Auschwitz

Jerzy Bielecki

39 roses for Cyla. One for each year of separation.

What must a man feel when he falls in love with a woman being in Auschwitz, rescues her from the camp, loses her for 39 years, thinking she was dead just to finally meet her again? Does he look back at these years like at a lost time? Does he think that fate has played a joke on him? Does he compare the loves he had with the one he'd lost?

Jerzy Bielecki, prisoner number 243, a man from the FIRST transport, met her in the camp mill. They could only share a few words a day. Sometimes through a hole in the dash, sometimes hidden behind trash bins when bribed guards turned their heads away. Did Jurek fall in love with her, because he found a soul mate, or was his 19 years old heart simply yearning for intimacy  with a woman?

This woman was Cyla Stawiska - Cybulska. A Jewish girl from a city of Lomża. Beautiful. Only such Jewish women were transfered to mother camp Auschwitz from Birkenau. Young, strong, nice. She lived in a brick block, thereby, in which German women lived, in a dry cell. She was assigned to work in the mill. Much to her luck. Not only because there she found a romance - quite unexpected in these conditions. But above all, because one day Jerzy took her by the hand and simply led her through the main gate out of the camp. To freedom. To life. Which in her case would last for another 61 years.

Earlier Jurek had decided they would not die like this. Not like dogs. Like cattle. (Such words Jurek heard from a SS-man on his first appeal) He decided that they would live. Cela listened to him like at a madman, but he insisted. "Go with me - he urged, stroking her hair - no one of your family is here anymore." And indeed, Cela's parents and her brother were murdered earlier in the chambers of Birkenau.

 

How much self-assurance may be found in a teenager in love? Enough to take a Jewish woman by the hand and lead her through the main gate of Auschwitz being himself a prisoner?

Jerzy had the nerve but he was not insane. He knew that if he approached the gate he would be instantly shot. So he prepared himself. For six months, his colleague, Tadeus Srogi, prisoner number 178, employed in the clothing storage, had delivered fragments of a German soldier's uniform. Element by element they managed to assemble a whole Rottenfuhrer outfit with a neme tag of Helmuth Stehler. This name was compromised because the guards knew Stehlera. The boys have changed the name to Steiner.

The events of 21 July 1944 are suitable for a Frederick Forsyth novel. Jerzy dresses up in the SS uniform, in the light of day, passes through the camp to the barracks where Cela was kept, where he found her trembling and near nervous breakdown to take her "for questioning". While waiting he had to exchange  witty remarks with a German woman in Aufscherin uniform. He took her from the building and led through the camp full of people, prisoners and guards, in the direction of the main gate. He stops at the guards barrack, waits for verification of documents, and then walks away with a girl towards the horizon.

Thanks to him the words Arbeit Macht Frei takes its original meaning.

Soon lovers have to split up. Cela is hidding until the end of the war in the village of Przemeczany-Gruszów with the Czernikow family, and Jerzy joins the armed underground organization, which fights untill the end of the war.

Both of them convinced of each others death start new lives after the war. They start their separate families. He in Poland. She in the USA. She lights up a candle for him every year. He continues his search for her. They meet again on the 8th of June 1983 at the Warsaw airport. 39 years after they said good-bye.

Jerzy Bielecki died on October 20, 2011 in Nowy Targ in Poland. Love lives on.