Film Collection
Maria Krystyna Bytnar née Święcicka
Excerpts from an interview with Krystyna Bytnar
Transkrypcja
An account by Righteous Among the Nations – Krystyna Bytnar née Święcicka. After their escape from the Warsaw ghetto the Braunrot family changed hiding places several times. They had fake “aryan papers” in the name of Lasocki. In June 1944 they arrived in the Święcickis’ forester’s lodge in Ząbki near Warsaw. They stayed there for 6 months, pretending to be holidaymakers. Only the hosts knew their true identity. After the war the Braunrots emigrated to France. They stayed in touch with the Święcickis. One day a cousin of ours came to us and said there were some people who needed help because they were in a critical situation. They were staying with someone, but conditions there were difficult and horrible, so they would like to move somewhere else, and could we take them in. It was a forester’s house, out-of-the-way place. And that was it. We had never seen them before. They came to our house quite openly. Mother said they should behave naturally, as if they were renting a room for the holiday. The house was fairly big, so we were renting out more rooms, there were other tourists. We pretended that they are renting a room as holidaymakers. Just for the summer holidays, and then it got prolonged. They had a room upstairs when they came, and that lady had her own… I mean, she cooked her own staff in our kitchen, whatever suited her. Well, it was occupation time, it was very hard to get food. In any case, whatever we had, we shared what we could. If a hen laid an egg, then one was for that little Elżunia, and the other one for me. Because I was always a weakling, very thin and sickly. But I am still alive! Fragments of an interview carried out by Zofia Waślicka in February 2009, for the project “Polish Righteous – Recalling Forgotten History” of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews.