The video was recorded by the Pilecki Institute as part of the “Witnesses to the Age project.”
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Our today’s interviewee:
Zdzisław Baszak (born in 1920), fought in the 1939 September Campaign and the Battle of Pszczyna, officer of the Home Army. In his home town of Dąbrowa Tarnowska, the Germans appointed an occupation starost whose assistant was fluent in German. Everyone considered them traitors who served the German occupier, but it later turned out that the starost worked for the British intelligence and his assistant warned the Poles about the planned German operations in the area. In September 1940, the Germans arrested Zdzisław Baszak, who was denounced by a blue policeman. Baszak was aware of how the Gestapo interrogations worked, so he decided to run before he gets to the Tarnów prison. His plan succeeded - he pushed over a guard and fled towards of the Vistula. The Germans who were chasing him were armed only with pistols and they didn’t manage to hit Baszak. He got in the water for 5 kilometers to throw them off the scent, and then smeared mud all over his body, thinking that if the locals noticed him in this state, they would dismiss him as a harmless lunatic and not report him to the Germans.
19 янв 2021
