an official
He was born on 10th June 1908 in Sielec. After graduating from the technical school, he was unemployed for some time and then he found a job in the town hall in Sosnowiec. Around 1930 he married Eugenia Kołton from Sosnowiec. His wife attended the Teacher Seminar and then she also studied at School of Economic. After the marriage she worked as a kindergarten teacher and also gave classes for poor children in the day-care room. In February 1933 Eugenia and Władysław Wierzbicki’s daughter Barbara was born. At that time the married couple lived at Limanowskiego Street. We lived there with the whole family, namely: father, me, mum, my mum’s grandma and her brother. It was a settlement consisting of three blocks of flats designed for the town hall’s workers – recalled Władysław’s daughter – Barbara.
After the war outbreak on 9th September 1939 the first German mayor doctor Ludwig Schneider announced that officials, employees and workers of the local former municipal executive committee should still serve. In this situation Władysław Wierzbicki agreed to continue his work in the town hall. On 15th April 1940 at 8.12 two buses with SS officers drove up to the town hall building in Sosnowiec where the president (Josef) Schönwälder worked then. They surrounded the town hall and secured all the exits and the entrance. Some of them entered the town hall on the first floor where the financial department was set, they called 26 town hall employees from the list – Polish people. After checking personal details twice, the whole group was escorted with a well-known “raus” to the mentioned lorries accompanied by “to arms”. After loading all the arrested were transported to the “Polizei Ersatz Gefaengnis camp” (…) – from Arkadiusz Cieślik’s testimony.
The transition camp where the arrested were put, was set in the former Schoen’s factory in Sosnowiec at 1st May Street and the prisoners were kept there for about 6 weeks. At the time they were interrogated by the Gestapo officers. We were brought in the cell between the double file of the Gestapo officers who beat us with different tools where it fell. We were driven into a big room surrounded by the barbed wire where I saw people lying face down on the concrete who were as numb as they were corpses. (…) – from Stanisław Goibion’s testimony.
On the rainy day of 26th May 1940 before noon we were gathered in the amount of over 1000 prisoners and we were escorted by SS men armed “to arms” along deserted streets to the railway station. We were loaded onto the train in different positions – lying, sitting and standing. They were passenger cars. We were not allowed near the windows and after twenty-four hours we were put down in the morning in the Dachau camp. There, we were driven into the concentration camp with big scream, rift and setting dogs on us – from Arkadiusz Cieślik’s testimony.
It appeared from the correspondence sent from the Dachau camp on 13th July 1940 that Władysław Wiarzbicki stayed in Block number 16 and he had camp number 12782. My dear wife and daughter! I am interested in how you are and if you are all right. I am healthy and I feel all right. Write to me as soon as possible but only in German (…) – he wrote in his letter from the Dachau concentration camp. As Władysław Wierzbicki’s daughter Barbara recalled (…) in 1943 my mum received a notification from the Mauthausen-Gusen camp that my father died. After the war my mum found out from one of the inmates from “Society of Former Political Prisoners” that my father was very exhausted with work in the quarry and then one of the paramedics helped him to get to the infirmary. There he was killed with a petrol injection.