Rather Die Than Betray the Cause: The Gestapo Detention Center at Aleja Szucha 25, by Witold Żarnowski
(For professors, college and high-school students, and interested adults) During the occupation of Poland by the Germans, the words “Aleja Szucha” (English: Szucha Avenue) inspired terror among Warsaw’s citizens. Aleja Szucha was the place where thousands of Polish citizens were tortured. Each of them suffered severely during the interrogations, which involved brutal beatings carried out daily, and often ended with the same fate – death. This work, published by the Institute of National Remembrance, depicts 63 of the many Poles who died because they were brutally tortured or executed by the Germans.
Up to 100 interrogations, combined with elaborate tortures, were conducted daily. The “investigations” carried out in the torture chamber were unspeakable acts of torment. During the interrogations, the prisoners were beaten with truncheons, whips, and springs, and were de-nailed, smothered with broken gas masks, hung with their hands tied behind their back or with their head down, almost drowned by having liters of water poured through the nose to lungs, baited by specially trained dogs, burned with hot irons, and had their fingers crushed with pliers. One of the most common psychological tortures was bringing close family members, such as mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, daughters, and sons, and interrogating and torturing the prisoner in front of them. However, the system of torture that was intended to acquire information from the prisoners often proved useless.
Wanda Ossowska, a nurse and messenger in the Home Army, was arrested by the Gestapo after secret documents were found in her apartment. She was “investigated” 57 times and during one of the investigations, had her skull broken. She tried to poison herself but was resuscitated. She was sent to the Majdanek concentration camp and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the war, she was imprisoned by the Communist secret police, yet she survived. Elżbieta Korompay was interrogated and tortured in front of her mother, Mieczysława. Both were messengers in the Home Army and Elżbieta did not reveal anything. She committed suicide in the cell by swallowing cyanide, so as not to betray her colleagues from the underground movement and to save her mother from suffering. Her mother Mieczysława was tortured physically and psychologically, and was then transported to Auschwitz, where she died in 1944.
This publication is supplemented with more that 100 archive pictures. The immense pain that the prisoners suffered is documented by 1260 pieces of writing on the walls and cells. They are words of prayers, reflections on life and death, thoughts of Poland, requests to have the family informed, crosses, calendars, names, and initials. These artifacts are a testimony to the courage and patriotism to the people detained there, many of whom were tortured to death during the interrogations.
