Krzysztof Głuchowski was born on 29 November 1926 in Warsaw. In June 1939, he graduated from a six-year Military Family School, and then passed his entrance exams to the 1st Cadet Corps in Lviv. He attended vocational schools during the occupation period. He also took secondary school exams in the secret Górski Secondary School, where he had been promoted to year four shortly before the Uprising broke out.
Since August 1941, still in the Union of Armed Struggle, which was later transformed into the Home Army, he was part of the underground under the codename “Juraś”, first in the Cadet Company and, since September 1943, in the 7th Regiment of Lublin Uhlans of the Home Army under the codename “Jeleń” in Platoon 1112.
Krzysztof Głuchowski also supported Operation Wilanów, conducted by the Directorate of Diversion (Kedyw) on 26 September 1943, and in other operations planned by the Warsaw division of Kedyw in the Wilanów area. In the Warsaw uprising, he served in the 1112nd platoon as a guard at the Home Army Headquarters and the Government Delegation for Poland in Kamler’s Factory in Wola, and later in the Old Town. Krzysztof Głuchowski received the Cross of Valour and was promoted to senior uhlan for his participation in the fights in the Old Town. After the surrender, he was sent to a number of PoW camps as well as surviving the American bombings of the German town of München Gladbach. After the liberation, he travelled through the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Italy to join the II Corps of the Polish Armed Forces in the West, commanded by Gen. Anders, where he joined the reformed 7th Regiment of Lublin Uhlans.
After being discharged from the military, he graduated from The Middle and High School of the 3rd Division of Carpathian Riflemen, passing his final exams in the UK. After graduating from university and obtaining his Chartered Engineer degree, he started working in the UK in the company CAV-Lucas, eventually becoming the director of its Spanish branches. While in the UK, Krzysztof Głuchowski became one of the founders and the first long-time treasurer of the Polish Social and Cultural Association (POSK) in London.
Interviewed by Aleksandra Pluta in Sao Paulo, 2015
It was an operation to arrest mostly men in Warsaw, still in 1940. See, they had built Auschwitz, which was built for Poles. Nowadays, our friends believe it was only for the Jews. Those Holocaust experts believe that Auschwitz was just the Holocaust. Auschwitz started with a huge, large-scale operation of arresting lots of young men in Warsaw in 1940, in the Autumn if I’m not mistaken. I was the first such... it was not a roundup, it was an operation where they would go from door to door, from door to door. Only my father made it out of there, he was sitting in an armchair with a very tall backrest in my grandmother’s room, who was in the bed. And the German came into the room, glanced at the old grandma and left. He didn’t notice father, who was sitting with his back to the door with that tall backrest and was saved. My uncle hid in the bushes. He hid in raspberry bushes. Father did not want to go with him because he had a cough. He did not want to alert the Germans with that cough. Also that fear, the fear of being arrested.
Julek came in one day and said: “Okay, starting today, I’m making you part of the conspiracy. You gotta keep your mouths shut, from this moment on, you are soldiers of the Republic of Poland”. So I remember, it’s stuck with me to this day, it was a bit later, it was an assembly in Ostoja’s flat. You have to remember, all the lamps were dimmed. I mean there were lamps, but they were all covered and everything was dark. And those shadows moving under the windows. It was winter, we go there, knock three times, knock three times, the password, they let in the next ones and the next ones, we would come in intervals. We were notified that we would have to come in intervals of 2–3 minutes. And then the assembly started. Ostoja, who was the section leader, said someone from the top brass would come. We are waiting, there’s tension, knocking, password, they let him in. Top brass – Julek. So Julek comes in and tells us that he can’t swear us in because things are being reorganised at the moment. That was the end of the Union of Armed Struggle and the beginning of the Home Army. There was no official oath yet. So he says “I can’t swear you in, but the oath binds you starting today, from now, treason will be punishable by death”. Julek left and Ostoja took out a gun, disassembled it and showed us. When he was disassembling it, a little spring flew out. It was a typical middle-class flat, with lots of carpets and daybeds and what have you, and a tiny spring got lost somewhere on one of those carpets. We spent the rest of the assembly on our knees looking for that spring.
After the uprising surrendered is where my path to emigration starts, because we were prisoners of war and they took us from Ożarów in various transports. I was transported to a PoW camp, a huge camp, more than one hundred thousand people were in the Fallingbostel camp near Hanover. We did not stay long there. They registered us and took us to a camp in Westphalia, it was in Dorsten. I was with a group of minors, and those minors were also spread around various... they called it komandos. It was a very interesting place – it consisted of 50 minors and one barrack. The second barrack was, let’s say, normal. And the third barrack housed the aristocrats from Wola, those were the thugs from Wola, they dominated the whole camp. The story here is interesting, the commander of that camp was [inaudible], who had been wounded somewhere on the Eastern Front and had worked in criminal police before the war, and since criminal police and thugs are usually in cahoots with each other, they were in cahoots with those thugs from Wola. It ran so deep that when the famine came and the camp stopped receiving its regular food rations via official channels, the thugs said “Feldschwedel, we’ll deal with this. So many farms have been bombed to the ground around Mӧnchen, Mӧnchengladbach, assign us a guard and a car, well bring some stuff back.” So they took that guard, took the car, drove near Mӧnchengladbach. There was a bombed German farm there and they started loading up the food. Suddenly, a buggy with a German officer drives up. Looks like they’re done for, robbery means firing squad. As it turns out, it is the son of the farmers that died on that farm. So they come up to them, but they conclude that he would be better off if they made a deal instead of executing them. So they come to an agreement: he gives them the food and, in return, they promise that the prisoners will work to restore the farm. And that’s what happened, of course Felschfedel agreed and everyone was happy.
In the meantime, the Americans very bravely recruited us to the American Auxiliary Corps so we became volunteers at Uncle Sam’s service. So from there, they took us to Krefeld, from Krefeld we went to Rennes by train. There was a giant, giant camp called, as historical ties are essential, “Pulaski Camp”. Poor man Pulaski gave his name to a camp that trained former prisoners of war to serve as auxiliaries in Uncle Sam’s army. And after two weeks, during which we were showed two films – one on guard duty and the other on how to use a rifle – they gave us rifles and we were trained as Uncle Sam’s guards. They took us on those huge lorries that normally transport cattle to Chicago. Only they took us from Rennes to Trois. Trois is to the south-east of Paris, about one hundred kilometres from Paris. So in Trois, which has a rich history, there was a PoW camp for Germans near the town. The Geneva Convention very sensibly stipulates that “Former prisoners of war cannot be used to watch over the prisoners of war of the other side of the conflict”. Very sensible. So they sent us to Trois to watch over the German prisoners there.
I stayed in England from 1946 to 1970 until I was sent to Spain and later to Brazil. Back in England, I was a senior scout. As a matter of fact, we lived in two worlds. The first world was the outer, English world, the other was our Poland in London, where we had everything. Some journalist once published an article saying that “It’s high time the Poles understood that they should adjust to life in England”. But we were very well adjusted to life in Poland, which was in England. Eventually, I got very involved in founding the Polish Social and Cultural Association, which nowadays has a very impressive building in Hammersmith, and which serves well both Poland and Polish expats and, to a large degree, to Poles from Poland who are visiting London. But, like I said, there was this external world – English, and there was our little Polish world with all the divisions. It was very interesting that, even though we were always arguing, which is very typical of our nation, we were all united when it came to the most important matters. When Khrushchev came to London, we were all there marching in protest. I participated in that mostly as part of the Association... I was their treasurer. When we were starting out, we had 300 Pounds to our name, but the building in Hammersmith proves it was worth it. We weren’t able to fully pool the resources of the Polish expat community, and they were considerable. But we just weren’t able to. We had powerful enemies.
...Poles there is a lot of similarity in many things. One of the main ones is that the Brazilian does not have blinkers like horses do to make them see only in one direction. He can, if the road is blocked, find alternatives, which might not be optimal, but which will get you to your destination. It’s similar with Poles. The Pole is an improvisation genius. Not sure about organisation, but we are geniuses when it comes to improvisation... Just look at the Warsaw Uprising, an improvised uprising. To what lengths did we go to make it last 63 days? We even had sanitation and everything, there was everything, supporting the effort. Without that support... we had sewing plants, factories, weapons being produced, flamethrowers. It was all improvised and so on. So the Uprising is just one example, but there are many others, the Brazilian can also think outside the box. Besides, the Brazilian has this one trait, if he wants to, if he wants to, he is a great organiser, but only if he wants to be one. Wanting to is the hard part. But let’s take the carnival as an example, a good 70 thousand people parading for three days. Excluding the onlookers, only those in the [inaudible] and it works fine. And everything works just fine. I once talked to a Brazilian army general, I was so delighted about it, the organisation of the carnival, and he told me “Thank God it’s not the army organising it, or it would never happen”.
I am not an emigrant, I have emigrated. How do I feel? No, let me put it this way. Please explain to me why I, who does not look in any way like a Brazilian, seeing as I am blonde and all that... Why do people keep asking me for directions? They won’t stop asking me how to get to the underground station, but I had the same thing happen to me in Poland when I went there on a visit. The same goes for Paris. Wherever I am, I am a local. I must look like a local, else they wouldn’t be asking. How could you ask tourist for such things? And they keep asking me.
I’ve got to say, the impression I got on my last visit was very positive. The municipal transport was alright, better than in London, better than... not to mention Rio. The discipline of both road and pedestrian traffic is much better than in London, much better than in Rio, much better than in Toronto and other places we discussed with friends who came from various... Warsaw would emerge victorious from comparisons, and I’m sure we had all arrived eager to criticise. So I was very... impressed with Warsaw on my last visit.
Rio de Janeiro is the most beautiful city in the world, that is beyond... They’ve been doing their best to ruin it, but they can’t, you can’t ruin the vistas of Rio de Janeiro. They are fantastic. And the beach, the beach and the carnival are definitely democratic institutions. Everybody mixes with everybody, there are no divisions by colour or nationality or anything like that.
