Lives: Salem man escaped Nazis then fought back

Everyone's life has a story. In "Lives," we tell some of those stories about North Shore people who have died recently. "Lives" runs Mondays in The Salem News.

SALEM — Zdzislaw M. "Mike" Prosniewski worked as a slave laborer as a teenager when he was summoned to Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw, Poland.

He averted certain death that day with his quick wit only to set off a chain of events that would send him fleeing for his life. His journey would take him across Europe where he helped defeat Nazi Germany.

Prosniewski, a longtime Salem resident, died Aug. 27 at age 87 at Devereux House nursing home in Marblehead.

The story begins when the Nazis invade Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Prosniewski is 16 years old, the middle of three children. His father, Walenty, and older brother, Jan, both with the Polish army, left to fight.

"My father, being a spry, healthy teenager, he was put to work right away," Prosniewski's son, Conrad, said. "They took able bodied men and they said: 'You are working for us.'"

Prosniewski worked on airplanes at a German airfield.

For almost four years, Prosniewski and his mother, Henryka, and sister, Ala, lived under Nazi occupation with no word or support from his father and brother. Sending letters or money to Poland was not possible during the war.

Foreseeing this situation, Prosniewski's father set up a system where the family could write to him through a post office box in Turkey. The holder of the post office box in Turkey would forward the mail to Prosniewski's father.

There was only one stipulation: the family could never address their letters to their father, but a fictitious uncle.

"They would write letters, 'Dear Uncle So and So, The family is doing fine. We're surviving.' Nothing of any importance in the letters. The fact was that they were letting him know that things are alright," said Conrad, a Salem police lieutenant.

Impending danger

Then in 1943, on a typical day at the airfield, the Gestapo, the secret police of Nazi Germany, pulled up in a vehicle and ask: "Where's Prosniewski?"

Prosniewski and his co-workers are stunned of what can only mean impending death.

Prosniewski is driven to Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw where he is brought before an officer and a Polish interpreter.

The officer wanted to know about the post office box in Turkey.

Prosniewski relayed the story: He has an uncle living Turkey and he wants to know how the family is doing.

Prosniewski, who picked up quite a bit of German since the occupation, hears the Polish translator tell the Gestapo officer: "This Polish swine is lying."

"I'm not lying," Prosniewski tells the officer.

Stunned, the officer angrily asks: "You speak German? Why didn't you tell me you speak German."

Prosniewski tells the officer he thought it would be respectful to speak through the Polish interpreter.

The Gestapo officer brushes off the interpreter who gets in an elevator down to the basement.

The Gestapo officer then asks Prosniewski directly about the post office box and the letters and Prosniewski tells him about his uncle.

Believing the story, the officer asks Prosniewski who his commanding officer is at the airfield and calls him on the phone.

The officer asks what kind of worker Prosniewski was.

"He's a good kid. He comes to work everyday. He does what he's supposed to do," the commanding officer tells the Gestapo over the phone.

Just as the Gestapo officer puts down the phone, the Polish interpreter returns, joined by a interrogator from the German SS, known for their brutal methods of questioning.

But the Gestapo officer dismisses them and allows Prosniewski to go back to work at the airfield.

But while Prosniewski may have thought he avoided certain death, he returns to find himself in a more perilous situation.

His Polish co-workers at the airfield can't believe he came back unscathed and figured me must now be a German collaborator.

"He realized soon that he was in danger," Conrad said. "He tells his commanding officer, 'They are going to kill me.'"

Prosniewski is granted a transfer and is assigned to work at an airfield in Berlin and forced to leave his mother and sister behind.

Fleeing the Nazis

On the train, he meets another slave laborer who is heading to Norway. Prosniewski doesn't want to go to Berlin. The man on the train doesn't want to go to Norway. They switch papers and Prosniewski is off to Norway.

Prosniewski is there for two weeks when he and another slave laborer decide to escape by fleeing the airfield and going to a camp belonging to his fellow escapee's family in the Scandanavian mountains. They hatch a plan to cross country ski 20 miles to the Swedish border.

They arrive at the camp in the mountains only to find Germans staying at a camp across the lake celebrating Christmas Eve. The two spend the night in the cold with no fire, not wanting to draw attention to themselves, and listen to the German soldiers sing Christmas carols all night.

They leave before dawn Christmas Day not knowing there is a snowstorm coming.

"They got disoriented, got lost, zigzagging all over the mountains and were eventually pulled to safety by the Swedish air patrol," said Conrad.

They recuperate in Stockholm for a short time and then are sent to England where Prosniewski begins to work at an airfield for the Royal Air Force.

He soon goes from working in the airfield to going through flight school and piloting the single-engine planes to the multi-engine Lancaster bombers where he flies numerous bombing missions.

After war ends in Europe on VE Day, (Victory in Europe), Prosniewski and the Polish soldiers in England are not celebrating as they see their homeland go under communist control.

Prosniewski and his Polish wife, Victoria (Tokarska), who works in ground control as a radio operator for the pilots, don't want to return to Poland. They reunite with Prosniewski's brother. Prosniewski's father returns home to Poland to his mother and sister.

Prosniewski works in the railroads in England. With an influx of refugees during the war, the British government offers to send them to Kenya to work in the railroad there. Kenya is still a colony of England at that time.

Victoria doesn't want to go to Kenya and says she wants to go to Salem instead where her cousins are living. She writes her cousins, Alice and Bill Ladyszewski, and they secure a job for Prosniewski in a tannery in Peabody.

Prosniewski, his wife, and daughter, Barbara, move to Salem on Columbus Day in 1952.

"It was a very Polish neighborhood," Conrad said. "You could walk up and down Derby Street and you didn't even have to know a lick of English." They lived in the Polish section of Salem on Derby Street at the corner of Tuner Street.

They had their second child, Conrad, and later bought their first home on Messervy Street.

Prosniewski's wife died in 1976 and a few years later he returned to Poland for the first time in 33 years and reunited with his parents, sister and extended family. He also meets another woman, Irena, there on his trip and fell in love.

"He came back from Poland and said: 'I hope you don't mind but I met a woman over there I really like and I'm thinking of marrying her.' My sister and I were like, 'absolutely,'" Conrad said. "He went back a year or two later and they got married."

Shortly after they married, Prosniewski retired in 1985 after 33 years at Remis Bros., sold his home in Salem and moved to New Port Richey, Fla., where they lived for 22 years.

Prosniewski's second wife died in 2007 of cancer and he returned a short time later to Salem to be cared for by his family.

Prosniewski's health continued to decline shortly after he arrived in Salem. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage a month after his return. He was later diagnosed with pancreatic cancer but chemotherapy or surgery were not an option because of his weakened condition.

On Aug. 24, Conrad received a call from Devereux House and heard a term that he had never heard before. His father was "actively dying" and he would not likely make the day.

Prosniewski's family kept vigil at his father's bedside for three days until he died. Prosniewski's funeral was held Sept. 1, on the 71st anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland.

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