(Kazimiera Mika, a 12 year old
Polish girl, mourns the death of her older sister Andzia (14 years old), who
was killed in a field near Jana Ostroroga Street in Warsaw, Poland during a
German air raid by Luftwaffe.)
Photographer Julien Bryan
described the scene: "As we drove by a small field at the edge of town we
were just a few minutes too late to witness a tragic event, the most incredible
of all. Seven women had been digging potatoes in a field. There was no flour in
their district, and they were desperate for food. Suddenly two German planes
appeared from nowhere and dropped two bombs only two hundred yards away on a
small home. Two women in the house were killed. The potato diggers dropped flat
upon the ground, hoping to be unnoticed. After the bombers had gone, the women
returned to their work. They had to have food.
But the Nazi fliers were not
satisfied with their work. In a few minutes they came back and swooped down to
within two hundred feet of the ground, this time raking the field with
machine-gun fire. Two of the seven women were killed. The other five escaped
somehow. While I was photographing the
bodies, a little ten-year old girl came running up and stood transfixed by one
of the dead. The woman was her older sister. The child had never before seen
death and couldn't understand why her sister would not speak to her... The child looked at us in bewilderment. I
threw my arm about her and held her tightly, trying to comfort her. She cried.
So did I and the two Polish officers who were with me..."
In September 1959 Julien Bryan
wrote more about it in Look magazine: In
the offices of the Express, that child, Kazimiera Mika, now 30, and I were
reunited. I asked her if she remembered anything of that tragic day in the
potato field. "I should," she replied quietly. "It was the day I
lost my sister, the day I first saw death, and the first time I met a foreigner
- you." Today, Kazimiera is married to a Warsaw streetcar motorman. They
have a 12-year-old girl and a boy, 9, and the family lives in a 1 1/2-room
apartment, typical of the overcrowded conditions of war-racked Poland. She is a
charwoman at a medical school (she told me her biggest regret is that her
education ended when the war began), and all of the $75 earned each month by
her husband and herself goes for food. Kazimiera and her husband, like most
Poles, supplement their income with odd jobs, and are sometimes forced to sell
a piece of furniture for extra money. But they celebrated my visit to their
home with that rare treat, a dinner with meat.
Back Story:
On September 13, 1939, the
weather in Warsaw was extremely good. The blue sky, almost without a single
cloud, was lit by the warm sun. Seven women were digging potatoes in a field
near the peasant cottage. They worked efficiently and quickly, not paying
attention to the surroundings, only from time to time one of them looked at the
sky. Nearby, at the junction of Jana Ostronoga and Tatarska streets, a car
parked, whose body was supported by a Polish officer in uniform. Together with
the driver sitting in the vehicle, they watched the man in the bright suit who
photographed the working women. Suddenly there was a moaning over their heads,
two planes with black crosses on their wings appeared above the plot and the
cottage. When the air broke the bang of the first bomb, the officer rushed
towards the photographer, calling for him to get into the car waiting with the
engine on. The man, however, still tinkered with his camera.
Women, like frightened sparrows,
scattered around the plot and fell between the bushes, and two of them ran into
the cottage. One of the bombs thrown by German planes collapsed part of the
building from which 14-year-old Andzia Kostewicz ran out and fell into the
grass hiding from the attackers.
After bombing the area, the
planes began to move away. The Polish officer managed to pack his charge in a
car that started to leave the threatened area. The man in the bright suit
looked toward the plot of land where human figures were slowly rising from the
ground. Then one of the Luftwaffe machines made a turn through the wing and
again fell on defenseless women, the dull, deaf sound of on-board cannons heard
in the area. The men in the vehicle could hear him well and the photographer
saw bullets cut into the air, the plane threw a fragmentation bomb at civilians
that exploded in the middle of the meadow. 14-year-old Andzia managed to press
her hands to her wounds before she fell dead in the grass ...
Andzia and Kazimiera loved each
other very much and were closely connected. In total, there were seven siblings
at home, the youngest brother Tadzio in September 1939 was 3 months old. The
family struggled to make ends meet, the father was unemployed and only the
mother had a job. As Kazimiera recalls: "When mother helped me, we did not
starve because she brought soups and bread every day." The older sister
was very ambitious, she studied well and wanted to get an education. When she
finished 7th grade, it turned out that unfortunately she had no money to buy
her layette for further study. Andzia, without saying a word to anyone, wrote a
letter to the editor of the Kurier newspaper, waiting for an answer, every day
she asked her mother for 5 groszy to buy a copy of the newspaper. Sometimes
there were not even five pennies, then the girl cried and no one knew why.
Finally she read about herself in one of the issues. Her sister, Kazimiera Mika
née Kostewicz, described the moment at the IPN exhibition devoted to
photographs of Julien Bryan: "But when I look at that photo from September
14, 1939, I still can't speak. I can only shake and think about how ambitious
Andzia was, as she wrote to" Kurier "that she wants to learn, but
there are no books , how happy she was when they wrote that she would get them
and how she didn't [...] started clapping her hands: "There it is!"
And there the editor replies: "Ania don't worry. You will get clothes, you
will get books. You will get a job. " Unfortunately, Adolf Hitler had
other plans and Ania did not sit on the school bench anymore.
When the war broke out,
Kostewicze lived in a small apartment in Powązki, 35 sq m, and shared it with
another family to reduce fees. In total, 13 people lived in such a small space,
one room and a blind kitchen. Already during the first bombings, the house in
which the apartment was located completely burned down. The family was forced
to seek shelter with friends on Okopowa, Andzia had moved to her father's Aunt
earlier on Will.
While the German ring was
tightening around the capital, there was less and less food to eat in the city
and people were starving. Kazimiera's mother knew a man named Lejman, who lived
in a cottage on Tatarska Street, he also had a small plot there. For a small
fee, he allowed people to harvest potatoes, cabbage and onions. On this unlucky
Wednesday, September 13, Andzia, together with her aunt and parents, went to
gather potatoes. Working women were photographed by American war correspondent
Julien Bryan, the only foreign reporter who was in besieged Warsaw. When German
planes attacked, people tried to seek shelter wherever possible. Ania and her
aunt ran into the host's cottage, but the German bomb collapsed, covering an
older woman. As it turned out later, the aunt of girls was not even scratched.
Ania managed to get out of the building and run into the field. Planes quilted
every now and then by shooting at civilians and throwing shrapnel bombs on
them. Her younger sister, today mother and grandmother, remembers with emotion:
"Unfortunately, the weather was nice. The Germans started bombing [...]
And Andzia jumped out and lay down in the field. The planes flew very low. They
threw spray bombs and shot from machine guns. Andzia got a bullet, here, in the
neck, in the spine And shrapnel stuck her shoulder blade. " The rest of
the people in the field scattered in panic. The father, who was also at
Lejman's, took refuge in a punched hole in the wall of the Protestant cemetery
at the corner of Młynarska and Obozowa. There, his mother found him and noticed
that he was wounded in the hand, the man was shocked and did not realize it. It
was only when his wife lifted the man's hand pierced through that that he lost
consciousness. During the attempted transport of the wounded by a cab, planes
came again and one of the bombs killed the cab driver and the horse. The
explosion ejected Andzi's mother, who started to run away in shock.
At that time, the six children of
the Kostewicz family were in a basement, in a makeshift shelter. There they
heard from the radio that Andzia Kostewicz, 14, was killed. During the
September fights, most of the children in Warsaw had a piece of material on
their chest with their name, surname, age and address. So when a child died, this
information was given over the radio. The mother of waiting for her parents and
terrified children recovered from shock only on the morning of September 14.
When she returned to the basement and found out about the death of her
daughter, she wanted to go back for her body. The children, however, no longer
let her go, begged her to stay. Both the woman and the children knew that she
could die, and then they would be left alone. However, Kazimiera decided to
find her beloved sister and ran to Lejman's house. She saw her lying in the
field and ran to her body not fully understanding what had happened. There was
also Bryan, who had photographed the potato harvesting scene the day before. It
was then that he took a series of photos that was to show the world the true
face of German aggression against Poland. Later he remembered this moment: "When
I photographed the bodies, a small ten-year-old girl (later it turned out that
Kazimiera was 12 years old) the girl ran up and froze near one of the bodies.
The woman was her older sister. The child never saw death and could not
understand why her sister did not see her "The child looked at us in
confusion. I put my arm around her and squeezed her hard, trying to comfort
her. She was crying. Like me and two Polish officers who were with me."
Kazimiera was shocked to remember
very little about that event, as she says: "I found no one with Andzi.
Then Bryan came. He had to be the day before, because the women were digging
potatoes in the pictures. I cried terribly. And he hugged me and said
something. It was only in the film that I saw that two men were leading me that
they were there women. I didn't see it and I don't remember. Then I ran home in
fear because everything was burning. " The children and their mother found
their father, it turned out that he survived and was taken to the hospital in
Płock. A seriously injured man had infections several times and had to be
operated three times. He managed to survive the fights of September and the
entire occupation after all. Only Andzia and the youngest Tadzio were killed
from the whole Kostewicz family. "Tadzio was so hungry that he sucked
blood from his mother's breast. He died in 1940. He was a year and a half. He
got such stains from coffee and wholemeal bread ... [...] I was a dunce, and
God gave me the longest life of my siblings. I have 85.5 years, four
grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. And this field, where they killed
Andzia, is so far. "Kazimiera remembered in 2013.
Photographer who is the author of
photos also deserves attention here. Without his testimony, these tragic events
would have gone unnoticed like many other similar events of the defensive war.
Julien Bryan was an American war correspondent, though he never described
himself that way. He used to say that he was a peace time reporter, a person
whose job was to photograph people, not bombs. His shots are distinguished by
an amazing personalization of tragic moments. Maybe that's why they interact so
intensively. Bryan, who was already in Poland in 1936, felt a great liking for
our country. When the war broke out, he arrived on 7 September from Romania by
the last train that entered Warsaw. He reported to the city president Stefan
Starzyński and asked for permission to document the fights. He agreed and gave
him a car and two officers to help. The latter often had to intervene because a
foreigner with a camera aroused suspicion or even extreme emotions in people.
However, Bryan was not discouraged, he photographed preparations for the
defense of the city, the construction of barricades and fortifications. When
the first German attack on the city was repelled on September 8, he documented
the fighting. When the city was completely besieged and cut off, Julien gave a
moving speech on shortwave radio.
"Mr. President Roosevelt and
the American people! Listen to my story and those who hear it write word for
word. I speak from the besieged city of Warsaw. My name is Bryan, Julien Bryan,
American photographer. There are forty-two Americans here. Nine consulate employees
of the United States remained bravely in their positions to protect the lives
of the remaining thirty-three American citizens who stayed in Warsaw. [...]
America must begin to act. It must demand the cessation of this most horrible
murder of people in modern times. The 100 millionth American nation! We ask you
in the name of honesty , justice and Christianity not for help for a small
group of [...] Americans, but for help for these brave Poles. "
President Starzyński asked the
photojournalist to leave the city and save his life. At home, in the states,
his wife and 6-month-old son Sam were waiting for him. Julien wrote a farewell
letter to his family, which he deposited in a safe at the US embassy and stayed
in Warsaw. He left the city just before the surrender. On September 21, Germany
allowed foreigners to leave the capital of Poland. Bryan managed to smuggle
photographic plates that the embassy employees had hidden in gas masks, as well
as a film. The latter simply packed into his suitcase. As early as 1939,
photographs appeared on the covers of Western newspapers such as
"Time", "Life," L'Illustration, "The War
Illustrated" and "Look". In 1940, the full album and the movie
entitled "Sige" (Siege), which was watched by two hundred million
viewers around the world. Only Eleanor Roosevelt watched the film in the White
House.
After the war, Bryan returned to
Poland again to show the difficult situation the people of the ruined cities of
the 1950s found themselves in. The son of the photographer describes the
feeling his father had for the country from the Vistula River: "I was in
college at the time. However, I don't remember one moment when my father sat
down and said:" Listen, I will tell you about Warsaw ". We talked
about it many times, but probably not often enough" With the rest, not
only our country and Warsaw were at heart, but also and maybe above all people.
People whom he photographed and with whom he tied his fate in this way. He made
sure that they and their history did not fall into oblivion. "In 1958, I
read Bryan's announcement in" Evening Express "that he was looking
for contact with people from his photos. I applied. Bryan visited us. I had a
husband, a 12-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son. He was so kind, homely,
modest He didn't boast. I cooked cabbage soup on the bacon. He liked it very
much. He always came with the translator. He sent me a package, but the
translator deceived me. She gave me an old coat - I found Polish tickets in my
pockets. I didn't tell Bryan about it he didn't think. " This is how
Kazimiera, the tragic girl of September Poland, remembers the post-war meeting.
At an exhibition organized by the Institute of National Remembrance in 2010 as
if it was a completely different person. However, when you look into the eyes
of this older woman, when you look at the photographs of Julien, you can see
that her soul remained unchanged and the affection for her sister remained
alive. "That she would stay with us, she would live. She was so smart.
Sometimes she sat at the lamp at night and studied. They called her" the
schoolgirl ", because she was intelligent, well-ordered, nicely glorified.
Even when killed, she looked like a girl from salary"
https://okruchyhistorii.blogspot.com/2019/02/historia-w-tle-fotografii-dramat.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Polish_victim_of_German_Luftwaffe_action_1939.jpg
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