by Leon Silver
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Tolek Klings’ movements during the Second World War.
This book is dedicated to Tolek Klings, my father-in-law, mentor and friend, with love and gratitude.
A soldier, a bon vivant and a gentleman who lived this Second World War story.
Author’s note
For more than thirty years I’ve struggled with Tolek Naftali (Ted) Klings’ extraordinary Second World War memoir, wanting to convey it with the honesty and vividness with which it was told to me, yet drawing all the threads together to make a coherent narrative.
I still get shivers when recalling the first time I sat down with Tolek – my father-in-law – to record his story. After hearing many fascinating snippets of his life as a Second World War soldier, I suggested that we try and put it into a book.
Tolek bought a small, foot-operated mini tape recorder, typed up his notes on a portable Remington typewriter (similar to the one he uses in The Miracle Typist) and then, sitting at the kitchen table, he read them out into the silent, spinning reels.
I could see from the first minute that Tolek was uncomfortable with this process. It was too impersonal; too removed – his face never changed expression as he read.
During the 1980s we persevered, making nine tapes before I dropped the procedure and switched to simply talking with him about his extraordinary life. Tolek was so much more comfortable with this, and I made heaps of notes during the twenty-five years we spent together, both at work and within the family.
He told his story to me feverishly, in episodes that were seldom chronological. Lunchtime in the factory, he would extract from his pockets notes and original documents that he had kept for over forty years. Tolek was a hoarder; he kept everything. He would read to me from notes jotted down the night before or even that morning in his office, continuing long after the lunchtime siren sounded. Many nights we stayed back in the brightly lit showroom after everyone had gone, sipping whisky. It was quiet and cozy, yet the brilliant lights seemed to highlight his memory flashes. It was almost as if we were isolated from the outside world in some wartime bunker.
To better understand the way Tolek Klings relayed his story to me you need to channel one of those old-fashioned flashbulb cameras.
Sudden recollections surfaced, such as… FLASH… the confrontation with the French high-brass in Lebanon… FLASH… his political, academic, philosophical exchanges with Jan the war correspondent while on army manoeuvres… FLASH… the time they fraternised with the Germans and Italians when the desert flooded – and of course… FLASH… his miraculous battlefield escapes, described so vividly: he’d jump to his feet, waving his arms as he re-enacted the moments over and over – sometimes it felt like watching a video.
Tolek would smoke, laugh and hoot, recounting his Armageddon deliverances. But when he showed me the moment he received a miraculous telegram from his wife, Klara, whose fate he hadn’t known, my heart went out to him.
And yet… I was to discover that most of his story had been sanitised for my consumption. It took Tolek many years to bring himself to tell me about his time with the Modena Speakers, and even longer to relay his traumatic experience in the freezing forest after he was robbed. These episodes didn’t need flashbulb moments or re-enactment. There was no smoking, hooting and laughing. He could barely look at me when relaying those events.
One night, sitting in the quiet showroom, Tolek told me about the incident in the woods at the start of the war. He hadn’t even told his wife and daughter. It happened in September 1939 and in 1944, near the end of the war, he told it to the Correspondent in a ruined farmhouse in Italy. Then he told it to his brother, Ijio, when walking arm in arm through the galleria in Milan after the war. Finally, he told it to me forty years later. First, he scanned my face intently, then I could see he’d made a decision. Tell it to Leon – now!
What I remember as clear as daylight today – thirty years later – is Tolek standing up to tell me the story, and I could see – so clearly – that when he finished, his eyes became lighter. He no longer carried that weight – it was now firmly weighing down my shoulders. He was finally vindicated; he’d passed the baton on to me.
Tolek told me one day that the Second World War was above all a war of moral issues, and certainly The Miracle Typist has a much broader landscape than mere wartime memoir. Tolek’s story raises confronting human rights issues; it puts the war on a personal level for both the narrator and the readers. It was Tolek’s fervent hope that telling his story would do some long-term good, helping people of all backgrounds to understand and relate to each other as equals.
Tolek told me once: ‘It’s as if I’m surrounded by doors… [memories] that draw me and repulse me at the same time.’
When I wrote the first rough drafts, Tolek would get very emotional when reading them. Down on paper it was ‘official’; real. He’d look up at me and nod slowly. ‘This story needs to be told,’ he’d whisper to himself.
This story stayed with me for about thirty years until, through the courtesy of Selwa Anthony my ‘miracle’ agent and the talented Simon & Schuster team, I was able to ease it off my shoulders and share it with the rest of the world.
Tolek Klings passed away in 1996 at the age of eighty-five. We still miss him.
I raise a glass of whisky in cheers to you, Tolek: ‘Mazldik nshmh’. Lucky soul!
Leon Silver
Prologue
Bóbrki, Poland
5 March 1935
Standing under a chuppah decorated with early spring flowers, Tolek Naftali Klings sucks in his breath as his bride Klara is led into the room. Tolek grins to himself. The first time he saw Klara he knew she was the one. She is wearing a long white wedding dress, the lengthy veil covering her face. Earlier that morning, in a room at the back of the wedding hall, Tolek had drawn the veil over her face in the traditional bedeken – the covering of the bride ceremony, a symbol that soul and character surpass physical beauty. Klara had crinkled her nose and smiled at her groom, an even more essential part of their private ceremony.
Now, Klara enters the packed room with her mother, Jutta, her sisters Henie and Sime, and Tolek’s mother, Lieba. Klara is all excited smiles and Tolek knows it amuses her that she’s moving from a family of five women and one man to a family of four men and one woman. Joel, Klara’s father, died of a heart attack a few months earlier. Tolek will make sure that his daughter is fully embraced by her new family.
Beaming, Klara transmits her love to him through the thin gauze veil. Black eyes, exquisitely made up, tender and yearning for him. ‘Soon we will be one,’ she whispers.
Tolek hums the Russian love song he used to sing to Klara while they were courting. ‘Óči Čjórnye’ – ‘Dark Eyes’ – written by Ukrainian poet Yevhen Hrebinka in the mid-nineteenth century.
Black eyes, passionate eyes,
Burning and beautiful eyes!
Rabbi Zvi exchanges looks with Tolek then nods to start proceedings. ‘Blessed are thou, oh Lord, King of the Universe, who created mirth and joy, bridegroom and bride, gladness, jubilation, dancing, and delight, love and brotherhood, peace and fellowship –’
The ceremony is interrupted by Eliezer, a red-eyed, long-haired, crazy-looking ‘holy man’, who stands up to announce that this union will be blessed with a male child after one year of marriage. That sounds promising to Tolek.
Then the celebration begins.
A violin, piano accordion and male singer play raucous Klezmer music. The crowd claps and sings, and the wedding feast is served. Rabbi Zvi jumps down from the small stage and, laughing joyfully, engulfs the groom with a lavish bear hug. ‘Mazel tov – mazel tov!’
Among all that joyful celebration, Eliezer jerks up to his feet again and points at the groom. ‘Anyone who will ever plan you harm, Tolek Naftali, will have that harm bestowed upon their own head.’ He stares intensely at the groom and nods slowly to accentuate his words. ‘Mazldik nshmh.’
Lucky soul.
1 Thus the war begins
Lwów, Poland
20 August 1939
Tolek Naftali Klings stood at the Lwów railway station, surrounded by his fussing family. They had travelled thirty kilometres by train from Bóbrki, where they’d lived for generations. In two weeks, Tolek would turn twenty-nine. He had been called up to the Polish Army under what was supposed to be a secret mobilisation, though deployment had been as ripe and scorching in the air as the hot summer sun for weeks, and the patrons in his father’s hotel-restaurant had toasted with shots of vodka, speculating when they’d be drafted. They raised glasses and clicked them with forced smiles. Would they return alive after killing the soon-to-invade Germans? ‘Time to take off that fancy suit and roll up your sleeves for the fatherland,’ the drinkers teased Tolek when he returned home late from work.
Tolek worked as a law clerk and had developed an efficient and courteous business manner. He set up his lawyer’s legal schedules and assisted him in general property and domestic legal cases in the courtroom. He offered a broad smile when welcomed in the courts, where he searched archives for documents and files. And he was proud of his typing skills – he was the only one in the office who could touch type and was legendary for being the fastest. His boss, advocate Schrenzel, sometimes asked Tolek to demonstrate his typing skills for future clients. They were impressed – a modern office, good for business. Schrenzel had even promised Tolek that soon he would be promoted to a junior solicitor and, a few years later, join a full partnership.
Tolek, his wife Klara and their son Juliusz lived upstairs over the restaurant, as did his two brothers. Mamme and Tatte lived in rooms downstairs. For months, Tolek had felt that conscription and war were just a matter of time, so when Klara held out the letter with a trembling hand, family surrounding her in a supporting huddle, he knew his time had come.
Tolek’s father, Mendel, had fought in the Great War and now it was his eldest son’s turn. During peacetime, although there’d been compulsory two-year military service, educated Jews were not wanted as officers and very few were recruited, except as doctors. But the coming war had changed all that. Lwów and Bóbrki had large Jewish populations and many local men were now being conscripted; suddenly Jews had become worthy. The young Jewish men were anxious to do their duty and fight against Hitler to protect their families.
The Nuremberg Laws had been proclaimed in Germany in 1935, declaring the Jews second-class citizens and separating them from the Germans. In 1937, the Aryanisation Policy barred Jews from business. Then came the terrifying Kristallnacht – Jewish shops and houses were smashed and people killed in the street. By August 1939, Hitler had reoccupied the Rhineland, and annexed Austria and the Sudetenland without bloodshed. Poland, with the largest Jewish population in Europe, was next on Hitler’s list.
The station was wallpapered with noise and desperation, and Tolek was bumped and jostled by soldiers, some already in uniform, others still in civilian clothes. The train blasted off a head of steam then belched out what sounded like a warning whistle to Tolek: Soon – very soon – you will be separated from your family. He hugged his two brothers, Ijio, three years younger, and Lonek, nine years younger. So far they had been spared conscription. They clutched him right back and cried on his shoulder.
Tolek looked everywhere but in Klara’s face – perhaps the next look would be his last. Could he delay that forever? Their closeness – they were almost one person – made him wonder how he could leave. Their courting song, ‘Óči čjórnye’, circled in his head. How would Tolek ever do without her?
The mobilisation letter was weighing down the pocket of his suit jacket. Juliusz, his two-year-old son, smiled up at him and shoved something into his hand: a drawing of himself with his tatte and mamme. Tolek held back tears at the three stick figures with sticking-up hair, round eyes and smiley lips like kisses. He swept Juliusz up for a bear hug, and a lonely tear escaped, dropping on the boy’s peter-pan collar. His son looked just like him. Juliusz’s white-cuffed sleeves encircled his neck in a grip that promised to never let go.
Klara smoothed down Juliusz’s hair with one hand and Tolek’s with the other. Tolek smiled at her. How could he not? Black Marcel wave, small nose and fine red lips, elegant navy dress and white collar. When they were courting, Klara told Tolek that he had a sharp profile, like Gary Cooper.
Tolek’s parents and two brothers again embraced them in a family hug. That’s it, thought Tolek, that’s the answer, cling together and never let go.
As he scanned the platform, he nodded to the familiar Jewish faces that would be leaving with him, including one of their best friends, Esig Hertzcovitch, who nodded back. He wondered how many of these men would not be coming home. How many would return on stretchers? In wheelchairs?
As the train whistle sounded again, Tolek locked eyes with his mother. Lieba whimpered softly, recalling, Tolek knew, sending Tatte off to the Great War from this very platform.
Tolek pulled Klara closer with his free arm and her tears wet his neck. With the gentlest butterfly touch, she kissed his skin. ‘I will live for the day you come back to me,’ she murmured.
It was a warm summer day; the disquiet of the platform rose around them. Since Hitler had come to power, anti-Semitism had been on the rise across Europe and very much so in Poland. Hitler blamed the Jews for Europe’s economic crisis, inflation, the vicious increase in underdevelopment, unemployment and abject poverty, which he declared created massive social problems. The German Jews – 500,000 of them, among a population of 67 million – were responsible for all of Germany’s woes. Hitler had broadcast his intentions of segregating and suppressing the Jews in all Europe, and a lot of Poles had publicly adopted his plans, including the Polish Government. Tolek had heard stories of Jews being beaten up in the streets of the big cities like Warsaw and Danzig.
An older soldier in a worn brown uniform locked eyes with Tolek. His hand crept to the top of the long bayonet hanging from his belt and he edged the blade out of its sheath. Two fingers pointed at his own eyes, then turned and, like daggers, pointed at Tolek’s: This is for you, Jew…
Too quickly, Tolek found himself fighting for a few inches of space in the open carriage window. As the train lurched forward, he caught a last glimpse of his family merging back into the crowd. Tolek’s head sank to his chest. He was alone, a soldier in the coming machine of war. A fog of hopeless desperation descended on him and he fought it with a vision of alighting at this same railway station in the near future as a victorious Polish soldier. Did he remember Klara’s last look? He could still feel her fingers gripping his neck; they’d trembled. She had pulled him down for a long kiss, hurry-home drops glistening on her face.
* * *
After two days of interrupted travel the conscripts arrived at the Kraków training camp for new recruits. Tolek and the others, about eighty men, were told to strip and line up for uniforms. Tolek, in his new white army long johns, was shoved and pushed back until he was one of the last in line. He was not very surprised. He was a patriotic Pole willing to fight, but a Jew.
The supply sergeant scanned Tolek from head to toe and told him that they’d run out of his size. Tolek stared at the man for a mome
nt then made his way back to the arrival hall to scrimmage for his original clothes in the assorted piles. It was hard for Tolek to feel like a soldier in his white shirt, grey suit pants and polished shoes.
Over the next two weeks, Tolek and the other fresh soldiers received basic training. They learned how to salute, studied pamphlets on military procedure and occasionally had rifle practice, as there wasn’t enough live ammunition for much shooting. Tolek gave a cynical chuckle. If he’d been in charge of this army he’d at least have more bullets.
Because of his educational level, Tolek was given the non-commissioned rank of corporal. Tolek’s duties included making sure that his group of soldiers kept up military appearances, performed their allocated duties and maintained physical fitness. Tolek could see in many faces their reluctance to be monitored by a Jew, eyes looking up and away instead of at him. Talking to their friends instead of listening. Not much he could do, so Tolek just ignored it.
Everyone was ready and eager to fight the Nazis – in theory. In reality, the army was in a panicked state. New recruits showed up at the wrong infantry division. Officers were changed or rotated without notice. Training procedures were interrupted or repeated. The disorganised army bumbled away under the fear of the approaching war. Manoeuvres were scheduled then cancelled, marches and inspections called off as they were being performed. Bullets rationed like precious diamonds. It was just all so wrong.
Fresh in Tolek’s mind were the pub patrons boasting and toasting to the Polish Army’s readiness for war. They quoted speeches by politicians and newspaper headlines about the stores the army had in reserve. Secret warehouses of rifles, machine guns, ammunition and artillery. But Tolek saw only empty supply stores. Was bureaucracy holding supplies up? Or were the boasts wishful thinking? Tolek was sure that, should these supplies actually exist, the soon-to-invade Germans would find most of the arms and provisions intact, including Tolek Klings’ rightful uniform.