Born in Warsaw in a family of clerks on 18 December 1931. During the Warsaw Uprising, he, his parents and sister were deported from Wola, via the Pruszków camp, to KL Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, where his mother, Jadwiga, died.
The boy and his father were sent to the Mauthausen camp in Austria, where they were both sent to work in quarries. In December 1944, he was transferred to the Gusen l sub-camp and assigned to a commando at the Messerschmitt aircraft factory. In May 1945, he was liberated by the Americans and taken to Bavaria. His father died of exhaustion in Mauthausen shortly after liberation.
In Germany, Jan Wojciech Topolewski was admitted to the DP Kloster Indersdorf International Children’s Centre, where he started sixth grade. During his stay in Indersdorf, he was a member of the Polish football team and the scout troop led by his friend from the centre, Witold Ścibak. He was also active in the theatre group and took part in plays.
He returned to Poland in 1946. In Olsztyn he found his sister and graduated from a teacher training school. During his retirement, he became involved in veterans’ circles. He was Chairman of the Mauthausen-Gusen Club in Warsaw from 2000-2004 and 2006-2013. He died on 23 September 2022.
1. Jan Wojciech Topolewski, US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.
2. A play, private archive of Jan Wojciech Topolewski
A performance by Polish children from Kloster Indersdorf for the Poles staying in the DP camp in Munich.
3. Nativity play, private archive of Jan Wojciech Topolewski
Members of the theatre group prepared a nativity play for Christmas 1945, in which they alluded to their experiences during the Warsaw Uprising and their experiences in the concentration camps.
4. Polish youth, private archive of Jan Wojciech Topolewski
Polish scouts and a group of girls from Upper Silesia on the grounds of Kloster Indersdorf.
5. Meeting in Warsaw, Heimatsverein Indersdorf archive
Jan Wojciech Topolewski (right), Sofia Ogłaza née Karpuk and Stanisław Janowski during a meeting at the History Meeting House in Warsaw in 2015.