Wingfoot

This was the 1950s and ’60s - the apogee of the Soviet domination in Poland.

 

Maybe that is why our father was hesitant in sharing his war and camp memories with us, his children.

Or maybe he just simply wanted to forget about those hard times.

 

What we only knew then was that during the defense of Modlin he was wounded in the head with pieces of shrapnel. That, later on, after the capitulation of Warsaw, he was transported by train along with many, many other officers to the Bavarian town of Murnau, near Munich in Germany, to the Oflag VIIA POW camp for Polish officers. That he worked there in camp’s post office, and that he was involved in some sort of underground movement within the camp.

 

We were very proud of our father, because he was so brave and because he fought for the freedom of our beloved Poland.

 

Our father’s two sisters Jozefa and Jadwiga were also not too talkative on his Murnau episode. After the war, when the three of them were together and the topic of Murnau or WWII came up, they would switch languages and started speaking German. We thought this was to not let us know too much, so we would not face any trouble from the communist authorities. During WWII, both of these sisters were taken away by Germans and forced to work somewhere in the Rhine-Westphalia area (provinces of Germany). They would only say that they wrote their brother frequently, that they would send him some parcels with food and other life necessities, and that they had visited him a couple of times in Murnau.

 

Our father never showed us too many keepsakes he (supposedly) had from these times. But we remember several of them: his uniform, a leather belt and his officer side bag, a hat, a cigarette box and a carved statue in his likeness, just 4 inches tall (100mm) - both carved in wood in the camp by some talented friend. But we never saw any documents or pictures from his “encounter” with Murnau.

 

In the 1970s, our father took part several times in reunions of the POWs that took place in Miechow, Poland, where an elementary school was built. It was partially funded by this POW group. The school was later named after them.

 

And this was it. We knew not much more. Our father did not talk and we did not ask. And only later we started learning more about Murnau.

 

In 1970 a book Za drutami Murnau (Behind the barbwires of Murnau) by Stefan Majchrowski was published. Our father’s name is mentioned in there.

 

Then several years later, in 1977, our father’s good friend slt. Jozef Hubert published his own book Odwrocone losy (Reversed Fates), in which he widely writes about our father, too.

 

After our father’s death, as the years went by, we kept finding some of his documents here and there among other house things during seasonal cleanings. That’s how we found his military ID card as well as letters and other documents.

That’s also when one of us--Przemo, his younger son--came up with the idea of going to Murnau to see this place. Years had come and passed by and finally in 2007 Przemo had the chance to fulfill his dream, although not fully. Unfortunately on this July Sunday afternoon he was not let in to what is now Bundeswehr (German army) living quarters and what used to be called Oflag VIIA - the place where our father spent six years of his life.

 

Photos of Seweryn Majcherkiewicz used courtesty of Przemo and Stan Majcherkiewicz