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Maria Rutkowska: To the Son

Info / context to the poem

Over and over again, women were plunged into deep moral conflicts by forced labor in the armaments industry, since they were forced to participate in military armament and aggression against their own people at home and for the enemy. Despite the many attempts to organize and carry out sabotage in the factories, many felt their actions, which they were forced to do under constant threats to their own lives, were a betrayal of their loved ones and their nation.

Maria Rutkowska wrote: "This poem was written in the Neubrandenburg factory, where prisoners were forced to work in the armaments industry. It is dedicated to all mothers and reflects their moral agony. It is dedicated in particular to Klara Jezierska, who was executed for sabotage at Ravensbrück."
(C. Jaiser)

Author - biography

Maria Rutkowska

Maria Rutkowska was born in 1910 in Gidle near Częstochowa. She attends a boarding school in Warsaw. According to her own statements, she is brought up in a very devout and patriotic atmosphere, which shapes her later attitude in the camp. After graduating from high school, she studies economics in Warsaw. In 1934 she marries her first husband, Tadeusz Rutkowski, with whom she has a daughter, Elżbieta.

Maria Rutkowska becomes a journalist and fights against the Nazi regime and Italian fascism even before 1939 with reportages in Poland. After her return from Rome in early September 1939, she takes part in the civil defense of Warsaw.

She is arrested on 20 June 1941 in front of her daughter's eyes, presumably because of her articles from Italy and a coded letter, and held in Częstochowa prison. Accused of "conspiracy," she was deported exactly one year later on a transport from Radom to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and transferred to the Neubrandenburg subcamp beginning in July 1943. There, she and her fellow prisoners had to produce parts for the V1 and V2 rockets as well as for airplanes for the Mechanische Werkstätten GmbH.

In mid-1944, she is transferred to the Waldbau subcamp near Neubrandenburg. In 1944 and 1945, about 7,000 women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp had to perform forced labor for the same company in the construction of underground factory halls and in production. During this time, Maria Rutkowska participates as a teacher of history and Polish literature in classes organized secretly in the camp. During the dissolution of the camp, she manages to escape.

On 15 May 1945 she returns home. She learns that her husband, Tadeusz Rutkowski, who was arrested three years after her, was shot in the Groß-Rosen concentration camp. After the end of the war, she gives up her journalistic profession and works as an economist in the construction industry. Maria Rutkowska died in Katowice in September 1999. (C. Jaiser)

Photo: Polish Women in Ravensbrück (polkiwravensbruck.pl)

Text in original language