Paulina Lemke. Nestor of the Polonia in the post-war period

Paulina Lemke was born in the village of Polanówka near Lublin in 1924. Her father, Tomasz Kukiełka, a former member of the army led by General Józef Haller, who had been distinguished with the “Virtuti Militari” order[3], ran a farm and was also an amateur musician. His daughter, who had been raised to be loyal to her fatherland, soon showed a talent for painting, which later helped her to survive the war. After finishing primary school at the top of her class, she attended the grammar school in Tomaszów Lubelski, where she also joined the Polish girl guides (Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego). This carefree period of her life was cut short by the Second World War. Paulina was 15 when it broke out, and spent the first years of the war living in her parents’ home. She was known to be good at drawing, and there was high demand at that time for her portraits. This reached the ears of the Germans, who came in droves asking for drawings of their loved ones, which she created from photographs that they gave her. During the occupation, she produced 680 portraits of this kind. This helped her survive, while at the same time providing valuable information for the Polish resistance. She was not paid for her art, but it did enable her to forge contacts, thanks to which soldiers from the underground army who had been arrested were set free. It was through these connections that Paulina Lemke was miraculously able to have her brother freed from Majdanek concentration camp. 

Today, Paulina Lemke has just one single work from this period in her possession. It is a portrait of the young Irene Lampe-Hartman from Magdeburg, which she drew in 1941 at the request of her fiancé. Both women survived the war and met in 1977. At the meeting, Irene Lampe-Hartman presented Paulina Lemke with the drawing.

However, during the war, the Germans had special plans for the region in which Lemke lived. Due to the highly fertile soil in the Zamość area, the National Socialist government decided, as part of their “Generalplan Ost”, to settle 60,000 inhabitants of the Reich there and to drive out the Polish population or subjugate them to the new inhabitants. In November 1940, Paulina was set to be deported for the first time. She only managed to escape arrest and deportation when the head of the Polish military police recognised her from the Polish girl guides from the pre-war years. He made arrangements that enabled her to avoid being taken away. She found a place to hide in the hospital in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, where she pretended to be a nurse. This hospital supported the Polish resistance movement. It treated injured partisans and helped the local population – albeit only unofficially, of course. Thanks to her courage and knowledge of German, Paulina was able to slip the sick and wounded past the German guards, helping transport them out of the area and risking her life in doing so. In the little free time that she had, granted her once a month, she produced paintings for the nuns. She was so good at her art that the hospital directors released her from work until the end of the war, so that she could study and further hone her artistic skills. During this period, she completed her studies at the underground grammar school and began training at the pedagogical college in Lublin.