Janina Fieldorfowa, née Kobylińska, was born on August 17, 1898 in Vilnius as the daughter of Jan and Maria née Iwaszkiewicz. In 1907, she began her education at the private gymnasium of Vera Michajłówna Prozorowa in Vilnius. From 1911, she belonged to the Union of Progressive and Independence Youth. She organized self-education clubs, taught children and young people Polish history and Polish literature, developed in them the spirit of patriotism and love for the homeland.
After the death of her father, in order to help her mother feed the family, she started working as an actress in the “Lutnia” theater in Vilnius, she also gave private lessons in French and Russian. Thanks to the protection of the famous photographer Jan Bułhak, she worked at a regional exhibition organized by the Germans. In 1919, she married a Polish officer, August Emil Fieldorf. The daughters Krystyna (1922) and Maria (1925) were born.
Janina worked in a knitting factory in Vilnius during the war. She was arrested twice – first she was in the hands of the Gestapo, then the NKVD, imprisoned in Łukiszki. She was forced to work in suburban gardens. She was a liaison officer, a distributor of the underground press in the headquarters of the Vilnius District of the Home Army. She ran a sanitary and transfer point at Helena Januszewska’s house in Kolonia Wileńska.
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In July 1945, together with her daughters, she left for Łódź, where at first she gave private lessons in Russian, then for many years she worked as a secretary at the Department of Correct Anatomy of the Medical Faculty of the Medical Academy of Łódź. After retiring, she moved to Gdańsk. She lived with her daughter Maria Czarska. She died on July 13, 1979. She was buried in her husband’s symbolic grave at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.
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“It’s time to start writing memoirs”
On October 24, 1956, Janina Fieldorf began writing her memoirs, which she dedicated to her daughters. Selected notes in the form of diaries were published by the Institute of National Remembrance in 2012 in the form of a publication entitled “Fate has already taken over me… Memories” – are a valuable source of memory about the Kobyliński and Fieldorf family. She wrote: “I think it’s time to start writing memoirs. Life is passing by, rushing at dizzying speed and I don’t know if I will be able to pass on the story of my life to my daughters. I would like to leave my daughters something that will show them the figure of a mother from childhood to old age. But will I make it? My heart is pounding and hurting so much… too many historical dates have hit me, all of us.”
For several years, she did not lose faith in her husband’s survival. “I’m approaching sixty. The thought of death haunts me more and more. I had a heart attack last November. Then for several months I was tormented by shortness of breath, I did not sleep at night, I thought that I would not recover. Now I feel a little better, but the slightest emotion causes heartaches, shortness of breath and freezing. And how to avoid so many emotions in my situation. If Emil is gone, he is gone… Is he alive? Was it in Russia or did they murder him… We don’t know.”
She devoted a lot of space in her memoirs to the political situation in Poland. This is what she wrote at that time: “Through the open windows, I hear broken, passionate rally speeches of young people. A historical storm passes over our Poland again. After 12 years of silence, sacrifices, violence and oppression, Władysław Gomułka took over the government. A communist, but a Polish communist.
Vilnius childhood
Janina grew up in Vilnius, which was seized by the Russian invader, where “Russification was going all the way”, as she wrote. She had seven siblings: Eugenia, Jan, Rafał, Kazimiera, Zofia, Ludwika, and Wacław. She grew up in a cheerful, family atmosphere. This is how she recalled her parents: “Father »was a pigeon heart and never raised his hand on children«. He was a carpenter, »he was a carpenter artist«. Mother, called “Masia” by the family, was a seamstress, she ran a tailor’s workshop.
Parents attached great importance to the education of their children. They instilled an attachment to Polish history and literature, including those banned by Russian censorship. Years later, she recalled: “Our father differed in appearance, behavior and intelligence from his fellow carpenters. Most of all, he read. He had a closely guarded library with the works of Mickiewicz, Kraszewski, Prus, and a number of other translations. They were some singers. We learned these songs from our mother, but quietly – so that, God forbid, someone didn’t overhear, because they were “going to Siberia” for that.’
This is how she remembered her childhood: “On Sunday, the whole dressed-up group went to the church, and then to the Bernardyński Garden, where there was a summer theater, where the Wilenka flowed, where there were two ponds with a bridge and on the pond swans, which had their beautiful house in the middle of the pond. My father rarely went with us. Mostly my mother alone. Sometimes we were invited to the Antoś or Oleś family. Mom was always in trouble about who to leave at home and who to take, and in the end she took all the kids, left us less often with the younger ones, and daddy went with the older ones.’
Read more: Polonia teachers in the Vilnius region. The initiative of the Institute of National Remembrance crossed the borders of Poland
“Fate has taken over me”
Janina met her future husband at the end of May 1919 during a performance in which she performed. They got married after a few months of acquaintance, which lasted until the general’s death. She described the first meeting as follows: “Suddenly I feel that someone is staring at me persistently. I looked, not suspecting that this is Destiny, that Fate has taken over me … Very handsome, with a swarthy face and huge eyes, the second lieutenant officer pulls out a pair of narcissus towards me. And one was broken. My God, how [ja] I remember it well! (…) I shrugged my shoulders, moved further away and did not take the flowers. We sit on, but something tempts me, I keep glancing at my neighbor and I see indignantly that he is not looking at the stage at all, but constantly looking at me. I couldn’t take it anymore and I nodded my head to look at the stage… But he’s not, he’s just staring at me.”
Then she recalled the proposal: “Emil noticed me sooner than I noticed him. As I ran out of the garden gate, I bumped right into him. And that’s it. He looked so happy, looked at me with such adoration, took my arm so imperiously that I couldn’t resist. Emil said, although I didn’t ask him, that he had broken up with his fiancée, that for those two weeks he had only thought about me, that he had shortened his vacation because he couldn’t take it anymore, that he loved me and that he would go to my mother soon. I was silent. I knew it was destiny and there was no point in resisting.”
“He was a noble and good man”
In her memoirs, Janina presented her husband as a good man, a father, and an exceptional soldier. “He was an extremely affectionate father. He loved children. And wherever fate took him, he was always able to take care of children who felt goodness and love in him and flocked to him. On March 20, 1925, the second daughter, Maria, is born. Emil was also born on March 20 and was 30 years older than his younger daughter. When I told my little Marysia about it, she was happy: ‘Oh dear, she cried, Daddy and I are twins'”.
She emphasized that he was generous and magnanimous in giving to others, he was able to share what he had. He supported her mother and siblings when they fell into financial decline after their father’s death. With these words he described his husband: “He turned out to be an incredibly noble and good man (…). Until his siblings became independent, he supported such a large family and never made me feel that it was a burden for him.”
She talked about his military service in the smallest details and about the love he had for Poland: “Emil was so thin and haggard that none of his colleagues expected that he would last long at the front. That he would surely drop out after the first strenuous march and return to Krakow. He withstood this march and many others.
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“Remember not to ask them for mercy”
General “Nil” did not want to apply the law of pardon. He believed that mercy was for criminals, not soldiers fighting for independence. All he wanted was a fair review of the sentence. Janina recalled the last meeting as follows: “February 2, 1953, I saw Emil for the last time. He was sad, my heart was breaking with pain and despair. He knew about the verdict. Some older, more human guard had brought him in. We were alone for the first time. Then Emil said: ‘Do you know why they sentenced me? Because I refused to cooperate with them. Remember not to ask them for mercy. I forbid it!«. I said, ‘I guess, but I’m not losing hope, I’m fighting for you.’ Then the guard came, announced that the vision was over. Emil left. His head was bowed, hands in his pockets, and he didn’t look back at me.
Despite the prohibition she heard from her husband, Janina with her daughters and his father, Andrzej Fieldorf, turned to Bolesław Bierut for the right of clemency. In the father’s pleading letter we read: “I am an old man, 87 years old (…). During the occupation, I lost my son Jan, an airman, who was murdered in the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. My wife Agnieszka died in 1941, which was caused by the situation and fate of her son arrested by the Nazis. The current news of the death threat hanging over the head of my second child is an unbearable blow to me. Therefore, I, a senile old man, turn to the distinguished citizen of the President with the most fervent request of my father’s heart to take advantage of the constitutional right of grace in relation to my son, August Emil Fieldorf.
Bierut did not take advantage of the right of grace. On February 24, 1953, General August Emil Fieldorf was executed by hanging in the Mokotów prison in Warsaw at ul. Rakowiecka. The body was buried in an unknown place to this day.
Keep the memory
For years, Janina did not lose hope of finding her husband’s “whereabouts”. The family did not receive notification of the execution of the sentence. It was only in 1957 that the general’s daughter, Maria Fieldorf, was informed about her father’s execution a few days after she asked about his health at the General Prosecutor’s Office.
Fieldorfowa could not accept it. Over the years, she asked for help from various people and institutions, always with poor results. In her diary, she wrote: “February 1 is the anniversary of the execution of Kutscher, the executioner of Warsaw. Emil told me that it was he who caused the attack and he passed the sentence on Kutschera, but in all the descriptions and accounts he was never mentioned. Even in the memories of Radio Free Europe. It was only yesterday that our radio announced that Colonel “Nil” had ordered the liquidation of Kutschera. (…) Extensive descriptions of this attack appeared in magazines and weeklies, but Emil was not mentioned either (…) they wrote that the sentence was issued by the commandant of Kedyw, but they did not give his name, and it hurts me so much. I know that Emil wants people, young people to know what he was like, what his life was like, and that he didn’t die for nothing, he didn’t give up. I do what I can, I speak, tell, move, write to different people, but how little can I do alone, and in addition already weak and old.
In 1972, she wrote to the Minister of National Defense, Wojciech Jaruzelski, who, on his own initiative, decided to fund a symbolic tombstone for General “Nil”. It is located at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw. Initially, the words carved on it spoke of the “tragic death” of the general. It was only after 1989 that the truth could be written: “murdered in the Mokotów prison.”
Magda Wysocka
Institute of National Remembrance
Branch in Wrocław
photo. archive of Magda Wysocka and the Institute of National Remembrance
Article published in the magazine “Kurier Wileński” No. 12(35) 25-31/03/2023
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