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STEFAN SKOTNICKI THE NETHERLANDS
NIJMEGEN
DRZEWKO NR 620
TREE NO.

Stefan Skotnicki was born in Łódź on 11 April 1935. His family lived at 35,
Andrzeja Street. He was the son of Jerzy Salamonowicz and Hanna née Spiro.
Zofia Kacprzak (née Podębska), a nanny and domestic help who played
a very important role in his life, lived with them.
Jerzy co-owned a small chemical factory called Syntex in Łódź with his friend,
Lewinkopf. After the outbreak of World War II, even as soon as December
1939, Stefan’s parents had decided to flee to Sandomierz, where his mother’s
family lived. The Lewinkopfs with their son, Jerzy (well known after the war
under the name Kosiński) fled from Łódź to Sandomierz in the same truck.
When the Germans began to create the ghetto in early 1942, little Stefan
and Zofia who pretended to be his mother left Sandomierz. “I quickly under-
stood the consequences that not only I, but also Zofia, would have to bear, if
we were recognized”, he recalls years later. “I understood relatively quickly
that I must be “invisible”, must not attract anyone’s attention, look at anyone
or make contact with anyone.
Zofia came from a small village near Sieradz. That’s where they went, looking
for shelter. “I remember a small one-room cabin which also had a hay-loft.
I could hear Zofia’s conversation with her family. They were trying to persuade
her that her behaviour was completely wrong, not only dangerous for her,
but also for them”, he says.
They fled that same night. After a few weeks, they found shelter in Warsaw
and then in Otwock. In October 1942, Stefan’s father was arrested and
imprisoned in Radom, and a few months later he was sent to Auschwitz.
On 23 January 1943, the Germans carried out the liquidation of the ghetto
in Sandomierz. Stefan’s great-grandmother was murdered on the spot, his
grandmother committed suicide, and mother was forced into the wagon to
be sent to Treblinka. She was the only one who decided to jump out of the
speeding train through a small window with wire on it. She managed to do
it. She was young and resourceful. She went to Otwock and found her son.
They settled in Warsaw. Her mother, under the name Halina Skotnicka, lived
with her friends in the city centre. She worked at the Toebbens factory, which
produced clothes for Wehrmacht soldiers. On 1 August 1944, at the outbreak
of the Warsaw Uprising, she just happened to be in Wola where Stefan and
Zofia lived. After only ten days, the German troops, or rather the Ukraini-
an troops of the General Vlasov’s army entered Wola. The Skotnickis were
driven out of Warsaw. They found a temporary shelter in the nearby village
of Borzęcin, then in Ożarów, and in December 1944, they reached Piotrków
Trybunalski. There, in January 1945, they were “liberated” by the Red Army.
“I really perceived the entry of Russian troops as liberation. I was almost 10

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