the end [of the war]. Really, they were truly horrific. The planes flew so low that you felt as though you could reach up and touch them with your hand. (...) I don’t know how we survived.”[6]