European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

when they were relocated to a neighbouring estate of Orszymowo.

This was also a small manor house.

Unfortunately, the barn got burnt and the Germans suspected my aunt that she had told her niece Hanka to set this fire.

They simply made up this version to lock her up.

Maybe it was a revenge of Mr Ertbruger, because my aunt was a very beautiful woman

and he must have had some hopes that this acquaintance would develop into something serious.

Well, unfortunately, my aunt was a great patriot. She detested the Germans.

She was little diplomatic and her feelings showed.

She paid with her life for that. Because they sent her to Fordon [near Bydgoszcz/Bromberg],

first they sentenced her to death for inciting a kid to burn a barn.

We wrote to Hitler pleading for pardon and Hitler gave her a commuted life sentence,

but she was immediately deported from Fordon to Oświęcim [Auschwitz], where she stayed for three days at most.

Introduction, family, Germans begin the war

My name is Tadeusz Sułowski. I was born on the 4th Feb 1929 in Warsaw.

I came from a landowning family.

My father, despite being a mechanical engineer and having studied in Germany, decided to stay and to live off the land.

The country was always his top interest.

I was on holiday at my grandma Wanda Rozwadowska’s landed estate in the Płock county. The name of the estate was Kobylniki.

And this is where the outbreak of war found me.

And it was still the first day when the German aircraft came dropping bombs on the neighbouring villages.