Interview with Jerzy Gach

Polish schoolchild in Łódź, Poland, 1939-1940; member of Polish Resistance fire brigade in Łódź and during Warsaw Uprising 1940-1944; POW in Germany, 1944-1945.

REEL 1 Background in Łódź, Poland, 1925-1939: family; education. Aspects of period as schoolboy living in Łódź, Poland, 1939-1940: behaviour of German forces, 10/1939-11/1939; treatment of Polish schoolchildren; effect of imposition of German language; expulsion of Poles from central Łódź; restrictions placed on Jewish civilians, 1940; powers given to Germans over Poles; employment in factory. Recollections of membership of Polish Resistance in Łódź area, Poland, 1940-1943: joining sabotage unit; raid on shop to seize firearms; reasons for leaving Łódź to join partisan group; German attack on his partisan group near Głowno, 4/1943; political nature of group; arrest by Gestapo after raid on German factory to obtain money in Łódź, 1943. REEL 2 Continues: treatment received from Gestapo and their attempt to use him to infiltrate resistance group; evasion of second Gestapo attempt to arrest him; flight to Warsaw. Recollections of operations with Chroby Battalion, Polish Home Army during Warsaw Uprising, Warsaw, Poland, 8/1944-9/1944: joining Polish Home Army and fire brigade prior to Warsaw Uprising; Gestapo capture of fire brigade's engines; initial mission to Hale Mirowskie to obtain weapons; encounter with German half-track; attack on German police headquarters; reaction to plan to attack German occupied bunker with Molotov Cocktails and grenades; German destruction of headquarters in Waliców Street; move to Old Town; losses to Chroby Battalion; attempt to breakout from Old Town. REEL 3 Continues: German forces' artillery shelling of Old Town; narrow escape from German Air Force attack in Simon's Passage area of Old Town; failure of Allied air-supply drops; use of sewers to escape from Old Town; German forces' attempts to burn Polish Home Army insurgents out of the sewers; emerging in undamaged central Warsaw; end of the Warsaw Uprising, 9/1944. Aspects of period as prisoner of war in Stalag VIII-B, Lamsdorf, Germany, 10/1944-4/1945: move to Stalag VIII-B, Lamsdorf, 10/1944; German transporting of prisoners of war to Regensburg; liberation by United States Army troops; physical condition on liberation. Aspects of his period as private with Polish II Corps in Italy and GB, 1945-1948: military training in Modena, Italy; move to GB; demobilisation in GB, 1948; continuing education in GB after 1948; later accusations of his being a traitor made during visit to Łódź, Polish People's Republic, 1965. Aspects of membership of Polish Resistance and Polish Home Army in Poland, 1940-1944: experiences in sewers during Warsaw Uprising, 8/1944-9/1944. REEL 4 Continues: physical condition on emergence from sewers in Warsaw; character of Warsaw Arsenal area during Warsaw Uprising; opinion of German forces; behaviour of his resistance group in Łódź, pre-1944; story of capturing German weapons using bluff.