The raid
Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 marked the beginning of World War II. The German campaign lasted only one month before the Polish troops surrendered in October 1939. During this short period, however, parts of the Wehrmacht troops at the front as well as the so-called “Einsatztruppen” (task forces) behind the front, a mixture of security police and security services put together by Himmler, wreaked real bloodbaths in Poland. From May 1940 on, Jewish and Sinti as well as Romani families were deported from Germany to labor and concentration camps in Poland.
Alfreda Noncia Markowska
Alfreda Markowska Noncia was born in 1926 in Poland near Stanisławów in eastern Kresy into a wealthy, horse-breeding and trading family.
From 1939, Romani people, who were to be persecuted and exterminated as a racially stigmatized group, were on the run. Many hid in the woods seeking protection, including the family of Alfreda Markowska Noncia. But in 1941, Nazis in Biala Podlaska discovered and raided her family. When 16-year-old Alfreda Noncia Markowska returned to her family with food, she found the entire tabor destroyed. Soon after the murder of her family, she was caught and deported to various forced labor camps and ghettos, including Lublin, Lodz, and Belzec. But she managed to escape again and again. After escaping from her last imprisonment, she made her way to Rozwadów Stalowa Wola. Here her husband worked with other Romani people as forced laborers for the organisation Todt, a Nazi paramilitary construction group. She obtained a forged “identification card” as well as an identity card and was registered as a railroad worker. At these railroad tracks, she became a witness to the inhumane transports to the surrounding camps. She laid railroad tracks and maintained the tracks – the workers were also forced to carry the dead out of the deportation trains.
One day, a woman on the train to Auschwitz secretly handed over her son to Alfreda Markowska Noncia. She brought him unnoticed to the barracks camp where she lived with her family. The boy’s name was Karol Gierliński Parno. He was a German Sinto and later one of the children who testified to Alfreda Markowska Noncia’s story. He received from his mother a note with his grandmother’s name and her address in Warthegau near Poznan. Thus, through a notified family member, he was able to safely reach his grandparents, where he initially remained protected by his grandfather’s German name. But after his grandfather died, the Nazis deported him and his grandmother to Hamburg as forced laborers. Both survived and returned to Poland after the war.
In the meantime, Alfreda Noncia Markowska, at the risk of her own life, saved not only this one boy. She searched for surviving children among the corpses at mass shooting sites within a radius of 100 km, she took other children out of the trains. She brought the children to her home and took care of their further survival. To do this, she sought out their relatives or willing foster families, forged documents, obtained food stamps and travel documents. Noncia, herself a teenager, rescued Romani people, Jewish or other children without distinction throughout the entire occupation, at the risk of her life.
According to Karol Gierliński Parno, at times there were over ten children in her care at the same time. She herself did not know how many children she saved until the end of the war. Estimates range from 50 children.
Remembrance
More than 40 years later, on October 17, 2006, Alfreda Noncia Markowska, over 80 years old, received one of Poland’s highest honors. She is the only Romni ever to receive this decoration. The ceremony was performed personally by Polish President Lech Kaczyński at the Presidential Palace. Alfreda Markowska Noncia Markowska passed away in 2021 at the age of 95. She never received compensation for the persecution.