I didn't take part in the Warsaw Uprising because I wasn't in Warsaw then.
I'll tell you why in a moment.
I had moved out of that sad little room to a normal room on Hoża Street
which my brother had rented when he saw what wretched the conditions I was living in,
and when he saw a spoon lying in a pan of dry buckwheat, he became so angry that he said,
'From now on, you're going to be eating your dinner with us' which I accepted very willingly, with a great deal of pleasure.
He had two small daughters who were very sweet, and a wife. During the occupation, he continued his practice.
But there came a moment, after I'd been studying for about a year-and-a-half, when I returned to my room
which I was renting from the landlady who never communicated with me
as she knew that these meetings had been arranged for certain times – and that Professor Kotarbiński would show up.
She knew I'd asked for the door to be kept ajar, she understood that when that group of five people arrived at a given time...
it was forbidden to hold meetings so we were already liable for punishment or could potentially be punished.
That day, when I came back after having been out, this lady said to me,
'I'm afraid you're going to have to go away because the Gestapo have been here asking about you'.
I never understood how the Gestapo could have known anything about me because I'd never been caught.
But I remembered something later, that I'd sent something to Lublin;
I'd been asked to do that because that's where I'd done a kind of nursing course
which was being run during the occupation so that we'd be prepared in case of war.
So then I, of course, only took my documents with me and left straight away
because I thought that someone either might be outside the house or that they might come back thinking that I'd return there.
I don't know what happened there afterwards because I never saw that lady I'd been lodging with again,
but I decided that I couldn't stay in Lublin any longer because I thought if they have anything on me,
they'll know that Lublin is my home town and that my family was there and that I could try taking refuge with them,
so the friendship with Anna Kamieńska really paid off in that difficult period.
She invited me to stay in the Świdnik forestry facilities which wasn't far from Lublin,
about 20 kilometres, I think, perhaps a bit more,
and that's where I stayed with her.
It was large, these facilities are always large, there are always rooms there to hide in
and this was where we stayed until suddenly, we saw wandering through the garden,
with his rifle pointing down, a ragged soldier,
and it turned out that some of those Russians who had finally just entered the city
after waiting in Praga had turned up there.
We realised then that it was time to return to Lublin. We returned on foot because there was no other way to get back.
It probably wasn't a safe road because we were overtaken by units of German soldiers but nobody took any notice of us.
Besides, a sense of fear isn't as strongly developed in young people; I think it develops much later on.
In Lublin, I found the city in a terrible state.
At that time, everyone who'd been arrested by the Germans was being held in the castle.
They were mostly activists of the underground movement,
and when we came into the city, a massacre was being carried out, or rather, had just been carried out.
Before moving out, the Germans had been hiding in the cellars, and some of them had come out
but first, they had murdered everyone who was being held in the castle,
so the streets were running with blood.
I remember that my brother was summoned to take photographs,
and when he came back, he was in a very bad way after seeing those images.