Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw

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.

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 Warsaw Uprising, which began on August 1, 1944, was an attempt by the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) to liberate the capital of Poland from Nazi occupation in advance of approaching Soviet forces.

[2] Despite the fact that in September the Soviets captured the Praga suburb[4] and allowed a few limited landings by Allied planes,[3] the insurrection became more and more isolated and pushed into an ever shrinking area within the city.

[5] 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.

[5] 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.

[5] 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".

[8] 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.

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".

[8] 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.

Szpilman's memoir served as a basis for a screenplay, written as early as 1945 by the Polish writers Jerzy Andrzejewski and Czesław Miłosz,[note 2] entitled Robinson of Warsaw.

[8] 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").

[13] 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.

[11][15] Uri Orlev's (Jerzy Orlowski) children's book The Island on Bird Street (1981), adapted into a 1997 film, tells the story of an 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 Alex, the story's protagonist, possesses is a copy of Defoe's novel.

[16][17] 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)[18] 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.

[note 5][15] As a consequence, a large number of the Jews who were still in Warsaw at the time of the uprising, decided to remain in hiding rather than join the non-Jewish civilians leaving the city.

[8] The largest known group of Robinsons was composed of approximately 37 people[8][note 7] under the leadership of Roman Fiszer and medical doctors, Dr. Beer and Prof. Henryk Beck.

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 POW who had been liberated during the uprising.

There were roughly three days between the signing of the capitulation and the deadline for civilians to leave the city, during which those who made the decision to stay could stockpile food and water, and camouflage their hiding places.

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 most famous of these, who became a local legend, 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.

[24] 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.

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.

[8] 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Black and white photograph of German units using flame-throwers to burn down Warsaw's ruins
Special German units systematically burning down Warsaw's buildings which had not been destroyed in the fighting (1944).
Black and white aerial photograph of destroyed Warsaw from January 1945.
The ruins of Warsaw, after its systematic and planned destruction by the Nazis, in January 1945, at the time of entry of the Red Army
A black and white photograph of a German Verbrennungskommando soldiers using a flamethrower to set fire to ruins of a Warsaw building.
After the capitulation of the Warsaw Uprising , the city was subject to systematic house-by-house destruction. In this German photo, a Verbrennungskommando soldier uses a flamethrower to set fire to the ruins of a building. As a result, the only hiding places remaining for the Robinsons were basements or bunkers that had been prepared ahead of time.
Black and white photo of Polish civilians leaving Warsaw under guard by German soldiers
German documentation of Polish civilians leaving Warsaw for the Pruszków internment camp after the uprising. Those who did not trust the Germans to abide by the capitulation agreement decided to stay and hide in the ruins of the city despite the penalty if caught: death.
Black and white photo of ruins of buildings in Warsaw. In the distance, two black figures can be seen walking through the rubble.
Ruins of Warsaw, Piwna Street. The Robinsons lived in basements and bunkers under the rubble for three and a half months.
Black and white photograph of Władysław Szpilman, subject of the 2002 film The Pianist.
Władysław Szpilman , the most famous of the Robinsons, and subject of the 2002 film The Pianist .
Plaque at 21 Marszałkowska Street commemorating four Robinsons who hid in this building between August and November 1944
A color photograph of Marek Edelman, one of the Jewish Resistance fighters and heroes of the Ghetto Uprising who hid out in the ruins of the destroyed city until escaping in mid-November.
Marek Edelman (in 2009), one of the ŻOB Ghetto fighters who initially stayed in the ruins, but then escaped from the city in mid-November 1944, with help from the Polish Home Army .