MARIA BARANOWSKA

Maria Baranowska
nee Nawracała (Nawrazalla)
*28.6.1894 in Hötensleben
+1975 in Kołobrzeg

Maria Baranowska was one of the most active members of Berlin’s pre-war Polish community. As a long-standing secretary of the Union of Poles in Germany, she drew on her organisational experience after the outbreak of war to help Polish forced labourers. The Baranowski family’s flat at Tilsiter Straße 65, today Richard-Sorge-Straße, became a place where hungry and exhausted fellow Poles could find food, clothing, shelter and support. Under the conditions of Nazi terror, this everyday assistance became a form of resistance.

The family soon came to the attention of the Gestapo. Following a denunciation, their home was searched and they were subjected to interrogation and arrest. Maria was arrested on 7 July 1941 and, without trial, deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp as a “fanatical Pole”. The repression also affected her family. Her husband Piotr died in the final days of the war when a prison ship carrying inmates from Neuengamme concentration camp was sunk. Their two sons were conscripted into the Wehrmacht and died during the war.

In 1943, Maria was assigned to an SS detachment at Schloss Itter in Tyrol, a subcamp of Dachau concentration camp. She worked in the castle kitchen for the prominent prisoners held there, among them General Maxime Weygand and the former French prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Édouard Daladier. Through her contacts with members of the staff, information about the course of the war and the SS’s plans reached the prisoners.

In early May 1945, Maria witnessed the events now known as the Battle of Castle Itter. When Waffen-SS units attacked the castle, American soldiers, Wehrmacht soldiers associated with the Austrian resistance, and the French prisoners jointly defended it until American reinforcements arrived. Maria survived the fighting in the castle kitchen. After the liberation, the French prisoners said goodbye to her with great gratitude. Marie-Renée Weygand gave her a dress and placed a black necklace around her neck, a symbol of her regained freedom.

After the war, Maria settled in Stettin (Szczecin). In 1948, on the 25th anniversary of the Union of Poles in Germany, she was among the first activists to receive its badges for loyalty and steadfastness. She lived to see neither a memorial dedicated to her nor scholarly recognition of her life and work. Her story represents a form of Polish resistance rooted in solidarity, mutual aid and the creation of networks of support.

Castle Itter

Schloss Itter (Itter Castle) viewed from the east-southeast in 1979.
Photo: Steve J. Morgan (of Portland, Oregon, USA)/ Wikimedia

Contact:
ANNA KRENZ
krenzarch(at)gmail.com
+491772725096