WARSAW (dpa) – Elzbieta Twardowska clutches a note with the number 128 written on it, another set of digits in the 73-year-old woman’s battle with bureaucracy.
Elzbieta Twardowska is one of almost half a million ex-Nazi slaves and forced labourers in Poland who have been waiting for justice for more than half a century since World War II.One number already reminds her of the past and will follow her to the grave – it was tattoed on her arm while she was an inmate of Auschwitz concentration camp.While she waits to hand in her compensation claim as an ex-Nazi slave labourer, Elzbieta recalls how she was only 16 years old when she passed the infamous gate with the cynical message “Arbeit macht frei” (work liberates) after the defeat of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.Work did not set Elzbieta free, instead she had to toil for 12 hours a day in a munitions factory as a slave of the SS.First in Auschwitz, then in Ravensbrueck and finally in Buchenwald. There was only hunger, exhaustion and humiliation for the slaves, the money went to the SS. Freedom came only with the liberation of the camp at the end of the war.Elzbieta Twardowska cannot remember her first moments of freedom. She was in hospital, numb with pain. After an Allied air raid on the factory she was buried in the ruins. She survived but lost a leg.“Only three days before the war ended, can you imagine?” she says bitterly.Unlike many others, she survived and returned to the rubble and ruins of Warsaw – her once-elegant home. Now she awaits 6,500 dollars in symbolic compensation for her suffering as an ex-Nazi slave.For the woman dressed in a light summer suit that covers her artificial leg, the sum represents a lot of money. But after decades of waiting she feels bitterness as well. “It’s not compensation, it’s a pittance,” says Twardowska.Stefan Kozlowski from the Association for Political Prisoners in Nazi Camps knows a lot of people like Elzbieta Twardowska.He looks tired as he puts down the telephone receiver in his cramped office in downtown Warsaw. Another former slave labourer has just inquired about whether he can now, finally count on the desperately needed money from Germany.“I get dozens of calls every day, hundreds in a week,” says Kozlowski as the lines of exhaustion around his eyes seem to get deeper. “These people know they haven’t got much time left.”From his desk Kozlowski’s glance wanders towards two posters. The graphics show starved prisoners in blue and white striped rags, looking like skeletons.When Kozlowski looks at the posters, he is looking back into his own past. “There were 180 men in my transport to Stutthof,” he recalls. “Eleven of us survived the camp. Nowadays, only two or three are alive.”The race against time is critical for Kozlowski in the ongoing fight for compensation. In recent months he has had to stand at the graves of old friends and fellow prisoners more often than he would like to recall.“What’s the good of the heirs having a right to claim the money?” he asks bitterly. “We wanted compensation for the victims, not for their descendants.” But according to estimates, in Poland alone more than 30,000 former slave labourers have died in the last two years, without getting the promised compensation.Kozlowski nevertheless avoids voicing anger at German companies whose legal concerns have delayed payments for two years. “We do not want to be a burden on German-Polish reconciliation,” he says.He is not being ironic. “After all, Germany is our most important partner, especially when it comes to E.U. enlargement. We have to look ahead to the future, not back to the past.”Still he is bitter. He feels the German companies responsible for half of the 4.5 billion dollar indemnification package seem to regard compensation for slave labourers more as a business deal rather than the payment of a moral and historic debt.When asked whether he ever heard a word of apology during two years of negotiations in Berlin or Washington, sadness flashes in his blue eyes and his voice turns hoarse.“An apology? Never, not a single word,” he says, his lips suddenly a thin line. But immediately he regains his composure. “Now the speedy transfer of the money is all that matters.”“If the money is transferred, at all,” stresses Tomasz Pawelczyk, betraying his doubts about the parliamentary declaration in Berlin that legal hurdles to the payments had been overcome.The 78-year-old former Polish resistance fighter with the full white hair moves uneasily in a worn chair in Kozlowski’s office.“I’ve forgotten most of my German. But I do remember the saying ‘Ein Mann, ein Wort’ (a man keeps his word)” says Pawelczyk and bangs his cane on the floor. “I will only believe their promises when I have the money in my hands.”
