Gwidon Edmund Damazyn, SP2BD

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

On April 8, 1945, a Buchenwald prisoner built a radio transmitter and contacted

Gwidon Edmund Damazyn was a Polish electrical engineer and pre‑war amateur radio operator (call sign SP2BD) who became a key figure in the underground resistance at the Buchenwald concentration camp during the Second World War.

Born 21 October 1908 in Bydgoszcz, Poland, he studied and worked as an electrical engineer and radio technician, and was active in Polish amateur radio clubs before the war.

He used the callsigns PL707 and later SP2BD, and was involved in constructing and operating radio equipment in the interwar period.

Arrested by the Germans and ultimately sent to Buchenwald, he was imprisoned there from March 1941 as a political prisoner.

In the camp he was registered as an electrical/radio technician and was placed in blocks where his technical skills could be exploited.

Together with other prisoners, Damazyn covertly modified a small German DKE 38 radio into a shortwave receiver, allowing inmates to listen to BBC and other Allied broadcasts and learn real war news, including D‑Day and the Allied advance.

The DKE 38 (Deutscher Kleinempfänger 1938) was a cheap German propaganda radio designed by Joseph Goebbels to block shortwave bands and limit access to foreign broadcasts. Damazyn reverse-engineered it by altering the tuning circuit—likely rewiring coils and adding components scavenged from the camp—to extend its frequency range for BBC and Moscow shortwave reception starting in summer 1942.

Later, he helped build a hidden shortwave transmitter and small generator, concealed in the prisoners’ cinema or meeting room, with assistance from other technically skilled inmates.

For transmission in 1944, prisoners used a different scavenged radio as the base. They added:A power supply from a small generator.An amplifier from the camp cinema's movie projector audio system.Two triode tubes (smuggled parts).Antennas from repurposed lightning rods on the prisoners' cinema building, with the setup hidden in an air duct.

It was a low-power, improvised shortwave transmitter likely operating around 8 MHz for CW Morse.

On 8 April 1945, as the SS prepared to evacuate and potentially annihilate the prisoners, Damazyn and fellow prisoner Konstantin Ivanovich Leonov transmitted a Morse SOS to General Patton’s U.S. Third Army: “To the Allies. To the army of General Patton. This is Buchenwald concentration camp. SOS. We request help. They want to evacuate us. The SS wants to destroy us.”

After several repetitions, they received a reply from Third Army headquarters promising aid; witnesses reported that Damazyn collapsed or fainted when he heard the answer.

Exact Text:

To the Allies.

To the army of General Patton.

This is the Buchenwald concentration camp.

SOS

We request help.

They want to evacuate us.

The SS wants to destroy us.

The message was prepared by leaders of the prisoners' underground resistance (likely Walter Bartel and Harry Kuhn).

It was sent multiple times in English, German, and Russian; Damazyn handled English and German, Leonov sent the Russian version.

Three minutes after Damazyn's final transmission, U.S. Third Army replied: "KZ Bu. Hold out. Rushing to your aid. Staff of Third Army."

"KZ Bu" stands for "Konzentrationslager Buchenwald."

The prisoners’ underground resistance used the information and the promise of Allied arrival to organize an armed uprising, using weapons secretly gathered over time.

Shortly before U.S. forces reached the camp, the SS began to flee; prisoners seized control of key positions, and when the Americans arrived on 11 April 1945 they found the camp largely in the hands of the inmates.

Various historical accounts credit Damazyn’s radio work as a significant factor in bringing timely U.S. military assistance and in emboldening the prisoners’ revolt, helping to save thousands of lives.

After liberation, Damazyn returned to Poland and became active again in amateur radio, serving on the board of the Polish National Association of Radio Amateurs and helping rebuild organized ham radio activity.

He died suddenly on 16 October 1972 in his car outside his home and was buried at the Bródnowski Cemetery in Warsaw (section 2H I 1–2), where former fellow prisoners continued to leave handwritten notes on his grave for many years.

=DR=