Footnotes
1 Quoted in J. Tomaszewski, Preludium Zagłady. Wygnanie Żydów polskich z Niemiec w 1938 r. (Warsaw, 1998), p. 99.
2 J. Gawroński, Moja misja w Wiedniu 1932-1938 (Warsaw, 1965), p. 538.
3 Ibid., p. 553.
* The author consciously keeps the spelling of most cities' and towns' names in the contemporary Polish when writing about them throughout the text, apart from several exceptions, e.g. Warsaw, Cracow. - Ed.
4 J. Tomaszewski, Preludium Zagłady, p. 131.
5 Ibid., pp. 181, 307.
6 "Rewizje - odbieranie paszportów - wydalanie," Polonia, 24 August 1939, p. 10; "Tragedia ludu polskiego w 'raju' hitlerowskim," Polonia, 27 August 1939, p. 12.
7 "U uchodźców Polaków z Niemiec," Dziennik Poranny, 27 August 1939, p. 3.
8 "Wśród uchodźców Polaków z Niemiec," Polonia, 27 August 1939, p. 5; "Antypolski terror w Gdańsku," Polonia, 28 August 1939, p. 2.
9 "Komitet pomocy uchodźcom z Gdańska," Dziennik Poranny, 28 August 1939, p. 2; "Gdańszczanie chronią się do Polski," Dziennik Poranny, 30 August 1939, p. 2.
10 "Gdynia opiekuje się Polakami wydalonymi z Gdańska," Dziennik Poranny, September 1939, p. 1.
11 Wiesław Arlet's account in Gdańsk 1939. Wspomnienia Polaków - Gdańszczan, ed. B. Zwarra (Gdańsk, 1984), p. 37.
12 "Po ucieczce panikarzy," Polonia, 27 August 1939, p. 12.
13 W.T. Kowalski, Ostatni rok Europy (1939) (Warsaw, 1989), p. 533.
14 E. Serwański, Wrzesień 1939 w Wielkopolsce (Poznań, 1966), pp. 83-84.
15 S.T. Olejnik, "Wieluń - prawda o 1 września 1939 r.," in Wieluń był pierwszy. Bombardowania lotnicze miast regionu łódzkiego we wrześniu 1939 r., ed. J. Wróbel (Łódź, 2009), p. 85.
16 As quoted in T. Jurga, 1939. Obrona Polski i Europy (Warsaw, 2014), p. 413.
17 A. Ossowski, "Luftwaffe przeciw ludności cywilnej regionu łódzkiego (1-17 września 1939 r.)," in Wieluń był pierwszy, p. 185; W. Bortnowski, Na tropach łódzkiego września. Z dziejów kampanii wrześniowej na terenie województwa łódzkiego (Łódź, 1962), pp. 175, 184; J. Wróbel, Przemiany ludnościowe spowodowane polityką okupanta hitlerowskiego w tzw. rejencji łódzkiej w latach 1939-1945 (Warsaw, 1987), p. 127.
18 P. Bauer and B. Polak, Armia Poznań w wojnie obronnej 1939 (Poznań, 1983), pp. 183-184.
19 "Z Gdańska do Wilna," Kurier Wileński, 13 September 1939, p. 3.
20 M. Tracz, Sprawozdanie z przeżycia w czasie wojny. Losy śląskiego uchodźcy 1939-1947 (Chorzów, 2014), p. 9.
21 Wrzesień 1939 r. w relacjach dyplomatów Józefa Becka, Jana Szembeka, Anthony'ego Drexel-Biddle'a, Leona Noëla i innych, ed. A. Skrzypek (Warsaw, 1989), p. 40.
22 J. Meysztowicz, Czas przeszły dokonany. Wspomnienia ze służby w Ministerstwie Spraw Zagranicznych w latach 1932-1939 (Cracow, 1984), pp. 250-251.
23 Z Gdańska do Wilna, p. 3.
24 W. Pobóg-Malinowski, Okres 1939-1945, vol. 3 of Najnowsza historia polityczna Polski 1864-1945 (London, 1960), p. 52.
25 T. Jurga, 1939. Obrona Polski, p. 480.
26 W.T. Kowalski, Ostatni rok, p. 544.
27 "Młodzi muszą zostać w Warszawie," Czas - 7 wieczór, 8 September 1939, p. 1.
* Here Praga refers to a borough in Warsaw on the east bank of the Vistula. - Ed.
28 J. Meysztowicz, Czas przeszły, p. 269.
29 A. Hory, "Martwa placówka." Wspomnienia i korespondencja posła Królestwa Węgier w Warszawie 1935-1939 (Warsaw, 2017), pp. 91-92.
30 H. Kark-ka, "Uchodźczym szlakiem," Kurier Wileński, 21 November 1939, pp. 2-3.
31 W. Pobóg-Malinowski, Najnowsza historia, p. 53.
32 Ibid., p. 54.
33 W. Roman, "Przystań polska w Rumunii," Nowy Świat, 17 March 1940, p. 13.
34 Wrzesień 1939 r. w relacjach, p. 155.
35 Przed wrześniem i po wrześniu. Ze wspomnień młodych dyplomatów II Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw, 1998), p. 83.
36 Wrzesień 1939 r. w relacjach, pp. 201-202.
37 J. Meysztowicz, Czas przeszły, p. 286.
38 Przed wrześniem i po wrześniu, pp. 245-246.
39 Ibid., pp. 245-250.
40 "Jak to było w Lubelszczyźnie? Z trzytygodniowej wędrówki na wschód," Express Poranny, 5 October 1939, p. 2.
41 "Wszyscy uchodźcy winni opuścić Warszawę," Express Poranny, 4 October 1939, p. 2; "W Ośrodkach Zdrowia i Opieki wre gorączkowa praca," Express Poranny, 4 October 1939, p. 2
42 W. Pobóg-Malinowski, Najnowsza historia, p. 61.
43 Ł. Kobiela, August Hlond 1881-1948 (Katowice - Warsaw, 2018), pp. 402-403.
44 "Dziennikarze polscy doznali serdecznej gościnności," Kurier Polski, 24 November 1939, p. 3.
45 J. Rakowski, "Diariusz wrześniowego dramatu," Zeszyty Historyczne (1977), fasc. 39, pp. 109-110.
46 P. Starzeński, Trzy lata z Beckiem (Warsaw, 1991), p. 159.
47 Wrzesień 1939 r. w relacjach, p. 288.
48 W. Rojek, Odyseja skarbu Rzeczypospolitej. Losy złota Banku Polskiego 1939-1950 (Cracow, 2000), p. 44.
** The author uses contemporary names of places, in accordance with their present-day national location; he occasionally, where it appears relevant, highlights the by-gone place names, using phrases such as "then [name]" and "today's [name]"; however, he consciously keeps the names of Wilno and Lwów in its Polish, non-contemporary spelling to highlight these cities cultural and historic significance to the Polish history and their relevance to the time period and events discussed in this volume. - Ed.
49 Archiwum Akt Nowych [The Central Archives of Modern Records, hereafter AAN], Bank of Poland in Warsaw, 287, I. Matuszewski's report regarding the transport of Polish gold from Łuck to Nevers, p. 90.
50 J. Wróbel, "Wojenne losy polskiego złota," Ziemia Łódzka 12 (2017), pp. 12-13.
51 AAN, Bank of Poland in Warsaw, 287, Director L. Barański's report for the Ministry of Treasury, January 1940, pp. 25-26.
52 AAN, Bank of Poland in Warsaw, 287, The Evacuation of the Bank of Poland: A Report Prepared by department head F. Szulwic, January 1940, pp. 3-8.
53 Z. Bielecki and R. Dębowski, Warszawski Wrzesień 1939 (Warsaw, 1984), pp. 27-28.
54 Instytut Polski i Muzeum im. gen. Sikorskiego [Polish Institute and Museum of Gen. Sikorski, hereafter IPMS], A.26.I/6, Letter from H. Floyar-Rajchman and W. Jędrzejewicz to the Minister of the Treasury regarding the transport of NDF, 23 October 1939, pp. 1-3; W. Jędrzejewicz, "Fundusz Obrony Narodowej w czasie 2-ej wojny światowej," Zeszyty Historyczne 1 (1962), pp. 157-160.
55 J.A. Krzywda-Polkowski, Z Wawelu do Kanady. Wspomnienia (Płock, 2001), p. 43.
56 A. Janta, "Szalona ewakuacja," Wiadomości, VIII, 32, no. 384 (1953), p. 4.
57 J.A. Krzywda-Polkowski, Z Wawelu do Kanady, p. 70.
58 J. Antall senior, Schronienie uchodźców (Wspomnienia i dokumenty), comp. K. Kapronczay (Warsaw, 2009), p. 161.
59 T. Dubicki and K. Spruch, Przedmoście rumuńskie (wrzesień 1939) (Oświęcim, 2014), p. 136.
60 ?. J?kabsons, "Internowanie żołnierzy polskich na Łotwie w latach 1939-1940," in Internowanie żołnierzy polskich w latach II wojny światowej, eds. T. Dubicki and T. Panecki (Tarnowskie Góry, 2004), pp. 109-129.
61 J.K. Sawicki and S.A. Sobiś, Na alianckich szlakach 1939-1946 (Gdańsk, 1985), p. 17.
62 J.K. Sawicki, Zbiór studiów, vol.2 of Polska Marynarka Handlowa 1939-1945 (Gdynia, 2021), pp. 6-11.
63 Ibid., pp. 16-21.
64 J.K. Sawicki, Polska Marynarka Handlowa, pp. 102-104.
65 J.K. Sawicki and S.A. Sobiś, Na alianckich szlakach, p. 18.
66 J.K. Sawicki, Polska Marynarka Handlowa (1939-1945), vol. 1 (Gdynia, 1991), pp. 18-20, 35.
67 Order of the Commander-in-Chief, "Służba na statkach Polskiej Marynarki Handlowej," 4 September 1941, https://isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/download.xsp/LDU19410070024/O/LDU19410070024.pdf (accessed 10 June 2026).
68 H. Batowski, Z dziejów dyplomacji polskiej na obczyźnie (wrzesień 1939-lipiec 1941) (Cracow - Wrocław, 1984), pp. 22-25.
69 Ibid., p. 28.
Before the Cannons Roared
There were warnings of a cataclysm before the war began, prompting millions of Poles to flee as refugees. As early as 1933, opponents of Nazism and Jews, discriminated against on racist grounds, began to leave Germany. Some emigrated soon after Hitler took power; others waited to leave in the hope that the persecution would cease under the pressure of outraged world public opinion. The latter were sorely mistaken. The Jews found themselves in a particularly difficult predicament, as anti-Semitism had been a constant component of Nazi ideology from the very beginning, and after 1933 became one of Third Reich's internal policy guidelines. As a result, the position of all Jews in Germany worsened with each passing year. Polish citizens who were Jewish, some of whom had lived in the country for many years, were among those disproportionately affected by Hitler's policies. In the late 1930s, the Polish consul in Leipzig, Feliks Chiczewski, reported: "Admittedly, among these Jews, unfamiliar with Poland, born in Germany, there is no tendency in principle to emigrate to Poland, but conditions may arise such that Poland will be the only salvation for them. In recent weeks, Jews have applied, which was not the case previously, with the purpose of resettling in Poland."1 His initial impression of the situation turned out to be correct.
The area from which they emigrated expanded as Hitler, while European powers looked on passively, made further 'peaceful' conquests. In 1938, the threat of repression hung over Jews in Austria, including Polish citizens of Jewish origin living there. On 11 March that year, faced with growing rumours that German troops would enter any day, panic broke out among Polish Jews in Vienna. The Polish Legation there was besieged by visitors seeking information and advice. Jan Gawroński, the Polish envoy, appreciated the patriotic spirit of Polish Jews in Vienna and felt obligated to assist them at this terrible time. When Wehrmacht troops crossed the Austrian border on 12 March, the legation acted. Gawroński recalled years later: "Two of our automobiles were regularly transporting families of Polish Jews who were most at risk to Bratislava. But already in the afternoon, I directed the expeditions toward the Hungarian border, for the sake of concealment at increasingly different crossings, because my officers informed me that German troops were advancing on Bratislava, making the passage of our fugitives through there difficult."2
The annexation of Austria did not halt Gawroński's humanitarian mission. He intervened and successfully defended Polish Jews to Hitler as the latter made his victorious entry into Vienna. Gawroński wrote: "One concern I had: save! rescue! - Whom I could, where I could, facilitating the departure of the most endangered, forcing the too credulous and the too trusting to leave, taking them across the borders of Czechoslovakia and Hungary myself, distributing passports, making it possible to escape by any means, legal or illegal."3
In the autumn of 1938, a larger-scale drama unfolded on the Polish-German border. The authorities of the Third Reich decided to deport Jews holding passports of the Republic of Poland. They used as a pretext the decision of the authorities in Warsaw, who ordered the verification of the documents of Polish citizens living abroad. This move, controversial in its very conception, was intended to deprive of citizenship those who, in the arbitrary opinion of the MFA, had "lost their bond with Polish statehood." It turned out to have the worst implications for Poland's Jewish residents who lived in the Third Reich. On 28 October 1938, they were arrested throughout Germany and taken to the Polish border. Many of them were able to flee to Polish consulates before being caught. Consul Chiczewski reported: "Already from the early hours of the morning the Consulate was besieged by hundreds of citizens, whose number rose to 1,000 during the day. The entire spacious garden, all entrances, staircases, waiting room, cellars and part of the private flat of the head of the post and the caretaker were overflowing with refugees."4 Some of them were given Polish passports, which protected them from repression, allowed them to cross the border legally, and saved at least some of their belongings.
The arrested Jews were taken by the Germans to then Neu Bentschen (today's Zbąszynek), then Beuthen (today's Bytom), and other border towns.* Robbed of valuables and money, they were herded to the Polish border and forced to cross it.
About 17,000 persons were subject to the brutal deportation operation, 9,000 of whom were banished to the Polish town of Zbąszyń. Of these 9,000, 2,000 headed further into Poland, where many of them were helped by acquaintances, family members and Jewish communities. The others were forced to remain. They scraped by in old barracks under extraordinarily harsh conditions. The nearby Polish and Jewish communities stepped in to help them. As of May 1939, around 3,500 of the Jews deported to Zbąszyń remained there. When they were finally allowed to leave the town, those who had enough money and could obtain foreign visas departed. According to limited data, by 1 September 1939, 673 persons had left Poland, with the majority going to Palestine, the United States, and the United Kingdom.5 The others remained in Poland.
What happened in Austria and Germany also occurred, although on a much smaller scale, after the occupation of the Czech Republic by Germany in March 1939. Jews who were Polish citizens, hitherto living in Prague and other Czech cities, crossed the Czech-Polish border. They took advantage of the fact that the police of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, established by the Germans, did not detain the fugitives.
Toward the end of the interwar period, ethnic Poles who had lived in the German parts of Upper Silesia and Pomerania for generations also had to flee Germany, especially those who clung to Polishness and worked for their community. As the Polish-German conflict escalated, their freedom and lives were increasingly threatened. They were ordered not to stay in the border area, their passports were taken away, and they were thrown into prisons and concentration camps in increasing numbers. In the last days before the outbreak of the war, the Polish press was full of reports of terror against the Polish minority in Germany.
In this situation, many Poles decided to flee across the border to Poland. At the end of May 1939, Arka Bożek, a prominent activist of the Polish minority in the German parts of Silesia, did so. At the end of August, the Katowice-based daily Polonia wrote about the escape to Lipnica on the Polish-German border of seventy-six Poles, "forced to save their personal freedom and seek refuge in the bosom of mother-Poland. They came to Poland at the risk of their own lives (women, elderly, children), taking with them in a few cases cattle, horses, and sheep. However, they left most of their belongings to fate." Sometimes crossing the border ended tragically. A group of fugitives of both sexes, breaking through the border cordon on the night of 23/24 August 1939, were shot at by German border guards. One of the women was killed. The Polish authorities and people from the Polish parts of Silesia rushed to help the refugees. A spontaneous collection of money was organized for them to buy food and clothing. Provisional dwellings were also prepared.6
The Free City of Gdańsk and the whole German-Polish frontier were sites of similar tragedies. Fifty people who had fled the Third Reich in fear of deportation to forced labor camps gathered at Chojnice, Pomerania.7 From the Free City of Gdańsk, the Polish Telegraphic Agency sent a dispatch stating that "a number of people unable to bear the harassment and terror are leaving Gdańsk." The local Polish community petitioned Polish officials to establish refugee care centers in Gdynia and Tczew.8 The quickest to react was the Polish Western Union (Polski Związek Zachodni), which set up a committee to help refugees from Gdańsk in the first of these cities. Poznań's daily Dziennik Poranny reported on 30 August that from the Free City "not only Poles, who are subject to special persecution, but also Germans are fleeing."9 In the edition released on the first day the way, the newspaper stated: "The wave of refugees from Gdańsk to Gdynia has clearly gained in strength yesterday evening, throughout the night, and today," the newspaper stated in an edition that ran on the first day of the war. "Every few minutes, new waves of refugees from the Gdańsk area are registered by the Committee for the Care of Refugees from Gdańsk and Germany located at 59, Świętojańska Street [...]. Dramatic events are unfolding in the committee's offices when parents and children who took different escape routes reunite in the offices and embrace each other, their eyes welling up with tears, as they express their miraculous escape from the tormentors in Gdańsk."10 Upon arrival in Gdynia, the refugees were housed at the Mass Tourist Hotel and given food coupons.
About 500 Polish men who were citizens fled the Free City before the war broke out, according to Wiesław Arlet, an official of the General Commissariat of the Republic of Poland in Gdańsk.11 Probably even more people, including women and children, sought sanctuary in Poland.
All this foreshadowed the coming war. On the Polish side at the time, there was a mood of uncertainty and even panic, although the authorities tried to reassure the public by convincing them that the country was well prepared to defend itself and could count on the help of Western allies. The newspapers reported at the end of August that the railroads and roads leading east were experiencing heavy traffic. Upper Silesia and Pomerania, the regions that were to be attacked first, were the most severely impacted.12
September 1939. The Exodus
In the summer of 1939 Europe was preparing for war. Hitler was making it unmistakably clear that if Poland did not meet his demands for Gdańsk and an extraterritorial road and railway line through Pomerania, he would not back down from unleashing a military conflict. The determination to put an end to Germany's "bloodless" conquests was finally being shown by the leaders of France and the United Kingdom, who realized that further concessions would result in the degradation of their countries' position as superpowers in Europe and the world. Ambassadors of both countries in Berlin warned Hitler that an attack on Poland would mean war. Above all, however, Warsaw was not going to succumb to the blackmail of the leader of the Third Reich. For any Polish politician, regardless of political color, and for millions of citizens, it was unthinkable to renounce sovereignty and independence, so hard won and defended only twenty years earlier.
Two opposing political and military blocs took shape during this period. The first was Nazi Germany and its allies Italy and Slovakia, and the second was France, the United Kingdom and Poland, bound together by a defense alliance. On 23 August 1939, the Soviet Union also became Germany's ally, and a secret protocol of the treaty signed that day in Moscow provided for the division between these two totalitarian powers of the territory stretching from Finland to the Black Sea. The political landscape of Europe was supplemented by the fact that Germany could count on the cooperation of Japan, while France and the United Kingdom had the support of their dominions and colonies, scattered across the globe.
It was clear from the outset that the first blow from the German armed forces would fall on Poland, and its fate would depend not only on whether the Western powers would rush to its aid but also on how quickly and effectively they would do so.
Although the length and course of Poland's borders with the Third Reich and Slovakia made defense difficult, the Polish High Command decided to defend them in their entirety, but they knew from the outset that a retreat to the main line of resistance, running along the Dunajec (possibly San), Vistula, and Narew rivers, would be necessary. This entailed the need to evacuate at least some of the population from the border areas, and later also from the whole of western and north-western Poland. Plans drawn up before the war envisaged the movement eastward both of reservists who could join the ranks of the army at a later date and of government offices. This included the central authorities in the event that Warsaw found itself on the front line or, worse, fell into the hands of the invaders. These authorities were to be relocated to the Lublin area. Plenipotentiaries for evacuation had been appointed, tasks had been allocated, and decisions had been taken on the allocation of financial and transport resources. However, there was a belief that if there was a need to leave the capital, it would arise no earlier than a few weeks after the start of combat operations.13
Few realized that the aforementioned plans would have to be put into action in the very first days of the war and under extremely unfavorable circumstances. The rapid advances of the German army, and especially the air attacks on civilians, meant that the evacuation took on huge proportions and turned into a panicky flight. Attempts to control it failed.
On the first day of the war, refugees from border areas appeared on roads. Inhabitants of Ostrów and Kępno poviats led en masse, heading toward Kalisz and further toward Łódź. A participant in these events recalled: "We walked all night to Kalisz, which is 24 kilometers from Ostrów Wielkopolski. [...] We decided to march further toward Błaszki on the railway line leading to Łódź. The march from Kalisz was completely different. The refugees from Ostrów got lost in the great mass of new refugees [...] There were more and more streams of human masses evacuating from southern Wielkopolska flowing into the main road going toward Błaszki."14
The Germans' criminal attacks on civilians worsened the refugee crisis. Wieluń's case may serve as an illustration of German military methods. On the morning of 1 September, Luftwaffe planes attacked this border town, which had no military value and was undefended. Several waves of dive bombers targeted and shelled its center with impunity, generating widespread panic among the locals. Most of the survivors fled in terror.15 The situation was similar in other bombarded towns in western Poland. On 4 September, the "Poznań" army headquarters communicated the following information: "German airmen were shooting at columns of refugees dragging themselves along the roads to the east with their deck guns. The shots were fired in good visibility from a ceiling of 100-200 m. [...] the mistake that these might be military columns was absolutely out of the question. The refugee columns consisted mainly of elderly people, women, and children; there were many dead and wounded among them."16
News of the Germans' atrocities spread like wildfire across the borderlands and penetrated deep inside the country. The planned but poorly thought-out and rushed evacuation of authorities and government offices fueled the population's urge to evacuate eastward. The people, seeing the representatives of the authorities leaving their posts, followed by the police and even the fire brigade and other public services, followed suit. At the end of the first week of the war, a massive refugee wave swept across Łódź and the surrounding industrial district. The tide of refugees arrived in the city on 4 September, bringing the local populace along with them. Its peak wave arrived two days later. Tens of thousands from Łódź and adjacent towns traveled to Brzeziny, Stryków, and the capital. The most important officials had left: provincial governor Henryk Józewski, district governor Henryk Mostowski, and city mayor Jan Kwapiński. Approximately 60,000 people were on the roads heading to Warsaw. On the night of 6 to 7 September, all of the roads leading east were congested with soldiers and civilians interacting, as well as horse-drawn carts, led cattle, and motor cars. Nobody was able to control this impulsiveness.17
The situation was similar in other areas of the country. Air raids on residential areas of Poznań triggered a mass exodus of its inhabitants. Crowds in their thousands blocked all roads leading eastward. The few trains leaving for the center of the country were stormed at railway stations. It is estimated that in southern Wielkopolska and Kalisz provinces alone, nearly half the population fled in panic. Evacuation routes leading out of the area were strewn with destroyed passenger trains, wrecked carts and cars, piles of abandoned belongings, and corpses of men, women, and children.18
The evacuation from Pomerania was especially dramatic, as it was under threat from both the west and the east - from East Prussia, to be exact - due to German attacks. By late August, Gdynia and the coastal towns, which were teeming with summer visitors, had become empty. Better-off individuals and the families of officials were departing, in addition to summer vacationers. Gdynia had turned into "an eminently masculine city," according to one newspaper, and the only people who stayed were those "whose workshops had kept them there."19 Pomeranian Voivode (governor of the Pomeranian voivodeship) Władysław Raczkiewicz, who later became the president of Poland in exile, issued an order on 3 September to evacuate all government offices and officials from Toruń. This included a branch of the Bank of Poland, superintendents of school districts, judges, prosecutors, and even the directorate of state forests. The police officers were the last people to leave the city. To complete this job, a train, a convoy of cars, and even a river boat were used. The voivode himself left Toruń on 5 September, traveling first to Włocławek and then to Warsaw.
Silesia and Małopolska were likewise gripped by evacuation fever as a result of the impending attack from the west and south. The Voivodeship Office in Katowice began to evacuate on 1 September, and the "Kraków" army started to withdraw to the Nida and Dunajec river lines the next day. In the days that followed, they were joined by employees of other municipal and state government agencies as well as a sizable influx of refugees from south-west Poland. When Aleksander Koj drove out of Chorzów on 1 September, he saw "thousands of men, women, and children who were fleeing the war with their belongings" on the roadways.20 On 6 September, Cracow became the first major Polish city to be occupied by Germans. Those fleeing, along with evacuees from the country's western and north-western regions, were heading for Warsaw. The first evacuation trains from Wielkopolska arrived on 2 September.21 On the same day, cars with refugees from Silesia and Pomerania appeared on the streets of the capital city.22 Kurier Wileński reported that "an inordinate number of people flocked into Warsaw in the first days of the war. Waves of people were heading for Warsaw, either to stop there or to pass through."23 Yet the capital did not guarantee safety. Like the whole country, it was besieged by Luftwaffe air raids, and the fast-approaching Wehrmacht's armored spearheads. In this situation, thousands of people decided to leave the city heading eastward, as far away from the front line as possible.
The worsening trajectory of the border combat, particularly the breaching of lines of defense by rapid concentrations of armored vehicles headed toward the capital, compelled the Polish Government to begin evacuating government buildings. On the third day of the conflict, Commander-in-Chief Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły instructed Prime Minister Felicjan Sławoj-Składkowski to start preparing to relocate these offices to the Lublin area. The following day, the prime minister ordered the evacuation by military transport of all ministries, the Parliament (the lower-chamber Sejm and the upper-chamber Senate), and other key government agencies. Only ministers and their core staff were to remain in Warsaw. Special trains and automobile columns left the city overnight on 4/5 September and during the day on 5 September.24 At a news conference that afternoon, Propaganda Minister Michał Grażynski announced the decision to evacuate the capital.25
On the afternoon of 6 September, the commander-in-chief chose to retreat eastward to defend the line along the Narew, Vistula, and Dunajec Rivers. He intended to relocate his quarters to Brześć nad Bugiem. He contacted the prime minister that evening, who then ordered the evacuation of government offices from the region of Lublin to the region of Volhynia. Government officials and ordinary people moved in the midst of escalating disorder and terror, which was exacerbated by Lieutenant Colonel Roman Umiastowski, Chief of Propaganda at the Commander-in-Chief's Staff, speaking on the Polish Radio on 6 September. He urged Warsaw residents to build barricades and directed all men capable of carrying guns to evacuate eastward. Thousands more people came to the highways, not all of them men or from Warsaw.26 Umiastowski's appeal was taken as proof that the capital would soon be the target of an attack by German ground troops, so people began leaving in haste. Columns of government cars driving eastward provided additional proof to city residents that this would occur. Attempts to mitigate the bad effects of the propaganda chief's speech not only failed but exacerbated the pandemonium. On 8 September, Warsaw's evening paper Czas - 7 wieczór reported that "unjustified panic caused by subversive elements" had occurred over the previous two days. The publication cited a new speech delivered that day by Lt. Col. Umiastowski, urging young men to stay in Warsaw and help defend the city. The advice for village and town residents, however, was different: men capable of carrying guns and leading draft horses were told to evacuate. The article went on to say: "Refugees already moving along the roads should be stopped, escorted to the sides of the road to give freedom of movement to the rolling stock." The article also mentioned getting women and the elderly to turn back.27 However, limiting and managing evacuation proved impossible.
Thousands of civilians followed in the wake of central and local government officials. It was a spontaneous and frantic movement. One woman, a Warsaw resident, described the exodus from the city as follows: "After a sunny September day, a beautiful moonlit night rose in the sky. At night the city came alive. A crowd of people with suitcases and bundles on their backs, on horse-drawn carts, in cars, on foot, were thronging across all the bridges to Praga.* It was impossible to walk through the streets: one had to push, squeeze, stop, call out for companions lost in the darkness. The trams, incredibly overloaded, with their lights dimmed, dragged along at a snail's pace, cars and carts jammed in their paths. [...] We had reached the end of the city: houses, streets, scarcely moving trams, and gloomy outlines of tenement buildings remained in the darkness. However, the stampede of people continued. Still, we walked hundreds of kilometers in the clamor and bustle, in dust as thick as a suffocating fog."
Jan Meysztowicz, a Foreign Ministry official who observed the evacuation on the road from Warsaw to Lublin, recorded: "A chaotic procession of all sorts of vehicles and cars glided past, driving laboriously in the darkness, stopping abruptly every now and then, with only smoldering lights from headlights smeared with dark blue or black paint, amid calls, curses, and the desperate clamor of horns. And when this din quieted for a moment, there came from the darkness the thud of hundreds of shoes and the muffled babble of pedestrians."28
András Hory, a Hungarian envoy who also traveled on that road, wrote that he would never forget that tragic image: "The carts and vans were piled with furniture, boxes, sewing machines, carpets, bedding and bundles on bundles. There were eight or nine people in small four-wheeled cars, mostly women, old people, children, cats on their laps, cages with canaries. People were even standing on their bumpers. Weeping, red-eyed, pale, with terror painted on their faces, crumpled, tired. Runaways. Runaways, who only a few days ago were living in their homes, in warm family nests, and now they were driving and going forward, perhaps without knowing themselves where, just to get out of this city where the angels of death were flying overhead wreaking havoc."29
Scenes out of Dante's Inferno were played out on the routes leading eastward. A refugee from Warsaw recalled: "during the day we were haunted by the familiar hateful roar of planes, the barking of machine guns, the roar of bombs thrown at the fleeing crowd. [...] The roar of planes, exploding bombs, cannon shots and the dry crackle of machine guns, the crying of women, the hysterical sobbing of men whose nerves refused to obey, the pale faces and wild animal terror in people's eyes - these are the images that etched themselves into my memory." The night offered cover from air raids, but it did not stop the march. "Everything most important happened at night. When, weary of the incessant wandering, I stretched myself out as long as I could in a roadside ditch, looming over me, as if in a horror movie, were the black silhouettes of horses, riders, people dragging themselves along at a heavy pace, mothers pushing prams with their children, priests in cassocks, nuns in habits, soldiers and civilians, driven from no-one knows where and to no-one knows where, tormented above all."30
On 8 and 9 September, the central offices were relocated to Łuck, Równe, Dubno, Krzemieniec and their environs. The heavy-duty military transports were soon joined by ministers with their staff.31 President Ignacy Mościcki took up residence in the Radziwiłł Palace in Ołyka. However, contrary to hopes, Volhynia could not be a safe haven for government offices and masses of civilian refugees. In view of the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht, Marshal Rydz-Śmigły ordered, on the night of 13-14 September, the evacuation of the president, the Government, and central offices to Pokucie, near the border with Romania. The president arrived in Załucze near Śniatyń, the MFA was located in Kuty, and the remaining ministries and central offices were located in and around Hutsul Kosovo.
Władysław Pobóg-Malinowski, who in 1939 was an official of the MFA, authored a crucial volume entitled The Most Recent Political History of Polandin which he was very critical of the way in which the evacuation of the central authorities and state administration was organized and carried out. In his opinion: "It was not permissible [...] to leave the population unmanaged either in the capital or in the hinterland. The voivodes and, above all, the starosts in the districts should have stayed at their posts, all of them without exception and regardless of, what might befall them. [...] The departure of all the representatives of the authorities - governmental, provincial, and district - was tantamount to abandoning the population to its fate, leaving it to face new, tragically difficult conditions after a terrible shock. This must have caused a wave of widespread grief, bitterness, indignation, and anger. During their retreat, the authorities appeared unconcerned about public opinion and comments."32
Indignation at the ruling elite's failure to perform during the most important ordeal shines through in the recollections of many refugees. One of them put it this way in the pages of a Polish journal published in New York: "Then the roads and highways were filled with cars, horse-drawn carriages, lorries, cyclists, and motorcyclists, they were filled with pedestrians; one saw scruffy and clumped women carrying their babies in their arms; one saw magnificent Buicks, Packards, one saw gaily groomed chauffeurs driving our former dignitaries, at whose side a wife cuddled in lace cushions was hugging her favorite dog. Many of us looked on in horror and disgust at this sad procession, which offered so many contrasts and so much food for thought. This race, to go further, to go faster, rushing like an unstoppable avalanche, is and will be a black page in the history of our Homeland."33
The sight of dignitaries, accompanied by their wives, children, closer and more distant relatives and friends, was not an isolated occurrence on the evacuation routes. Indeed, many dignitaries took care of their loved ones. As early as 10 September, Deputy Minister Jan Szembek drove his wife to Bucharest by car via Zaleszczyki.34 Foreign Minister Józef Beck traveled from Warsaw to the Romanian border with his wife, Jadwiga, and stepdaughter, "Buba." They passed through the border in an official Cadillac.35 Families accompanied President Mościcki, government officials, and top state institutions. In contrast, the families of lower-level personnel were disregarded.
There was bitterness at Minister Beck's decision, made at Krzemieniec on 13 September, to continue evacuating only those personnel believed to be the "core and indispensable team."36 The aforementioned Jan Meysztowicz, who had traveled with the Ministry's leadership close to the Romanian border, witnessed the incident. "The director, [Wiktor Tomir] Drymmer, who was in charge of the evacuation, ordered [...] with brutally expressed ruthlessness that a group of female officials, who were not young, had worked hard, and had been loyal to the Ministry for many years, be left in Krzemieniec to fend for themselves. It was an unspeakably sad and humiliating spectacle as the numerous automobiles drove away from the high-school building where they had been stationed, leaving behind their sobbing colleagues in anguish and agony."37 These people were abandoned to their fate, and a few days later several of them were captured by the Soviets.
Krystyna Krzyżanowska, then a young official at the MFA, was ordered to evacuate with the rest of the Ministry staff. With the permission of her superiors, her mother accompanied her. In Krzemieniec, she was told that she was no longer needed and was paid a severance package amounting to three months' salary. As she wrote in her memoirs, she watched with "deafening despair" as the column of cars with colleagues who had been further evacuated moved away. Like many other MFA officials who were deliberately left behind, she remained where she was, waiting for events to unfold. She soon found herself under Soviet occupation. Living conditions in Krzemieniec then deteriorated overnight, and the severance pay she received from the Ministry turned out to be "a handful of almost worthless paper."38 In fear of falling into utter poverty and being arrested, she decided to return to Warsaw. She arrived there with her mother after many dangerous adventures in the last days of December 1939.39
The central offices' motorized evacuation columns successfully made their way to the border, while the situation for ordinary people was dire. The expectation that they would reach safe sections of the country was shattered when faced with the harsh reality. The approaching Wehrmacht troops outpaced the lagging columns of evacuees. The ultimate blow to those heading east came when Soviet troops invaded Poland on 17 September, making the entire country unsafe. An unidentified lawyer who left the capital on 7 September described the final leg of his three-week journey in a Warsaw newspaper: "We arrived in Kowel on 18 September. Here we learned that Soviet soldiers had entered Poland. We immediately headed a little further south, but groups of Ukrainian partisans were already prowling. We retreated to Kowel and marched back through Luboml and Łęczna to Lublin, accompanied by a wave of soldiers and a crowd of refugees. [...] On 27 September, I took a train from Lublin to Puławy. After three hours, we reached the town. From then, we were marching on foot with a group of its residents back to the capital, sleeping at night in villages. We spent the last night, 30 September, at Piaseczno. We returned to Warsaw from Wilanów on 1 October."40
The destroyed and overcrowded capital could not provide proper care for the thousands of returning refugees. On 3 October, Stefan Starzyński, the still officiating Mayor of Warsaw, issued a proclamation calling on them to return to their own homes, where "you will feel better, you will be able to fend for yourselves more easily and your lives will be less stressful. So return to your homes." Evacuation points were set up in the capital, operating with the help of the Care Department of the City Board. They provided assistance to people returning to the provinces.41 Many of them immediately discovered that the Germans had destroyed or occupied their homes, and the wandering was far from over.
While hundreds of thousands of people returned to their homes in the occupied country, tens of thousands crossed the borders into adjacent countries. On 17 September 1939, President Mościcki crossed the Romanian border at Kuty after 9.30 p.m. He was immediately followed by members of the diplomatic corps and then the entire Council of Ministers, with the exception of the prime minister, who remained in Poland alongside Marshal Rydz-Śmigły. The heads of the Republic's top institutions, including the speakers of the Sejm and the Senate, the presidents of the Supreme Chamber of Control, the Constitutional Tribunal, and the Supreme Court, departed for Romania alongside the Government. Voivodes of Silesia - Michał Grażyński, of Cracow - Józef Tymiński, of Pomerania - Władysław Raczkiewicz, of Stanisławów - Stanisław Jarecki, and of Volhynia - Aleksander Hauke Nowak were among those who went into exile. Marshal Rydz-Śmigły and Prime Minister Sławoj-Składkowski departed Poland after midnight on 18 September.42 At the border bridge, the voivode of Poznań, Ludwik Bociański, blocked them, hoping to discourage the marshal from leaving the still fighting troops. When this failed, he tried to kill himself out of despair. He was heavily wounded and brought to the Romanian side of the border. Cardinal August Hlond, primate of Poland, who fled from Poznań to Warsaw in the early days of the war and ended up in Krzemieniec, was also in Romania. After speaking with the Nuncio Archbishop Filippo Cortesi, he decided to leave the country. He crossed the border at Zaleszczyki.43
A large number of scholars and literary figures were among the evacuees. Romania was home to an estimated 114 Polish journalists and publicists as of the end of September. 44 Among them were well-known writers and poets - Melchior Wańkowicz, Julian Tuwim, Kazimierz Wierzyński, Antoni Słonimski, Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna - as well as academics - Stanisław Kot, Stanisław Stroński, Karol Estreicher, Olgierd Górka. They soon came to play a significant role in the cultural and political life of Polish wartime emigration.
Many refugees documented the dramatic moment of crossing the state border in letters and diaries; it was a final goodbye to their homeland and a tragic experience for all of them. "We are driving those 40 kilometers just over the border, seeing the final phase of the evacuation of the area - the tearing down of the Border Protection Corps posts," wrote Janusz Rakowski, a Ministry of the Treasury official, in his journal. "A lengthy swathe of dust is visible on the route to Kosovo a few kilometers before Kuty. By the time we join the column of cars that moves along parallel routes to the bridge over the Cheremosh, it is about 7 o'clock in the evening. This massive assembly of such a wide variety of automobiles is something I have never seen before. There are limos from government offices, private automobiles of all sizes, lorries, buses from all over Poland, postal vehicles, and military vehicles all lined up in the town. They cannot move because in front of the bridge police officers are trying to force all this crowded mass into one line, from which the Romanians let three cars pass, unhurriedly, checking documents. All this goes on for a very long time [...] Everyone is restless and wants to get to the bridge as quickly as possible. Every stronger whirr of the motorbikes makes people jump; after all, one German bomber could cause a panic and make the crossing impossible. Fortunately, it is slowly beginning to get dark and the black wings of night are spreading their protection over these thousands of carts seeking refuge on Romanian soil [...] From the bend in the road where we stopped, we can see the bridge and the illuminated Romanian shore at Vyzhnica quite well. City lights we have not seen for 17 days! Our shore - Kuty - is still darkened. By now all the will is concentrated toward breaking out of this darkness into the light. Nobody thinks about what awaits them there on the other side of the bridge - just to cross it as quickly as possible!"45
Paweł Starzeński, Minister Beck's personal secretary, set off with other MFA officials towards the bridge over the Cheremosh at six in the afternoon of 17 September. He too had a sense of the tragedy of which he was a participant. Years later he wrote in his diary: "Meanwhile night had fallen; in a considerable crowd some were crying and praying; others were kneeling and slandering everything and everyone. There were cases of suicide. This one and that one stooped down and hid a lump of earth surreptitiously in his pocket [...] Humiliated and with the bitterness of wormwood on our lips, we were now driving through Romanian territory."46
The tragedy of the Polish refugees made a lasting impression on the foreigners accompanying them. The Spanish Envoy Luis de Pedroso wrote in a report to his minister: "Throughout the night of 17-18 September, as well as on 18 and 19, an endless line of cars paraded through Chernivtsi (formerly Romanian Cernăuţi), in which many thousands of Poles arrived in Romania, fleeing from their native land. Never before have I seen such a sad spectacle. Nor have I ever seen people more despondent - civilians and military men alike. [However,] none of them lost faith in the future of Poland, regardless of its present fate."47
Among the fearful and panicked refugees were many who did not forget their responsibilities to the state and the Polish people during these trying times. First and foremost were the members of the teams that saved the gold retrieved from the vaults of the Bank of Poland, the National Defense Fund (NDF, Fundusz Obrony Narodowej - established in 1936 to collect funds for the defense of the country), and the most valuable monuments from the Wawel collections.
In total, in 1939 the gold resources of the Bank of Poland were worth 463.6 million zlotys, of which 100.2 million zlotys were deposited in foreign banks - in London, Paris and other French cities, Zurich, and New York - and 363.4 million zlotys in Poland (193 million in the central vault in Warsaw and 170.4 million in the bank's local branches).48 Shortly before the commencement of war, some of the bullion was distributed to branches in eastern Poland, including Brześć nad Bugiem, Lublin, Siedlce, and Zamość. The major part, however, remained in Warsaw. Stocks of gold, foreign cash, and securities from branches in the country's western, most threatened, region were also to be transferred to the capital. Following the outbreak of war, these branches began their evacuation, which took place in exceedingly dangerous conditions via packed roadways, often while being bombed by the Luftwaffe. They gradually moved further east. Their final assembly places before the Soviet army invaded were in Wilno, Pińsk, Tarnopol, Stanisławów, Równe, Lwów, and Łuck.** When it became evident that the entire country would soon be occupied, the gold was transported beyond Poland's borders. On 17 and 18 September, the bank branches in Tarnopol, Lwów, and Łuck crossed the Romanian border, while the Stanisławów branch was evacuated to Hungary, leaving only the branches in Wilno and Pińsk.
The evacuation of the Bank of Poland headquarters began on 5 September. In the evening a column of several dozen cars with gold and banknotes set off from Warsaw, heading for Lublin. The following day other columns of cars set off for that city, and a special train was diverted to Dubno. The car transports, after only two days in Lublin, continued on to Łuck and then to Śniatyń, on the Romanian border.
At this time, the resources, amassed in the regional branches of the Bank of Poland, were also, in several separate transports, taken to Śniatyń. Only three tonnes of gold were left at the disposal of the state authorities in Dubna. On the night of 13/14 September the bullion was prepared to be taken abroad. The former Treasury minister, Ignacy Matuszewski, who was in charge of the evacuation, recorded in a report on the operation: "At 12:30 a.m., the reloading from automobiles to freight cars was completed, using bank personnel, police, and railwaymen to carry the boxes. The freight cars were sealed with three different seals each and padlocked. Two duty officers from among the bank's staff were assigned to each freight car and made responsible for locking them and accompanying the bank's money on the train. Throughout reloading, the freight railway station was cordoned off by a convoy and closed to outsiders. Reloading was done in total darkness."49
Phot. 1. Ignacy Matuszewski, organizer of the evacuation of the Bank of Poland's gold (NAC)
Shortly after midnight on 14 September, the "golden" train set off toward Romania. Franciszek Duda, a Pole living there, who was sent to help his compatriots at the border, described its arrival as follows: "With considerable delay, around 1:30 a.m., a train from Poland rolled into the station with its signal lights out. The steam locomotive had the engine driver's and stoker's posts covered on all sides with a large tarpaulin to camouflage the furnace fire. The train consisted of twelve covered freight wagons and two Pullmans, one first class, the other second class. I immediately reported to the person commanding the transport operation, who was the deputy treasurer [...] and handed him a sealed letter from [the Polish consul in Chernivtsi] Buynowski. In both train cars [...] there were more than thirty sick and tired refugees, including two women, one of whom was said to be Halina Konopacka, a former Olympic champion in discus throwing. Most of the men were older directors of branches of the National Bank."50
In his report, Leon Barański, general manager of the Bank of Poland, stated that there was a noticeable decline in the staff's morale following the crossing of the Romanian border. "For our employees, who had been escorting transports from the very beginning in unbelievably difficult conditions, mostly without any help from the administrative authorities, often under direct threat from the enemy and in contact with him, the border crossing was an unheard-of blow. In the military police barracks in Chernivtsi, where we had been put up, incidents of breakdown and the waning of earlier energy began to increase."51 However, this breakdown proved to be temporary. Officials were made to realize that their mission was not yet over and everything possible had to be done to ensure that the gold was in France, at the disposal of the new government abroad.
A report on this operation, drawn up in France, records that "the Bank of Poland managed to transport abroad 100 percent of its gold reserves that had been in Poland at the beginning of September."52 As far as foreign currencies were concerned, the management of branches that were unable to leave the country (e.g. Baranowicze, Drohobycz) decided to hand over the currencies against receipt to bank clerks, who transported them abroad in private luggage and then returned them to the bank's cash desk. It was estimated that 90 percent of foreign currencies were successfully taken out from the country. The value of evacuated securities was at a similar level. Significant stocks of cash in Polish zloty were also saved.
No less dramatic was the experience of those evacuating the NDF to Romania. These funds came from, among other sources, donations from Poles. On the eve of the war, the administration of the fund was located in the Budget Office of the Ministry of Military Affairs in Warsaw, and valuables donated by the public were stored in the warehouses of this ministry. As early as 4 September, officials of the Budget Office took out of the country some of the deposits, including cash in zloty and foreign currencies. On the following day, the order came to take all assets out of the warehouses of the Ministry of Military Affairs and the General Savings Bank (Pocztowa Kasa Oszczędności) safety deposit boxes. Captain Wacław Skarżyński, who was in charge of the evacuation, energetically set to work, and soon the most valuable deposits of the fund were packed onto two lorries and joined the evacuation column with the Bank of Poland's gold. The transport "included antique gold and silver products of priceless value: candelabras, sugar bowls, cigarette cases, jewelry, as well as gold rings and silver five-penny notes. There were also gifts of perhaps the most valuable kind, such as family heirlooms - silver and gold Virtuti Militari crosses handed down by grandparents and great-grandparents. Among the crates with which the lorries bound for Lublin were loaded were eleven that were especially valuable: in four there were gold products and gold scrap; in two there were coins of numismatic value; one crate contained gold coins of gold bullion; another two contained gold watches; one crate was filled with precious stones and one with foreign currency in banknotes and cheques. The rest of the chests contained silver: practical items, coins, and jewelry."53 A box of manuscripts, sabers, and other precious memorabilia from the Belvedere Museum was also evacuated. Regrettably, some of the items could not be evacuated: sixty unopened parcels from benefactors, paintings, two crates of silver coins, and rare china remained in Warsaw. Upon arrival in Lublin, the NDF was deposited in the local branch of the Bank of Poland. Two days later it had to be moved again, this time in the direction of Lwów. In the process, the gifts were systematically sorted, with gold and foreign cash being separated from the rest of the fund and handed over to the Bank of Poland's Lwów branch. The route then led to Ternopol and onward to Horodenka. Following that, the decision to evacuate the NDF was made by former minister Henryk Floyar-Rajchman, who had previously successfully transported the gold from the Bank of Poland to Romania. The convoy of cars left for Śniatyń on 17 September and crossed the Romanian border late at night at Kuty.54
The administration of the famous Wawel Castle showed similar determination in saving national treasures. On the eve of the war, Wawel was administered by Professor Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz, who led the castle's rebuilding work, Stanisław Taszkowski, the castle's administrator from the civil chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, Stanisław Świerz-Zaleski, the custodian of its collections, and Józef A. Krzywda-Polkowski. When general mobilization was announced on 31 August, the staff set about rolling up the treasures, including the valuable tapestries, and packing them into crates made of zinc sheet. The intention was to place them all in specially prepared shelters. No one had yet thought about evacuation. On the second day of the war, Wawel Castle began to realize that developments at the front had taken an inauspicious turn and that it was necessary to think about saving the most valuable artifacts. On 3 September, before noon, the order to evacuate the Wawel collections arrived from Warsaw, but the state authorities failed to provide transport. No support could be obtained from the Voivodeship Office in Cracow, which had left the night before. A frantic search began for any possibility of transporting the treasures, but neither the army nor the state railways were able to help. In this situation, the desperate Wawel administrators decided to use a river boat that was finishing unloading coal at a river port in the Cracow borough of Podgórze. A small truck carried twenty crates, eight boxes, and the staff's luggage from the Wawel Castle, and on the night of 3/4 September, it was loaded onto the ship. The boxes contained tapestries, smaller fabrics, horse tacks, armor, and shields. Rolled standards, swords, sabers, concertinas, and valuable carpets were placed in boxes.
The seized ship, steered by its owner, Franciszek Misio, sailed down the Vistula. On board, apart from the treasures, were eighty-two people, including twenty-one women and children.55 The chances of reaching its destination safely were slim. The slow, unarmed vessel was an easy target for German aircraft, and the low water level of the river risked it running aground. Yet luck favored this unusual escapade. German air attacks were avoided, and a tugboat encountered on the way pulled the ship down the Vistula. On 9 September the transport reached Kazimierz Dolny, where the treasures were loaded onto peasant carts under the command of a Polish army corporal. In this way, the collection traveled further east, after which it encountered three Warsaw buses and a truck. It was only thanks to this that on 17 September it reached the border town of Kuty.56 There, the guardians of the precious transport learned that Poland's eastern border had been crossed by Soviet army units and that orders had been given to evacuate the army and civilians to Romania. Krzywda-Polkowski, in charge of the evacuation of the collection, recalled these tragic moments as follows. "At around 2 a.m. on 18 September, the cars in front of us started moving, followed by ours. At 2.30 a.m. we entered the border bridge, whose Romanian half was brightly lit. In the middle of the bridge a border sign with a white eagle. Passing it, we took off our headgear and one of the chauffeurs said: Have a look at this Polish sign, because perhaps not many of us will see it again in our lives."57 Although the precious artifacts from the Wawel Castle had been saved, there was still work to be done before they could be transported to France.
The refugee streams were moving toward neighboring nations with which Poland was not at war: Lithuania and Latvia in addition to Romania and Hungary. Although all of these nations welcomed refugees, chances to enter their territories legally quickly ran out owing to the ongoing acts of war and German political pressure.
On 10 September the first Polish refugees arrived in Hungary, and more came every day after that. One week later, on 17 September, the Hungarian Government let all the refugees in.58 Civilians and military columns were making their way along the roads through the Carpathian passes - Uzhok Pass, Tucholska Pass, Wyszków Pass, and Yablonitsky Pass .59 On 28 September, the border was sealed due to diplomatic intervention by Germany. On 15 September the border crossings at Kuty, over the Cheremosh River bridge, at Śniatyń, Zaleszczyki, and Serafińce, were ordered opened by the Romanian authorities. The Romanian-Polish border was closed to Poles on 21 September when the first Soviet military units reached these places.
On 19 September the long Polish-Lithuanian border was opened to Poles, first the army and then also civilians, and the mass movement of people across it continued until 26 September. The evacuation took place mainly along the roads leading from Wilno to Wilkomierz and Kaunas, but the border was also crossed in other places. The much shorter border with Latvia began to be crossed by evacuees on 17 September, on hearing the news that the Soviet army had entered Poland. On 22 September this became impossible, as the border crossing at Turmantas was manned by Red Army troops.60
The vast majority of civilian refugees left Poland by land, often on foot; a few went into exile by air. A dozen or so LOT Polish Airlines civilian aircraft landed at Romanian airports (mainly in Chernivtsi). However, in Dyneburg, a Latvian city, commercial planes from Lida Airport were also discovered, alongside military planes. Out of the twenty-seven commercial planes operated by LOT Polish Airlines, three made it to the United Kingdom, while as many as eighteen ended up in neutral nations.
The category of war refugees also included seamen from Polish merchant and fishing vessels. Faced with the growing threat of war, the authorities in Warsaw found it necessary to send units of the Polish Merchant Navy from the Baltic to ports in Allied or neutral countries. Their main concern was to protect them from sinking or falling into enemy hands, as the German Kriegsmarine dominated the Baltic. During the early stages of the war, the ships were used to transport supplies and weapons from ports in the United Kingdom and France to Romania, from which they were intended to reach Poland, a battleground. The ships were believed to play a significant role in the combined military effort of the Allied nations.
Even before the war, all Polish shipowners were obliged to prepare sufficient fuel and keep their crews in full readiness to go to sea.61 The decommissioned passenger ships Pułaski and Kościuszko sailed out from the port of Gdynia on 24 and 28 August respectively. The transatlantic ships Piłsudski, Batory, Sobieski, and Chrobry, which were the most valuable, were able to reach safe harbor. The latter set sail from Gdynia at the end of July on its routine voyage to South American ports. There were 260 crew members and almost a thousand passengers on board. Poland sent a radio communication to the ship's captain on 30 August telling him to dock at the closest neutral-country port. The Chrobry entered Recife, Brazil, on the second day of the war. A few weeks later it crossed the Atlantic and reached Freetown, a British colony in Sierra Leone. On 22 August 208 people boarded the twin ship Sobieski from Gdynia on their way to South America. When the war broke out, the ship was in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, which was a French colony at the time.
The Batory sailed from Gdynia on 24 August on a voyage to New York. It had nearly 300 crew members and 465 passengers on board. A dispatch from Gdynia with the order to call at an Allied port found her in the Atlantic. On 1 September the transatlantic liner was at the roadstead of the Canadian port of Saint John's. The Piłsudski crew and passengers were on their way back to Gdynia from New York when the war broke out. Following an order from the Polish authorities, the ship took refuge in the Scottish port of Cromarty. 62
Despite some of them having started out in the danger zone, cargo ships were also spared from enemy destruction or seizure. On 29 or 30 August all freighters, whether at sea or in harbors, received encrypted dispatches instructing them to call at ports of Allied countries or, in the event that this was not possible, at ports of neutral nations. Last to depart from Gdynia was the Lida. She left early on 29 August, in the afternoon. The Robur IV was diverted from its intended course to this port the following day.
Sweden and Norway became a refuge for eleven Polish merchant ships and a dozen fishing boats and sea yachts. The freighters Wisła and Lida, which were based in Gothenburg, sailed northward through Swedish and Norwegian territorial waters in the first days of September and then reached the United Kingdom through the North Sea. At the end of September, also from Gothenburg, five ships (Wilno, Chorzów, Naroch, Kroman, and Robur IV) sailed, arriving safely in the Norwegian port of Bergen on 3 October. From there, in the middle of the month, escorted by British ships, they sailed to the port of Methil in Scotland. In addition to the crews, on board were participants in a training voyage of the sailing ship Dar Pomorza, which had been interned in Sweden, as well as some of the crews of the fishing boats. In November 1939 it was also possible to get the Poznań, Silesia, and Rozewie out of Swedish ports.63 Fishing vessels were not captured by the enemy. Following the commencement of hostilities, a total of fifteen vessels belonging to the Deep-Sea Fishing Company Mewa (specifically, Mewa-1 - Mewa-XV) sought safety in the Netherlands. Conversely, fishing vessels belonging to the Korab and Delfin companies were berthed in French ports.64
The Polish Merchant Navy's essential vessels were moored in Allied ports or secure maritime zones. Among the 137,785 gross registered tonnage (GRT) of pre-war merchant tonnage (ships exceeding 100 GRT), up to 90.1 percent of the tonnage (124,151 GRT) was on the side of the Allied fleets. 65As of the end of April 1940, Polish vessels were manned by 1,345 officers and sailors.66
Merchant ships, along with those of the Polish Navy, were among the few assets in the hands of General Władysław Sikorski, who served as both the commander-in-chief and the prime minister in exile following the reconstitution of the supreme state and military authorities on the side of the Allied states at the end of September 1939. Later, on 4 September 1941, the Polish leader issued an order in which he said, "I fully understand the significance and peril of serving on Merchant Navy ships, and I regard the service of all those who dutifully execute it as just as honorable as service in the Navy."67
The situation faced by Polish diplomats and consular personnel abroad was similar to that of Merchant Navy sailors. They were also cut off from their homeland, and their professional status was basically unchanged. As in neutral nations, the majority of which accepted the existence of the Polish state despite its occupation, their position among the Allied countries was solid. It was unclear what would happen to Polish diplomats in nations that supported or were allies of the Third Reich. But even Italy, Japan, and its dependent Empire of Manchukuo tolerated Polish diplomatic missions on their soil. In Slovakia, the Soviet Union, and Germany the circumstances were different. Mieczysław Chałupczyński, the Polish chargé d'affaires in Bratislava, and his staff left for Budapest as early as 1 September. The Polish diplomatic staff in Berlin were evacuated a few days later. Ambassador Józef Lipski decided to take his employees via Denmark and then go via Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia to arrive eventually in Poland. Lipski consistently followed through on his goal, even if the war had taken a negative turn from the beginning. In his pursuit of the MFA, Lipski made it as far as Krzemieniec, where he eventually caught up with Minister Beck. Then he crossed the border into Romania with other members of the Government. He departed for France at the beginning of October, traveling through Italy and Yugoslavia before offering himself to the Polish authorities in exile. Consular staff evacuation was far more challenging. The Germans initially interned them in Hamburg and Vienna. They had to wait until 13 and 14 September before they were allowed to leave. The "Vienna" group went to Hungary, while the "Hamburg" group traveled to Denmark. Three consuls were held by the Germans in violation of international law. Bohdan Jałowiecki from Olsztyn (today's Allenstein) was one of them; he died in a Nazi camp in Działdowo (today's Soldau). The staff of the General Commissariat of the Republic of Poland in Gdańsk were treated with brutality. Commissioner Marian Chodacki was among those who were detained and subjected to physical violence. They were transported to the Lithuanian border on 7 September.68
The circumstances of the departure of Polish diplomatic and consular personnel from the Soviet Union after the invasion of 17 September 1939 by the Red Army across the borders of Poland were also dramatic. Ambassador Wacław Grzybowski, summoned to the Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs on the morning of that day, refused to accept a note stating that the Polish state had ceased to exist and demanded passports for the staff of the embassy and consulates in Leningrad, Kiev, and Minsk, who were to assemble in Moscow to then leave the Soviet Union. This had not taken place as late as 10 October 1939. A group of 110 Polish diplomatic officials left via Leningrad for Finland and then via Sweden and Norway for France. Unfortunately, Consul Jerzy Matusiński from Kyiv was not among those leaving.69 There is no doubt that he was arrested by the Soviets and never regained his freedom. His fate remains unknown to this day.
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