Warsaw Boy by Andrew Borowiec

A Memoir of a Wartime Childhood. First published 2014.

Dedication: For all the Warsaw boys - especially the ones who never grew up.

Note: I wrote this review in 2017, but somehow it got stuck in Drafts, maybe because it looks unfinished...

This book is a mixture of personal stories and a commentary written with the current knowledge of world history. The personal touch is very valuable. It shows the events, how they looked like on the ground.

The story starts before the war when Andrew was a young boy living with his father, a Polish army officer, and a governess in Kielce. We follow him to Cracow (Kraków) and then, through the September 1939 campaign in Lviv (Lwów), when the city defended itself from a German onslaught only to surrender to the Soviet army.

"On 18 September, the day after the Soviet intervention, the Luftwaffe littered the city with thousands of leaflets urging our garrison to surrender. Simultaneously, the commander of a Russian armoured brigade was busy telling a Polish envoy that the Red Army were there to fight the Germans and, in order to do so, required unhindered passage into Lwów. This, of course, was an enormous lie."

Later, he escapes from the Soviet annexed Lviv to General Government, a German administered area for Poles. The Soviets and Nazis were allowing limited population exchange, but his governess had to lie about his identity to be let go - she said he was a child of Volksdeutsche parents, who sent him with her to Lviv for safety.

He is an eye-witness to the deportation of Polish Jews from Maków on 23 August 1942:

"[...] overnight Maków had been disfigured by a rash of printed wall posters. In German and Polish they ordered the entire Jewish population to assemble in the grounds of a sawmill near the railway station. Failure to report for Umsiedlung (resettlement) was punishable by death."

"[...] these men, women and children living alongside us had, with sullen acquiescence, assembled to start a foul journey towards an uncertain fate without a word of protest from themselves or anybody else. It was as if we all somehow accepted that the Germans had some unchallangeable right to do this. [...] I felt ashamed."

And speaking with his father afterwards:

"'We could have worked together -' I began.
'Don't you think there were efforts to organize joint resistance? Do you think you're the only one who ever had the idea? All kinds of approaches were tried. But the elders of their community, those in the long black coats and with the pejsy, were against it. 'Let us be patient and God will reward us,' they were saying. Their people should tear them apart.'"

Andrew took part in the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944. In the days before the uprising:

"[...] for several days now we had also been hearing comforting rumble of distant artillery as the Red Army and Wehrmacht exchanged fire outside Praga". 

Praga is the collective name of Warsaw districts on the right side of the Vistula river.

"'No doubt Warsaw already hears the sounds of the battle which is soon to bring her liberation,' cooed the broadcaster from the Union of Polish Patriots, the Communist front organisation that had set up shop in Lublin. 'Let those who have never bowed their heads to Hitlerite power join us for the decisive action.'"

"But the Germans were also reminding the Poles of old battles and pleading a common cause. Warsaw Governor Ludwig Fischer, who earlier in the year had narrowly escaped an attempted assassination for the many executions he had ordered, had announced the call-up of all males [...] to help dig a deep anti-tank ditch build other fortifications [...]. 'Just as it did in 1920, Warsaw will defend itself and defeat the Bolshevik enemy,'"

He describes the ill-executed start of the uprising, which took away the advantage of a surprise.

Where he was not a witness himself, Andrew includes eye-witness accounts of other people, like Wanda Lurie, who survived Wola massacre - the killing of 40-50 thousand civilians in just 7 days of August 1944:

"I came last and kept in the background, continuing to let the others pass, in the hope that they would not kill a pregnant woman, but I was driven in with the last lot. In the yard I saw heaps of corpses three feet high, in several places. [...] There were about twenty people in our group, mostly children of ten to twelve. [...] They were all killed. [...]"

The order to kill all was executed mainly by two groups of low-life scum, counting together about 2500 men: Oskar Dirlewanger's German and Volksdeutsche criminals, and Bronislaw Kaminski's RONA - Russian National Liberation Army - Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks and Turkic-speaking Soviet soldiers recruited from German prisoner of war camps.

The Germans also used Polish women and children as human shields on tanks and barricades:

"With our backs turned to the insurgents we knelt or crouched and the Germans placed themselves on the ground behind us, or knelt on one knee, firing over our heads. [...]".

Europe Trip 2025 - Warsaw - Things to Do - Part 2

National Museum of Technology

An old technology museum located in the Palace of Culture - entry from the south-west corner. I visited it many times as a kid, and now it has many things I had at home as a kid. 

Pre-war poster "All of Poland listens to the radio" - the interesting thing is that the spelling of the word "radio" changed.

This little red TV was my first computer monitor connected to ZX Spectrum.

I had a Kasprzak tape player like the three here. I used it to load and save my ZX Spectrum programs.

This was our TV.

I slept on a folding bed like this one... with my brother.

My first car. The little one.

The frunk could hold one suitcase.

I didn't have this little tank. The Polish Army had hundreds of them, in 1939.

The general vibe of this museum.

Polish Army Museum

This museum moved from the location near the Poniatowski bridge to Warsaw Citadel. I looked at the outdoor exhibits only, this time, which were mostly tanks, troop carriers, artillery. The planes were still being moved from the old location and were behind a fence. The labels on the outdoor exhibits were only in Polish, so I would consider it not ready yet for foreign visitors.

The rusty red museum pavilion "South". Pavilion "North" is not built yet.

I saw this type of troop carrier in the streets in December 1981 when martial law was introduced in Poland.

This was an improved (larger gun) war-era T-34.

This looks like tank destroyer ISU-152.

Self-propelled howitzer 2S1-Gvozdika.

This was a post-war T-34.

I think this was the original T-34.

The Royal Castle Museum

I was disappointed with this one. It could be so much better. There are many fascinating stories to tell that the museum is not telling: why the capital of Poland was moved from Kraków to Warsaw, how come the castle looks like buildings in Sweden, why does it look very different from the Vistula side, how many times was the Sigismund column destroyed, the story of the Constitution of 3 May 1791, what role it played in September 1939, why was it rebuilt so late, why it doesn't look like before it was blown up. Instead, we are getting a series of mostly boring rooms. My English speaking guests said that the audio guide content was also very bad compared to the one they had at Malbork Castle. It's expensive too. I would probably go again only on the free entry day - most public museums in Poland have one day a week when entry is free.

The western side.

The southern side.

The throne room.

Chopin Concert in the Royal Łazienki Park

Two free concerts every Sunday in Summer. Come early to get a good seat. Don't except any known pieces. Every concert is performed by someone else and it's up to them what they play. In our case, the artist decided not to play any of the known pieces, so you've been warned. You may be able to check the program before the event using the link above. Still worth it. I appreciate Chopin more the older I get.

Europe Trip 2025 - Warsaw - Things to Do - Part 1

Night at The Institute of Aviation 

A once in a year event. Hands-on experiences, like controlling a wheeled robot, a chance to see some planes from up close, a chance to meet interesting people, like the second Polish astronaut. Free entrance. Lots of people. Cold October night.

Kolejkowo

A chain of private model city/model train exhibitions. Each one is different - it showcases the local city/region. There is day/night change and some weather. Hands-on experiences: there are buttons that control some scenes. Paid entrance. Interesting, also for adults. 

The Royal Castle is rotated 90 degrees.

Grodzisk Mazowiecki train station.

"Tęsknię za tobą Żydzie" means "I miss you, Jew".

Push the button to run the ski lift.

Warsaw Rising Museum 

The museum of the August 1944 uprising. There were two uprisings in Warsaw in WW2. The first one was in 1943 and it is documented in Polin - Museum of the History of Polish Jews. The uprising museum home is not purpose built, but is a former tram power station, and therefore is quite confusing inside. There are plans to expand it, so hopefully it will get easier to navigate.

The person who posed for the Warsaw Marmaid monument - Krystyna Krahelska took part in the uprising as a field nurse and was killed.

The uprising was started to take Warsaw before the Soviets. With hindsight, a terrible mistake that cost about 170,000 Polish lives mostly through acts of despicable cruelty. The 19-25 August uprising in Paris, happening at the same time, in similar circumstances (allies advancing, Germans retreating), succeeded. Stalin stopped the advance towards Warsaw after reaching the outskirts of the city on August the 2nd, and started an offensive in Romania on August the 20th, entering Bucharest on 31st of August. The uprising in Warsaw lasted from 1st of August to 2nd of October. Afterwards, Germans started to systematically destroy Warsaw. When the Red Army entered the left-bank of the city on 17th of January 1945, among ruins lived only a few thousand people. Overall, from the 1.3 million people who lived in Warsaw in September 1939, about half were killed.

The "W" hour.

A replica of a Liberator plane. Such planes were dropping supplies for the uprising.

A map of the area controlled by the insurgents. Stalin did not allow western planes to land.

Whenever you read about wars, remember that "The first casualty of war is the truth". German Nazi propaganda was extraordinary from the start: painting Hitler as a man of peace, blaming Poland for attacking Germany, setting the occupied people against one another. Deceiving Jews with promises of resettlement in the east, so they would get on the trains without fighting, promising freedom through work ("Arbeit Macht Frei") at the entrance to a concentration camp, and ultimately disguising the gas chambers as showers. This time I noticed a couple of German posters written in Polish only, aimed at convincing Poles to volunteer for work in Germany, and showing a German soldier as a defender of Poles:

Top: "We are going to Germany". Bottom: "Polish women and girls on the way to work in Germany. Their joyful wait won't be disappointed" - yes, it sounds broken in Polish too.

"He defends You and your possessions!"

And at the same time if anyone attacked Germans, they would use the principle of group responsibility and shoot anywhere from 10 to 40? Poles for each German killed:

An announcement that 140 Poles, members of PZP (Polski Związek Powstańczy, another name of Home Army) and PPR (Polska Partia Robotnicza - Polish Workers Party) who were supposed to be freed, are instead going to be publicly executed, because of the 12 "dishonourable and insidious" attacks on Germans and their collaborators between 1 and 11 of March 1944 in which 4 Germans were killed, 9 injured and robbed, and 2 Poles working for Germans were injured and robbed.

Meanwhile, the Polish underground showed Germans as apes, black claws/death, and Polish women who went out with German soldiers as pigs:

Big German ape painting the V for victory. I remember the photographs with a big V standing next to the Warsaw Main train station.

A skull in German helmet taking the industrial output, the bags of flour and sugar, the Catholic cross, and leaving people hanging.

This rhymes in Polish: "In the streets of Warsaw, krauts walk with pigs!!!"

Two more interesting artefacts:

The highlighted section of the underground newspaper "Biuletyn informacyjny" from 17 August 1944 says "Under the pressure of bigger German and Ukrainian infantry units, supported by tanks [...]". There is a whole Wikipedia article about participation of Ukrainians.

This is a pamphlet in Polish by General Berling - the commander of the Polish Army in Russia (the second one, the first one by General Anders was not communist, and evacuated to Iran and later to Palestine). It is interesting for two reasons: it says the Home Army is paid by Germans ("hitlerites") - if anyone had any doubts how Stalin would treat the uprising by the Home Army, it adds "Death to fascists!" immediately after that, and second, it uses the word "Russia", not "Soviet Union". The "Biuletyn informacyjny" does the same in the subtitle in the lower right corner: "Military cooperation with Russians". This matches how my grandfather spoke about the war: there were Russians and Germans, not Soviets and Nazis. I never heard "Nazis" used in Polish. The word exists - "naziści", but communists used "hitlerites", or "fascists", and regular people, like my grandfather just said "Germans". Nothing in life is simple: Berling's daughter was serving in the Home Army during the uprising as a nurse.