“Brother Albert” in Auschwitz became Bolesław Świderski. No 1 can face him in terms of the size of aid and care. After this, he had peculiar opportunities, even in the heaviest, early years of the camp, due to the fact that he replaced the vat of the vegetable plant.
Arrested in an effort to cross the border as a courier arriving from Hungary, he was imprisoned in prisons in Sanok, Montelupich, Kraków, Wiśnicz close Bochnia. In Montelupi prison, he learned to peel potatoes efficiently, and he utilized that skill in the camp. Initially employed in sweeping the square close the camp kitchen, he applied for an interpreter to the vegetable store due to the fact that he knew German fluently. He's advanced there shortly to be the deputy of that commandant, Alfred Goebla, a German with a black “winkle” who placed almost all work for the work.
Working in a vegetable shop, consisting of peeling potatoes and clearing vegetables, was almost the tallness of the prisoners' dreams during the first year of existence. respective twelve Polish intelligents were employed there, many of whom became active in the underground life of the camp. Thanks to the prevention of the Świderski plant workers almost regular received an additional pot of food from a close kitchen. In particular, Swiderski went out of his way to make conditions that he might not even have at home. These friends were the 2 leaders of ONR, Jan Mosdorf and Aleksander Heinrich and Stefan Godlewski, The poet, the baker of Warsaw. no of them survived.
But the long list of Swiderski's subjects included not only nationalists. He besides helped sanators, Pepesovists, people, as well as scholars, artists, priests and another intelligents. They besides gotta thank him for the more bearable conditions of the Franciscans, and in peculiar Father Maximilian Maria KolbeHe knew before the war. Even 1 of the executioners of Bereza Kartuska, chief of the Kamala police, whom Bolek remembered from his time in that executioner, received a bowl of soup from him from time to time. In 1941, Świderski fell sick with typhus and went to block 20, intended for infectious diseases. After his recovery, he found employment as an orderly and began caring for the sick. At that time, he changed the tactics of providing aid. In the first period, he helped people known primarily, especially politicians; in many cases, his aid was futile in relation to the older age or physical weakness of prisoners, not to mention accidents – these people engaged in political activity in the camp.
Later, he cared mainly about young people, small known, in the belief that they had a better chance of surviving the camp and would be able to become the seed of the fresh elite of the country. Remembering his own experience of how sick people endure from a deficiency of adequate drink and exhaustion with a long-term advanced fever, he introduced on his block the habit of bringing overcooked water from his kitchen and separating it after cooling between the thirsty.
Swiderski, after transferring from block 20 to infirmary block, continued to participate in the conspiracy activity. Knowing that the camp Gestapo was starting to step on his heels, he volunteered to transport going to Neuengamme. He received freedom from the American Army in Mauthausen.
Letter from Bolesław Świderski to SN president Tadeusz Bielecki (1945)
After the war, Świderski worked in the Information Department of the II Corps in Italy as a press officer, supplying “dipisian” camps with Polish literature and press. After the dissolution of the Corps, he settled in London, established a bookstore there and published valuable Polish books. At that time, he entered a sharp conflict with the leadership of the National organization and another independency activists against the background of relations with the Country. He was accused of working unfairly with the regime. After 1956, Bolek went to Poland, saw PAX activists, criticized the leaders of the London emigration very harshly, but his "Kronika" did not have a debit in the country, and his name was removed persistently from all national publications. The difficulty of political cooperation with Swiderski, as many examples can be found in his life, was, in my opinion, first of all, that he was a determined individual, with the nature of the leader. He hated walking in a harness, and expected almost fanatical effort and sacrifice from the environment, which he himself was capable of.
The fanatical nationalist Bolesław Świderski, whom I met before the war, was in the first year of law, in the “Szarej Kamienica” in Krakow, where the office of the SN on the Kraków territory was located, died in London on 28 April 1969, at the age of 57. His corpse was transported to the country and buried in Powązki in Warsaw. Ludowa Poland awarded it after the death with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta of Poland, but not for the courage, dedication and self-sacrifice which grateful Auschwitz prisoners remember, but "for their merit in Polish and public-public activities in the UK."
Jerzy Ptakowski
From the book “Oświęcim without censorship and without legend”, Think Poland, London 1985
