Paul Zimnol
Martyrology of Bojschau
Posted
by
Jeena
This is an article from a Silesian newspaper, originally in the Silesian language, about my great grandfather. The journalist while researching did interview my grandmothers sister. English translation below.
Paul (Polish: Paweł) Zimnol from Neu Bojschau was born on April 2, 1894. He was a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp, prisoner number 15091.
Our parents were named Zimnol and Katarzyna, née Baron. They had seven children: Róża, Antonina, Florian, Bolesław, Stefan, Paul – he was the youngest – and me.
When I think back to my childhood, we lived in great poverty. We were a large family, and our father had no steady job. He only worked occasionally: he made wooden items, crafted brooms and baskets, caught and sold fish – he did whatever work was available.
In his youth, he took part in the uprisings. His father (our grandfather Walek) warned him: “Paul, do not get involved in politics, or you will have to pay for it one day…” But our father did not listen.
He fought in the uprisings, but what did he gain from it? Nothing. He could not even secure steady work.
Then the war came. Hitler came to power, and the first thing he did was arrest the insurgents. Our father managed to hide for some time, but not for long.
In May 1940 – I remember it well because we were planting potatoes – the postman brought a letter: our father was to report to the police in Pleß. The letter also said he should bring a change of clothes.
He sensed what this meant and did not go. Instead, he hid beyond the Vistula River with a friend named Władek. But one cannot hide forever.
Someone betrayed him – supposedly for 50 marks – and he was arrested and taken to prison in Myslowitz.
There he was brutally beaten. Our mother was allowed to visit him once a month. She hid some money in soap so he could buy something or bribe someone. She brought his clothes home for washing.
Those clothes were covered in blood, and that is how we knew he was being tortured there. He spent half a year in Myslowitz.
Later, we learned that he had been taken to Auschwitz. What he did there and how he suffered, we do not know exactly.
I only remember a gendarme named Kaptur – a Silesian from Beuthen, a good man. My little brother Paul was perhaps four or five years old at the time.
Whenever the gendarme passed by, he shouted loudly: “Let our father go! Release our father from the camp!”
The gendarme advised our mother to stop the child from shouting like that, because he could be punished for speaking Polish. But my brother only shouted even louder.
Our father died in the camp on April 15, 1942. How exactly, we do not know.
At that time, I worked in a factory in Berun. One day, a man from Neu Berun came to me and asked whether someone from our family was in Auschwitz.
When I asked why he wanted to know, he said: “Last week, a Zimnol from Bojschau threw himself onto the electric fence in the camp…”
That is all I know about my father’s death.
Narrated by Marta Zimnol (married name Spyra)
Collected and edited by Alojzy Lysko