Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Print

Oral history interview with Konrad Bogacki

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1995.A.1285.36 | RG Number: RG-50.149.0036

Search this record's additional resources, such as finding aids, documents, or transcripts.

No results match this search term.
Check spelling and try again.

results are loading

0 results found for “keyward”

    Oral history interview with Konrad Bogacki
    Transcript
    Session number 8838, reel number 1.
    Mr. Bogacki, reel one.
    Where were you born, Mr. Bogacki?
    I was born not far from Poznan, in the western part of Poland,
    not far from the German border.
    I really was born, at that time, under the German occupation
    because Poland was divided before the First World War
    into three parts.
    And I belonged to the German part.
    Do you want the date as well?
    Yes, please.
    I was born the 28th of July, 1908.
    What did your father do for a living?
    My father was a headmaster of a-- school headmaster.
    And did your mother work?
    No.
    I don't think at that time the wives worked at all.
    This was just an old medieval time still kind of family.
    Did you come from a small family or a large family?
    I have two brothers and one sister, four of us.
    And are you the eldest?
    I'm the eldest one.
    Yes.
    Where did you go to school?
    I started my school in Poznan.
    And 1925, I joined the cadet school, military cadet school,
    where I finished my general education and then joined--
    it was transferred to the military officers
    school from there.
    Had you had a Polish-language or a German-language education?
    No, I had a Polish one.
    I started in the German one, really, in 1918--
    '17, really.
    I was in the primary school as a young boy about 9, 10,
    or something.
    I started German.
    And then 1918, when Poland gained independence, of course,
    I had to go into the Polish-language school, which
    was quite difficult for me at that time,
    because I was brought up with German.
    Although, I was bilingual at that time, but still
    it was a certain problem for a young boy.
    Anyway, after a few years I joined the cadet school,
    which lasted about five years.
    Which school?
    Cadet school.
    A so-called cadet school, which was
    a preparatory to the military profession or something
    like that, from where you could go straight
    into the military officer's school and be commissioned.
    Before we talk about that, could I
    ask you if you have any memories about what
    it was like for Polish people to live
    in a part of the German Empire?
    Well, I can't really say much from my experience.
    I was a young boy.
    The First World War broke out in 1914.
    I was about, what, seven--
    six, seven?
    So of course, I remember the beginning.
    I remember the soldiers marching to the front with this music
    and so on.
    But that's all I can remember, really,
    and the war pictures from the western part, from Verdun
    or what--
    anyway.
    I know that the living was rather hard at that time.
    Food was difficult to get.
    And from that point of view, I remember that.
    To, say, get something to repair--
    I even repaired shoes for myself at that time
    because it was difficult to get the leather--
    these little things, which are in my memory.
    Otherwise, no special things because we
    were quite far from the front line.
    Were you actually hungry?
    Did you go hungry?
    I wouldn't say that.
    No, I wouldn't say that.
    The mother always provided something.
    My father was, of course, taken into the German army in 1914
    and was killed in 1915 on the Eastern Front with Russia.
    So since that-- I remember my father, probably
    I'm the only one from my brother and sister.
    I remember him quite clearly.
    And then my mother was the widow till the last days.
    She never remarried.
    She had to bring up--
    the youngest one was my sister, born 1914, just a year
    after my father was killed.
    So my mother had four of us, where
    I was the eldest from probably-- in 1920, I was 12,
    and she was only six.
    So it was quite a problem for her to bring us up.
    But she succeeded I think.
    Do you know if the Poles in Germany during the First World
    War wanted Germany to win the war or not?
    Well, I don't know really, from my memory.
    I know that in my family, all my uncles were taken into the army
    and served their part in the Western Front.
    What their opinion, I couldn't at that age really recollect.
    I've hardly seen them at that time
    because they were fighting somewhere.
    I don't know.
    Probably there must have been some kind
    because all those uncles, they were born in the 19th century.
    They were born under the German Kaiser.
    So you are brought up in a certain surrounding.
    Probably they must have some kind.
    Although they were Poles, and they certainly joined,
    later on, the Polish official whatever they are--
    duties, but I think they must have
    been fought with some kind of--
    I don't know.
    It's difficult to say what they thought, really.
    As a schoolboy, did you have--
    It's probably-- if I-- sorry.
    If I may just say, for instance here, Polish-born here,
    if a war broke out, they were taken as British citizens here.
    They were brought out here.
    And Poland for them is their mother language
    for their fathers.
    But they've never been, never seen it before.
    Probably they will have more British patriotism
    in their blood than they have Polish one, although the Poles
    might be on their side.
    They would be at, now, at the moment, on the other side.
    So it's probably the same thing that
    could have happened in the minds of those
    born in the 19th century.
    As a schoolboy, did you have any wishes
    about who should win the First World War?
    No.
    I can't recollect any special--
    no, I can't say anything about it.
    Now, can we go on to cadet school?
    And can you tell me why you decided
    to make a career of the army?
    Why?
    Well, young boys, all they want to be train drivers,
    or they want to be something like that.
    I wanted to be--
    join-- probably the friend of mine,
    we were in the same class, gymnasium.
    And he told me, let's go to the cadet school.
    What do you think about that?
    And he joined it the year before me.
    So I joined him the year after.
    This was just things which appealed to me.
    It's probably that, the only thing.
    I liked a certain discipline, a certain regime.
    I always enjoyed it in the whole time.
    I never had any problems in that time,
    when I was brought up in the military system.
    So going to a cadet school meant you were training
    to be an officer, did it?
    Yes.
    I had to right after the cadet school--
    I had the choice still, after five years, where
    I gained my matriculation, gymnasium-- you know,
    there was a different system of schooling.
    It's probably like your A-levels here or something like that.
    One had the choice to join the army,
    to go straight under the officer's, cadet officer's
    school, or opt out and go to a civilian life,
    to university or something, because we could go straight
    to university out of that school.
    And majority-- very few opted out,
    only those who didn't like the discipline,
    the regime, the rigor.
    And they opted out and went to civilian life, whatever they
    were, mostly to universities.
    And we went to the officer's school.
    And I chose-- we had the choice also of the kind of school
    we wanted to.
    So I joined the so-called Polish--
    how to translate that school is Polish officer's engineers
    school, where there were two faculties, sappers and signals.
    And I joined the signals.
    Was it easy to get into the cadet school?
    At that time, it was very difficult.
    There was a fantastic trend for youngsters to apply for that.
    I don't know why.
    For instance, there were only 100 or 100 in my company.
    There was 120 of us.
    And I have been taught about there
    were nearly 1,000 applications.
    So you had to have-- go through a certain exams, selection,
    which luckily I passed somehow.
    Why did you want to go into the signals?
    It's a good question.
    Yes, I'll tell you why.
    I had a quite distinct idea.
    I thought-- I could have gone to the infantry.
    But I thought, when I go to the signals,
    I gain a certain profession, a certain skill.
    This was my idea in the back of my head.
    What kind of social background were
    the people in the cadet school?
    Were they from rich and poor or not?
    Very varied.
    Very varied-- from really affluent people,
    who usually opt out in the end because they were just--
    they could afford everything--
    and to quite poor people, who just went there.
    I think the average is just middle class, as far as I
    could-- because I wouldn't know everybody's background there,
    but I think average was middle class, probably
    lower middle class.
    What was the discipline like at the cadet school?
    Very strong.
    Very strong, indeed.
    Mind you, this was 1925 when I joined it.
    The war ended in 1918, so only seven years.
    The officers in charge of us were all First World War
    soldiers and very disciplinarian.
    The drill was fantastic for us.
    Of course, we were youngsters, so I personally enjoyed it--
    very strong indeed.
    For the first year, I wouldn't allowed, except for holidays
    like Easter or Christmas, Easter, and the final summer
    holiday--
    I wouldn't be allowed for a weekend out,
    only by special permissions or request--
    so strict.
    And we always kept, of course, sport, these kind of things.
    And education and learning was quite a lot.
    So this was quite a strict discipline.
    It's like a monastery, I must tell you.
    You understand?
    What punishments would you have?
    Punishments at that time--
    well, you just had to report with your rifle.
    And mind you, that part of the country was very dry and sandy.
    And they ask you, with the rifle on the field,
    and go through a certain drill and exercise.
    Say, after half an hour, my word, you were all through wet--
    just as a punishment.
    Or I remember quite clearly-- this sounds properly ridiculous,
    but in the beginning, when we were transferred to this--
    was a new school.
    There were three cadet schools in Poland.
    And I went to the number three, which was just opened in 1925.
    And we were located in some barracks, not far from Poznan,
    on the German border.
    And there were no beds even for the first few weeks.
    We were lying on the straw, bare straw on the floor.
    The drill was unbelievable.
    For us, this was sport, of course.
    We were all 12, 15, 13 something.
    The age differed very much.
    Ahem.
    Sorry.
    And when we were not behaving properly,
    lunchtime we had our small--
    I don't know how--
    food in the military.
    I don't know how they call this in English--
    cups, with which we would go to the kitchen,
    and they just pour you something in there.
    So from the barracks, about 100 meters to the kitchen,
    we were all on our tummy on elbows and feet
    and here holding that and going like that to the kitchen.
    Crawling.
    Crawling.
    Because somebody was not up to scratch in the company.
    So this was something in the beginning.
    From many years back-- it's about how many?
    60-something years back.
    So now I look at it with a certain--
    not regret, but with a certain--
    even pleasure, I must say.
    Was the discipline accepted or resented?
    I think it was accepted, because everybody, as I told you
    in the beginning, there was only 120 places
    and competed about 1,000 people for it.
    So if somebody was accepted and tried to get into,
    he was devoted to that kind of life.
    I would have thought so.
    Although, in the first year--
    probably that's the negative side of it--
    about-- I would have thought about--
    I wouldn't be the figure right-- about 20,
    probably, were just discharged.
    Not they went away, but were discharged as not being up
    to scratch or physically or mentally because the studies
    in that time, they were also very strict indeed.
    We had to, every week or few weeks,
    some kind of exams, papers, this sort of things.
    If he wouldn't follow the right way, he just was chucked out
    and went home.
    So in the end, after five years there were 49, I think,
    of us who graduated in the end, from the whole turnover,
    over 200.
    It was quite a selection, quite a selection.
    Where was the cadet school?
    You want the name of the town?
    Yes.
    The town was called a Rawicz--
    R-A-W-I-C-Z. It was just on the border of Germany at that time,
    southwest of Poznan, I would have thought.
    And how old were you when you went to officer's school?
    I went 1930.
    I was 22.
    And how long was the course at the officer's school?
    Three years.
    Three years.
    What kind of a course, was it?
    Well, studies were, because near to us was--
    we were studying in parallel with the university,
    technical university, called Polytechnic of Poland.
    It's not the same as you've got here.
    But Polytechnic of Poland is the same as an ordinary university.
    For three years-- and the same teachers,
    professors, so on, plus military signals education or training.
    Were you taught techniques of command?
    Of course.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    All the time.
    You were in charge of, see, from small units, a few,
    and then platoons.
    That's the highest one, really, were in charge.
    I was, for a certain time, in charge, selected as a--
    they called it prefect here, in that year
    of the whole the company, for the last two years
    in the school.
    This was certain something extra.
    I don't know.
    Probably I had my five years cadet school in my blood,
    where I was trained.
    There was-- the cadet school consisted,
    in the end, of five companies, of each one over 100.
    There was over 100 boys.
    And for instance, every day, an order, from the highest company,
    was selected as a commanding cadet of the whole battalion.
    So one knew how to behave in front
    and how to give the command, this sort of thing.
    For instance, on Sunday, the whole battalion
    marched to the church, for instance.
    You had to get your voice properly and so on, and so on.
    So when I came to the officer's school,
    I had something behind me.
    In comparison with officer's cadet school,
    the officer's cadets who joined the school not from the cadet
    school, they could have joined from the civilian life.
    But they had to have a certain military schooling
    in the so-called reserve.
    There were reserve cadet schools as well, officer's cadet school.
    Sorry-- because they're not the same.
    So those were rather slightly roughish, military,
    because they had only one year or maximum
    two years behind them, partly.
    So the cadets from--
    like me, for after five years, they had a certain advantage
    in the first year, probably.
    Later, this all went and mixed together.
    Did you enjoy the course, at the officer's school or not?
    Well, yes, I would have thought so.
    My aim was to finish it.
    So I learned.
    And you had to sit and learn.
    Yes.
    I never thought of changing my mind and going away.
    I could have opted out anytime, but never thought about it
    for a minute.
    This was my career which I had in my head.
    Was there any part of the course that you didn't like?
    Not really.
    Not really.
    I was engaged, not only in learning.
    I was engaged in sport and various kinds
    of things, and activities, in cultural activities.
    I joined a small theater team or something or performing
    or singing or something like that.
    It doesn't matter.
    I joined-- really, what I learned as far as sport
    is concerned was fencing.
    I was training for nearly three years.
    And I reached quite a high standard with one of my friends.
    So we were even selected, for a certain time,
    to the pre-Olympic team from which the team was selected.
    We never went higher because we couldn't
    afford the time and training.
    But they took us in just as partners, so we couldn't do.
    I would have thought-- from that I'm a bit proud of.
    And I still have a picture of me standing
    in the school foyer with my whole outfit, with my weapon
    and so on.
    That's the little things which I remember clearly.
    The rest, quite pleasant.
    During the summer, we had field training.
    We were transferred from Warsaw--
    the school was in Warsaw--
    out of Warsaw into so-called signals training center,
    not far from Warsaw, where we spent about, I think actually,
    about two months, [NON-ENGLISH],, field training, radio,
    telecommunication, telephone, building, marching,
    these sort of things, and maps, and so on and so on-- all
    the preparation, what the signalman, of the needs,
    once he is attached to a unit because signal officers,
    their attachment started very high.
    As a young second lieutenant, you
    were not lower than the division, not a regiment
    or battalion-- division.
    That was the laws--
    or higher.
    Lower, there were different ones too,
    from the reserve or trained differently.
    So we had to be quite acquainted with
    the tactical and operational work
    of a HQ of a division, for which we had to prepare and supply
    a working telecommunication or radio system.
    So that training we received in the school.
    Of course, everybody, even anybody
    who finishes a high school with the best degree, he is rather--
    once he goes into life, he has a lot of knowledge in his head.
    But you need a little practice, of course,
    because that's the thing.
    Of course, we have a second lieutenant to the regiment
    or to the unit.
    And there are these old other ranks, old weather beaten.
    And they knew probably more technically, practically.
    They knew.
    But very soon, we all managed because of our quite good
    training in the school.
    When you finished officer's school,
    did you have a choice as to which unit you would go into?
    I personally had.
    Certain top-- because I finished more or less on the top.
    Yes, I had.
    I belonged to those who had the choice.
    So I choose Poznan, where my mother lived.
    I wanted to be-- my mother was a widow,
    and I felt I had to help her a little.
    I was the first time who was a bread earner for myself.
    So I went there to help my mother a little.
    And I got in Poznan.
    So I spent there quite a few years.
    Which unit did you join at Poznan?
    I joined the so-called signals company
    attached to the 14th Infantry Division in Poznan.
    Would each Infantry Division have
    a signals unit attached to it?
    That's right.
    Yes.
    And how big would the signals units be?
    This was-- in a company, that means
    it consists of three platoons, I think,
    I couldn't tell you exactly the number
    of soldiers involved in it.
    But there were well over 100 anyway.
    And this was a completely independent unit,
    with all the administration system.
    Of course, at that time we moved--
    our locomotive movements, if I may say so, were horses.
    So we have stables with horses and this sort of thing
    there in the beginning.
    It's completely independent from anybody, a unit, attached
    to the division, with all the paraphernalia which you
    need with the technical ones.
    There was a radio platoon and, I think,
    three telecommunication platoons plus the equipment, as I say,
    stables, horses, carts, this sort of thing.
    Did you have motorcars in the unit?
    Not in the beginning.
    The first motorcycle with a sidecar
    for the commanding officer--
    I joined this in 1933.
    And I think it came in 1935 or something like that.
    And a year later, there was the first heavy truck, a lorry
    or something.
    So we were really slowly being equipped with a motor--
    motorcars or this type of thing.
    Did that worry you and your brother officers,
    that you were so heavily dependent on horses?
    Not at all because we were trained with it.
    I had my personal horse.
    And I was trained in officer's school already, horse riding
    and this sort of thing, everything.
    We went into that.
    We knew what it is all about.
    Motorcars, lorries, or trucks that was a novelty.
    Of course, we had a very good one,
    because this helped a lot of in movement
    and transferring soldiers and equipment.
    But no, not at all.
    But I mean, in relation to the possibility
    of having to fight a foreign enemy, did you think that--
    did that worry you, that heavy dependence on horses
    might be a disadvantage to you?
    Well, in 1933, mind you, being a freshly
    commissioned sublieutenant, I don't
    think I was thinking about the war at that time
    and that I will fight, say, a better--
    mind you, even at that time, even the Germany, Hitler that
    came to power only in '32, so they were not really
    the power in 1939.
    So I don't think I would have thought a disadvantage.
    We were proud of our horses, cavalry and this sort of thing,
    at that time.
    Was most of the equipment that you were
    using Polish equipment or foreign equipment?
    Beginning, foreign of course.
    When we gained independence in 1918--
    and of course, you remember that Poland
    was in the war with Russia at that time, immediately, in 1920.
    Poland was created from three different countries--
    Austria, Russia, and Germany.
    And all, in Poland, equipment was
    Russian and German and Austrian.
    Plus there came an army from France at that time.
    You might have heard about it--
    John O'Hara-- again, French equipment, which came to Poland,
    especially radio equipment and so on.
    So the equipment was very mixed, as far as technical signal
    is concerned.
    The same was in the weapons, with the rifles from the--
    I don't know-- the 1870 war probably
    or something, in the beginning.
    But very soon we started our signal.
    The signals were equipped in, probably, '35, could be.
    We were receiving Polish production
    of telephones, exchange units, and radio as well in 1937--
    [AUDIO OUT]
    Session number 8838, reel number 2.
    Mr. Bogacki, reel 2.
    Well, as I said, in 1937, we started
    receiving radio transmitters or transceivers really,
    radio stations, field radio stations
    called N1 and N2 produced completely in Poland.
    And they were really fantastic.
    I have been told that there were one
    of the best at that time as military equipment in the world,
    very good indeed.
    And in the end, also for a higher command,
    on the level of army and even the HQ, were radio stations
    called W1 and W2, which were novelty
    at that time in the world.
    They could transmit even pictures or maps,
    this whole thing, apart from radiotelegraphy and
    radiophonetic.
    How would you say that, radiophone?
    Speech.
    Speech, yes.
    But unfortunately, this was all not enough.
    The war broke out shortly after.
    And we went into the war probably not fully prepared
    but with full of enthusiasm, enthusiasm
    and really wanting to fight the Germans, who invaded us anyway.
    Before we go on to the war, could you
    tell me if the Polish army in the '30s
    was a conscript army or a volunteer army?
    Conscript.
    Conscript.
    And how long would a young man have to serve?
    Signals, two years.
    And in the infantry?
    I'm not sure.
    I think a year.
    I'm not sure really.
    Sorry, I can't tell you the answer to the question.
    So was it all young men who had to go into the army?
    All the young men born at a certain time--
    there might have been exceptions or something like that.
    But every year we received a new one.
    And at what age would they normally be conscripted?
    In what age?
    Yes.
    At what age?
    No, just a second.
    They were 20-something youngsters, young men.
    So it must be about 20-something or other--
    21, 22, or something, or some who
    were delayed because they were released before,
    but they were taken on later on.
    For instance, students who studied,
    they didn't need to join, but they had to after the study.
    After they finished, they had to join the army
    and make their training, normally in the reserve.
    Cadet officer schools, because they had some education
    or they had, they were entitled to get the title of an officer
    later on, could be commissioned in the reserve.
    Would any of the NCOs be professional soldiers?
    All.
    Only the very low rank of a corporal,
    for instance, the highest, who could have graduated
    in those two years, if he was bright there,
    he was quickly a lance corporal and a corporal.
    But from a corporal upwards, really, they
    were all professionals.
    What was the attitude of the professional soldiers
    and officers to the conscripts?
    Did they welcome a conscript army or was there any agitation
    amongst the professional soldiers
    to have a professional army?
    No.
    Professionally-- professional we're
    only other ranks and officers.
    The soldiers were all conscripts.
    But did the officers say amongst themselves
    sometimes that, instead of Poland having a conscript army,
    they should have a completely volunteer army,
    like Britain has today?
    I never heard about it, never heard about it.
    We just were brought up like that.
    And this was happening from the very beginning that way.
    And we just took it for granted.
    It was a normal thing for us.
    Every time they went home and new came in.
    And they were trained, and they went off again, and so on.
    That's all it was.
    What was the usual attitude of the conscripts?
    Were they willing or difficult or what?
    Well, probably not all of them, not all of them.
    But there was a certain discipline demanded from them.
    In general, we had--
    I had anyway in the company I was,
    I never heard about any problems with them.
    On the contrary, we tried--
    of course, in the signals, they were not illiterate ones
    because in the infantry you might
    have found illiterate ones.
    But they were educated to write and read
    and so-called three R's, I should say.
    But in the signals they were also taught.
    There were some kind of education given them further,
    apart from that.
    Always an hour or two per week they were assembled,
    and there was an education officer,
    one of us, who just took on, give them a bit
    of history, this sort of thing.
    No, no.
    The army cared about the conscripts,
    really cared about them, tried to give the best for them.
    Were the officers all Polish-speaking,
    or did you have any German-speaking
    or Ukrainian or Lithuanian-speaking officers?
    Certainly not German-speaking, although we all
    knew the language because we were brought up in that time.
    No.
    No.
    No.
    The only foreign officers of foreign nationality,
    because you must remember-- you mentioned Ukraine.
    Ukrainian were Poles, Polish citizens because Poland--
    part of Ukraine belonged to Poland.
    Part of Lithuania belonged--
    Belorussian belonged to Poland on the eastern part.
    So there.
    And they were normal Poles, and they might
    have been officers in the army.
    But of foreign ones, they were such so-called Georgian,
    starting came from Georgia and the Caucasian there.
    And after the end of First World War,
    Georgia was overrun by the Bolsheviks and so on so on.
    And they emigrated.
    And some of them came to Poland and were
    accepted in the Polish army as so-called contract officers.
    They looked like we professionals.
    They had a certain contract with us.
    And they had the ranks of, say, lieutenant, captain, major,
    and so on.
    Not many, but they were excellent officers.
    They were all-- whoever I remember in the signal,
    and we had a few of them there, they
    are very excellent officers, nothing wrong with them.
    Of course, Georgian patriots and sort
    of thing, enemies of Russia because they over
    and this sort of thing.
    Apart from them, I couldn't say there were any of a nationality,
    with different nationality officers in the Polish army.
    But did you know of any people in the Polish army who
    spoke Ukrainian or Lithuanian or Belorussian?
    Oh, it was very common, very common.
    All the people who lived--
    were born as I was, before the First World War,
    and were in the Russian part, from Warsaw west--
    east, sorry-- they all had to be at least
    bilingual, Russian and Ukrainian, normally.
    And could you communicate easily with them?
    Well, they all talk--
    they spoke Polish, of course.
    Of course.
    If somebody reached the rank of Officer,
    he must have been fluent Polish.
    And were Germans excluded from the officers corps?
    I don't know what you mean.
    German nationals?
    German-speaking people in Poland.
    No, no.
    I was a German-speaking boy from boyhood.
    Of course, I had both in the German schools.
    I acquired the language as a boy and never forgot it.
    No.
    No.
    No.
    Not at all.
    All the Austrian people spoke German
    because this was their language once upon the time.
    They had to live with all the officers.
    The Polish army consists of ex-German officers, ex-Austrian,
    and ex-Russian.
    But you had people in Poland before the war
    who considered themselves, as the Hitler regime led
    to call them, ethnic Germans, who
    lived in Poland, people who regarded German
    as their first language.
    Did they go into the officer corps?
    Well, I understand your question.
    There were quite a lot of, we call
    them, who settled in Poland.
    There were quite a lot who, after the end of the war,
    the Germans had the right to stay in Poland, opt for Poland,
    or go out.
    Some of them stayed there because they were landowners,
    these sort of things.
    And they settled, especially not far from Poznan or Pomerania,
    slightly north from Poznan, which proved,
    in 1939, that there were all really engaged by--
    well, put it differently, were pro-Hitler, quite a lot of them.
    If some of them were, during the, say from 1920
    to '39, or say around '30, accepted the Polish army,
    this I am not--
    I can't answer that question because I
    was a young fellow at that time and just
    starting my career myself.
    I would have thought, if somebody behaved normally
    and that he was born--
    well, he wasn't born in Germany, really, but might be a suspect,
    probably there must have been some kind of selection
    in the secret, the security branch of the Polish army,
    probably.
    But as I say, that's beyond my possibility to answer.
    But did you personally know of such ethnic Germans
    in the officer corps?
    Well, I must say, yes now--
    not at that time.
    But I think I will tell you that when we come to my war time.
    I came across quite a good friend of mine-- ahem,
    sorry for my throat--
    who, during the underground, which we will talk about later,
    collaborated with the Germans.
    And many, many people lost their life because-- yes.
    The answer is yes.
    We'll talk about him later.
    Later, yes.
    Now you said that, in 1933, you hadn't regarded any danger
    from the new regime in Germany.
    When did you start to feel that a war with Germany
    might be possible?
    About '37, '8, because I was transferred in 1937 from Poznan
    into the Polish Signals Education Center
    as an instructor and commanding officer of one of the addition
    of officers.
    And there, very often within the officer mess,
    this subject came on.
    This was-- anyway, this was in the official press at that time,
    quite well known.
    Yes, at that time we started thinking quite--
    we were convinced that the war is inevitable.
    Can you remember any particular thing
    which started to give you the idea that
    war would be inevitable, any particular incident?
    Well, we probably thought that it might
    be avoided, as I say, '38.
    But still there were always border clashes with the Germans,
    from top, from Gdansk or Danzig in German, along the border.
    Then there was always something there happening.
    But this is probably the political side
    of the whole thing.
    There were the connections of our minister of foreign affairs
    and so on back.
    That's a different problem worth a thought.
    But as an officer at that time, I must say,
    I was very engaged in the education,
    being in charge of certain things.
    I did not involve myself or spend much time
    and thought about it.
    I knew I am in the army.
    I'm teaching now.
    I'm preparing, having these younger future colleagues
    under me and thinking about the war.
    We're at war.
    We are professionals.
    We are just going to war.
    That's all it was, really.
    So I haven't given this many thoughts about it.
    But certainly we were aware of that kind of possibility.
    What did you personally think about the regime in Germany
    at this time?
    Well, how to answer that question?
    We knew, and certainly I, from observing or talking,
    discussing, that since Hitler came to power,
    all Germany was transformed after the Weimar Republic
    and was reorganized.
    And he pulled all the nation behind him.
    This was a fantastic psychological change.
    And I think when the war started in 1939,
    there were not many Germans who were against him, not many.
    The whole nation was behind him.
    Although today, you might listen and hear and read
    different, sometimes, opinions.
    If he would have won, the whole Germany
    would be just a menace in the world.
    In 1939, or before rather-- you asked me before that--
    yes, we were aware of building up strength.
    There were little happenings, which
    came to the mind of, like me, young people
    who was not involved, who didn't see--
    thought about much about external politics,
    little happenings which made you think.
    For instance, Poles were sometimes--
    not Poles, sorry.
    Jews were persecuted or just, in 1937,
    it was quite normal in Germany.
    We read about it.
    The shops were stoned.
    They were put in concentration camps.
    They were already known at that time.
    For instance, the Olympics in 1936,
    this was-- for us it was unbelievable,
    when this famous sprinter, only the one, Hitler
    wouldn't go and congratulate him.
    He just walked out.
    You see, this made you think, this little behavior,
    irrational completely at that time.
    But I wouldn't go further than that.
    We knew that we have--
    well, we knew historically Germany
    was never a friend of ours, never,
    from the time's beginning.
    Since even 10th century, when Poland
    started existing on the map.
    And, yes, we are preparing ourselves, I think,
    because at that--
    19-- I think '37, Poland created a big industrial center south
    of Warsaw.
    And this was mainly directed into producing
    military equipment.
    And Poland had, at that time, I have been told
    and the war I think proved it, one of the best
    anti-aircraft guns already at that time, which were later
    taken over.
    By the way, I talked about this, in 1937,
    when there appeared these radio stations here.
    The first thing the Germans came to Poland,
    they started producing them immediately for their own army.
    They accepted them as the best one.
    Now, at this time, just in the time immediately
    before the war started, what was the attitude of you
    and your other officers towards the question
    of the possibility of an alliance with Russia
    against Nazi Germany?
    Was that-- did the officers oppose that or were they
    in favor of an ally?
    Which year, you say?
    Say, around about 1938 or '39.
    Russia was never a friend and possible cooperator.
    Although, there was a peace treaty with Russia at that time.
    I can't remember, that Pilsudski made and in which year it was.
    But well, in 1939, this was all, by the Russian,
    thrown into the basket, and Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement
    you have.
    Immediately everything was invalid.
    No, we never trusted the Russian.
    So who did the officer corps favor as possible Allies
    against Germany?
    Well, 1939, you know, there were our minister of foreign affairs,
    Beck, came to England here and talked to Chamberlain.
    And in the end, after long discussions, Britain agreed
    to help and protect, come into the war in case
    Poland would be invaded.
    The same, shortly after, it was agreed with France.
    This was 1939.
    April, I think, Beck into Chamberlain here.
    But this was a different story, Chamberlain's attitude
    to the war, who believed in cooperation or agreement
    with Germans, which actually, by the way, was against it.
    Whom we preferred?
    My word-- I don't know really.
    We don't prefer anybody to invade you.
    That's the first answer.
    But--
    To be allies with Poland.
    Oh, to be allies.
    Neither Russia or-- if the war would
    be against Russia-- this is completely guesswork,
    I'm saying.
    If this whole thing would be historical by some trick
    of providence would be reversed, and we
    fought with Russia and the Germans, probably--
    I can't say.
    That's a hypothetical question, really.
    I can't answer those questions.
    I know only that, once Beck received
    or got an agreement with England and France, we were uplifted.
    We believed.
    We trusted.
    We looked forward.
    And once in September 1939, the war broke out,
    we just awaited month or day by day, week by week,
    month, to the beginning of the war between England and so on.
    But it was declared three days later, on the 1st of--
    3rd of September, and started with leaflets thrown on Germany.
    This was a big disappointment, a big disappointment.
    But that's what we believed we might survive somehow.
    We fought hard because even--
    there still were fights on the 25th of--
    it was still in October, I think there were.
    In the beginning of October, there were fights in Poland.
    Pockets, but there were fights.
    So was there bitterness amongst the officer corps
    when there was a lack of military effort
    by France and England after September the 3rd, 1939?
    Well, certainly we were disappointment.
    I can tell you only this little group I was in
    because I was attached to the army HQ, which
    was situated on the northern part of Poland,
    against East Prussia.
    You know, there was this little pocket divided by the corridor.
    That's where we were situated.
    We were very-- but, mind you, I don't
    think we had much time to think about it
    because on the third or fourth, we were already beaten.
    The army just rolled over us.
    We tried to board that-- there was a retreat, retreat.
    And the fight and retreat and so on.
    Before I regained my mental balance after the end of that
    September 5, where I landed somehow,
    I'll tell you later, in Warsaw.
    And suddenly you were there.
    And what now?
    Then you thought, what the--
    on earth happened?
    Why haven't they come?
    Why haven't-- they could.
    There was nothing of the German army, which
    could defend themselves on the western part against France
    or England, well France mainly.
    The Maginot, and this sort of things
    they had sat in the bunkers there and did nothing.
    If they went forwards, it would be just--
    must be different.
    Now, let's go back to the actual German attack
    on the 1st of September, 1939.
    Can you remember what you were doing then
    and what your reaction was when you
    heard that the German attack had been launched?
    As I said, I was, at that time, this
    was the end of the military cadet school course, September.
    They were just sent for the last--
    before the last official commissioning,
    where they got their stars on their epaulet.
    So I was, at that time, in that center just doing something--
    I don't know-- in my office or something like that.
    Not the first-- I was-- my war started on the 23rd of August.
    I was waking up about very early in the morning.
    It could be 3:00, it could be 4 o'clock in the morning.
    A messenger came to him with a paper, official paper--
    mobilization.
    And got the paper--
    I knew what I have to do because I was trained for that.
    And I just packed up.
    And say, half an hour or 40 minutes, I was in that place
    where I should be and start organizing my war company.
    I was commanding officer of a company.
    Where were you?
    Not far from that education center, which was near Warsaw,
    called Zegrze, if you want to say it--
    Z-E-G-R-Z-E, Zegrze.
    This was the signals communication--
    signals education center.
    And was Zegrze your mobilization post?
    It was.
    This was a village not far from Zegrze, where--
    there was a point where I had to go there.
    There was already a house there, and so on so
    on, not far, about a few miles.
    So I start on the 23rd in advance of the war.
    This was, of course, advanced mobilization.
    And while-- and I had to be ready in about--
    I don't think-- 18 or 19 hours they gave me.
    Everything came to you in that short time.
    Soldiers came to you, equipment, horses, cars, everything.
    You just had to-- from nowhere, because the mobilization papers
    went out in the special way to all these people.
    They were mobilized.
    Half through that, I got a telephone call already
    from Warsaw, from the army commanding HQ officer--
    he was probably chief of staff or somebody--
    to report immediately in Warsaw.
    This mobilization is still on here, so my second-in-charge,
    a sublieutenant, who was my pupil in a way once upon a time,
    I left him there to finish that whole thing and went already
    and to receive orders already, to move as soon as I'm ready
    immediately.
    There was a fortress not far from Warsaw,
    called Modlin on where the river Vistula, or Wisla,
    Vistula in your way, and Narew joined Modlin.
    It's a big pre-First World War fortress--
    to organize the HQ from the signals' point of view
    because all the signals, HQ will move there as soon as I'm ready.
    You know, all these officers, telephone, this sort of thing,
    radio an so on.
    And that's when I started my war.
    On the 1st of September, I was in the office of my company,
    in the fortress there.
    And suddenly, early morning it was,
    a alarm, air alarm, an airplane come.
    And the first bomb--
    bomb came on that fortress, on the side somewhere.
    Nobody was killed, a little damage.
    And that's when the war started.
    Did the German attack take you by surprise or not?
    Well, we were listening to the radio, of course.
    8838, reel number 3.
    Mr. Bogacki, reel three.
    Well, you asked me if I expected the attack.
    Well, in a way, yes.
    Because I knew I was mobilized on the 23rd of August.
    And of course, the purpose of mobilization
    is to prepare for enemy's attack.
    Will that happen on the 1st of September, of course,
    I wouldn't know.
    But listening to radio communications,
    which were quite frequent and described
    the position and the movement of the German arm
    of the German side board and so on and very strong incident
    provoked by the Germans--
    you probably read about it.
    They provoked, for instance, an attack of a German radio
    station in Silesia, in Gleiwitz or something
    like that by their own soldiers dressed in Polish uniforms.
    Apparently, they were ex-concentration camp convicts,
    whom they shot immediately.
    Yes, I wasn't surprised with the bomb, really.
    Well, we knew it started.
    That's all.
    And what did you then do immediately afterwards,
    personally?
    I did nothing.
    I just prepared.
    As I said before, I was organized.
    All the HQ, from the signals point of view,
    I had my advanced positions moved
    many, many miles towards the border on orders
    from the chief of staff.
    And that's how the war started.
    And the Germans came from East Prussia, I think,
    on the 3rd of September, already overrun the Polish defense line
    there.
    On the 4th of September, the HQ from Modlin packed up and moved
    away towards Warsaw.
    And of course, I packed up my signals parts
    and went with them.
    WE organized the signals in the new HQ, not far from Warsaw
    and so on.
    And now we-- our, the retreat went on and on and on and on,
    which I could probably tell you by day
    by day because it's still vividly in my mind.
    That's not necessary, I think.
    Anyway, in the end we landed in not far from the town Lublin.
    It is southeast of Warsaw.
    South of Lublin, in some kind of wood, forests.
    And there we were encircled.
    And it's a real paradox of nature.
    All the time there was fantastic good weather, sun, dry.
    So the Germans, with a heavy tanks and equipment,
    just drove quickly fore.
    On the 23rd of September, I was called in to the HQ.
    They said, look, we are--
    tomorrow or during the night tomorrow,
    General Anders with his cavalry brigade will try to get through,
    fight through the German lines south.
    And the HQ of the army is dissolving now.
    But we are telling you, you can go that way with your company.
    Or you are free what you do.
    We are not more as an army operating.
    And the general said he is dissolving the whole thing
    because we were encircled.
    The only thing I could go behind that,
    which I tried but I did not succeed, at that night
    came rain.
    And that part of Poland is not sandy.
    It's clayish.
    So not only the Germans stuck in it,
    but also we stuck in this whole clay and rain.
    I did not succeed to go through.
    So I went, I stood one day--
    in my company, I said to my soldiers, look, you are free.
    We are-- I'm going here, try to go down.
    If you want to go with me, well and good.
    And I will take charge of you, to the south,
    to the Hungarian border or something.
    So all you want to go home if you can, if you are succeeding,
    it's all your decision.
    They asked me if they can take the van or the lorry.
    I said, yes, you can take it.
    It's all yours.
    And they went on that lorry, a few of them.
    The rest marched.
    Thus I finished my career as a commanding officer
    of that army signals.
    And the army packed up.
    It ceased to exist.
    And I remained there, standing the next day on a hill
    with my superior officer, who was the chief signals
    officer of the army and another one
    with German origin, of which I will tell you later.
    And I only kept two horses and the cart,
    which were a part of the equipment
    of the company and the soldier.
    Well, and we just went.
    I had my car, everything.
    I left everything.
    But there was no petrol or nothing.
    Anyway, I was running my cars and the company cars
    on pure spirit, which I got from the--
    where they produce spirit.
    Now they call them--
    anyway, so I left the car, got the horses,
    and we went, three of us and the soldier.
    We went up.
    Now the situation is this.
    The Germans are on left side.
    We are not far from the river Bug.
    River what?
    Bug-- B-U-G, Bug, which divided the Germans from the Russians.
    On the right, from the other side of the Bug
    were the Russians.
    And there was a part of a no-man's land, where
    the Germans did not come in.
    They were-- ours here, and the Russians not in.
    Well, it is really a personal story.
    I don't know if that it--
    Yes.
    And so we went to the nearest small town.
    We were all in uniforms.
    I was really, at that time, I must admit,
    I was really shocked.
    I didn't know what to do.
    With all my uniforms, they said, well,
    you must change because they will take us there.
    I had all my pistols, everything.
    I said, I will not.
    So we went to the nearest town, and a friend
    of mine, who were higher ranks with me,
    they knew that I somehow did not want to change.
    They brought me a civilian [INAUDIBLE]
    and asked me to change, so I changed.
    And we stopped in a small village,
    in the small village school, and sat down
    because we couldn't move.
    The Germans were not far here.
    There was no war at that time.
    They were here, the no-man's land.
    They were probably talking to each other.
    Anyway, cutting the whole story short there,
    I went myself maybe twice through the German line
    somehow, with the help of a local
    because we had no documents.
    I couldn't show anybody my military documents.
    To the nearest village, how do you call it?
    Superior-- some kind of man who had a stamp,
    and he could stamp some kind of document, that I belonged there.
    The village headman?
    Could be headman.
    Yes.
    So that's what the only thing I managed
    to crawl through the lines, somewhere between here
    and there, and nobody saw me.
    Anyway, once we got that, the Germans walked
    over our the village, just went through.
    There was no resistence.
    Normal people living there, they were not interested in--
    they didn't come into the house at all.
    Once they moved over, the people started
    moving freely behind the lines.
    So we went our horses, water and started.
    It's about 150 kilometers, probably from--
    oh, 200-- from Warsaw, we started our way to Warsaw,
    took us quite a long time.
    Finally we reached Warsaw.
    There was, of course, a tumult or movement
    of people on the roads, people in all directions.
    Nobody knew where from.
    They were running away from the Germans,
    now they're coming back again, [? in ?] [? our ?] car,
    and then horses in between there.
    We came to the outskirts of Warsaw,
    barbed wire, German soldier.
    Happily, all three of us, we spoke German.
    And they asked questions, where you are?
    I said, well, we just after the war, we're coming back home.
    What should we do?
    What-- we looked around.
    Nothing, go away.
    So we just threw the barbed wire.
    We went into Warsaw.
    I told the soldier, look, my boy.
    You live not far from Warsaw.
    The horses and the cart is yours.
    You are a farmer, take it with you.
    And good bye and good luck to you.
    You were pretending to be a farmer?
    He, he was a farmer, farmer's son.
    The soldier who went with us, not the horse and driver.
    So we gave him the horses, the horse,
    and he's supposed to go home.
    Probably he did reach home.
    I don't know.
    This was his.
    And we just went.
    There was a taxi in somewhere around or something like that
    already, because Warsaw fell on the 27th of September.
    And we came there, it was October, two weeks late
    or something like that.
    And we went to the house of the friend
    of mine, who were with me.
    He had a house and a wife in Warsaw.
    And that's how my war, in September 1939, ended.
    What rank were you when you finished?
    I was lieutenant.
    And can you say something about what
    you considered about the caliber of the German army as an enemy
    to fight?
    Well, as an signal officer, you never are on the front line.
    So I can only tell you, that's what I heard.
    I never seen them or nobody shoot
    at me because HQ of the army is always quite away from--
    even in that surrounding, there's
    quite a few kilometers or miles.
    So I can't-- I don't know.
    Well, they must have been good.
    I don't know.
    Although, when the Poles retaliated,
    they usually succeeded in the short run.
    But they were overpowered by sheer power, mobility.
    So even courage was short-lived.
    They got the village back.
    They killed a lot of people.
    And got prisoners, what to do with them?
    No, no.
    This was a hopeless fight in the end.
    What was the--
    You must remember that on the 17th of September,
    the Russians put the knife in our back.
    That's why they were on the other side.
    We had nowhere to retreat.
    And they were fighting with us, taking prisoners and so on.
    So--
    What was the condition of Warsaw when you got there?
    What did it look like?
    Warsaw?
    Horrible.
    [LAUGHS] Was all bombarded, a lot of rubble,
    houses demolished, burnt out.
    So--
    What was the demeanor of the civilian population?
    Were they dazed or what?
    I would have thought--
    I can only-- I was dazed myself.
    But looking at the people, everybody
    was trying to make some kind of living.
    They were moving, movement around.
    There were people standing on the corner selling something
    here, a piece of bread or a shoe or something,
    wanted to get the money, make the living somehow.
    Complete, complete turmoil really, really.
    Because their jobs no longer existed?
    Of course, nothing existed.
    Later, a few days later, I realized that the public
    was against that.
    The army or the commanding things
    that we haven't fought properly or something like that.
    But this all changed in the next years,
    when they found out that France even fell quicker than we did,
    didn't fight at all.
    Was it October 1939 that you reached Warsaw?
    That's right.
    Yes, the first half of October.
    I couldn't tell you exactly when it was.
    And can you tell me something about how the Germans behaved
    once they took over?
    1939, Germans behaved-- this was the army.
    That's a completely different thing
    from later on, which I experienced from the Gestapo
    and SA and so on.
    This was the army.
    They were fighting there.
    Of course they were proud.
    They were walking around here and there.
    And nothing special, they behaved normally, just
    normal people in that time.
    Well, there's one little thing that's my personal story.
    October, not a week or two later, still in October I think,
    end of October, something like that,
    there was an announcement given that all officers have
    to report--
    because they knew they haven't taken prisoners, all of them.
    Some went away, some like that, have
    to report on the square, Pilsudski Square in Poland,
    it was at that time--
    and so on.
    So my friend of mine, both of them were majors at that time,
    they said, look Konrad, you go first.
    They always sent me first.
    You know, even during the battle,
    I was always in the first car moving
    from HQ to HQ, with a machine gun in my hand and the chauffeur
    here and driver, over the hills.
    So this will go fast.
    I said, well, actually, I don't want to report to the Germans.
    I'm here, and I couldn't care less about them.
    Anyway, they convinced me.
    I went.
    First time, nothing happened.
    They sent us home.
    The second time, I came there, stood in a row of many officers.
    And there was a general also in between them.
    And a German came out of that house and said,
    all professional soldiers-- in German, of course--
    come here.
    In German it sounded [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    What does it mean?
    That's what I said, all professionals-- all these step
    out from the row, forward.
    And so I went in.
    And I see near me stands my second officer, who
    was with me in the company, second lieutenant.
    Anyway, I went to the--
    after the second time, I went to the--
    where there were these German soldiers sitting and taking
    personal details from you.
    I told him who I am, my name, my rank, my everything.
    Where do you live?
    I said, on the street such-and-such,
    but I gave him the wrong number.
    I told him in Polish--
    I had to help him a little because he couldn't speak.
    I said, look, I have given him a wrong address.
    I don't trust you [INAUDIBLE].
    You'd do the same.
    He did not.
    Anyway, they gave me a paper with a stamp,
    and I could free walk in Warsaw, not being protected in that way.
    I came home to my sister.
    That's what it is.
    And their wives say, oh, that's fine.
    You must go now, and that's all free and so on.
    This all lasted till November, I think 11 or something
    like that, which is a certain Polish remembrance day.
    In the morning, one of those chaps lived with me in one room,
    not far on that street, where the others were.
    And the maid from that family came running.
    Look, Major [PERSONAL NAME] is taken by the Germans
    this morning.
    And the other major with whom I was together said, oh, dear.
    Dear.
    Dear.
    I must-- he had a house, a flat really in Warsaw.
    But he gave it to another-- a wife of another officer.
    So he lived with me.
    So he went there.
    And she said, yes, the Germans were here asking for you
    and said that they asked you to be in the evening here.
    So I thought, Well, I said -- and I went to that number,
    which I gave wrong-- it's opposite--
    to the housekeeper.
    And she says, what is all about.
    I said, Oh, they were here looking
    for some kind of Bogacki.
    But I never heard.
    It was what [INAUDIBLE]
    So anyway, all them were taken, cutting this whole thing short--
    and sent to the prisoner of war camps.
    And I remained in Warsaw.
    That's a small incident.
    Now, you said that the German troops were behaving normally
    at first.
    You mean they behaved correctly?
    Well, 1939, I haven't heard about any special, brutal
    behavior or something.
    I seen that later, yes.
    If you walked on the pavement, and they just
    shoot you in the face and [INAUDIBLE] you away,
    simple as that.
    Smack you in the face?
    Yes.
    But you couldn't care less.
    Out of your way.
    He walked straight, not very common but it happened.
    But in '39, this was really the time of day.
    They were probably not organized themselves properly,
    just the front was on.
    They were reorganizing themselves.
    What changes did the German occupation
    bring about to everyday life?
    How did it affect everyday life in Warsaw?
    Well, I don't know how to say, how to explain that.
    Anyway, all public institutions, all,
    say, factories or something like that
    were taken over by the Germans.
    There was always a German manager or director put there.
    Even outside Warsaw, on the land,
    where there were landowners, this all
    was taken over by Germans.
    There was also a German put in charge of it,
    although the people were sitting there, the workers were working.
    They're paying something, some little salaries or something.
    So food was rationed, very miserable supply.
    But how we lived, we made excursions out into the villages
    and bought something and brought it to Warsaw
    in the beginning, which was forbidden later on.
    You could even land in the concentration camp
    later on, when they found a little meat under your--
    on your body because you put it on your body,
    put the jacket on, and brought it with you.
    In the beginning-- and so that was-- life was on.
    Everybody tried to live on his own as much as he could,
    to earn money.
    How?
    I don't know.
    I wasn't suffering from that because I had my salaries still.
    Before the war started, I put my little, what I earned,
    savings, in my pocket.
    When I was discharged, my superiors, signals,
    got from the treasurer, from the army treasurer, our three
    advance salaries.
    So I had a bit of money with me.
    And the prices were not exaggerated at that time.
    So the living was quite, as far as I
    am concerned, quite tolerable.
    I was a bachelor at that time.
    And my first thought was to find somebody.
    I must tell you one thing.
    After the HQ of the army was dissolved,
    I could have, later on, gone south.
    And that's what many people did, over the Slovak
    or Hungarian or Romanian border south, and join somehow
    the west.
    And I would be probably during the war here somewhere.
    But I did not.
    I distinctly said to myself, I will not do that.
    I'm going to Warsaw.
    And this might sound a bit pathetic.
    But you see, my generation was brought up
    on quite a good historical knowledge of the past,
    of Polish history, which was tragic.
    It was always risings, from 1831, '63, and so on,
    maybe to '48.
    So I thought to myself what to do.
    Because these two chaps with me, two majors,
    they wanted to go south.
    I said, I'm not going.
    If you go, you take the horses, and it doesn't matter.
    I'm not going with you.
    So they did not.
    They did it with me.
    I was somehow the--
    I was probably stronger by will than they were.
    Although, they were married, and I was a bachelor.
    I could have gone, you know.
    In my mind I had one clear.
    This is impossible that nothing will happen.
    German overrun, there surely must be something happening here
    that we will fight or somehow act against the Germans.
    That was my belief.
    So when I landed in the end in Warsaw as you heard,
    I tried to find I didn't know what--
    anyway, some friends.
    And I found-- first, I came across of one of my pupils,
    who just graduated second lieutenant in '39.
    And I told him, look--
    he was Adam, his Christian name.
    Doesn't matter.
    He doesn't-- he's dead already, killed by Germans.
    If you can contact a friend of yours, do that and let
    me know who they are.
    And be in contact with me because I
    think we will organize a little signal unit.
    Because I said, there must be some kind of connection.
    I thought about that then--
    some radio connection with the outside world
    because whatever happens here, this will be needed.
    Whoever does create something in the future,
    he must have a connection with the outside world.
    See, I was an active and professional soldier.
    I knew this was my-- knew I could do.
    I thought about it at that time already.
    And very shortly, I had a few of these lieutenants.
    I met even, probably a few weeks later,
    a friend of mine, a captain who was with me in that signal
    school.
    And we started-- and I'm starting now my war time
    activity with that story now.
    And also shortly, I contacted, from the same signals center,
    education center, other ranks.
    There was a sergeant and so on, who were radio operators--
    Morse, now in contact.
    Now, I think this was end of October
    or beginning of November, something like that.
    I got a contact of a gentleman who was representing already
    the organizing itself underground organization,
    of which in charge was put in charge
    by the last commanding officer of defense of Warsaw,
    a General Rómmel.
    And this one here, who was in charge, put on charge
    and asked to act underground and create
    a certain underground organization,
    was General Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski.
    Tokarzewski is probably enough--
    T-O-K-A-R-Z-E-W-S-K-I-- Tokarzewski.
    And the chap who I was--
    I contacted by some pure accident
    was a major in charge of the secret department
    or something like that, like the MI-5 or something like that.
    He said, all right.
    I said, I have already a few--
    I'm a signals officer, I said.
    And I have already a few people with me.
    And I am willing to organize something
    in the radio direction.
    He said, all right.
    Be in contact with you, or I will be in contact with you.
    We made a certain arrangement, where he can find me.
    He said, as soon as a chief signals officer will
    be nominated, because I was still a lieutenant,
    there must have been a major or captain or even [INAUDIBLE],,
    we will contact him with you.
    In the meantime, one of those of my group
    was a reserve officer from before the war.
    And he was an owner of a house in Warsaw,
    which was partly bombarded.
    And the second one was adjacent, semi-detached.
    So we had already a house.
    We had these few people.
    And I was looking now for equipment.
    And of course, I couldn't find-- there
    was limited military equipment.
    But I knew perfectly well the military equipment
    I can't use in a conspiracy.
    A big thing here, and they were not prepared.
    The wavelengths were not the right, and technically not
    the right--
    Session number 8838, reel number 4.
    Mr. Bogacki, reel 4.
    Well, as I said, the military equipment,
    which I could find somewhere concealed in Poland,
    I knew is not--
    it's too cumbersome, too big.
    I can't move with it, not to be discovered.
    Anyway, shortly after I contacted so-called radio
    amateurs association, who were existing,
    functioning before the war and had contact by shortwaves
    all over the world.
    And they promised to help me.
    But unfortunately, the Germans knew about them
    because they were a registered people on the track.
    And they were chased and haunted immediately.
    And besides, their equipment, it technically
    was the right one, because they could
    communicate all over the world.
    But this wasn't the right equipment
    which I could use in a secret way walking around from here
    and there and just running away.
    Because they were in a big room, units, which-- anyway,
    it wouldn't work.
    January, the chief signals officer was nominated.
    I met him.
    He came to me.
    Apparently we knew each other.
    He was a captain before the war, and I would hear about it.
    I told him that the unit is ready except--
    and the room is ready.
    The only thing we are lacking is equipment.
    He was apparently a fully qualified engineer
    and before the war, worked in the ministry
    of telecommunication in the radio section
    on the International thing.
    So he was quite knowledgeable about radio
    and this sort of thing.
    And he found out, and he knew about it,
    that Poland produced, before the war,
    for their secret intelligence, small radio
    transceivers, small ones.
    I have somehow even the measurements.
    And so I said, that's excellent.
    Where are they?
    So he gave me a contact to a gentleman, who took me there.
    This factory was already taken over by the Germans, of course.
    But there was still the caretaker there.
    So sometimes in the evening, when the Germans were away--
    you mind, it was '39.
    They were not so strict, looking everywhere.
    He took me there with the side entrance.
    In the corner lying there, partly made, some finished,
    some unfinished components, this sort of thing.
    I said, that's fantastic.
    So I took, I think, about two, I could find,
    in so-called working order, supposed
    to be in the working order, two components.
    Outside was a horse carriage.
    There were no taxis, of course.
    There was horse-driven, like you see nowadays
    in Malta, for instance, or something.
    So we went on it and have driven through Warsaw.
    I just said to this driver, I said, look,
    don't go through middle of Warsaw.
    Yes?
    He looked at us from the side here.
    Oh, yes, yes.
    I know, he said.
    So somehow sideways he reached the suburbs of Warsaw,
    where we had the house.
    And that's how I gained the first transceiver.
    So we had to find out how it works.
    We listened.
    Now the main problem was how and with whom
    to gain a radio contact.
    To gain a radio contact, you have
    to exchange verbal or written information,
    written information.
    That is the wavelength, the signal, and the time.
    So at that time, a courier was going to Budapest
    from our underground movement.
    And I asked that courier, through my signals
    superior at that time because he was in contact with him--
    contacts were always limited.
    You had contact with him, but you didn't
    know what happened there.
    He didn't know what I was contact--
    I contact had with somebody.
    This was all in groups.
    Anyway, I gave him my wavelengths I had.
    This was a quartz orientated or designed transceiver.
    My wavelength-- and I put some few letter signals,
    which he has to call me, and I will call him--
    a few letters, three.
    It's 3HW or something like that--
    and the time, and he went.
    And he came back after a few weeks time.
    This was already, I think, beginning of February.
    He said, yes, I have a confirmation.
    That's the whole thing.
    And we started calling each other from, say, February--
    no result. No result. Nothing.
    Or we heard them, but they wouldn't hear us, no answer.
    So this was-- he'd gone to Budapest?
    Budapest, the courier, yes.
    And he'd practiced contacting you, had he?
    He gave him my-- these elements, like signal code.
    Who had he given it to?
    I gave them to the courier, who took it to Budapest, to them.
    He said, you can call me on that wavelength.
    And you can hear me or listen to me on that wavelength.
    But who was his contact in Budapest?
    Oh, I see.
    That was the Polish Consulate still there.
    You must remember, Hungary was not
    overrun by Germany at that time yet.
    There was the Polish Consulate still there.
    And they had, their consulate or whatever they had there,
    some kind of radio equipment.
    So you were telling me how you were trying to establish contact
    with the consulate.
    I'm trying to tell you how I organized that, that he knew how
    to find me, how to talk to me.
    Because they had already contact with the Polish HQ,
    Polish government in exile, in France,
    in Angers, where General Sikorski was.
    So anyway, he came back.
    He confirmed everything, that they know everything,
    how to listen to me and how to call me.
    And a long time nothing came out of it.
    Anyway, cutting through this whole thing--
    on the 4th of March, we achieved exchanged contact.
    He said, yes, I hear you.
    And there are certain abbreviated forms
    in the Morse code.
    He says, all right, I hear you, so-and-so, with a strength
    this and that and that and so on.
    And we said also.
    Anticipating that I have--
    I might have to contact, I already reported to the HQ,
    to the general, that I might have the--
    I haven't gotten that yet, but I might have the radio link
    very shortly.
    So they sent me already an initial short telegram,
    just to prove it, through them to Angers,
    to Sikorski from our general.
    So once I got that contact, my other rank sergeant
    was sitting on it and knocking here.
    So I gave him.
    He said, put that down here.
    It was coded, of course, deciphered.
    4th of March, 1940, we had already our first contact,
    the radio link with the outside world.
    What kind of messages were passing?
    What's in the message, I can't tell you
    because they were coded.
    And I was not in charge of the deciphering the unit.
    This was completely separate.
    And it must have been separated.
    You must remember, we worked in a very difficult position.
    The radio, Morse, once he presses the key,
    he is in the air.
    And not only my friend hears it, but everybody
    hears it, and the German also.
    And that was proved later.
    There were very quick with so goniometry,
    cutting into and find out where they are.
    So once caught by Germans-- and we had losses, of course,
    later on--
    you can't tell where the rest is,
    even if they beat you to death.
    So ciphering, deciphering was a special unit.
    Few ladies were sitting somewhere near the HQ.
    Even they didn't know properly where that is.
    So what's in the telegram, I haven't a clue.
    You don't even know the type of material which was passing?
    No, nothing.
    Nothing.
    Of course, nowadays I can find out
    because we have here records in our archives.
    But and there are five volumes of books already printed.
    No.
    Later on I knew sometime, because I
    had personal contacts with some officers who
    were in charge of departments.
    If they wanted something special, they came to me
    and said, look, could you telegram such and such?
    Somehow, put it quicker.
    Because I restricted them in the volume in Warsaw later on.
    Because-- and then in later years, in about 10,
    15 minutes, half an hour at the most,
    they were on our doorsteps, wherever in Warsaw I
    pressed the key.
    They're very good, later on, the Germans.
    So you were having to move from place to place all the time,
    were you?
    Later on.
    But in the beginning, we had that house.
    Of course, we were inexperienced conspirators.
    Nobody told us before the war that such a thing might exist.
    And nobody knew properly how to organize a conspiracy.
    This wasn't our line.
    So we learned the hard way.
    So that was this villa, the house, partially damaged,
    without--
    the roof bombarded, snow coming through.
    Mind you, this was March.
    And the telegraph sitting in a fur
    coat there on the transceiver and contacting Budapest.
    Shortly after we got contact with Budapest,
    through Budapest who had contact with Bucharest in Romania,
    we got the elements to contact Bucharest.
    And we got connection with Bucharest shortly after.
    You see, once you have one, then they inform them.
    They could freely communicate at that time still between Romania
    and Hungary because this wasn't Germany.
    And they told us by telegram how we contact them,
    so I got Bucharest.
    The borderline between Germany and Russia
    was the river Bug and south to the Tatra Mountains.
    And there was a town, Lvov, or the Germans said Lemberg, Lvov.
    And they're also already existed an underground nucleus,
    who had already, on their own achievement,
    on their own initiative, a radio link with Budapest.
    So through Budapest, I got with my Polish town
    a Lvov connection in that time.
    Anyway, at that time we had Bucharest.
    Shortly after we had Ankara in Turkey.
    Shortly after, at the same year, probably till August,
    September, we had the contact already
    with Belgrade in Yugoslavia.
    And we used all those stations because, you must remember,
    Hungary was overrun not shortly after.
    I can't tell you 1940, which month it was.
    And then Bucharest was in danger as well.
    And we contacted-- we had a contact with Angers
    only through intermittent stations.
    Intermediate.
    Intermediate stations.
    And so once we knew that Budapest is in danger,
    we head to Bucharest.
    We go to Bucharest and Bucharest to Angers.
    Once Bucharest was in danger, we had the contact with Ankara,
    and through Ankara to Angers.
    And Belgrade for a certain time helped us quite a lot.
    There was also, for a short while, but never really used,
    Cairo.
    We had that contact as well.
    But this was never used for any, for the length of time.
    The most we used Ankara later on because the whole Europe
    was out.
    Germany overran all Europe, Yugoslavia as well--
    so Ankara, till the late autumn 1940,
    where after France, the Polish government settled in England.
    We achieved-- this was, I think, September.
    I'm not sure-- achieved a straight, direct contact
    with Great Britain, with England, with the Polish HQ.
    Why couldn't you go via Stockholm?
    Good question.
    We tried.
    We could never achieve it.
    Because of technical problems?
    Yes.
    What I learned after the war, Stockholm
    had a similar, a weak transceiver,
    weak transmitting power, and not a very selective, good receiver,
    which you have to have.
    If you want to have a good radio link with your agents
    in the terrain, somewhere in the world, your main point where you
    sit, like England for instance, you
    have to have powerful transmitters
    and excellent receivers.
    So you can-- the weakest get out from the air
    and between other noises.
    Stockholm had a weak one, similar to ours.
    And we never could achieve.
    That was the nearest one, of course, but we couldn't.
    Mind you, distance doesn't matter.
    The further the distance, probably
    easier to achieve communication than on a short distance.
    And that was my problem later on.
    See?
    Because later on I was created the chief
    of staff of signals in the HQ underground army signals.
    And I had to prepare the operational in case
    of a rising or something like that,
    so the commanding officer, army [INAUDIBLE],,
    could communicate with his points in Poland.
    But I'm running away, of course, ahead.
    So technically, a transmitter has
    a ground wave, which is a limited length, depending
    on the power, and a bouncing wave from the ionosphere
    somewhere, which--
    and that is a--
    very often, that at that time anyway--
    nowadays everything might be different.
    The ground wave ends, and the bouncing wave
    starts only a distance.
    There's a-- that distance, where you can't reach anything.
    So that's why I couldn't create, really, I
    couldn't get a good communication between, say,
    towns, which were 150, 200 kilometers.
    Are you all right?
    Yes.
    So 150, 200 kilometers, it was practically
    impossible to achieve.
    But I think I will come to that later on.
    So 1940, September I think, we got this direct contact
    with London.
    And of course, we ceased to use, or very little,
    the other stations, Ankara especially, later on.
    Well, the Germans were on our trail.
    We knew this was still the army was occupying.
    And the army has their own units,
    which listen to the enemy.
    So they found out that something is ticking in Warsaw.
    But the army equipment is not very, very good.
    It's just rough at that time, pre-war.
    So we found out that on the next road, that van stands there.
    And it's not soldiers.
    beginning they was acting soldiers here,
    but civilians looking around.
    And we found out they are Germans.
    And that-- [INAUDIBLE] something suspicious.
    Whenever we started sending telegrams-- in the beginning,
    we were quite generous.
    We could sit in the air for an hour.
    Of course, they were there.
    So I say, there was always an outlook from us.
    Whenever you see them, just signal to us, we stop.
    But shortly after, see, in the turn of '40, '41,
    this van disappeared.
    But when we started sending our messages,
    a slow flying airplane was circling over our heads,
    that part of Warsaw.
    We found out whenever we started he was there.
    But I'm coming back in the beginning,
    say, more or less June, July, 1940.
    I knew, spotting that van, that we can't sit in the open,
    in the house, because whoever walks in,
    he's just a sitting duck.
    So what can we do?
    I said to my superior and my friends who were with me,
    I said, look, we have to conceal that kind of thing,
    to make some kind of room, conceal, this sort of thing.
    Anyway, after lengthy deliberations,
    there was a garage under the house from which you
    can drive in from the garden--
    cement floor.
    I said, look, we will go under that cement floor.
    They looked me.
    They thought I'm mad.
    I said, no, you have to conceal it.
    The chap who owned that house was a mechanical--
    I think he only finished the polytechnic university.
    Anyway, well equipped for that kind of thing.
    So we knocked out a plate of cement, start with a spoon
    first, dug deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, under the house,
    under the foundations.
    We built up the foundations of the house.
    I later on called an architect friend of mine.
    He said, my word.
    If I would be here, I would run away.
    The whole house could have collapsed.
    You scraped out the concrete with a spoon?
    No, not this.
    The concrete wasn't knocked away.
    But then with the earth, we start from a spoon-- taken out,
    and then the bucket, and then the shovel.
    And in the end, under the house we
    built a little two rooms, where you can walk and stand.
    And you put the radio transmitter, transceiver there,
    and the operator.
    And the antenna in the chimney, up to the top and on the--
    how do you call it, crossbars on the top there, on the roof--
    Beams.
    Beams.
    Yes.
    Concealed somehow.
    But this is very--
    well, it sounds easy.
    It took a long time.
    But to dig out is easy, but how to conceal it?
    So if somebody walks in that part of the house,
    will not see the hole.
    And here there was quite ingenious,
    what this friend of mine did.
    That hole, he made a cement form, like a dish,
    deep pot, built in some main duct,
    of course, water, tubes, with a big cup.
    So it indicated.
    And it was covered with simple timber plank.
    If somebody opened it, it was like a main tap to the house,
    of water.
    But this was on special rollers.
    You just put the little needle somewhere,
    disconnected a little lock, and this whole thing rolled away.
    And the hole opened, and you just slid in and shut it
    after you.
    And this saved our life once.
    February the 3rd, I was in that house at that time.
    I did not need to be there, But I was.
    Is this 1941?
    '40.
    '41-- '41--
    April, '41.
    The outlook, suddenly Germans!
    You see?
    And the telegraph-- this was about 6 o'clock in the morning.
    Telegraph was already sitting down there
    to start a correspondence with England.
    But it was much before 6:00.
    So we all make a flutter.
    There was another concealed thing,
    but I'm not going into details.
    Like a flash, we were down there.
    And only one lady remained in the house, houseowner,
    registered.
    So they went.
    They ran around, not in our house immediately.
    But from that concealed spot under the ground
    there, I had, in the house microphones in all the door
    locks, behind the locks.
    In the frame, really.
    In the frame side.
    So when the Germans finally came in,
    I heard how they knocked-- how they talked on the entrance, how
    they talked into the room.
    I heard everything-- how they talk to that lady.
    But their main impact of looking or chasing or--
    I've lost the word at the moment.
    Searching.
    Searching-- that's the word.
    Yes.
    Searching-- went to the neighbor house.
    What I found later, that the head in between them
    in that whole group of commanding officers,
    there was one air force man.
    And he put his finger on that house.
    That means they had the measurement
    from that airplane flying.
    So beam here, this was about 100 yards, probably, away.
    And they made a mess in that house.
    But they were in our house.
    Luckily, this was February.
    And a few days before we were snowed down completely.
    Entrance to that derelict house, where the radio station was,
    from outside was completely snowed on.
    There was no mark or any footsteps.
    So they went through the neighboring house.
    And from the neighboring house, we
    had the concealed the entrance to that derelict
    house from inside.
    So we didn't need to go out.
    So they checked everything, even the locks.
    But they looked-- they have seen that open roof,
    look down, everything snow in the derelict house.
    They didn't go into it.
    This lasted till the late afternoon in that area.
    They were sitting.
    They were searching. they were--
    about-- I think it was about 6 o'clock again.
    And he's still sitting there and listening to England.
    He said-- and I was with him, and few old friend
    of mines in that thing, we were sitting all the time there.
    He said, Mr. Z, because I had the crypto name, that Zaremba,
    England is calling.
    I said, quiet.
    But in the same time, I got the message
    from that lady from upstairs through our internal intercom.
    The Germans are going into the vans and driving away.
    So I was young at that moment.
    Today I wouldn't do it probably.
    I said to him, look, they had excellent contacts.
    They were professionals here and there.
    I said just, ta-dat.
    By the tone of the voice, they knew who is calling.
    And he responded immediately.
    He said, I have for you 1,000 group of telegram.
    That means a long telegram.
    And I'm beginning.
    So he started receiving, not acting.
    Once he did that ta-ta-dat, to give a sign that he is here
    and I'm here, I'm ready to receive something,
    the message from that lady--
    the Germans are again-- they are like a thunder in them, you see?
    They were out immediately on the street.
    They might have been-- must have been listening still.
    And they thought that they must be--
    they were searching the whole day.
    They are going home.
    And those, if I may say such a bad word,
    so-and-so, they're out starting the radio.
    They were [INAUDIBLE] to shut down
    They searched again for a short while and gone.
    This was a big risk, of course, I made.
    But well--
    Why had you place the mics in the door frames originally?
    Was it for that particular purpose?
    Because I wanted to make--
    to have contact with the outside world once I'm cut off.
    All this was deliberate, quite deliberate.
    Which part of Warsaw was this in?
    We went into a suburb name, Zoliborz.
    It's a Z with a dot, O-L-I-B-O-R-Z.
    And Z with a dot is also zhed.
    It's confusing.
    Accession number 8838, roll number 5.
    Mr. Bogacki, reel 5.
    Did the fall of France in 1940 have much effect
    on your work or not?
    1940, it was, as far as I remember,
    about June or something-- mid-year at that time.
    So we already had an established link with the outside world
    from March 1940.
    As far as I remember, it was the 4th of March,
    we had our first connection with our embassy or consulate,
    whatever that was, in Budapest.
    And at that time, the Polish government in exile
    was in France in Algeria.
    We never got a straight link.
    No, the answer is rather no.
    The only thing which affected us was a psychological thing
    because we believed, the nation believed, every Pole
    believed that the Western powers, especially
    France, which was very much historically
    connected with Poland from before Napoleon, even,
    will resist.
    And the contrary, they fell probably quicker than--
    they just didn't want to fight.
    There were a few Polish divisions there as well,
    who were probably on the rear guard
    all the time, just defending the French from--
    and let them go away.
    This kind of thing I learned from my friends later on.
    So the effect was, as I said, slightly psychological,
    but has no effect on us at all.
    On the contrary, it made us more determined that we
    have to go on with our work.
    That's all.
    What was the policy of the Germans
    at that time of the occupation towards apprehending
    young men of military age like yourself on the street?
    Could you walk freely on the street?
    Or would they be very suspicious of young men of military age
    like yourself?
    Would they interrogate you?
    1939, '40, I-- yes, we could walk freely on the streets.
    Because there were many, many extra--
    they haven't imprisoned every soldier.
    On the contrary, they let them go home.
    They kept the officers or the other ranks in the POW camps
    and probably some quantity of ordinary soldiers.
    But whoever went home, they just have to be left alone.
    No, no, we could walk freely on that time
    at all, no interference.
    The only thing which--
    this was in autumn, October, I think, or the end of October--
    there was a-- they demanded by-- through a certain newspapers
    at that time or loudspeakers that all officers, professional
    or reserve, have to report at a certain day, a certain time
    to the unit so they could be recorded, something like that.
    And well, I did report.
    And when we were on this main place in Poland--
    was Kosciuszki Square--
    they asked from the hundreds of people there,
    all professionals, soldiers, come forward and come in.
    So I went in.
    And there were behind the desk a few German soldiers
    who just took note this.
    And they recorded all your names and this sort of thing.
    I told them everything--
    who I am, my rank, and my name, I
    said, except I gave them the wrong address, which
    saved my life, really-- not my life,
    but my whereabouts and my imprisonment later on.
    Because on the day of the beginning of November,
    one morning, a friend of mine came to me
    that there were arrests in the morning of other people
    who were with me at that time.
    But they gave the right address.
    They were taken prisoner of war.
    So that's the only one where they tried to eliminate us
    as much as they could from the Polish community
    the people who might be active, in their point of view.
    Which they succeeded in a certain way
    because they took away quite a lot of young men--
    intelligentsia and this sort of things.
    Otherwise, no, there was no harassment, really,
    in the beginning.
    Now I think you wanted to say something
    about the technical problems which you had
    in trying to cope with the new situation
    you found yourself in in the underground.
    Yes.
    From the beginning, I knew that there must--
    something must happen.
    But after the defeat in September 1939,
    that's not the end of the war.
    That's the beginning, surely.
    This was in my mind.
    Well, this sounds probably a little--
    but being brought up on Polish history--
    and I was born on the beginning of the century here,
    so this was all deep in our education.
    There were risings in the 19th century.
    There were some happenings at the end of the 18th century.
    Poland was fighting all the time against Russia, Prussia,
    and Austria at that time.
    So I had this kind of mindset that something must happen.
    I asked a professional signals officer, thought my way
    that something has to be done.
    And probably, there will be needed a link
    with the outside world.
    This was in my mind.
    So I gathered around me few young men, well-known to me
    and I well-known to them.
    Because I was in command of the last edition in the officer
    school, signals officer school, from 1937 to 1939.
    They just graduated their commission
    to sublieutenant in 1939--
    August.
    So when I met one in Warsaw, of course,
    I could freely talk to them what my intention is.
    And they believe me.
    And they gathered around me.
    There were few of them.
    And that was the beginning.
    And now, of course, the main problem
    was to find the equipment.
    I knew that I can't use a military equipment, which
    is bulky.
    And you can't walk with it or have it on a truck
    and go through Warsaw from place to place.
    This was impossible.
    But luckily, through some acquaintance, I learned--
    which I did not know before the war--
    that the Polish secret--
    military secret service was--
    has a connection with a electronic factory, who built--
    which built for them small units.
    At that time, this was already under German occupation.
    There was a so-called Treuhander or supervisor.
    But the old-- how do you--
    keeper-- doorkeeper or whatever, he was still employed by them.
    So I got contact to him.
    And I was let in some evening to the factory.
    And I found a few units there, quite in good, perfect order,
    which I took away.
    And that was the beginning of our unit, really,
    where we got the equipment-- the right equipment to start with.
    The next step of course, we had no experience at all
    with these kind of reflected waves connection
    or thousands of kilometers, this sort of thing.
    This wasn't our military aim.
    We've had a straight connection from the division
    to the regiment, this sort of thing, a few hundred
    meters or a few kilometers on this,
    straight on through a so-called ground waves.
    Well, to get, now, say, outside the 1,000 kilometers away,
    first, to get a correspondence working,
    you have to have a communication with them, establish signals.
    And at the time, signal-- that means a few letters and so on--
    and a certain time and the frequency--
    that's the three elements which could be only
    exchanged by a courier.
    At the beginning of 1940, I think
    it was January, the Polish commanding officer
    of the so-called underground movement on,
    at that time, the very nucleus of it,
    sent a courier to Budapest.
    And Budapest was, at that time, still a free country.
    Well, I think I told you already about this first connection
    with Budapest, exchange of elements, and so on.
    Now, my real problem was lack of experience, how to get over it,
    and how to find out about the movement of radio waves
    or reflected radio waves, which depend
    very much from the period of the year for the time of the day--
    is it midday or is it sunrise or sunset?
    They act completely different, which I learned later on.
    But I had nobody, really, to act--
    to ask about these things because this wasn't my line.
    I wasn't trained in that way.
    Of course, I had the theoretical certain knowledge
    because we were, in general, educated as far as the radio
    communication concerned.
    So I thought, the most safe one-- and this helped me, also,
    that I got a certain frequency quartz,
    which established the frequency of the amateur range,
    about 7,000 kilohertz.
    And the time, I thought, well, remembering, in the afternoon,
    sometimes before sunset.
    And this worked.
    So these difficulties, we had to overcome.
    Then, of course, we did not know how far
    does the groundwave goes from that little secret service
    apparatus.
    Because a groundwave helps to find out the units which want--
    goniometry units which want to--
    which can establish exactly the position.
    There were difficulties.
    And in 19-- end of that--
    I think I told you that already, when we established our place
    in one of the suburbs of Warsaw, we
    found out that the military goniometers were already
    around the corner.
    We easily could distinguish them.
    This was a military--
    some kind of car or caravan with little antennas and directory
    antennas trying to get it.
    But they were very primitive.
    Once we spotted them, we always stopped our correspondence.
    And then if I have mentioned, I don't remember--
    they made a more sophisticated approach by small,
    slow-running airplanes, like Cessna or something like that,
    at that time, over our place, which we found later on, when
    they surrounded us in the beginning of 1941 February--
    that there was a German, if I may say so,
    air force officer who was directing and indicating
    exactly the house, which wasn't ours.
    He made a mistake a few hundred yards or meters
    from us, which gave us a lot of breathing time
    and saved, probably, our lives.
    Although they looked through our house,
    but not so exactly as the other one, which they nearly
    stripped to piece, as far as decorations are concerned.
    This was a thing to find aerials or something.
    So these were the little difficulties in the beginning.
    But we went on.
    From that time, when we had this first attack by the Germans,
    as I mentioned, in February, we had to change our method.
    This was a stationary place, which, of course,
    I realize is wrong.
    Because once you are in one place,
    never move, and once you put the key--
    Morse key down, you are in the air,
    and indicating quite clearly to the enemy, here I am.
    So from that time, I introduced a correspondence
    by changing places in Warsaw and outside Warsaw.
    And of course, this could be-- could have been done only
    with the help of local underground units
    in the terrain, for which I had to go
    through the top of our organization to the terrain.
    And they had an order to help us to find the place,
    find the house.
    Because not every householder wanted
    to have strangers in their house because they
    were in danger, probably sometimes more than we were.
    We could run away, but they couldn't.
    And this happened later on in a few cases.
    They were arrested.
    And what happened to them, I don't know.
    So now, in this period of the first half of 1941,
    the Germans were making preparations to attack Russia,
    from--
    for which Poland was obviously going
    to be one of the launching pads.
    What-- did the invasion of Russia come as a surprise
    to you?
    Or had you seen any military signs
    of German military movements which
    might indicate that they were going
    to invade Russia beforehand?
    Oh, yes.
    Well, we have seen this colossal concentration movement.
    I had a very close contact with our underground secret service,
    which used our network to contact or report
    outside the world to the West--
    so England, France, and so on-- not France at that time, but it
    was after that.
    England knew exactly from us how the concentration looks like.
    I'm sure they had their own secret service there,
    of which we had no knowledge.
    But a lot of them went through our network.
    Yes, we knew about the concentration on the river Bug.
    This was on the borderline with Russia.
    The date, of course, was June 22.
    I think it was 1941.
    Well, we were really relieved because remembering
    the beginning, 17 of September, 1939,
    where Russia walked on our back, where we had to-- still fighting
    with the Germans in front, and they came with a knife
    on the back, as friends, they called,
    but they were shooting around.
    And even my close friend was killed there.
    And so 1941 was just a relief that these two friends now
    fight each other.
    And this goes off our back.
    Again, something must be good from that.
    So did the invasion of Russia have any material effect
    on the position of the Polish underground?
    What do you mean material?
    In what--
    Did they-- did it make things harder or easier for you?
    Oh, I would have thought rather--
    at the beginning, rather easier because all their effort,
    all their machinery was directed east.
    Even I would have thought the Gestapo--
    this sort of thing was there, they
    might look on us as on somebody who might try to disturb them.
    But I don't think there was such a thing
    because we were pleased that they are fighting the Russians.
    And they are losing their manpower.
    They are losing-- they are weakening
    their own military strength, the Germans,
    fighting with the Russians.
    This was good from the beginning.
    Later on, of course, we had-- when they went deep in Russia,
    and when our underground movement,
    especially the secret service and the terror movements--
    that's probably the right expression--
    which we had in our underground, who blew up the railway tracks
    or whatever, on--
    behind the German Army to help later on,
    this was on order from the West.
    Well, then, of course, they put their foot slightly down.
    People were hurt sometimes.
    But when the Germans, at first, seemed
    to have very great success against the Russians,
    did that worry you at all?
    No.
    No.
    Because, I mean, did you think that the Germans might
    have a very easy victory over Russia,
    and that that might make your position worse?
    Well, in the beginning, we were, as I say, rather pleased.
    But then we found out very shortly
    that Hitler made a political blunder.
    We knew that in the very beginning because--
    that you can't win that kind of thing.
    I tell you why.
    The German Army was greeted by the Russians, especially
    Belorussians, Ukrainians, which were just on the border with us,
    just the first one they came across--
    were suppressed by Stalin fantastically, the Ukrainians.
    They were just-- in millions were,
    by arranged hunger in the '30s.
    So they greeted the Germans.
    But the Germans neglected them, and suppressed them, and made--
    and forced them to fight the Germans again.
    So they turned against the Germans
    and rather went with the rest of Russia,
    which, of course, at that time, was
    pronounced as a patriotic war.
    So that was the blunder, of course.
    We knew that from the beginning.
    If he would have approached them friendly,
    he would have them on his side.
    He would have walked through.
    Well, we observed.
    That's all we could do at that time.
    It was 1941, mind you.
    I talk at the moment.
    This was a strong fight.
    They were-- of course, they're walking
    over the Russian Army, who just surrendered in hundreds
    of thousands at that time.
    We have seen them in camps in Poland, treated completely
    like animals by the Germans--
    not even under huts or under [INAUDIBLE],, in open--
    like cattle, just with barbed wire around.
    Did you actually see such a camp?
    Oh, yes, yes.
    It was in the east, slightly east from Warsaw, one of them.
    Did you have any contact with the inmates of the camps?
    Not me, no, I haven't.
    It wasn't my home.
    Were there any collaborators in the Polish population?
    Well, how could I answer that?
    Not in the extent like Scandinavian Quisling.
    No.
    There was nobody on a higher position who would collaborate--
    or like Pétain in Vichy or something like that, no.
    Collaborators on a scale of a street level,
    surely, there have been there.
    And I know, later on, where our commanding officer,
    the general, Grot-Rowecki, was arrested in 1943.
    He was just a Polish collaborator,
    given away to the Germans.
    Of course, we had to act very, very, very cautiously,
    especially in the signal, my unit.
    I separated as much as I could completely
    from the rest of the underground army.
    The only contact with the superiors in other departments,
    if I may say so, was through me personally
    or through the superior of mine.
    There's only one.
    And the only contact--
    sideways and through an intermediate--
    was with the ciphering unit, where
    we got the telegrams ciphered.
    That's all.
    And even-- and radio stations units,
    of which there were a few, which developed later on in battalion,
    they did not know one unit, which was a radio station
    and radio operator, little courier--
    little transport and outlook--
    was a compact unit.
    They did not know the other one, although they were in one unit.
    Now, did you have to take any measures
    against any degree of collaboration
    amongst the population to try to discourage collaboration?
    Well, it's as a general question, not to me--
    Yes.
    --because this wasn't my--
    my objective was to transfer news in the outside the world.
    Yes, there were measures.
    There were certain-- there were jury--
    how do you call it--
    Trials?
    --trials, courts.
    And the people were put--
    what's the word in--
    Executed?
    Well, executed as well, yes.
    Yes.
    Did you personally come across that type of thing?
    Not personally, no.
    This-- we were, as I say, on the sideline.
    I knew because I had contact with other chiefs
    of departments.
    So of course, I knew about this whole thing.
    And I was invited to a conference,
    but not-- never involved in that kind of things
    because we would be against the secret of my unit.
    Because one had to remember--
    keep in mind, once arrested, your resistance to torture--
    human resistance torture is limited.
    And I never blamed anybody of my, later on,
    who gave away something.
    That's why.
    He was-- he knew only that what he was essentially--
    should essentially know, nothing more.
    See, he didn't know where I live.
    He didn't know what I'm doing.
    Some of them knew me before the war.
    They knew my name.
    That's why I showed you that thing.
    That's what they learned about my name, the German SS.
    This is a sheet that you showed me that you obtained a copy of--
    That's right.
    --in which the Germans had a breakdown of your organization.
    There was a breakdown not far-- in Lublin, south of--
    they caught quite a lot from the whole organization,
    including some signalmen.
    And of course, they were tortured there.
    And they gave them my crypto name and my name.
    That's all.
    The only thing is my Christian name is wrong there
    because they came to that-- into that Christian name
    because I had, in between school times,
    I had my nickname, to quote [? Mundich. ?]
    And they thought I am Edmund.
    I wasn't, of course.
    That's why there's Edmund there.
    So that's the way they arrived.
    Otherwise, I never--
    I was against involvement of any signalmen in anything else.
    But his work of transforming-- transferring telegrams outside,
    that's all he had to do.
    Once I was-- there were a few in items
    that they were involved in some other things due to patriotism
    or something like that.
    I said, or-or-- or you go there, and you
    want to shoot people, and blow up railways, you go.
    But you are not the signal.
    Did you lose people because they wanted to conduct sabotage?
    Not me, personally, but in our unit.
    Because there were a few departments in our signals.
    There was the correspondence unit,
    there were operational units, there was an educational unit,
    there were other things there.
    Yes, some of them were involved in this whole thing
    and later caught by the Germans and shot.
    But I disconnected this immediately
    from our corresponding-- correspondence.
    How many men were you in command of personally?
    Well it depends from which period.
    That is of the very beginning we started, very few.
    There were probably four or five when
    we started our correspondence in March 1940.
    This developed slowly.
    And in 1943, December, which I tell you later,
    I ceased to operate personally because I was taken prisoner.
    There were already-- we called three companies.
    I couldn't tell you, really, the number of people involved.
    I could only tell you in what region--
    in what capacity they were working.
    There was a battalion, a radio battalion called in that time.
    But I'm jumping, of course, at the moment forth.
    One was with the correspondence outside the world.
    There were a few units, the platoons, they were called.
    There were two or three stations with five or six people in it,
    platoons, but never connected in between with the outside world.
    There was another company which was involved only
    to receive telegrams from outside, to communicate the West
    or send meteorological elements of news connected
    with the airplanes which flew to us
    and dropped material and people.
    And then we had the third unit, which
    I organized, just in the end of late autumn 1943, which--
    [AUDIO OUT]
    838, roll number 6.
    Mr. Bogacki, reel 6.
    Well, as I said, the third unit of that signals battalion,
    the underground movement in Warsaw,
    was created for a purpose of training signal
    personnel attached to the units all over Poland.
    Because at that time, preparing, as I said,
    dossier for the eventual rising against the Germans.
    I came to the conclusion that it's
    impossible to have a central signals unit next
    to the commanding officer of the Polish underground movement,
    which the Germans would discover immediately once we all
    start pressing our keys.
    So we ask London, could they organize big transmitters
    and receivers, a big unit, intermittent unit,
    which would receive our telegrams,
    and send them immediately to the addressee
    in a different place in Poland?
    And because we had not many experienced telegraphists
    in the terrain--
    although, at that time, 1943, quite a few were already
    dropped to us from England.
    I sent from my central unit to each military unit
    in the terrain one fully-trained instructor with the equipment,
    who trained the other-- the local ones, radio telegraphists,
    and was helping the local commanding officer to keep
    link--
    radio link with the commanding officer in Warsaw
    through London.
    This worked all the time to the end of the war.
    And this intermittent link helped very much,
    all moving units in the partisans and everywhere.
    Because there are certain radio intricacies,
    as far as the deflected or reflected waves are concerned.
    They start from a certain distance,
    and then you have a dead distance,
    where the reflected wave jumps further.
    And if you are with your radio station in that dead distance,
    you can't have any link.
    But on a long distance, like 1,500 miles, more or less,
    from here to London, this didn't matter at all.
    And that's why the link was a good and perfect one--
    and permanent one.
    And this was the unit which those instructors sent
    in the terrain, was the third unit, called Omnibus, which
    was a part of the radio battalion in Warsaw.
    So we equipped-- when the Warsaw rising, in the end,
    and the whole fight against the Germans,
    retreating Germans in 1944--
    the commanding officer had a really good connection
    with all the units in terrain.
    And he knew what was happening.
    And he could give orders and receive information that way--
    not to mention the secret service,
    which could, from the terrain, send information
    not only to the commanding officer in Warsaw,
    but also to the Allies in the West,
    as far as the German movements are concerned.
    Now, can we pick up the narrative
    where we left off in 1941?
    And can you tell me how your work
    developed over the period of the later parts of 1941 and '42?
    So coming back to 1941, after we were surrounded and found out
    by the Germans-- but they did not found the radio station,
    neither there were any losses--
    I came to the conclusion and I realized
    that static position of the radio station,
    which from '40 to '41, was in one place in Warsaw
    in the suburb is no solution, is no safe way of keeping
    correspondence because they found us out already,
    and we have to.
    So I said to myself, the only way we have to do
    is go in the terrain, send the telegram, pack up, and go away.
    So half an hour, and go away.
    But easy to said, but not so easy done.
    Because you had to convince strange people somewhere
    in the suburbs or even further from Warsaw
    to let strange people with something in there.
    And they knew that something dangerous.
    They didn't know what they were talking about,
    but what the Germans might object to it.
    But to get cooperation, I asked the commanding officer,
    and through him, went an order to the commanding
    units in the terrain so they should give us help.
    So before we went somewhere-- into a village or a small town--
    a request went in advance that we
    want a room with this kind of facilities and a good outlook.
    Because there always was outlook around there,
    if somebody approached in a car or walked suspiciously
    from, say, 500 meters or something like that--
    or a kilometer, and gave us a signal, visual, or some other
    so we could pack up and go.
    So there were the difficulties.
    But from that time, we had no interference from the Germans.
    Well, the next thing with that kind of system
    was to move the equipment.
    Although this wasn't a big equipment,
    it could be taken in a briefcase or in a bigger briefcase.
    But still, the Germans at that time, from time to time,
    bounced on buses and trains and checked
    people, whatever they were carrying,
    because it was forbidden to go outside Warsaw,
    for instance, to the peasants or--
    and to bring food into it.
    This was forbidden.
    And if somebody was caught and had,
    for instance, meat under his overcoat or something
    like that, he could land in the concentration camp.
    But looking after the meat, they might easily find my equipment.
    So this was a certain problem to move the equipment from place
    to place and so on.
    And all this was done, again, through the local organization,
    who knew how to move around, who were known there.
    Because all strange faces always created a certain suspicion,
    although they were Poles and Poles.