official
He was born on 26th May 1912 in Królewska Huta. He lived there with his family at 105 Wolności Street. Alojzy’s father, Emanuel Tomaszowski, came from Kędzierzyn Koźle, worked in Huta Królewska (Königshütte) and he took part in the distribution of Polish press in Silesia for many years. He was a Polish patriot and he took part in Silesian Uprisings. When he was a schoolboy, Alojzy Tomaszowski was a scout. After finishing his education he started to work in the town hall in Królewska Huta. In 1936 he married his neighbours’ daughter Lucyna Palluch, whose father died in 1916 during the battle of Verdun while serving in Prussian Army. In 1937 the first child appeared in his family – son Tadeusz, and in 1939 his daughter Iwona.
On the eve of my third birthday on 13th April 1940 in the early morning three or four uniformed German police officers appeared in our flat. Although I was a small child then I still remember that day. The police officers were aggressive, they carried out a search and asked about weapons but they did not find anything. My father got dressed quickly, put on his hat and coat, my mother gave him a blanket for the road. My father’s parents lived on the first floor in our house. Having heard what was going on, his mother ran away with tears to my father to the staircase and then she was roughly battered by one of the Germans. That was the last time I saw my father – Tadeusz Tomaszowski recalls.
After some time the family found out from the received correspondence that Alojzy Tomaszowski had been taken to the Dachau concentration camp, and then to the Mauthausen-Gusen subcamp. In November 1941, after a year after his arrest, a police officer delivered a letter from which it appeared that Alojzy Tomaszewski had died of typhus on 8th October 1941 at 2.30 in the afternoon in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Not long after that his things were sent from the camp including his sweater stained with blood. According to his inmates’ account, Alojzy Tomaszowski was a writer in the 14th block in the Gusen camp and took an active part in the camp resistance movement. His activity consisted in preventing the transportation of the weakened prisoners from the camp, who lured by the opportunity to “heal their health in the Dachau sanatorium”, voluntarily reported a desire to leave. In fact they were taken to the Hartheim Castle and killed there. As the “Wieczór” newspaper from Katowice wrote in 1969: Tomaszowski was a writer in the 14 block and he saved life of many of his inmates. As far as the saving action was concerned he also acted strictly. One of them complained to SS-Hauptscharführer Gross – the work manager in the quarry that despite the severe health condition, Tomaszowski made him work hard. Gross, Brust and Hauptscharführer Jenisch went to the 14 block where Tomaszewski worked and there they murdered him with “bykowce” beating wherever they could.