Story of Steven Kuligovski written down by Tamara Sandoul

In the early months of the occupation, eighteen-year-old Steven Kuligovski, received a phone call from his step mother, Maria, who was a Jew. “Zbishek,” she called him by his polish name, “Get your brother and come down to help me with my luggage. There are too many suitcases for me to carry.”

Steven was puzzled: “But Maria — where are you going?” She explained she was moving to a ‘Jewish Residential District’, where for the first time in history, Jewish people from all over Poland, would come to live together in one part of Warsaw. When questioned further, she insisted that she’d already booked a room and was moving out of her villa to live in the ‘Jewish Residential District’, mentioning that while the Jewish people are living spread out, the polish people aren’t always very friendly to them.

Obeying Maria’s plea for assistance, Steven and his brother, Henryk, took a two-wheel cart and began to move Maria’s luggage. However when they got to this residential district, they discovered that dozens and dozens of Jewish families — men, women and children — were making their way into a place of high walls with barbed wire and officers with machine guns stood guard on top of the towers. Apparently this area was so wonderful and precious, it had to be guarded from outsiders. But in the early days, the gates were still open and polish people as well as Jews were free to go in and out. Maria moved into the one room she booked. As Steven walked out of the ghetto with his brother, he remembered seeing German guards and Polish police standing by, laughing and joking, as Jewish families from all over Poland entered the gates of the ghetto.

After a year to a year and a half, Steven and his family started hearing stories of starvation in the ghetto and stories of men, women and children being killed inside its high walls. The gates were now closed to outsiders but most Jewish men were still allowed to leave the ghetto to go to work. Steven found it a puzzling fact that he never ever heard stories of Jewish men attempting to escape, even when the opportunities were clearly there.

The only one who ran away was the man from the book ‘The Pianist’. Steven remembers seeing Captain Hosenfeld, the German officer who helped the ‘Pianist’ escape and says he was the only one who always waved to him and other Polish people in a friendly manner in the street. He was the only one who was not a nazi and he paid for it with his life.

A year after they took Maria to live in the ghetto, Steven received another phone call. It was Maria. She said she was starving and pleaded for Steven to bring her a loaf of bread or even half a loaf of bread and throw it over the wall of the ghetto at a specific place. It seems the Jewish residential district was not all that Maria thought it would be. When Steven asked his father, the director of a major building company in Poland, if he could take a loaf of bread to his starving ex-girlfriend of ten years, he replied, “Not a whole loaf — half a loaf, yes, but not whole.”

It was a part of the wall where the eyes of the Germans in the towers could not reach. When Steven arrived there, he saw about a dozen Polish people throwing small parcels of food over the wall to the Jews on the other side of the ghetto, who would catch the parcels and run away as fast as they could. Among the Jewish people stood Maria, and after getting the parcel over the wall to her, he heard a strange noise, a banging. It was indeed the beating drum of the Jewish police marching through the streets of the ghetto, carrying huge metre-long truncheons. Before Steven knew what was happening, they started attacking the dozen Jews for accepting parcels of food from the outside and with horror, Steven heard the noise the truncheons made on people’s backs from the force of the blows. He saw Maria making herself very small and diving under people’s feet to escape a beating. She disappeared into the streets of the ghetto and Steven never saw her again in his life.

Months later, walking not far from his home, Steven saw something unusual as he approached the crossroads. Thousands of people, eight abreast, were walking down a road at a slow pace. SS Soldiers, each about 3 yards apart, were leading the Jews towards Warsaw west station, old-fashioned riffles strapped across their chests. Steven was being very careful all the time while he approached a polish crowd of people to find out that part of the ghetto was evacuated.

He then saw the most bizarre scene unfold before him. A beautiful Jewish girl who fell in love with an SS soldier, ran to him with an embrace, kissing him on the cheek, while the SS soldier burst out laughing. Many other SS soldiers were exchanging jokes and were flirting with Jewish women, as they led them down the road.

They were going towards the gas chambers at either Treblinka or Maidanek, near Lublin.

Steven had a strange feeling on his chest: he was chocking as if he couldn’t breathe. As if he needed to ACT and do whatever he could, no matter how dangerous it was. So he ran to check the side turnings of crossroads for German officers and found three turnings completely empty. The Germans weren’t hiding there to prevent escape. Relieved, he waited until he saw a man who looked like he was a Jewish businessman, who was not starved, that is, the colour of his skin was not yellow, and ran up to him all the time checking for the SS Soldier.

Steven screamed at him: “RUN! RUN NOW! Into the side turning. There are no Germans there. Run! And tell the others to run!” The Steven ran back as fast as he could so that the German SS guard did not notice him, as he was busy laughing and joking with the Jews, an act which showed that things were going well between the Germans and the Jews and encouraged them not to resist.

Steven did the same again with another man who looked fairly healthy and well dressed and showed him the direction of three different side turnings.

The man turned around to Steven and cursed and swore at him, calling him a young polish anti-Semite. “If you don’t leave, I will complain to the guard!” he said. Steven ran away shaking with fury, angry at the stupidity of the Jews for letting themselves be led to their death and swearing at him for trying to help them escape. They did not know because they didn’t want to know. And he was angry with the Jewish man for judging him. Steven grew up in a Jewish part of Warsaw and had many encounters with the Jewish people in his life, as many were his father’s associates. But the ignorance and stupidity of the two Jewish men he tried to save left him bitter and angry. Never again would he try to save lives.

The second story of Steven is that of his brother, Henryk, who was three years older than him. One night, the Gestapo came to search the house where Steven and his brother lived with his father and the housekeeper. They took Henryk away.

Later the family discovered he was being tortured in a Warsaw prison. For three months he was being asked for the names of his associates, as he was involved in helping the resistance by digging up and oiling weapons which were hidden in the countryside from the Germans.

The family never saw Henryk again.

Henryk’s mother was on a commission set up to dig up mass graves to identify victims and provide a proper burial. Henryk’s remains were found in the forest of Palmyri, where the Germans left the bodies of thousands of other polish people. Henryk was wearing a distinct and unique sheepskin coat, by which his body was identified. A medical examination revealed that every bone in his body was broken.

A forest ranger at Palmyri forest watched the Germans carry many bodies into the depths of the woods. Miraculously, the Germans never spotted the forest ranger, as he sat hidden on a tall tree. He recalled seeing the Germans carry a man in a sheepskin coat. The man was unconscious and covered in blood. The Germans were laughing and joking.

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