September 1, 1939 was Friday. For Katowice, the beginning of the war was announced by the sounds of an detonation on the edge of the city of Muchowiec airport, bombed by German Stukas. Totally pointless.
At the time Clare Hollingworth was in Katowice. A well-known English writer left interesting memories of the first tens of hours of war in the Polish capital of advanced Silesia. It's interesting, but it's unbelievable. For example, the roar of the engines of the tanks surrounding Katowice was heard by the English female in the first minutes of the war. However, there was not a single German tank within tens of miles of Katowice that morning. So what did Hollingworth hear? From the British consulate at the exit of 3rd May to Liberty Square is not besides far to the Katowice barracks. In the morning niche, which followed the raid on Muchowiec, there could be sound of motor vehicles belonging to the Polish 73rd Infantry Regiment. Its core was infantry, the bulk of its supplies were provided by horse rolling stock, but the regiment inactive had any number of motor vehicles. The advanced Silesian command of the 23rd Infantry Division was besides motorized, besides housing in Katowice. So it may have been from around Koszaryowa Street that Hollingworth heard engine noises. The sound she heard can besides be explained in another way – as the roar of sirens attacking the airport on the Stukas fly
However, let us not discredit the English woman’s evidence completely. any of the details in it are besides confirmed by another sources. For example, what Hollingworth heard from any encountered during the journey to the Polish captain's area:
Even the concrete in our fire stations didn't dry quite.
Powerful fortifications or a bogeyman for Germans?
In any places, it was true. Fortifications of the “Silesian” Vary Area, stretching along the Polish-German border from Piekar Śląski to Kochłowice, were extended for respective years, but only in 1939 it was decided to extend them to scope Brynica in the north and outside Mikołów in the south. In the summertime of 1939, the construction of these outer sections of fortifications continued. In many places work has only just begun, in many places it has not been completed. any reinforced concrete shelters were not yet suitable for usage – inactive wet, steaming concrete made it hard to stay indoors for a long time. but for his weaker fire resistance. On many occasions, soldiers did not usage fresh shelters, preferring to dig somewhere nearby. Or they had improvised fire points on their roof.
As we are slow beginning to realise, the full area of the Silesian Warden was weaker than it seems to defend the Polish part of advanced Silesia from the German attack. It was only in fresh years that historians reached the papers preserved in military archives, which show that the advanced Silesian shelters were comparatively poorly armed. Many of these objects inactive be today, and many of them may impress with the number of rifles for dense device guns, not to mention armored domes and semi-dome. Throughout the years, describing the firepower of these shelters, it was assumed involuntaryly that on all shooting scope in the reinforced concrete walls 1 fell in a coil. As it turns out, it wasn't. device guns were little than weapon ranges. In many cases, 1 of them was “serviced” respective of them, simply being moved to the 1 from which he was to lead the fire. That's enough. In any episodes OW “Silesian” was only a scarecrow, with crewless combat shelters.
This, by the way, suggested the facts that have been known for a long time. For example, how easy German Sonderformation "Ebbinghaus" from Wilhelm Pisarski's branch penetrated on the night of 31 August to 1 September through a line of Polish fortifications between Dąbrowka Wielki and Maciejkowice on their way to the Michał mine in Michałkowice. On his own destruction, as was due to happen on September 1. There are more mentions of unfilled shelters. Among them, the account of Lieutenant Jerzy Wąsik, discovered in fresh years, is simply a peculiar place. Let us return the level to this Polish officer, a valuable witness of September 1939 in Silesia:
It's empty in the rooms. Fire station fire rifles empty – no rifles. Crew area empty – without equipment – no inventory. Same way in another rooms I didn't know what their destiny might be. It is evident that constructions have not yet been completed. And here at any minute the enemy may attack our defensive line – or, in fact, defenseless.
However, the mustache is incorrect about the time it completed its fortifications. The shelters of the Radoszowy sector and the standalone Kłodnica combat group located under Kochłoowice (which most likely included its retreat from Makoshów on 1 September) were built in 1937. As they did not make the face of Polish fortifications, it seems that the Polish commanders, juggling with comparatively thin forces at their disposal, stripped these objects from the cast, directing specialized fortified crews to a more susceptible position.
The evaluation of the real power of the advanced Silesian fortifications of the WP (in any case, inactive awesome and forming part of our historical heritage) is waiting for its historian. But is not the only undiscovered mystery of September 1939 in Silesia.
When did Wehrmacht enter Katowice?
Until recently, especially thanks to papers from the German national Military Archive in Freiburg, found there by prof. Ryszard Kaczmark (their number was expanded by writer Bartosz Wieliński after his own qualend), and detailed analysis and improvement by the habilitated doctor Grzegorz Bębnik, it seemed that at last we knew precisely the circumstances and chronology of entering German regular troops in Katowice. papers of the 239th Wehrmacht Infantry Division clearly indicated that this large unit had taken a march from Mikołów to Katowice on September 4, 1939 in the morning. That morning, her soldiers would have entered Katowice.
However, as the author of this text discovered a fewer years ago, things were somewhat different, due to the fact that regular German troops entered the city earlier – already 3 September 1939. They were soldiers of Aufklärungs-Abteilung 239 – a divisional reconnaissance squad. Among the papers discovered by Prof. Kaczmark, there is simply a divisional order of 239 DP for 3 September, which, among others, orders Aufklärung-Abteilung 239 to head from the Halemby area to Panewniki, and then conduct a reconnaissance on Murcki and Katowice. It is worth noting that the soldiers of this unit moved on horseback, on cars, as well as on motorcycles and bicycles. This correspondences with another sources, e.g. with the evidence in the chronicle of the Panevnica monastery, in which there was the appearance of bike scouts of the Wehrmacht on 3 September. Panewniki was inactive a separate commune from Katowice at the time, but the neighboring Ligota was their territory from 1924. And her resident Edward Lipa remembered that:
Here the Germans came, their first watch, at 4-5 p.m. It was a car reconnaissance, officers in the company of security.
In turn the author of the valuable (because besides based on missing accounts) of the survey “Katowice in the first days of September 1939” Daniel Janiszewski mentions German officers who arrived by midnight on 3 September in a field car to the very Katowice market. Earlier, a motorcycle patrol of the Wehrmacht appeared.
It can be assumed that the scouts of the 239th Infantry Division, moving along railway tracks leading from Brynów to the city centre, reached even the abandoned Polish barracks that day.
As it turns out, not all infantry troops of the 239th Division left Mikołów on September 4. 1 platoon of 14 companies 372 infantry regiment commanded by Lieutenant Kania approached Katowice and occupied Ochojec settlement the erstwhile day.
Marszruta led through Mikołów, Kamionka and Piotrowice. The second platoon was secured by Piotrowice from the side of Katowice. The troops have taken the emergency quarters. The capture of the insurgent leader, who was then shot in an effort to escape, reported Kania.
This “leader of the insurgents” was Emil Wilczek – a soldier of General Haller's Blue Army, a associate in the Polish-bolshevik War and the 3rd Silesian Uprising, and in 1939 a post office official. Deadly wounded, he was transported to a infirmary in Mikołów, where he died.
On that day, the soldiers por. Kani or their colleagues from Aufklärungs-Abteilung 239 came even further, reaching the area of today's transfer centre in Katowice-Brynów. Salomea The Rising of Ochojca recalls his return from Katowice to Ochojca on 3 September:
We walked down Kościuszko Street and passed by the Park. Before the war the advanced part of the tower was very well visible from the street. Mary and I both saw very well at the top of the Boy Scouts' Tower, and I think it was the boys that happened under the tower, the 1 on the street that was not visible. We heard gunshots, singles and series. We started moving home. At the top of the park we were stopped by a Polish soldier and shouted at us that we were not allowed to go further, due to the fact that there are Germans there. We didn't perceive to him, and we kept moving towards the house. At the place where there is now a tram loop was a low pine forest crawled men in alien uniforms. I don't know if it was Wehrmacht or Freikorps. They were wearing helmets. They didn't pay attention to us. We got home, and I remember it was at 2:30. Mom cried and said there were Germans in Ochojec.
Did they go on? There are testimonies of passing that day close Kościuszko Park and heading for Katowice German motorcyclistsBut we don't know anything about being shot at from the park.
In the fresh by Kazimierz Goby, “The Parachuting Tower” September 3 is simply a day of heroic, multi-hour conflict fought with a German division by a fistful of scouts and Silesian insurgents in Kościuszko Park, whose heart of defence was a parachute tower. Her prelude was to be a shelling of the motorized column emerging from Piotrowice and directing the Bryns. Admittedly, even though the fighting in Kościuszko Park took place a day later (which is lower), this would be entirely possible on September 3, 1939. Only that no known papers so far nor the accounts of specified a firing of soldiers Aufklärung-Abteilung 239 or platoon por. Canni doesn't report. At the moment, we don't know any evidence that this episode is anything but a literary writer's vision..
What happened at Kościuszko Park?
The literary creation is besides many another scenes of this loud book, for any cult, by others mocked. There are all authentic scenes in it, which are actually Goby's relation from what he saw in Katowice with his own eyes, before leaving them before entering the Wehrmacht. These include the beginning book of the escape scene from Katowice of the inflowing Polish population in fresh days before the war, the departure of the Grażyński voivode or the nightly peregrination of the city of 1 of the second-round heroes (whose impressions seem to reflect the observations of the author himself). And yet, even though Dołuba at times rubs on the reportage, he uses authentic (or, in any case, considered authentic) episodes as artistic material. For example, a scene with a hero walking into the city to cry “Silesian people, wake up!” has its historical pattern, although the calling insurgent was not called (of course!) Viktor Jadwiszczok, only – specified are at least the assumptions – Imiel's Warrior. And it didn't end tragically for them.
However, the author knew small about the events in Kościuszko Park. For good We don't really know what made him decision the action from September 4 to September 3 and to the parachute tower. – after all, its place was initially made by the mediate school name Mikołaj Copernicus on Jagiellońska Street.
Because the “Strip Tower” was not Kazimierz Goby's first approach to the fight about Katowice in 1939. The first effort is simply a small known and never published fresh "The diary of Jola", on which the author worked in 1944, during the occupation, while in Sosnowiec. You can find more scenes and situations in the Jola Diary that will later appear in the feature of the Parachuting Tower. But the scouts in the parachute tower aren't there! It would appear that during the business the author had no cognition of the events of the parachute tower..
The most fundamental critics of Kazimierz Goby's fresh thus prove that scouts on a parachute tower are simply a figment of the writer's imagination. However, it so happens that the communicative of the “Slapper Tower” published in 1947 and even published in 1946 in the weekly “Guest of Sunday” was not the first publications in which scouts appeared on the parachute tower (which in a somewhat modified form was later implemented in the book as its culmination chapter). Well, about the Boy Scouts, or alternatively the Scouts, individual wrote earlier and... it wasn't Kazimierz Gołba.
On September 2, 1945, the paper “West Journal” published an article “Faithful to the End... September toll of death in Katowice” containing this passage:
HARCERS IN THE SPANISH SIG
Not many are just known. The fact that 5 young scouts, who died in combat and whose corpses the Germans dropped from the tower, were defended at the parachute tower in Kościuszko Park, no longer existing today, just as they dropped a “scraper of clouds” from the roof at Żwirki and Wigura Street, 1 of the Boy Scouts.
The author of this article, although only a shorthand KABE, is easy to identify. This. Kilian Bytomski, a writer working before planet War II in the editorial board of the paper “Polonia” and in her years a soldier of the National Army. Bytomski was besides a associate of the Regional Delegation of the Silesian Government, where he directed the Katowice territory Office of Education and Culture. A conspiracy cell hiding under this name dealt with secret education. It was headed by a Deputy Regional Government Delegate –Alojzy Targ. What were the sources of Kilian Bytomsky's information? We inactive don't know that, and we may never know. However, it is possible that this brief mention was utilized as an inspiration for Kazimierz Gołbie. Or the Alojzy marketplace he was friends with just delivered it to him. Especially since the Targ was another individual who wrote about the Girl Scouts on the parachute tower even before Dołba. His published in 1946 The book “Silesian during the period of occupation” was to defend the Silesians against their targeted and possibly threatening allegations of betrayal and collaboration. Identical goal, only that the novel, not the popular survey of Targ's book, was directed by Kazimierz Gołbie.
A parachute tower investigation? There wasn't one.
The second must be given that he acted rationally, reliably and almost professionally. He published a survey of questions about September 1939 events in Katowice and an appeal to possible witnesses to share their knowledge. But it besides seems that the consequence turned out to be comparatively low (in the sense of substantive value), in any case erstwhile it comes to Kościuszko Park itself and the parachute tower. The main origin utilized by the author as a feed for the creation of the Boy Scout era was seemingly Francisz Szymiczek's letter in consequence to the survey. This 1 described only a fewer facts known to him from the autopsy, which took place during the withdrawal of the Polish Army from Katowice, i.e. respective hours before the Wehrmacht arrived. His description of fights in Kościuszko Park area, which he had not witnessed, is based on a press article in the Katowice paper “Katowitzer Zeitung” published during planet War II. Szymiczek's occupational reading of the book was poorly remembered, and he gave it to Dołbie in a highly distorted way. But from his account the author squeezed out everything possible. From Szymiczka's message in the fresh we will admit all the films. Though knowing their origin – At times, it is better not to accept them as proven historical facts.
But does the proseman gotta stick to them? The course of accidents in Kościuszko Park in terms of the novelist does not confirm anything, but it cannot be required either – Like nonsense it would be to require Henry Sienkiewicz to confirm Kmicic's engagement in the defence of Jasna Góra and to blow up the Swedish club. At the same time, however, even though the mention of scouts is vain to look in German military papers of the 239th Infantry Division and 3rd Episode of the Border defender (they are reliable, they contain quite a few valuable information and devote quite a few space to shelling German soldiers from Kościuszko Park in general, and from the parachute tower in particular), the full scope of witnesses who were interviewed in the times of the Polish People's Republic by the territory Commission for the Investigation of the Nazi Crimes in Katowice, and for the 3rd Poland by the Institute of National Memory. By the way: IPN never investigated a parachute tower.. The investigation of the Branch Crime Investigation Commission against the Polish Nation in Katowice took place “on the killings of civilians and POWs committed during the September 1939 war in Katowice by soldiers of the Wehrmacht and members of Freikorps” (and was completed with the resignation in 2005).
Let us quote the passages of 2 of these accounts. The first is testimony. Paul Szyszka, which in the vicinity of Kościuszko Park found itself in dramatic and personally tragic circumstances (he came there for the body killed close the departure of Barbara's father's street):
When we were taking my father's body, I saw the Boy Scouts on the elevator leaving for the ground and fleeing towards Muchowiec. The full tower was shot by bullets.
The second author is 7 years old in 1939. Alfred Dybala:
At 1 point we heard shots coming from the park from close bushes. We jumped on the road at the tram tracks, from where there was a view of Park and Kościuszko Street. I saw the German army, almost everyone was lying down, and individual shot them out of the bushes. They were returning fire from rifles. For a moment, the fire started from the tower, and we got curious and ran to the park, hiding in bushes close the Green Eye restaurant. Then a group of young people with rifles came out of the bushes, from which there were shots first, and ran towards the tower, and they wanted to get on the steps. 1 even reached the 5th stairs. The Germans started shooting at them and killed them all. Then we talked to the boys on the field about it, and we concluded together that there could be six or 7 young people. From the tower they started shooting, the army tried to approach, but they didn't make it, I think the grenades flew from the tower due to the fact that there were explosions. The Germans had to back down a small bit. We were sitting in these bushes, the coming German army chased us away, nobody hurt us. After a short break from 2 sides, i.e. from the “Green Eye” and Kościuszko side, the Germans began firing from the anti-tank cannon. They hit the tower a fewer times, only quite a few smoke and fire. After that, they stopped firing from the tower. The army approached the tower and a fewer soldiers climbed the stairs upstairs. After a while, they dropped 4 bodies off her. I inactive remember 1 soldier on the mountain who put his hands in a motion that there was no 1 left.
Returns the deficiency of heroism of the image so succinctly outlined by Szyszko – After all, the Scouts escape from the parachute tower (which would be completely understandable if they were under fire from anti-tank artillery). In turn In the account of the Dibala first reigns chaos, which paradoxically adds to her credibilitySecond, it is impossible to see the effort to fit the full communicative into a framework shaped by a suggestive literary vision.
Among the many accounts in the files of the Katowice IPN investigation there are most likely not even 2 that would describe events in Kościuszko Park identically. However, this does not mean that the persons questioned lied, but it is typical. The same events are frequently viewed and interpreted differently by various witnesses. A classical example is the descriptions of Christ's death and resurrection in peculiar Gospels. And closer to our time – reports of airmen about the course and results of air combat during planet War II. They may disagree from 1 another, but usually they do not deny the very fact of the fight.
It is impossible to tell which of the details of these and many another testimonies correspond to historical truth, and which, for various reasons (for example, that human memory does various, unpredictable and independent things from us, especially after a long time) disagree from it. The IPN actually spread his hands.
Detailed determination of events in Kościuszko Park is highly difficult in view of the fact that, in the context of this investigation, neither historians nor journalists have previously been able to scope direct witnesses or families of the victims, and thus establish the identity of the victims, we read in the explanatory memorandum of the 2005 investigation.
And yet the awesome documentation, collected in his file, forms a pattern and allows to reconstruct the basic axis of events in Kościuszko Park. Grzegorz Bębnik tempted to do so in 2012:
... The tower was not an isolated position – at the bottom, there were members of insurgent self-defense in the park, partially in the trenches made in haste. In this sense, the device weapon embedded on the tower was just support. In addition, the remaining defenders in the park did not necessarily realize that they were in the main direction of the impact of German troops, including the full infantry division. possibly they were prepared to fight Freikorps, in which they would not be without a chance. But erstwhile they saw the troops of the regular army moving toward the Katowices, they opened fire. The next part is known – possibly any of the people present on the tower after noticing the preparations made by the Germans to fire the object from the anti-tank cannons, decided to escape, sliding down the elevator while it was working, or coming down stairs or elements of the structure. If there was anyone left on the tower, it was most likely the consequence of the fire. Like those in the park at the time who did not retreat in time, the historian concluded in 2012.
Dr. hab. However, the drum notes that regardless of any historical findings, “legenda” or “mit” of the tower already lives its own life (2015).
