Alfred Borowicz

This is my picture; it was taken after I finished my studies in 1936. After completing my studies I started looking for a job, couldn't find any for a long time, and finally I got a rather poorly paid job. There was this company, wiring services in Cracow, but they also worked in the Silesia area. They got a contract installing elevators and I was to supervise that. They paid me little, namely they reimbursed me the cost of getting from Wieliczka to Cracow and then to Katowice by train, plus a very modest daily allowance in Katowice. I didn't work there long but it was through them that I finally got a decent job. Wspolnota Interesow, the Silesian company, which ran the Zgoda plant, bought a disused steel plant in Cracow. The plant had its own power plant in Borek Falecki, which provided power to the Solvay sodium plant and some houses in the neighborhood. The diesel engines in the power plant didn't work. They asked the company I was working for whether they wouldn't repair them. They said that wasn't their specialization, but that they had this young engineer whom they could send, and if he agreed to do it, so be it. And so I agreed to repair the engines and got a job as the chief technician at the power plant. That was my last job before the war. It was 1939 and you already felt war was coming. Only we believed in Poland's power. We thought we'd beat the Germans easily.