Czesław Aredzki

Digital exhibitionSeven lives

Czesław was standing in the street smoking a cigarette. This was where he usually spends his breaks, peoplewatching. Without warning, Czesław was arrested by the Gestapo. Czesław did not understand why he was arrested, and no one told him.

Czesław, 1943 Końskie, Poland

Czesław came from a non-Jewish, middle-class Polish family. In 1939 he was 24 years old and had spent a year at cadet school. He was a student at the Warsaw School of Economics and was engaged to a girl named Krystyna.

When Germany attacked Poland, Czesław was sent to the front as a non-commissioned officer in the Polish army. He fled from the Nazi German army and became a Soviet prisoner of war.

Czesław Aredzki in Polish uniform. Photo: Private

He tore off his rank insignia and was therefore treated as an enlisted soldier instead of an officer. Czesław was released and walked all the way back to Poland, where he reunited with his fiancée.

They married in Krystyna’s hometown of Końskie in February 1941, and Czesław got a job as a clerk at a farmers’ co-operative. In August 1943, Czesław was arrested by the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secretpolice, and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

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