They lived in the darkness of damp, cold cellars in the eerie ruins that had once been Warsaw. They had no idea how long their ordeal would last. Sometimes they didn't even know where they would find their next morsel of food, their next sip of water. Hunted by the Germans, who called them "rats," they were killed on the spot. Despite this, several hundred "Robinsons"—as they were called—many of them Jews—survived the Soviets' entry into Warsaw. Here are the stories of three groups that managed to survive successfully from the outbreak of the uprising until its "liberation."
"We live like Robinson Crusoe, with the difference that he was free and could move freely, while we have to live in hiding. We're like on an island, surrounded by mines. We're cut off from the world, we don't know the political situation, the fight (the Germans – ed.) against the Home Army is over. At night, you can hear cannons; the Soviets are clearly advancing." This is how 29-year-old Dawid Fogelman, who, with three companions, was hiding in the basement of a half-ruined tenement house at 5 Szczęśliwa Street, in the former ghetto, described his situation in September 1944. He was one of the several hundred Jewish "Robinsons" who managed to survive in the ruins of Warsaw. Their stories are moving, sometimes terrifying, but above all, they demonstrate the power of the survival instinct. Here are three of them.
| Ogrodowa Street (1942), State Archives in Warsaw
Commune from Ogrodowa
In the first week of the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans advance along Wola's main arteries—Wolska/Chłodna and Leszno Streets—towards the Vistula River. Along the way, they massacre the district's residents. Within days, they kill tens of thousands of civilians. Amid the ghastly chaos of bombing, shelling, and executions, a Polish-Jewish "Robinson" group takes shape in the tenement house at 26 and 26a Ogrodowa Street. On August 7th, as the Germans are evacuating the entire block, eight people are hiding in this very building. Most are Poles: the three-member family of a caretaker named Słowik, the pregnant caretaker Władysława Lewandowska, as well as two young men, Zygmunt Kacprzak and electrician Józef Dudziński. From the outset, two Jews have been with them: shoemaker Witold Łazowski and Jan Festinger, owner of the oil mill located at 26a Ogrodowa Street. Dudziński, who wrote down the history of the entire group after the war, noted that there was no anti-Semitism among them. "In our circumstances, it didn't matter in the slightest, because, to paraphrase the aphorism: a Jew and a Pole – two nephews, both to the rope and rounded up," he wrote with bitter humor.
For the first three weeks, the "Robinsons" remained in the building, moving from apartment to apartment, floor to floor—anywhere they could get away from the Germans, who were ransacking each apartment in search of loot. Finally, on August 31st, they set up a hideout in two small, burnt-out rooms in the attic of the building. From the windows, as Dudziński wrote, there was a panoramic view not only of Aleje Jerozolimskie and Starynkiewicza Square, but also of the buildings of the Mokotów district.
They made themselves as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. They removed the couch and mattresses, built a two-burner kitchen and a pantry. In October, when the weather worsened, they added the missing sections of the roof. Unfortunately, despite these efforts, winter temperatures in one room still dropped to minus 15 degrees Celsius. This meant Dudziński, Festinger, and Łazowski had to sleep huddled together to avoid freezing.
German soldiers prowled the building and its surroundings during the day. After dark, members of the "commune" would go in search of food and water. They found a lot of hidden provisions in abandoned premises and basements of buildings along Ogrodowa Street. So much so that by the end of October, as Dudziński recalls, their menus included not only bean, potato, and herring salad or potatoes with bacon, but also cocoa, cake, and vodka. Most "Robinsons" could only dream of such fare.
Water was worse. First, it was brought from bathtubs in the building, then from one of the backyard wells, which was risky due to the presence of the occupiers. Finally, in November, Łazowski began draining it at night from boilers in subsequent apartments. The shortage was then supplemented with melted snow.
In mid-November 1944, the Germans moved in permanently, several floors below the Robinsons. They turned the building into a gasoline depot. Several times, the group came close to being exposed. The group's greatest crisis came when Władysława Lewandowska gave birth to a daughter on December 1st. The little girl was crying, and most of the group feared it might bring misfortune upon everyone, especially since the Germans sometimes swarmed the floor below. They even considered killing the child, a decision openly communicated to the mother. Ultimately, when the infant began to cry, it was placed in a metal bathtub and covered with a pillow. It was kept there until it calmed down. Dudziński recounted that the little girl nearly suffocated several times, until finally, after several days of such torture, "she knew not to scream."
Ultimately, the Ogrodowa "commune" survived for over five months almost entirely. Only Józef Słowik did not survive the arrival of the Soviets, dying after falling from a balcony.
| Fragment of Szczęśliwa Street buildings before 1939 (Warsaw1939.pl Foundation)
Four from the Lucky 5
A few days after Łazowski and Festinger's group, another group of "Robinsons" was formed about two kilometers north. It consisted of four Jews: 29-year-old Dawid Fogelman, a turner from Dzika Street; 20-year-old Jacek (last name unknown), a war orphan; and two merchants – 36-year-old Chaskiel Wajnberg and 29-year-old Majer Dancygier, a Hasid from Praga. On August 5th, the first two were liberated by insurgents from the camp on Gęsia Street (known as "Gęsiówka"). For a few days, they helped the Home Army (AK) build barricades. However, when the Germans began pushing the fighters away from Okopowa Street toward the Old Town – a "panic retreat" began – Fogelman and his companion decided to seek refuge in the ruins of the ghetto. And so, on August 11th, they found themselves on Gęsia Street. Szczęśliwa 5, where Wajnberg and Dancygier had previously taken shelter in the basement of a half-collapsed tenement house.
Fogelman, who chronicled the group's fate in his diary, emphasized that an unpleasant atmosphere prevailed within it. A quarrel was constantly brewing. The men were completely incompatible in personality, background, and education, and, on top of that, they all had suffered from wartime trauma. As a result, as a turner from Dzika wrote, there was little conversation, living "in the hope that it would end soon." However, this did not happen – they were stuck with each other for five months. And on essential matters, they cooperated quite well.
During the day, out of deference to the Germans, they didn't move much. They went hunting at night. Every so often, they stumbled upon a "treasure" that helped them survive for weeks.
In a single evening, they managed to seize 40 kg of sugar and 60 kg of flour from abandoned warehouses, not to mention canned goods and other goods they found here and there. In their quarters, they set up not only a kitchen but also a bread oven.
They became anxious when they ran out of matches—worried they'd have to eat only cold food. But then, inspired by finding several dozen kilograms of paraffin, they got creative. They made hundreds of candles from it, using them to keep the "eternal flame" burning for a while. They only found relief when they got their hands on a few boxes of matches and some kerosene.
Water was less of a problem than for the "Robinsons" on Ogrodowa Street. During the first period of their stay on Szczęśliwa Street, they had free access to it from a tap on the neighboring property. They could even wash themselves. Later, they would draw it from a hole in the water pipe. Finally, at some point, they had to venture into nearby tenement buildings, where they would find it in the bathtubs of abandoned apartments.
In September, the group faced its first major crisis – the expected Soviets never arrived. "We've lost track (of time – ed.) (...) We live like cattle. Dirty, unshaven, just like savages," Fogelman noted.
By October, the Robinsons had become accustomed to "eternal waiting and temporary things." They were constantly trying to improve their lives. They moved to a more comfortable apartment in the adjacent basement. They furnished it as cozily as they could. They laid a brick floor, built a kitchen, and brought in mattresses and beds from nearby. They installed shelves and clothes racks.
To combat boredom and social distaste, Fogelman began writing poetry—in Polish and Yiddish. It allowed him to forget his tragic situation. In it, he captured his wartime experiences and also expressed his grief over the loss of his wife and two children, who were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942.
And so, untraceable by the Germans, the four Jews survived until January 18, 1945, when they finally encountered the first Red Army soldiers. After meeting each other—and discovering they, too, were Jews—they began hugging and kissing each other. They celebrated their liberation from their persecutors and their hated hiding place by drinking wine and spirits until dawn.
| Dawid Fogelman, "A Memoir Written in a Bunker." JHI Bulletin No. 52, October-December 1964.
Community from Wspólna
Some Jews began their "Robinson" lives only after the fall of the Warsaw Uprising, in early October 1944. Among them was 55-year-old Bernard Goldstein, one of the prewar Bund leaders in Warsaw and later a member of the underground movement associated with that group in the ghetto. After a failed attempt to cross the Vistula River into Soviet-controlled Praga, he hid in various bunkers in what is now South Śródmieście from October 8th.
By early December, he had been working his way through several basement "communes": at Wiejska Street, 9 Hoża Street, and Krucza Street. Each one eventually fell apart due to misunderstandings, and above all, poor organization and lack of food – apartments and basements in Śródmieście had already been thoroughly decimated during the uprising. During these desperate peregrinations, Goldstein met Daniel Guzik, president of the Joint in the Warsaw Ghetto. Both were nearing exhaustion when, one night, three other Jews – "Robinsons" – burst into their hideout on Krucza Street, searching for food. Among them was 20-year-old Jakub Smakowski, codename "Czarny Julek," a smuggler who had participated in both Warsaw Uprisings (interestingly, in 1943 he fought in the Jewish Military Union). Thanks to his intercession, Guzik and Goldstein were taken into the group hiding in a bunker at 26 Wspólna Street.
The new "commune" welcomed them warmly. Both men were washed and given new clothes. As many as 29 people, mostly Jews, lived on Wspólna Street. The group was led by two smugglers from the ghetto – a certain Mojsze Kulas and "Wysoki Jakub" – who managed to survive with their wives and children. Besides them, there was a Greek Jew rescued from the "Gęsiówka" concentration camp (a professional pickpocket), a Treblinka insurgent named Spiegelman (who died of pneumonia before the Soviets arrived), and also a Polish woman who had been sheltering Jews throughout the occupation.
Life at Wspólna 26 was impeccably organized. They were divided into task forces, each responsible for a different section: one for keeping the bunker clean, another for food preparation, and the third for nightly expeditions into the ruins to retrieve "loot." Goldstein recalled that the most negative emotions were aroused by the evening task of carrying out the bucket of waste. No one bothered to do it. The "Robinsons" of lower pre-war status who ruled the bunker tended to relegate this task to the intellectuals and former bourgeoisie. "You've had a bed of roses all your lives. Now you can get your hands dirty," they sneered.
During the nightly expeditions, they not only "hunted" for food. They also brought to the hideout all sorts of valuables found in basements and abandoned apartments: furs, clothes, and even jewelry. Furthermore, some members of the "commune," such as Guzik, had accumulated significant amounts of dollars. All these resources proved crucial to the group's survival during the most difficult times. It was in December 1944 that contact was made with peasants from a village near Mokotów, who were sneaking into the ruins of Warsaw to loot. The "Robinsons" began trading with them regularly, at a single fixed point—far enough from Wspólna 26 to avoid revealing the bunker's location. Currency, valuables, and textiles were exchanged for fresh food: bread, butter, and even meat. Thanks to this, the "community from Wspólna" managed to survive almost in its entirety until January 17, 1945. Soviet tanks on Marszałkowska Street made Goldstein, Guzik and the rest of the group ecstatic.
"We cried with joy, hugged and kissed. Finally, we could emerge from our burrow into the light of day," Goldstein recalled.
| Bernard Goldstein
How many "Robinsons" were there?
It's impossible to determine how many Warsaw "Robinsons" there were. Jadwiga Marczak, in "Exodus Warszawy," reports that there were around 400. Stanisław Knopf, in turn, estimates the number to be around 1,000. Bernard Goldstein, meanwhile, who stayed in Warsaw for several weeks after the "liberation" and was in contact with aid institutions, claims that around 200 Jews survived in the city's ruins, out of the 500 who took to shelters during or after the 1944 uprising. Certainly, many were tracked down by the Germans and killed on the spot, such as the group of Jewish insurgents in the Old Town, described in Chaim Icel Goldstein's account "Bunker." Ultimately, however, the exact proportion of those who survived and those who perished will forever remain speculative—like many tragic statistics of World War II.
Wojciech Rodak
Bibliography:
- Goldstein – “Stars bear the witness”, New York 2015
- "The Exodus of Warsaw: People and the City after the 1944 Uprising" vol. II, Warsaw 1993
- Ch. I. Goldstein – "Bunker", Warsaw 2011
- Knopf – "Sentence on the City. The Warsaw Thermopylae 1944–1945", Warsaw 2001
- Fogelman, "Memoir written in the bunker" in: "Bulletin of the Jewish Historical Institute", Warsaw 1964, no. 52
- Libionka, L. Weinbaum – "Heroes, Impostors, Describers. Around the Jewish Military Union", Warsaw 2011
