Wspomnienie o losach wojennych pracowników i współpracowników Państwowego Instytutu Geologicznego w czasie drugiej wojny światowej

Abstract

MEMORY OF WORKERS AND COLLABORATORS OF THE STATE GEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Merits of workers and collaborators of the State Geological Institute during the fights with the Nazi invasion and occupation are expressed by the honor board. placed in 1948 in the entrance hall (Fig. 1). It comprises names of 25 geologists and technical workers, amongst them professor Józef Morozewicz who founded the Institute, has been its chief for many years and was also the outstanding scientis.  A tragic list is closed by the many years collaborator, professor Stanisław Pawłowski who has been brutally killed by the Nazis in the Poznań gallows - the 7th fort at Winiary, already at the beginning of 1940.

Geologists and assistant staff of the State Geological Institute, all together about 80 persons in that time, took part in different fights with the German occupant already in autumn 1939. Participation of workers and collaborators of the Institute in fight and conspiracy are described in two groups. The first one comprises the names of lates since the end of the second world war i.e. in 1948-1987, the second one the names of workers and collaborators that are employed at present in the Institute or have retired. In general the first group comprises 49 geologists and technical staff. Amongst them there is professor Karol Bohdanowicz, the chief of the Institute. He was the world-famous scientist, the late chief of the Geological Institute and the Geological Committee in Petersburg, in 1921-1935 the professor of the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy in Cracow. During the German occupation K. Bohdanowicz worked at home but all the time he operated in fact the Institute. Besides him, the assistant manager of the Institute Jan Czarnocki, together with his whole family, was the most active in conspiracy. His flat acted as the "contact box" with the Polish government in London, was the residence for instructors coming by air to fights with the occupant, etc. This list comprises also the assistant professor Zbigniew Sujkowski, an outstanding sedimentologist, veteran and disabled from the first world war. Since the very beginning of the occupation he organized and carried through the sabotage actions. In 1944 he was air-transported to the West as the officer who knew well acting of the Polish underground. This long list is closed by professor Józef Zwierzycki who came to Poland in 1937 after 25 years of geological investigations in Indonesia and here passed the whole German occupation. In this time he laid outstanding merits for the Institute. He was arrested at the end of 1942 due to denunciation of his previous collaborator, the German from Indonesia, then passed a year in concentration camp at Auschwitz and afterwards lived in Berlin under surveillance. The second group of names comprises the ones of two late managers of the State Geological Institute i.e. professor Stefan Zbigniew Różycki, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and professor Edward Rühle.

The central idea of these reminiscences comprised a wish to describe the society of the State Geolo· gical Institute, particularly the one of the Warsaw area. Such approach is due to the authors who lived there during the whole German occupation.

A team of several dozen workers of the State Geological Institute in Warsaw, Rakowiecka Street 4, has been composed of considerably varying people if their education, intellectual level and philosophy of life are taken into account. But all of them were cemented by the idea of intransigent fight with the German invader. On that score the Institute acted as a marvellous monolith, a uniform large family that composed of people who understood and cooperated with one another. During the whole occupation there was no denunciation in the Institute or even unfriendly relation of anyone to such a deeply developed conspiracy.

Finally, the fight with the German occupant embraced various generations of workers and collaborators of the State Geological Institute. There were numerous participants of the war in 1939; under-ground soldiers were still more abundant. 19 years old cadet-gunner took part in the battle at Monte Cassino and at tract from Ancona to Bologne, a soldier of a rifle woman battalion named after E. Plater in the Kościuszko Division passed the battle tract from the Bug River to Berlin where she was twice wounded and awarded the Cross of Braves. Amongst them there were also veterans of the first world war, 17 years old rifleman of that time, soldier of the first cadre company of the Polish Legions and during the Nazi invasion a main organizer of sabotage in the country. Participation of workers and collaborators of the State Geological Institute in fights with the Nazi occupant in 1939-1945 is to a certain degree expressed by numerous battle medals.