This is the Polish ghetto in Łomża. Here Cyla Cybulska (upper left) was first forced to live with her immediate family. After they were all sent by train to Auschwitz, she became the lone survivor, most likely because she was young and attractive. In 1944, Cybulska became not only the sixth Jew to successfully escape from the Auschwitz complex, but also the only Jewish woman to escape successfully (never be caught).
39 ROSES
Anyone who has seen the 2002 romantic comedy Love Actually will recall its opening and closing sequences—the movie begins and ends with a montage of random embraces in airports. These feature people of all ages, all shapes, all sizes, all colours, moving into one another’s arms like happy and often clumsy dancers. As they reach out to one other, their spontaneity is both grateful and deeply kind.
Every day, in airports all over the planet, from Kazakhstan to Kalamazoo, everyday people are simply glad to be alive, glad to hold someone, glad to be held and we cannot refute this. We are left with a surprising revelation: human beings might actually deserve to be on this planet…
So, picture a Polish Catholic man waiting at the Kraków airport on June 8, 1983. He is 62 years old. His name is Jerzy Bielecki, aka Jurek Bielecki. In his arms he holds an over-sized bouquet of 39 roses. A woman is walking towards him. She has flown to Europe from New York City. She is 63 and noticeably well-dressed. She has been a widow for seven years. It is not difficult to imagine she was a knockout. We can never know whether or not there was a large smile on her face, but we know her name was formerly Cyla Cybulska–when he last saw her. Born in Łomża, eastern Poland, as a Jew, she had married to become Cyla Zacharowicz.
Our airport Romeo is the director of a school for teaching bus and car mechanics. He tries to maintain his composure. Jerzy and Cyla have spoken on several long distance phone calls in advance of this reunion. Therefore, Cyla knows he is still married and Jerzy knows she is not. At long last they are embracing again, living in the moment. There are tears in four eyes and they don’t know how or when to let go. Maybe never?
Jerzy and Cyla reunited after 39 years.
Jerzy tells his “little Cyla” there is one rose for each of the 39 years they have been apart; one rose for every year they had assumed the other must be dead. Once upon a time, in a grim fairy tale, they had felt obliged to forsake a great love in exchange for survival. Every day since on this godforsaken planet, Auschwitz has haunted their dreams; but for these exquisite moments in the Kraków airport, animosity doesn’t rule the universe and regrets can be jettisoned.
With so many people rushing by, with everyone distracted by their own viewpoints and anxieties, this older couple would be almost invisible to passersby were it not for that over-sized bouquet. Only the elderly pair know how exceedingly special they are. Holocaust experts have completely overlooked them. Professional historians assiduously copy one another; they persist in declaring that only five Jews ever escaped from the main murder factory, Auschwitz II. This will continue to be the case for at least the next forty years [or until this article herein appears in 2023]. Meanwhile, the aging lovebirds in the Kraków airport know their grim fairy tale romance is one for the ages.
There was love, actually, in Auschwitz, because once upon a time, in a land not so faraway from where they now hold onto one another once again–for dear life–there was a future mechanics instructor named Jerzy Bielecki who enabled a future American homemaker named Cyla Cybulska to become only the sixth Jew to ever escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau, as well as the first and only woman to do.
[The first Jew who is known to have successfully escaped from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ziegfried Lederer, did so entirely according to a daring plan that was made by his accomplice, a Nazi prison guard named Pestek. Historians have never slighted Lederer’s achievement because he did not engineer his own escape. As well, Vrba & Wetzler have likewise never been given short shrift because they didn’t engineer their own escapes either–as first revealed by this website, during research for the first biography of Rudolf Vrba, Holocaust Hero. Likewise, Cyla Cybulska did not plan or engineer how own escape from Auschwitz. Why then, has Cyla’s successful escape not been acknowledged by the thousands of historians who have written about the Holocaust? is it sexism? or ignorance? There are now almost as many female Holocaust historians in the 21st century as male historians, so the prevailing lack of attention seems bizarre.]
CYLA’S STORY
Cyla Cybulksa was born on December 28, 1920 in Łomża, a city in north-eastern Poland, located approximately 150 kilometers to the north-east of Warsaw. In her late teens, her hometown shrank; she found herself limited to the Łomża Ghetto. With her mother Fela [or Faye] , her father Mordechai, her older brother Jakub [or Yaacov], her younger brother Natan and a ten-year-old sister Rebecca, she resolved to remain hopeful. As their gated community was increasingly swollen by the influx of Jews from the surrounding countryside, it became impossible not to imagine that a rumoured “re-settlement” somewhere to the south might be a preferable option.
The Jews of the Łomża Ghetto—including Jews from the surrounding towns of Czyzew, Jedwabne, Kobylin, Kupiski, Kołaków, Śniadów and Wysokie Mazowiecki—were all eventually transported to a former army barracks in Zambrów. “I don’t remember the exact date,” she told Holocaust historian Lore Shelley (née Weinberg), herself a survivor (1924-2011), born on February 19, 1924 in Luebbecke, Westphalia, Germany. Their collective numbers in Zambrów have been estimated as anywhere from thirteen-to-twenty thousand prisoners. Conditions were horrid due to disease, hunger and beatings. Hard labour and executions awaited anyone who objected.
German soldiers in Zambrow, 1939 (Click)
In Zambrów, the Germans killed about eight hundred people. A captive named Abraham Berl Sokół reported: “Mortality in the camp reached a hundred people a day, mainly children and the elderly. The camp was divided into seven blocks, the cramped conditions were terrible, fourteen people slept on bunks for six people, mothers killed their own children out of a sense of hopelessness” (source: Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, aka AŻIH, report no. 301/2249).
Witness Icchak Stupnik’s left memoirs: “The Jews from the Zambrów camp were assigned three types of death. First: starvation to death. Due to the abnormal diet, the Jews suffered from dysentery and spotted typhus. (…) The number of small, innocent souls that hungered like flies was monstrous. Secondly, the Jews were tormented with cold. When it was very cold, all the Jews were lined up in the camp square and kept for several hours, in this way they frostbitten their hands, legs and other body parts. Thirdly, they were harassed for the smallest thing.” (source: AŻIH, report no. 301/1258).
Zambrów was so foul that the Germans chose to liquidate the camp in mid-January of 1943. All the remaining prisoners, mainly Jews, were loaded onto horse carts and taken to the railway station in Czyżewo where Germans packed the deportees onto cattle cars. Crowded, without food or drink, in unheated wagons despite the bitter cold, the prisoners set off on their way to Auschwitz. During transport, more Jews would be murdered or die as a result of exhaustion and hypothermia.
When the train stopped in Oświęcim on January 19, 1943 , the SS men used truncheons for the unloading process for approximately 2,000 Polish Jews. It was important that nobody had much time to think. The selection process occurred immediately. Two words were spoken repeatedly: rechts [right], links [left]. Approximately, 164 men were admitted to the camp, bearing the numbers 89,845 to 90,008. Also, 134 women were permitted to live, from numbers 29,451 to 29,584.
Regardless of age, any woman with a child was sent to the group to be murdered. Cyla (or Cylka) recalled, “My mother and my ten-year-old sister were included in the group of those who were sent left for the gas chambers. I was directed to the right side. I was deemed fit to work… All civilian items were taken from us, we were shaved and the number 29558 was tattooed on my forearm on my left hand.” The surviving women were driven to the Birkenau labour camp where they were assigned to barracks BIa and beaten often by a Czech Jewess block leader in Barracks #9. Initially she was required to assist in the demolition of farm buildings and homes that belonged to displaced Poles in villages the included Brzezinka, Babice, Rajsko, Pławy, Harmęże and Budy. “The most primitive tools were used for the work,” she told Shelley.
Stabsgebäude building (left), from which Jerzy Bielecki accompanied Cyla Cybulska.
Soon enough, after several weeks, Cyla was transferred from Birkenau to Auschwitz I. “I noticed during the selection that only young, healthy and attractive girls qualified for this transfer,” she recalled. She and other attractive, younger women were accorded separate lodgings, near to the grain silo, in a masonry building called the Stabsgebaeude [administration] headquarters, where conditions were “incomparably better.” Evidently, German personnel were not ill-disposed to having fifty, attractive, young women all sleeping in the warm basement of their headquarters. This relatively small coterie of women were allowed to let their hair grow and had access to better, stylish clothing from the Canada compound.
Cyla recalled: “It was incredible luck. We slept in a relatively dry cellar on straw mattresses. We had to wash in the morning and in the evening. It was required for our work mending the flour bags. We received far better food. It was supposedly the kind of food that the German overseers received.” Better food and lodging was provided because the facility also housed the German Aufseheruinnen [SS women] or aufzierki. “We could maintain personal hygience,” she noted.
These preferred women transferred from Birkenau expected to do secretarial work but there were “not enough openings” [as she put it], so Cyla was assigned to a building where sacks were mended by nine other women. In the survivalist hell of Birkenau, one could have used unprocessed grain as a form of currency, but the granary compound in Auschwitz was hardly akin to the Canada compound wherein vigilance of the workers was extreme. Grain was not comparable to diamonds; therefore, the level of surveillance in the grain storage facility was far less severe. That is how and why a furtive and flirtatious intimacy soon evolved between Jerzy Bielecki and Cyla.
“During my stay in Auschwitz I did not have an opportunity to send official letters out of the camp,” she recalled. “We Jewesses were not allowed to do this. However, we corresponded illegally with the male prisoners in Auschwitz. These secret notes were called ‘gryps’. They circulated at different occasions between female and male prisoners. All this took place under the most carefully guarded circumstances. Being caught would have had tragic repercussions for each of us.
During the next eight months, not unlike Ovid’s and Shakespeare’s ill-fated lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, they were able to talk to one another through a hole in a board, or when she was permitted to visit the latrines. Each brief encounter was like oxygen. There was little opportunity to consummate their love, barely time for an elicit kiss. He was Catholic. She was Jewish. But their religious differences were irrelevant.
Her brothers and father would soon perish. By September, at age 22, Cyla would be the lone family member left alive.
JERZY’S STORY
Born in Slaboszow, Poland, in the Kielce region, on March 28, 1921, Jerzy Bielecki was arrested, for no legal reason, at age 19, on June 13, 1940. It was a beautiful day in Tarnow, Poland. “Jurek” and some friends had been preparing to cross the border into Hungary, hoping to join a Polish army unit, then ultimately join some of the Polish armed forces in France. The Nazis suspected Jerzy Bielecki of being a member or the Polish resistance. He was not. But that hardly mattered. The Germans had invaded his homeland on September 2, 1939 when he was eighteen, having just completed his education at Bartlomiej Nowodworski High School in Kraków.
First apprehended in the town of Nowy Sącz in southern Poland, Jurek had been brought 60 kilometres north to the city of Tarnów for his formalized processing.
When he and dozens of other men were marched through the streets under police escort, towards the train station, he felt like they were all cattle being escorted to the slaughterhouse.
A Polish town in 1938
He would never outlive that memory. The faces of those watching the cavalcade, peering through their windows, looked stunned. Some of the local women tried to provide food to the convoy of young men. At one point someone dared to toss some red roses into the street, as a way of saying farewell. One of the Nazi gendarmes trampled on the roses in a matter of seconds.
None of these arrested Poles had any idea that various SS commissions had examined a swampy area near Oświęcim, (pronounced Os-VEE-en-chim) in western Poland, as a potential site for a concentration camp. Specifically, the Nazis had investigated an adjunct called Zasole, within Oświęcim county, where there was an abandoned Polish army camp. Most important, this area, with its relatively easy access to Kraków, could offer excellent railway connections.
In keeping with a Nazi plan made in April of 1940, the director of the existing Sachsenhausen camp (opened in 1936), would be appointed commandant of this new facility. His name was Rudolf Hoess. By June, SS Gruppenfuhrer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski and SS Gruppenfuhrer Wiegandt had therefore deemed it necessary to gather a labour force to help construct an encampment soon to be known as Auschwitz—the German pronunciation for Oświęcim.
The life of tall, skinny and handsome Jerzy Bielecki would be forever changed as a result. Previously, there had been nothing remarkable about him. Now he was playing a pivotal role in history. As part of the inaugural transport of Poles from Silesia to Konzentrationslager Auschwitz on June 14, 1940, at age 19, Bielecki was a historical figure: he was participating in the onset of the most vile mass murder site in human history with the arrival of 728 Polish alleged “political prisoners” who arrived at Auschwitz at 3 p.m.
Millions of others would be forced onto trains heading in that same destination for several years to come, but he represented the vanguard of an event in history that could be considered as remarkable as a trip to the moon. It was one step for man; one giant step backward for mankind.
Karl Fritzsch
Very soon, 0nly those who were destined to live more than a few hours would be accorded numbers on their striped uniforms. Jerzy’s Auschwitz prison number was 243. Likely, precious few with numbers lower than his ever outlived him, with the noteworthy exception of Tadeusz Srogi. The words of a German officer during first roll call were seared into his memory: “You dogs! Remember, that this is a German camp, not a sanatorium. You will work here for the rest of your life…” This speech was likely delivered by Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch (deputy commander of the SS in KL Auschwitz). Bielecki claimed, perhaps fancifully, that the Nazi officer continued to say “…I give priests and Jews three weeks… Never forget that there is only one way out of here—through the chimney. And if someone doesn’t like it, they can go straight to the [electrified] wires.”
[According to Rudolf Höss, it was Fritzsch who had first suggested using poisonous gas Zyklon B for the purpose of mass murder but the “chimney” reference in the quote from Bielecki must be considered contrived because plans for large-scale cremation of corpses were not yet widely-known in June of 1940. The first crematorium at Auschwitz would not be operational until August 15, 1940 and its three furnaces could only incinerate 340 corpses every 24 hours until it ceased operations in July of 1943. Poisonous gas was not used for mass murder at KL Auschwitz until September 3, 1941, initially in the cellars of Block 11. Hence, Bielecki’s recollection of a Nazi threat in June of 1940 about there being “only one way out—the chimney” must be disregarded as poetic license.]
First, barracks needed to be built; foundations had to be dug. Houses belonging to resident Poles must be demolished. The crude living conditions and Nazi sadism were far more lethal than unbuilt chimneys. The early death rate in Auschwitz, prior to the implementation of crematoria at Birkenau, can be deduced by camp commandant Rudolf Höss’ own report on February 2, 1941. After more than 10,000 prisoner numbers had been issued, the prisoner population in Auschwitz was about 6,000.
These figures fail to take into account the lethal effects of transport for Poles brought to Auschwitz as a labourers. According to Auschwitz Museum-related researchers, “no one survived from the transport of 20 prisoners brought from Tarnów on December 27, 1940; of the 26 prisoners on the transport from Kraków, only 2 survived; of the 81 prisoners brought on February 26, 1941, from Tarnów, only 7 prisoners survived…. The archival record indicates that the total percentage of deaths among the 140,000 Poles deported to KL Auschwitz was around 50 percent.”
Bielecki’s modest command of the German language was enhanced over eighteen months to the point where it became an asset. Near the outset of 1942, Bielecki was able to join the Landwirtschaftskommando (the farming or agricultural brigade) where the labour was less debilitating. [Bielecki should not be confused with Witold Pilecki’s second-in-command in underground activities in Warsaw, Stefan Bielecki, who arrived in a transport in April of 1941 and became integral to the third ‘upper five’ contingent of Pilecki’s camp underground, along with Wlodzimierz Makolinski, Stanislaw Maringe, Dr. Jerzy Porazinski and Szczepan Rzeczkowski.]
At first, Bielecki worked at the mill in the sub-camp of Babice, some 36 kilometres west of Kraków. The dietary benefits and indoor working conditions greatly improved his outlook and he regained some strength It began to dawn on him there could be a slim possibility he could survive. But his hopes were dashed after one of the prison workers at the mill escaped and all his co-workers were demoted to harder labour. As a member of the roving “reapers commando” Bielecki was constantly working outdoors, reaping crops or cutting grass. It wasn’t until midway through 1942, while he was doing gardening chores near a crematorium, that he saw his first stack of naked bodies, thousands of them, in a gigantic pile.
Agricultural labour was seasonal so next he was sent to serve as an apprentice mechanic for the Landwirschaftkommando, working mainly indoors, repairing farming machinery as well as motorcycles, bikes and trucks. Spare parts from the warehouse could sometimes be bartered for food. Next, in September of 1943, he was transferred to work in the large grain warehouse, not far from the ramp. His ever-expanding aptitude for speaking German gained him a position as a Vorarbeiter (foreman).
Bielecki in Auschwitz with a photo of Cyla when she was young. (Click)
Grain in the warehouse was stored and put into sacks. Everything was weighed, strictly accounted for. Some grain was sent to the Reich; some grain sent to the mill at Babice for either flour or cattle feed. Other grain disappeared without a trace. It was such a large operation that the SS themselves were involved in trading grain for other foodstuffs. As a foreman, he was able to barter grain for produce from the nearby farms at Budy, Harmeze (Harmense) and Babice (Babitz). As well, there was a fish farm at Plawy.
The grain warehouse was staffed from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. There was a separate room where ten Polish women worked repairing bags to store the grain. Each day the SS escorted these women to and from the warehouse. When groups of female prisoners were marched past male prisoners, all male prisoners were supposed to look away, but indoors, in such facilities as the Canada warehouse or the grain warehouse, such regulations were not so strictly enforced.
Elsewhere, it was forbidden in Birkenau for male and female prisoners to converse, but the warehouse crew was so familiar with the SS men that they could easily be bribed to turn a blind eye. So it was that one day Jerzy glimpsed the mending crew of ten Polish women, all brunettes, arriving at the warehouse wearing white aprons, clean blouses and scarves in their hair. He was stupefied. Never had anyone, as far as he knew, ever witnessed such a cavalcade of beauty in Auschwitz.
“I backtracked when I saw them,” he recalled. “Women?… It seemed to me that one of them, a pretty, dark-haired one, smiled and winked at me. I blushed like a kid. It was Cyla, who had been assigned to repair grain sacks. From the first moment, I fell in love with her femininity, her smile, her face. Paradoxically, I lived the best of my life while death was all around me… I was crazy about her, and I saw that she was not insensitive to my advances. We were like teens on a park bench stealing kisses as death rumbled.”
THE ESCAPE
Prisoner #29558 Cyla Cybulska, the sixth Jew to successfully escape from Auschwitz
Two of Jerzy’s co-workers named Marian Wudniak and Kazek Jankowski were also uplifted by the luxury of female company and formed romantic liaisons with two of Cyla’s friends, Regina and Lonia Szwarc (from Pomerania) among the nine other women who were darning the granary bags.
The smoke from cremated bodies and the stench of corpses stacked high were hardly an elixir for romance, and yet this death-defying aura of near-bliss evidently sustained these chaste couples for almost a year. The status quo only became unviable when Cyla witnessed the murder of a close female friend. A Nazi aimed his revolver at her neck, at close range, and calmly pulled the trigger. After Cyla had witnessed the murder, she became severely agitated and Jerzy ached to calm her.
So it was, purportedly on Christmas Eve in 1943, that Jerzy Bielecki vaingloriously pledged to figure out some way for them to escape. “I’ll get you out of this hell,” he promised. Or so the story goes.
Bielecki claims he came up with a scheme that required the theft of an SS uniform in order to escort Cyla out the gates, but this was clearly a copy-cat plan that was first utilized for an escape attempt made by non-Jews in June of 1942, then emulated successfully by the better-known, heroic and doomed tandem of Malka Zimetbaum and Edek Galinski who had successful fled Auschwitz on June 24, 1994.
“It was like something clicked,” Bielecki would recall. “I would not have had the courage to do it for myself. I knew how [most of] the escape attempts ended. But for Cyla and for our love, I was ready to do anything, even the impossible.”
Bielecki paints himself as a romantic hero so it’s easy to look somewhat askance, but by their actions ye shall know them. This was Auschwitz, after all. Only six Jews ever succeeded in escaping from Auschwitz and never were caught and it was entirely through Bielecki’s efforts that Cyla Cybulska became one of them. Bielecki had grounds for pride.
The details, however, of how Cyla Cybulska became the only female—out of more than one million Jews—to escape from the Auschwitz complex have much to do with Jerzy’s friendship with Tadeusz Srogi, a veteran survivor of the camp whose tattoo number was 178. Srogi was therefore a Pole who had also been brought to Auschwitz on the same train as Jerzy, who was #243. This pair of camp veterans were on the first transport of 728 Polish political prisoners who were sent to Auschwitz on June 14, 1940, long before it was transformed into a murder factory. These men who could boast being “old numbers” earned grudging respect from the Nazis. In the case of Srogi, he had been an Auschwitz veteran for so long that he had been accorded the job of looking after Nazi uniforms. It was Srogi, not Bielecki, who would furnish the couple with a faked green pass as well as a stolen Nazi uniform that would enable his friend Bielecki to escort his would-be lover out the gates to freedom.
Tadeusz Srogi Prisoner #178. It was Srogi who gathered the SS uniform as well as the day pass for Jerzy Bielecki. Srogi died in 2009 at the age of 90.
Srogi was a remarkable character. Born in Sanok on January 10, 1919, he was apprehended by Germans on May 6, 1940 and incarcerated in the Sanok prison until June 13, 1940, at which time he was transferred for processing at Tarnów, where he then met Jerzy among the 758 Poles who were sent to Auschwitz on that initial June 14 transport. Srogi was tattooed only a few minutes before Bielecki.
Having survived a stint of punishment in Block 11 for five days in February of 1943, Srogi was assigned to a penal command (Strafkommando) in May of 1943 but somehow remained in touch with his Jewish sweetheart in Auschwitz named Regina. It is not known how he was transferred to work in the SS warehouse where uniforms were kept. Regardless, it was he who managed to gradually assemble the various pieces of attire that Jerzy would need in order to pose as a Nazi officer.
Initially, the two Poles planned to escape as a foursome. Srogi’s intended escape mate “Regina” was presumably a love interest, but it’s unclear whether this was the same woman who worked alongside Cyla in the granary or not. When Srogi nixed this plan as too risky, he nonetheless persisted in helping his friend with the risky acquisition of an SS officer’s uniform along with a Rottenfuhrer’s insignia.
As well, and equally crucially, Srogi provided a blank pass that one of the SS men had left in a uniform. These passes that enabled officers to pass in and out of the camp were issued in varying colours, for security reasons, so that only passes of a particular colour would be valid on a particular day. The pass Srogi gave to Jerzy was green and it was pre-signed by an SS man named Helmut Stehler. Clearly, guards at the gate might quickly discern that Bielecki was not Stehler (if they happened to know Stehler). Emboldened rather than deterred, Srogi therefore decided he would forge the signature to make it appear as Steiner instead of Stehler. Reverence for rank in the Nazi army was such that a lesser-ranked soldier would not risk repercussions if he dared question the credibility of a more senior office named Steiner even if they did not recognize him.
Next, a friend of Bielecki’s, who worked in the camp printing house, agreed to create six forgeries in different colours, because Bielecki knew that the SS used a different pass colours intermittently in no discernible order.
Most of the time Bielecki could only communicate with his escape partner Cyla in a sentence or two. He managed to say to her, “Listen, soon, around three in the afternoon, an SS man will come for you and take you to the Politische Abteilung (Political Department) for interrogation… Remember and wait.”
Auschwitz escapee Jerzy Bielecki
Later that same day, Bielecki learned that the basement dormitory for Cyla and her co-workers had been emptied. Cyla and the others had been transferred but he had no idea to where, or why. When she did not appear at the granary, he had no idea if she was alive or dead.
Days or months later [versions of the story don’t agree], he received a note saying “Jurek [diminutive for Jerzy in Polish], darling, I work in the laundry. Try to find me.” Or possibly, “I work at Stabsgebaude C.” (Headquarters C). Either way, via intermediaries, they learned they were still working very close to one another.
Through intermediaries, they were able to set a prospective date of July 21, 1944 for their delayed escape attempt. Bielecki had the uniform hidden; the main hurdle now was the colour of the forged pass. It was agreed he would appear on the balcony of the warehouse at two-hour intervals and Cyla would appear in the window of her nearby building at two-hour intervals, on even hours; noon, 2 or 4, etc. He would raise his hand as a signal to verify that their escape attempt should proceed.
Good fortune was upon them later that day when two horses pulled a platform to the entrance of the warehouse. His friend named Staszek Zygula appeared to be escorting a new arrival and presenting him to the manager of the warehouse. The nature of the exchange was unclear to him but his heart beat faster. He could clearly see the colour of the pass that was being presented for signature, to verify whatever transaction was occurring, was green.
As soon as Zygula had confirmed the colour during a brief conversation, Bielecki hurried to the attic where he had stored the forged passes. He completed the green form. It was simple enough. Prisoner’s name. SS controller’s name. Rank. Destination. Time. Date. Next he went to the balcony and waved to the nearby Stabsgebäude C (Headquarters) building where Cyla now worked in the laundry. They had agreed to depart on a odd-numbered hour; 1 or 3 or 5, etc. As he waved across to her it was 2 p.m. There was now about forty-five minutes to make the other necessary preparations.
For her part, Cyla was petrified. A friend named Sonia Rothschild convinced her that even a week of freedom might be sufficient to tell the world what was happening in Auschwitz. In other words, she owed it to everyone else in the camp to try. It didn’t need to be stated that remaining within Auschwitz could likely be a death sentence anyway.
Bielecki hastened to ask Rottenfuhrer Titze for permission to leave the warehouse for a pre-arranged pick-up of some sausage at the slaughterhouse, with an assurance that he would share the bartered goods with Titze. He knew Titze well enough to know this ruse would be accepted. He left the grain warehouse by the main entrance but circled around to a rear staircase. He bound up that stairway to the attic.
He had already packed shoes and a rubber cape for Cyla in a haversack. The difficult part was retaining enough equilibrium to don the complicated SS uniform, making sure it was exactly right. Everything must be impeccable, including the way he put canvas clips on the cuffs of his trousers. He had to fasten the belt correctly. He did not have a pistol for his holster but it would be weighted properly with a piece of metal under his jacket.
He donned glasses to further disguise himself, then he re-entered the world as a Nazi. As soon as he descended the back stairs, prisoners at work avoided eye contact. After he had saluted a well-known SS officer in passing, without a hitch, his confidence soared. It was easier to be a brute than he had imagined.
By the time he had reached the neighbouring Stabsgebäude C building, Cyla was anxiously waiting in the laundry, having already been wished a fond farewell by Sonia who allegedly said, “May God guide you.” That sounds more like a Polish Catholic speaking than a Jew, or, more likely, this was a detail added by Bielecki in his version of events.
As the story has been told, or possibly embellished, a corpulent woman in an Aufseherinnen (warden) uniform met SS officer Steiner at the entrance. Having been ordered to deliver a prisoner for interrogation, or else to work in a nearby farm (again, accounts differ), he supposedly consulted his own paperwork for validation, reading it aloud as if for the first time, saying “Haftlingsnummer (inmate number) 29558. Cybulska-Stawiska.” This, too, could well be an embellishment. The warden then summoned a kapo. “Ruf mal die Schwarze von Bügelstube.” (Get the black-haired one from the ironing room). In due course, Cyla appeared and he directed her to proceed with him out of the building, without further comment. It helped that her fear was genuine.
It was impossible to remain calm as they proceeded along a stretch of gravel towards the Raisko sub-camp. Their destination was a side-exit just beyond a large guard chain and sentry post. With tattoos on their arms, capture meant certain death. As an SS officer came towards them, walking in the opposite direction, Cyla was astonished to hear Bielecki say, “Heil Hitler.”
He had practiced it. The procedure at the gate went without incident. At the control box, he silently presented his paperwork to the non-commissioned officer on duty who didn’t dare question a higher-ranking official. “Heil Hitler, Unterschfurher,” Bielecki said, in a cordial fashion, to speed things along. The lone guard supposedly said only, “Weiter Machen.” You can go.
Bielecki clicked his heals. He would never forget what happened next—nothing! He recalled that his fear of being gunned down from behind generated a physical sensation. “I felt pain in my backbone, where I was expecting to be shot.”
THE PERILS OF FREEDOM
New problems began immediately. An SS man they both knew appeared on the same road but he failed to recognize either of them. It was difficult to walk as briskly as possible without appearing to run. Gradually the glow of Auschwitz receded as they proceeded past the Buna Werke industrial zone under construction. When dawn approached, they nestled in a field of grain and slept, exhausted.
Cyla was not prepared for marching through fields and woods at night, being exhausted and hungry all the time. “Far from any settlements,” she recalled, “we had to cross rivers. When water was high, Jurek carried me to the other side.”
At the same time, the two lovers had the balm of one another’s arms. It was an agonizing blend of bliss and blisters, of comfort, hunger and dread. He refused to consider leaving her behind. “We fled together and we will walk on together,” he kept saying. The fugitives could never rest easy because all the surrounding countryside had been re-settled with Nazi loyalists who were glad to take over Polish farmhouses. Near Zator one night, they were shot at by some of these usurpers. Eventually, they reached the village of Bachowice, near Spytkowice, where they were sympathetically sheltered by the family of the local organist, Stanislaw Kosowski, who arranged for a guide to travel with them. This likely saved their lives. He led them safely to the village of Brzeznica. Finally, near Czernichow, they were able to board a small ferry to cross the Vistula River.
In Bieleki’s book, He Who Saves One Life…, Cyla is quoted as saying she eventually became too tired to proceed any further and asked to be left behind. The story goes that Bieleki refused to be defeated and insisted she must never give up. In one of the towns they passed through, he was reunited, by chance, with his brother, Leszek, who was active in a Polish underground resistance movement. There was hope for a future again. Kraków was now almost in range. Bieleki began to recognize the terrain. After nine nights of walking, they eventually reached their destination, the home of Bieleki’s uncle, Jan Marusa, in Muniakowice, where his mother was also living. As much as she was deeply relieved to see her son alive, she was steadfastly determined not to allow him to marry a Jew. “How will you live?” she scolded him. “How will you raise your children?”
It was not safe for everyone if the two runaways remained in the Marusa household in Muniakowice for more than a few days of recovery. Arrangements were therefore made to have Cyla take refuge with a poor Polish family on an isolated farm, far from the frequent Nazi patrols. Cyla, as a lone female Jew, seemingly had precious little power to decide her own fate within the Catholic household. So it was that Cyla would be required to remain hidden in the tiny village of Przemeany-Gruszow, with the Czernik family, friends of Bieleki’s uncle, for the duration of World War II. Some accounts suggest Bieleki went into hiding in Kraków; others suggest he intended to fight with his brother’s comrades in the Polish resistance, fighting with the so-called Home Army. Legend has it the star-crossed were saying goodbye all night, under a pear tree.
Freedom and peace were declared in the Gruszow area on January 3, 1945. As the Nazis retreated, Cyla went hopefully to the nearest road, waiting for hours every day for her lover’s return. She gradually began to lose hope. Then she received news that he had been killed in combat during Operation Tempest, a series of local uprisings against the Nazis. Who might have told her this news is not clear. One can assume it could have been Bieleki’s mother.
Bieleki had remained been in hiding in the Kraków area. The Soviet tanks did not roll into Kraków until January 18, 1945. Hence, Bieleki was unable to return to Cyla when she was expecting him to arrive. By the time Bieleki was able to make the 40-kilometre walk on snow-covered roads to find her at the Czernik’s farmhouse, he arrived four days too late. Cyla never realized, or else she was never told, that the countryside where she had been living has been liberated 15 days before Kraków. She also did know that is where Bieleki was in hiding.
Eventually, Cyla decided to take a train to Warsaw. On this train she met David Zacharowitz and his older brother. She and David soon married and gained admission to Sweden. During their five years in Sweden, she sent numerous parcels to the Czernik family, as a way of thanking them for their protection. In each accompanying letter, she would ask if there was any news of Bieleki. She was never told he was still alive. Possibly, each parcel sent via Bieleki’s relatives was never received by the Czerniks. This might explain why she never received an honest answer to her persistent queries.
She and her husband, David, immigrated to the United States where, with the help of her uncle, they eventually operated a jewelry business in New York City. They had one child, a daughter, Fay. Every year on November 11th, in her apartment in New York City, Cyla always lit lamps for him and cried.
In post-war Poland, Bieleki began teaching at a school for auto mechanics and married a year-and-a-half after the war. Some of his relatives eventually told him that Cyla had died in a hospital in Stockholm, just prior to her leaving for America. One can only assume they were anti-semitic and believed Catholics should not marry Jews. “I was very much in love with Cyla, very much,” he later said. “Sometimes I cried after the war, that she was not with me. I dreamed of her at night and woke up crying.”
Meanwhile, Bieleki and his wife had two daughters and a son. After he graduated from Cracow University of Technology, he became director of the Mechanical School Complex in Nowy Targ.
CYLA’S VERSION
Cyla Cybulska’s decidedly unembellished account of how she escaped from Auschwitz, re-told here seemingly with some reluctance–to Lore Shelley, one of the many, under-recognized historians of the Holocaust–is only interesting for what it doesn’t tell us. Whereas the likes of her escape accomplice and coordinator Bielecki and Rudolf Vrba have taken obvious pride in their bravey, viewing themselves as action heroes, Cyla Cybulska’s account is obtuse, vague and forgetful to an extreme. One has to question why she not only took so little pride in her exceptional achievement, but also why her bare-bones account can so easily be viewed as an effort to bury the truth.
What it took for a man to survive in both Auschwitz I and Birkenau could have been very different for what it took for a woman to endure. Cybulska stresses how little she contributed to her own escape and also how much she was entirely dependent on her heroic saviour and protector. She never mentions the extent to which intimacy was a factor in this relationship. She also does not include details of her survival prior to their escape. After she became an American, as Cyla Zacharowitz, she could have been celebrated for her remarkable achievement but instead she appears to have squelched the truth, avoiding any limelight.
These sentences are not criticisms of Cyla Cybulska; they are only encourgements for us to collectively look deeper. The women of Auschwitz survived in an alternate hell; one that has been far less examined and talked about than the vile and deadly degradations of male prisoners. The following account by Cyla Cybulska is only an interesting document if one appreciates how painstakingly unexplicit she has been, at every turn, while seemingly seeking to diminish the amount of attention we apportion to her fascinating story. Cyla Cybulksa is the polar opposite of Rudolf Vrba–an Auschwitz escapee who has nothing to say…
“In the summer of 1943 (it could have been August) I met a Polish prisoner by the name of Jurek Bielecki in the grain warehouse. He was, at the time, working there. Neither the female prisoners nor the male prisoners were allowed contact with each other. We worked in the same building, and therefore there were moments when we met and when it was possible to exchange a few sentences. These moments occurred at specific times, e.g., when we were led to the bathrooms.
“My meetings with Jurek Bielecki resulted in sharing our experiences with each other and each encounter was truly moving for both of us. These meetings lasted quite a while, and so the months passed.
“One day, during one of our secret rendezvous, Jurek told me of his intentions to organize an escape and of his desire that we should escape together. At first, four people were to have participated in the escape. This conversation took place in the early part of 1944.
“When I first heard of his escape plans for both of us, I told him that I thought that he was joking and that I was not taking him seriously. He, however, insisted that he was telling the truth and that he was earnestly thinking of our joint escape from the camp. Bielecki figured out everything. He made all necessary preparations, such as arranging for appropriate clothing for me, shoes, etc., and eventually, during the day of the escape, for food. For himself he had obtained an SS uniform.
“I mentioned that during the initial plans for our escape four people were to have participated. There were the two of us, Jurek and I, and another couple, Tadeusz Srogi, a Pole and Jurek’s friend, who also had a girlfriend in our commando, a Jewess. From the beginning it was intended that Jurek would walk us out of the camp in his SS uniform stolen from the warehouse. These plans fell apart and Tadek Srogi did not take part in our escape. However, Jurek did not give up. On a day in July 1944, I was told by him when and at what time he would make his appearance in the Stabsgebaeude in order to get me out of the camp in his SS uniform stolen from the warehouse. These plans fell apart and Tadek Srogi did not take part in our escape. However, Jurek did not give up. On a day in July 1944, I was told by him when and at what time he would make his appearance in the Stabsgebaeude in order to get me out of the camp.
“Finally, the day of our escape arrived. It was July 21, 1944. If I remember well, I could not, for some time, meet with HJurek in our previously designated workplace. I knew, however, that he would come for me. Having been in Auschwitz for such a long time, I was well aware of the consequences should the escape not be successful. I felt depressed and wanted to back out of the fight. My good friend, Sonia Rotschild, prevented me from doing so. She begged me fervently not to change my mind. ‘Even if you are free for only a week or two. If you get caught it will be too bad but you must tell the world what goes on here. Let the people know. Let the whole world know what they do to people here.’ Sonia hugged and kissed me. She did not know at that time that she, too, would potlive the nightmare of Auschwitz. After the war she moved to Belgium and presently lives in Brussels.
“Finally, the moment arrived when Jerzy Bielecki showed up outside the Stabsgebaeude in his SS uniform. Sonia Rotschild kissed me for the last time and whispered through her tears, ‘May God lead you.’ I walked down the stairs and found myself next to Jurek. After some short formalities, Jurek walked me out of the Stabsgebaeude.
“Jurek wore the uniform with a holster at his waist, but I did not know whether it contained a pistol. We moved on. I marched first and Jurek walked behind me as an ‘escort.’ When we met I said nothing. After marching for some minutes, we found ourselves in front of a guard house through which a road led to the exterior of the guarded area. As we approached the guard, Jurek took a document from his pocket. The guard said, ‘Witer machen,’ which meant that we could march on. So the guard did not note anything suspicious. He had no idea that he had escapees from Auschwitz in front of him.
“On the day of the escape I wore a dress with a painted red stripe across the back. That was the way civilian clothes were given to prisoners in Auschwitz. I wore sturdy long boots which Jurek had gotten for me. In my backpack which I wore crossing the guard line, there was also a sweater (also ‘organized’ by Jurek) and some food. Those were our total supplies.
“After a successful exist from the guarded area, we continued our escape toward the east. We had neither a mkap nor prepared points of contact, and we tried to walk mostly at night so as to go unnoticed. Walking inland from away from the roads was exhausting, especially for me, who was not used to such intensive marching. Bypassing populated areas, we had to cross ponds and rivers. During those moments, especially when the water was deep, Jurek carried me in his arms to the other side.
“Finally, a time arived when I could walk no further. I didn’t care whether I got caught any more. I only wanted to rest. I wanted to stop and lie on the ground. I begged and pleaded with Jurek. I told him to leave me because I was only a burden to him. I tried to explain that leaving me would increase his chances of saving himself. But Jurek did not want to hear of it. He kept repeating, ‘We escaped together and we shall continue together.
“The sun directed our escape. I was not at all familiar with these areas, so Jurek had to decide which directions to take. Our food supplies, which Jurek had managed to save before the escape, dwindled quickly. Jurek knocked on some doors of houses on our way. This was obviously very dangerous since we could have run into a trap and fallen into the hands of Germans.
‘I am unable to reconstruct the exact route of our escape. I can’t even describe closely in which area we crossed the then Reich border and the ‘Generalgourverement‘. [sic] We wore the same clothes we had left the camp in. I had on my navy blue camp dress with red stripe painted on the back from which, at times when we stopped to rest, I tried to remove the paint. However, if we had been stopped and caught by the Germans, we would have been doomed anyway. We each had a tattooed number on our left forearm. The tattoo could not be removed and once caught, we could easily be identified as escapees from Auschwitz.
“Our trip took about ten days. Jurek was trying to reach his home area, in the direction of Miechow. I do not recall all the details and adventures we lived through during our escape. The most important fact was that we finally reached a village called Muniakowice, close to Slomniki. Here lived Jan Marus, Jurek’s mother’s cousin. We were both cordially welcomed by Jurek’s aunt and uncle. There we rested after our difficult journey.
“For a short period we stayed in the village of Jankowice with the Klimczyk family where Jurek met Leszek, his own brother, a member of the resistance. This meeting was quite coincidental. Later, we also stayed for a while in a certain Banasiek in Przemaczony. Finally, in the village of Przemeczony-Gruszow, 12 kimometres from Raclowie. This family treated me like their daughter. Unfortunately, I had to part with Jurek, who joined the underground resistance movement A.K., and at that time we lost contact.
“I received everything necessary from the Czernik family: shelter, food and friendship. Nevertheless, it was dangerous because in case of a routine search or arrest a catastrophe could have occurred. I had no identification papers and my tattooed number could give me away. But everything ended happily and I survived until the liberation.
“After the war I began to search for my family living in the U.S.A. In 1945, I received a transit visa which allowed me to travel to Sweden. I spent five years in Sweden and then emigrated to he U.S.A. I went together with my husband.
“The reunion with my [husband’s] family was warm but I was soon informed that since we had arrived to settle here we should take the future into our own hands. I must admit that the early years in the U.S.A. were very difficult for me. As an ex-prisoner of Hitler’s concentration camp I did not receive any compensation. We had to depend upon ourselves and our work. The situation was complicated by the fact that I did not speak English, which diminshed my ability to obtain a decent job.
“And so the years passed, but my longing for Poland never left me. I was obsessed with seeing my home town and Jurek, since I had lost all contact with him and even did not have the address of the Czernik family any more.
“Even without contacts and addresses I did not give up trying. Chance came to my rescue. A few years ago I employed a Polish girl who came from the country of Krakow where the Czernik family lived. The girl, through a girlfriend who worked at the post office, obtained the address of the Zernik family for me and from them I received the address of Jurek’s aunt. I could not understand why she wouldn’t give me Jurek’s address. After a year of silence, I received a positive reply from her. I finally found out that Jurek was alive and that he lived in NowyTarg, but I still didn’t have his his exact address. I decided to send a letter to the chief of police in that town. I wrote in the letter that I believed a Mr. Jerzy Bielecki lived in Nowy Targ and that I wished to establish contact with him. I mentioned, of course, our common experience. I received an answer. It was a beautiful letter from the police chief, which really surprised me. He not only sent me Jurek’s address, but also his telephone number. Furthermore, he wished me a pleasant and happy reunion.
“After the liberation and immigration to the U.S.A., I shared my experience in Auschwitz with only those closest to me, not wishing to make a martyr of myself. I was often encouraged to write my memoirs in the form of a book. I was not interested in these propositions, despite the fact that my experiences, especially my successful escape from Auschwitz, are or some interest.
“I received the first letter from Jurek the day before a trip to Washington to attend a Holocaust gathering. My cousins lived in this city. I called them from the hotel, not intending to meet with them because I wished to devote my stay to the subject of the Holo0caust victims. My intentions went astray. My cousin telephoned me to tell me that she must see me. She arrived in my hotel lat 11:00 pm. After the initial greeting, I did not omit sharing my happiness over receiving a letter with an enclosed photograph from Jurek. My cousin begged me to read her the entire letter. She found out from the letter of our intended meeting in Poland and what Jurek once meant to me. Long into the night, I told her of those time and of our escape. My cousin was deeply moved, but reacted strongly. She pleaded with me not to go to Poland. She suggested that she and her husband would let me have their house to invite Jurek here for a stay of a week or longer. She just did not want me to go to Poland. Perhaps she was afraid I would stay there.
“I did not give up on my intended trip and in 1983 I saw Jurek again. We went to Auschwitz, which is presently the government Museum Auschwitz-Brzezinka, where a film company assisted us in filming our escape route.”
CYLA ZACHOROWITZ REUNITES WITH HER FORMER LOVER, BIELECKI
David Zacharowitz died in 1975.
In 1983, when Cyla Zacharowitz was a widow in New York, one day she invited her Polish cleaning lady to stay for a coffee. As they had both grown up in Poland, and it was pleasing to slip into Polish again. She soon found herself telling the cleaning lady her story, her love story, a story that quite possibly even her late husband had never heard. She soon found herself getting carried away, recalling how she had met Jerzy, how they had escaped, how they had been separated by the war.
Her listener was stunned. “I know the story,” she finally said. “I don’t think he’s dead.”
Cyla was stunned.
“I saw a man telling this story on Polish TV. I heard him describing how he had led his Jewish girlfriend out of Auschwitz.”
The cleaning lady was fairly certain she could remember his name. Jerzy. And he was the headmaster of some school. Overcome with both shock and excitement, Cyla immediately commenced her detective work, tracking down the television program, confirming that it really was her beloved Jerzy Bieleki, then learning he still living in Nowy Targ. She looked it up in an old-fashioned atlas she had. There it was. Nowy Targ. A town only 85 kilometres from Auschwitz.
She found his telephone number. It was around dawn in Poland.
“Jurek, it’s me, you’re little Cyla!”
As soon as he heard her voice, he knew it could only be true.
This was the first of several extended phone conversations. After a few months, Cyla had bought herself a plane ticket to Europe. She arrived at the Kraków Airport in May of 1983 and received the 39 roses. It’s not known if Bielecki took her home to visit his wife or not. It is known they visited the farm family that had sheltered her. They visited Auschwitz. They stayed together in hotels.
“The love started to come back,” he said.
According to Bielecki, Cyla tried to persuade him to leave his wife and children in Poland and come back to America with her to live. Bieleki told Cyla that he could not go with her to America and leave his wife and children. “She cried a lot when I told her, ‘Look, I have such fine children, I have a son. How could I do that?’”
Accounts vary. Some reports suggest she left Poland in huff, after only one visit, vowing never return, feeling rebuffed.
Stanlee Stahl, vice-president of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, disagrees. “He and Cyla saw each other about another 15 times. They were good friends for life.” According to the Cohen Center for Genocide Studies, likely replicating Stahl’s assertion, “Cyla and Jerzy saw each other fifteen more times.” Stahl knew Jerzy Bieleki because in 1985 the heroic mechanic was accorded the distinction of Righteous Among the Nations, the award accorded by Yad Vashem to righteous gentiles who had saved a Jewish life. Bieleki, who had founded the Christian Association of Auschwitz Families, was made an Honorary Citizen of the State of Israel.
Cyla’s gravestone
Cyla Zacharowitz died on February 5, 2005 in Fort Lauderdale. Soon afterwards, Cyla and David Zacharowitz’ only child, Fay Roseman of Coral Springs, Florida, went to visit Bielecki in Poland after her mother’s death. “I felt closer to my mother,” she told the Sun-Sentinel. “He said that he felt that my mother was watching us, which I believe. And I hope to go back.” She also told Madeline Baró Diaz of the Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Coral Gables,“I want to be able to talk to her and say, ‘Wait, why didn’t you tell me all of these things? Why didn’t she share that? Why didn’t I know?’” Roseman described Bieleki as “a gentle soul” and her mother’s “saviour.”
In 2011, a German feature film was released, Remembrance, directed by Anna Justice. It takes significant liberties to fictionalize the story for greater impact. Cyla becomes Hannah, pregnant in Auschwitz. Jerzy is Tomasz, a member of the Polish resistance who takes photos inside the concentration camp. He doesn’t know she is pregnant. Tomasz dresses in an SS uniform and demands Hannah must follow him to the gate. An SS guard at the gate wants to rape her… Tomasz’ mother hates her; Hannah miscarries as Tomasz must take his Auschwitz photos to Warsaw. The mother tries to hand over Hannah to the Nazis. She trudges off into the winter snow but is saved by a passing Red Cross van…Tomasz’s mother eventually tells her son that Hannah has died. After an impasse, the couple re-connects in 1976 (instead of 1983, so they can be a little bit younger). By this time, Tomasz is divorced…A happy ending is imminent.
ABOVE: A promotional photo from the German movie based on Cyla Cybulska’s escape, Remembrance Day.
Bielecki is credited with co-founding the post-war Christian Association of the Auschwitz Families and writing a 333-page autobiography in Polish, Kito ratuje jedno życie… (He who saves one life…), subtitled pamie̜tnik z Oświe̜cimia), published by Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, in 1990. His escape was also written about in German by Sobanski in Auf demselben Pfade (1980), pages 187-193.
The Jewish Foundation, an organization that assists non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews, provided Bieleki with financial assistance from January of 1997 until his death, at age 90, in 2011. He likely never saw the German film adaptation of his story. As his health was failing, his daughter Alicia Januchowski, herself a New Yorker, returned to Nowy Targ to be at his bedside. She assured the Associated Press that he had died peacefully. “He did not think he was a hero,” said Stanlee Stahl, “but he was. He will be missed.” Jerzy Bieleki had seemingly made his own peace with his tragic love affair. “It’s fate that decided things this way,” he once said. “But if I could do it again, I would not change anything.”
*
Cyla’s experiences have been partially recounted and verified in Chapter 14 of Auschwitz The Nazi Civilization: Twenty-Three Women Prisoners’ Accounts (University Press of America 1992), compiled and edited by Lore Shelley, who herself was in Birkenau and could have crossed paths with Cybulska. In April of 1943, Shelley was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau; then she worked as a secretary in the Political Department and Civil Registry at Auschwitz until its evacuation in January 1945. The extract above called ‘Cyla’s version’ is entirely replicated from the aforementioned Chapter 14 of Auschwitz: The Nazi Civilization.
On July 24, 2010, there was a report for the Associated Press filed by Warsaw-based Monika Ścisłowska-Sakowicz (who also wrote an obituary for Bielecki in 2001):
After the Soviet army rolled through Krakow in January 1945, Bielecki left the city where he had been hiding from Nazi pursuit and walked 25 miles along snow-covered roads to meet Cybulska at the farmhouse. But he arrived four days too late. Cybulska, not aware that the area where she had been hiding had been liberated three weeks before Kraków, gave up waiting for him, concluding that her ‘Juracek’ either was dead or had abandoned their plans. She got on a train to Warsaw, planning to find an uncle in the U.S. On the train she met a Jewish man, David Zacharowitz, and the two began a relationship and eventually married. They headed to Sweden, then to New York to Cybulska’s uncle, who helped them start a jewelry business. Zacharowitz died in 1975. In Poland, Bielecki eventually started a family of his own and worked as director of a school for car mechanics. He had no news of Cybulska and had no way of finding her.
***
[In 2025, this website shared its research on Cyla Cybulsksa with the head of HEFNJ who was writing a book to be called Women in Auschwitz, so possibly Cybulska will finally gain some attention. Source material for this page of the Vrba website includes Aud demselben Pfade [The Same Path] by [Tomasz?] Sobański, Kto ratuje jedno życie [He who saves one life], 1990) by Jerzy Bielecki and Auschwitz, The Nazi Civilization by Lore Shelley (University Press of America 1992). — A.T.]
Here is an interview with Jerzy Bieleki in Polish from 1998.
Next: MALKA’S ESCAPE
