Jerzy Kowalewski - Holocaust Survivor

Jerzy Kowalewski was born in Warsaw in 1924.
His father was the head of a papermill and a printing plant, and his mother worked as a manager in the tobacco industry. Both parents had fought for Polands independence in the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) in World War I. He returned to Warsaw in August 1939, shortly before the German Wehrmacht invaded Poland, and volunteered for military. After his countrys defeat, he participated in the underground resistance movement until his arrest by the Gestapo on April 22, 1941.
After countless interrogations and torture sessions, he was deported on April 18, 1942, and two days later he reached the Auschwitz I main camp. There Jerzy Kowalewski had to do heavy labor, building roads as a member of the Buna external detachment during the construction of the I.G. Farben plant. While at work, he tried to make contact with the outside world on behalf of the Polish resistance movement inside the camp.
In late May 1942, an SS doctor infected Jerzy Kowalewski with typhus during medical experiments on prisoners, and it was only the assistance of friends and medical orderlies that kept Kowalewski from being gassed. He briefly returned to work on building the Birkenau camp before being transported to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. There Jerzy Kowalewski had to work first in the quarry and as an electrician, and later as an SS handyman (Kalfaktor). Denounced for illegally listening to the radio, Jerzy Kowalewski was moved to the Dachau concentration camp, where he was finally liberated by the U.S. Army on April 29, 1945.
He did not want to stay in Europe and emigrated to Argentina. To be close to his mother, however, Jerzy Kowalewski returned to Poland in the early 1950s despite great difficulties. From then on, as a non-Party member and second-class human, he had a hard time earning a living.
He worked first for the Argentine Embassy, next in construction, and finally for the state-owned travel agency. He married in 1972, and in 1973 his son, Adam, was born. As a result of the medical experiments conducted on Jerzy Kowalewski by the SS, Adam suffered from polio since birth. From then on, Jerzy Kowalewski served as an advocate for children who were born with a handicap attributable to their parents imprisonment in a concentration camp, and he continues that work to the present day.

Jerzy Kowalewski now lives in Warsaw.



Fortunately I had the pleasure of meting Him on the summer of 2008. Where he explained to us his past and how his life was when the war was happening. I hope You enjoy this video and You can feel the same emotion i felt when i was listening to this great man speak. =]

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[KrysiaMarysia100]

Thank you for publishing this video.

I watched fascinating interview with him (in Polish) on TV TRWAM on 24 Jan. 2010 - "Don't awake a beast in a human, once it's awaken it won't stop at anything."

Mr Kowalewski is a guide to Auschwitz visitors/pilgrimages.

Jews coming for March of The Living ask him to be their guide. (He's not a Jew.)

He said all prisoners were helping each other. Now he receives daily phonecalls from handful of survivors, just asking : Are you alive? You need anything?