Sergiusz's family: wife Weronika, son Andrzej and mother Margarita. Vilnius, 1945

Memories of Sergiusz.

Sergiusz was supposed to set off with Basia and Igor from Warsaw to Vilnius on 27 or 28 December 1939. Basia, aged 22, had no family in Warsaw, and her fiancé was in Vilnius with his parents. I was supposed to stay. I lived with my mother-in-law on Wiejska Street, worked in the Ziemiańska confectionery on the first floor, as a waitress, with the team from the former Qui-Pro-Quo, where my father was the manager of the confectionery, as the former director of Qui-Pro-Quo. On 26 December, my mother-in-law, Basia and Sergiusz came to the confectionery. We returned home to Wiejska Street together, Sergiusz was supposed to spend the night with us, Basia came to discuss the final preparations for the trip. I was supposed to stay because I already knew that my husband, Wacław, was in Kaunas, in the camp, had contacted Zaleski and was supposed to leave for France. Actually, he was not in the camp at that time, but in Kaunas itself, waiting for a plane to France. Naturally, we wrote to each other in code: so, he wrote to me that he had had a series of hemorrhages, that they recommended Switzerland, where, through Zeta, he would go. I knew that he was healthy, he was young (32 years old), well-built and I was completely calm, because he had left Warsaw in good health. When we were going through the gate, I saw a letter in our mailbox. I told everyone to go to the apartment and that I would take the letter out and come right away. The letter was from my friend from the boarding school, a very even-tempered girl. He was from Kaunas. I read the letter while I was still at the gate. She wrote to me that she had met Wacław in Kaunas, that he was seriously ill, completely broken, that he was afraid for me and was writing to me not to go to Kaunas, because the winter was very hard and I was in poor health, but that if I saw him, I would come immediately. She finished by writing: "forgive me this strange letter, but I considered it my duty". When I got home, I only said that I was going with Basia and Sergiusz. Because of this, the departure was delayed by one day. I had to inform my father, who asked me to go when Sergiusz next returned. Nothing changed my decision. Wacław's mother gave me her engagement ring, so that I could sell it there, on the spot, to save Wacław. Wacław's mother was very close to me, we loved each other sincerely, nothing divided us, we were united by our love for Wacław. She was very upset that I had to go, but she knew she would do the same and she resigned herself to the thought that she would be alone for a while. (Wacław wrote to us not to go to Lithuania because Zet would send us visas.) On December 29, at dusk, loaded like ungodly creatures, we boarded a train to Małkinia at the Vilnius or Eastern station. Sergiusz and Igor had lots of razor blades to trade – apparently they used this as a pretext for their journeys back and forth on the Vilnius-Warsaw route. Basia and I didn’t carry anything to trade, we only had a few clothes with us. I had lots of photographs and letters – very valuable things for me. We reached Małkinia late in the evening. The severe frosts that were characteristic of this winter were already beginning. Sergiusz took the lead of our expedition. When we arrived at Małkinia, he told us to get off and walk under the carriages, diagonally across the station, to find ourselves outside the station itself, by the field. I will never forget this fear of walking under the wagons, hoping that none of the wagons would move. As if in a dream, we crossed this road and found ourselves by the field, there was a lot of snow, few bushes. We had to walk about a kilometer to the cottages looming in the distance. We were walking quickly, suddenly we heard behind us: Halt! and shots. We fell, got up, started moving again, fell, got up, shots rang out. We reached some barn and climbed up the ladder. There we sat quietly, just wrapped ourselves in straw. After a while, some German voices, then everything fell silent. But for a very long time we were silent in fear. Suddenly in the night we heard... the bleating of a sheep or ram, which was downstairs. At first, some voice, so some fear, but then, we simply started laughing. When it got light, Sergiusz went downstairs and after a while he came for us, because he had arranged that during the day we would be in some cottage with a farmer who would keep us and take us to the border at night. The cottage had two rooms, a kitchen and a room, where we made ourselves comfortable. There were two beds, Sergiusz and Igor went to sleep in one, Basia and I in the other. We washed ourselves first, were given tea, we had our supplies, we ate and thought that the worst was behind us. We did not leave the cottage, probably to the so-called "slavojka". Basia and I were there when the farmer started to call us quietly. He told us that there was a German patrol in the cottage, that they were in the kitchen, where his wife was treating them to vodka, and he led us backwards to the room, where the boys were already sitting in silence, and we, after hiding money and small valuables in a straw mattress, also lay down. After an hour or so, quite unpleasant, the host came and said,