260648 Cpl. Zygmunt Nowak Polish Army Polish Tank Corps from:Wolamakowska, Poland My father Zygmunt Nowak was captured on 6th of October 1939 and sent to Stalag XIII-A, and then moved to Stalag X-A in Schleswig. On 15th of December 19141, he was sent to work on a farm near Flensburg. He stayed there until the end of the war, as the farmer treated him well. Even after he was freed by the British, he stayed on to help at the farm until one of the farmer’s three sons came home from the war. Knowing the area well, he joined the occupying Allied forces to keep law and order in the area.
Not much was said about the camps, so I can't tell any stories. One interesting point was that some time in 1943 Dad was allowed to go home to Poland for a week. My family back in Poland has a record of this. His brother was part of the Polish underground and told him not to go back, as he would hide him in Poland. But Dad said no, as probably the Germans would kill the whole family if he didn't go back, plus he was being treated well there. Additional Information: | On his death bed, Zygmunt told Harald, his second son (my brother), that while working as a farm labourer in Schleswig Holstein (near the village of Bredstedt) after he was transferred from Stalag X-A, he had worked secretly for the Allies helping hide downed airmen until they were able to be repatriated back to UK. One such airmen died from his injuries in the barn and Zygmunt buried him in a place that no-one would come across out in the paddocks and reported back to the Allies. The story goes further (and has only come out very recently because Harald was sworn to secrecy on dad's death bed) - something that we are finding difficult to corroborate: when Zygmunt was given leave to go back to visit his family (with a train ticket paid for and an official German leave pass) he was actually sent by the Allies to check out information they had received about an informer in the Makow area who was passing information about partisan activities back to the Germans. Zygmunt's brother Cheswaw was a member of such a group so it appears that Zygmunt had to be particularly careful and secretive about his investigations. When his brother asked him to stay on and "kill Germans" Zygmunt declined. The Nowak family were somewhat disappointed but seemed to understand when he said he had to go back to help the old German farmer couple because (given that he was forced out of home at the early age of 6) "this was the only family he had truely known." Zygmunt's research turned up nothing so on his return he reported back to the Allies. When the war was over Zygmunt was employed (paid a stipend) by the Civilian Mixed Labour Organisation (CMLO) and worked as a military policeman and dispatch rider. One of his jobs was to secretly take large amounts of cash from UK military ships to the various army HQ to pay military personnel because armed army trucks doing such work were being held up by bandits with inside information. It was in his role as policeman that Zygmunt met a German girl, Sigrid, 12 years his younger, who was looking after a group of orphan children. They had camped in a house illegally so Zygmunt had to evict them and took pity on the group, found them suitable accommodation and delivered meals for the hungry children on a regular basis. The rest is history. A child, Siegfried, named after the German farmer, was born in 1948 and the couple married soon after. They spent time in a Resettlement Camp for displaced persons, because they could not return to Poland and did not want to live in Germany. Eventually they were sent to Australia where Zygmunt (and Sigrid) stayed till he/they died. His epitaph reads "a man of Poland who called Australia home." My dad is a legend.Siggy Nowak
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