by Leon Silver
The CO had never been confronted by such chutzpah from a Jew before. But knowing who had authority over whom was difficult in this multinational army under the British flag. Tolek could read the confusion in the officer’s eyes: Better to play it safe, and not rock any boats.
Accordingly, in a villa in Almeria, an ancient Egyptian seaport town filled with cathedrals, forts and mosques, about sixty soldiers from different nations – Poland, Australia, England, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, even one from India – celebrated the Jewish holy days with singing, prayers and feasting. Many who had left families in Poland cried openly when remembering such festivities at home. The rabbi handed out kippahs, prayer books and talliths, compliments of the Australian Army. Tolek promised he would use the items to say the Kaddish for his father every Friday night for a year – whenever possible – and keep them for as long as he lived.
On the Eve of the Day of Atonement, Rabbi Cohen outdid himself. Religious and secular alike sat wrapped in their new prayer gear at large trestle tables covered with white sheets. A team of Egyptian waiters came marching in carrying trays bearing the pre-fasting feast. The soldiers were totally agog. They were served chicken soup with – hard to believe – kreplach. Knotted challah with honey dip and even boiled chicken. This Australian Jew must’ve researched Polish holy days menus to serve a traditional Eastern European autumn feast in the heat of the African desert.
As the men descended on the food, all Tolek could see was Mamme and Klara and their beaming smiles, bringing in trays of similar delicacies. Everyone was in their best clothes, young Juliusz staring with fascination at the proceedings. Leaves were turning red in the Bóbrki streets.
He remembered too the last time he had sat down to celebrate this holy evening – in the Hungarian village synagogue just after he was robbed in the woods. Sitting in that small country shule, praying to be written into the book of life for the following year. Time had passed since then – years – but he could never forget what he witnessed in that cold clearing. His hands still shook at the memory.
With the merriment around him, Tolek ignored the burning pain in his chest and, with closed eyes, concentrated on writing his remaining family into the book of life.
Tolek was shaken back to the present for the l’chaim toast with small glasses of sweet kosher wine. Had he been dreaming?
* * *
Rommel started another push, and the Poles were rushed back into the desert. They arrived at night, among British planes taking off and landing. By morning the British Army had gone, abandoning them to defend the airfield, directly in Rommel’s path. The Poles had no artillery, no tanks and no air support. The supreme commander, General Kopański, would have chosen to evacuate immediately. But he was in Cairo for a briefing, and the CO in charge, seeking to make a hero of himself, decided that they would defend the airfield with their rifles and machine guns.
‘Dig in,’ the fool told them. ‘We’ll fight to the bitter end.’
Jan swore under his breath as he and Tolek dug a double foxhole. Other soldiers, pale-faced, dry-lipped, hugged each other farewell. This wasn’t going to end well and all because of an officer’s stubbornness.
At the last moment, they heard the engine of a small plane approaching. It was Kopański, flying in from Cairo. The men clapped and cheered as his plane landed. Barely out of the plane, Kopański yanked the troops from underneath Rommel’s boots, ordering an immediate retreat and saving them all from death or life in a German POW camp. The troops were never happier than when they left the virginal foxholes to be packed into trucks for the dash back to Alexandria. But they discovered the trucks had very little fuel and they were in serious danger of being stranded in the desert. Soon, two trucks huffed and rolled to a stop, the troops they carried cramming in with the other men.
As had become his habit since the Stryj evacuation, Tolek sat last on the bench near the tailgate. As they bumped along, he spotted several metal reflections in the distance between the sand dunes. Remembering the marmalade tin top that nearly killed them, he yelled out for the trucks to stop. The men jumped out and got their rifles ready, then marched forward to investigate. They found full petrol tins half buried in the sand, most likely dropped by air to supply some other column that had never retrieved them. The jubilant troops hustled to refill the thirsty trucks, and Kopański patted Corporal Klings’ shoulder.
Along the way, the brigade engineers built phony supply dumps to trick the German pilots into wasting their bombs. Passing an oasis with palm trees, the soldiers cut them down then spent precious hours digging useless trenches and planting dummy electrical poles covered in nets to look like camouflaged artillery pieces. They also constructed sections of fake railway tracks from buried biscuit and marmalade tins covered with thin sand, to shine like metal tracks. Tolek doubted if these tricks would fool anyone; the Germans would still have plenty of bombs to harass the retreating Poles.
It was Rommel’s last effective push. He retook Tobruk from the British and raced right to the Egyptian border. The Germans were optimistic that this time they would take Egypt. Tolek typed up notes at an interrogation of a captured German private who was in need of new glasses. He had a letter with orders from his wife to get the glasses when they got to Cairo, not if. The Germans were confident.
Tolek took the man’s nail clippers to keep as a souvenir.
The British weren’t nearly so confident they could successfully defend Egypt. In case they needed to retreat, they prepared a second defence line in Palestine. But Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the head of the Allied African forces, saved the soldiers from that calamity. He rolled Rommel back with relentless attacks and the troops got a well-deserved rest. The Correspondent disappeared on a secret mission to London and Tolek awaited his return, scanning the returning soldiers daily, as though looking for a lost lover. Life in Port Said was dull without the Correspondent. No one else was worthy of baiting or annoying with political theories far removed from the real war, the real Poland. Tolek had great hopes that the passes and money he’d fed Jan would eventually yield results of more underground news from his family.
When Jan finally returned from his secret mission, he burst into their tent, face set like concrete, eyes looking everywhere but at his compatriot. Tolek’s heart raced, beating out Klara’s last two telegrammed words: we trouble.
Tolek sat on a crate, Jan sat opposite him. Tolek poured him a whisky, a large one. He put the old telegram and dispatch rider’s typed note on the table between the two mugs, smoothing out the edges like a child with a birthday wrapping. Jasiek… Please? The news? The Jews? Poland? Bóbrki? My wife and son? his eyes begged.
Silence thumped louder than a drum.
Tolek lifted the Johnnie Walker bottle and shook it. Fresh bottle, his compliments.
‘We’re going to win the war,’ Jan said. He drank his whisky and lit a cigarette.
That was it?
Admittedly, it was a big statement. But it wasn’t what Tolek wanted to hear. Since the news of his father’s death, Tolek felt as though he was desiccating; only news of his family would nourish him. He gulped down his whisky.
‘We’ve signed a pact with the murderer Stalin. We have millions of fresh soldiers to throw at the Germans.’
Tolek touched the typed message on the wooden crate, moving it barely an inch towards Jan. The Correspondent flinched as though harassed by a powerful curse. The curse that would befall him should he – for whatever reason – be withholding information from Tolek about news of Poland’s Jews under the Germans.
‘Come on, Janek, what’s happening? Bóbrki now under the Germans? Are the Jews surviving? Is my family alive? Talk to me! Your contacts! Your contacts!
‘The Germans are too busy to worry about the Jews, aren’t they, Jasiek? The Russians are now on our side, Polish partisans harassing them. The Germans are not stupid enough to divert manpower. They’ve let the Jews be. Uprisings all over Poland… The Poles and Ukrainians are sticking with th
e Jews against their oppressors – one united patriotic front, right?’
Jan’s uniform was soaked through and his forehead a wet mat. ‘Had a meeting with Kot. The Russians are releasing all the Polish POWs. Thousands will join us.’
Such a momentous statement, a joyous occasion for all Poles. The ruthless Russian prisoner drive had been a sore point since the war started. The Correspondent had drunk himself silly on many occasions while condemning the trainloads of Poles shipped to Siberia. Yet this statement of redemption, this news of liberation, lay on the crate, flat as the expression in the Correspondent’s eyes. How will this news affect my family back home? Tolek screamed inside his head.
‘This information is confidential – not to be mentioned to anyone,’ the Correspondent finally muttered, looking down at his glass.
Tolek raised his right hand in promise.
‘The Polish Home Army is now the largest underground resistance movement in all of occupied Europe. The resistance is disrupting German supply lines as they advance on the Eastern Front. They’re blowing up trains and supply depots. They are providing immensely valuable military intelligence to the British.’ Jan paised to drain his glass and Tolek refilled it. ‘Armed uprisings in Kraków and Lwów are well into the planning stages.’
‘The Jews?’
‘Not good news, Tolek. Labour camps and ghettos everywhere.’ Jan controlled his voice. It seemed a rehearsed delivery. ‘A Nazi called Gruppenführer Fritz Katzmann has set up the Lwów Ghetto in the city’s north, in Zamarstynów.’ They both knew this was the poorest part of the city. ‘The Poles and Ukrainians have moved out, the Jews have been moved in. The whole district is surrounded by barbed wire. They call it Jüdischer Wohnbezirk. There has been some shooting under the rail bridge on Pełtewna Street.
‘A lot of Jews escaped from German-occupied Western Poland to the Eastern Russian zone, so there are now 220,000 Jews in Lwów.’ Jan emptied his glass in a slow, contemplative way. Tolek’s eyes were locked to the Correspondent’s every movement. ‘I asked Stanisław Kot for a special favour – to find out what has happened to your family.’ Pause. ‘He promised me he would as soon as possible.’
Civilians were no longer safe. The war had turned on them. The pressure in Tolek’s chest built – was he having a heart attack? He clasped his chest and gulped more whisky to defuse the pain.
Jan grabbed the empty bottle and shot to his feet. A heavy truck rumbled by and the dangling tent light behind Jan’s head began to swing. Tolek dropped to his knees and cupped his hands. He prayed to the flickering light to save his family as though it were God’s signal. He saw them clearly against his closed eyelids. The pictures in his pocket trembled against his heart.
13 Klara’s message
After Tobruk the Poles were sent to Ain el Gazala, a small Libyan village near the coast about sixty kilometres west of Tobruk. Clay houses, rough dirt roads, a mosque with its distinctive pointed minaret in the middle, inhabited by fishermen and farmers with no interest in the war. The troops made a stand against Rommel, then were moved to Derna, a pretty city lying between green mountains, the Mediterranean Sea and the desert. The trucks took them to Cyrene, where the ruins of an ancient town lay in a lush valley. By then the men were well used to the war’s agenda, and understood that a soldier’s life was ninety per cent being transported and waiting, and ten per cent fighting. If one survived the fighting, the history and sightseeing were bonuses among the drinking, card playing and smoking.
Finally, in March 1942, the troops arrived in Palestine for rest and reorganisation. On his first day off, Tolek went to visit the Solomons. The entire family were there for the customary large breakfast.
‘The bureaucrat at the electricity company has been sacked over his mistreatment of you,’ Herman proudly announced. ‘Our brothers and sisters at Beit Oren kibbutz were so disappointed that you didn’t join them. They need you, Tolek.’
Tolek dismissed the news with a wave. ‘I’m glad I stayed with the army. You know that the Russians have left Poland and the Germans have moved in, occupying all of Eastern Poland, including Lwów and Bóbrki? You know about the Lwów Ghetto?’
Sad nods all around. The Solomons’ families were still in Poland. ‘Street pogroms,’ Herman said. ‘Under the Russians, life was bearable. Now there are round-ups and mass shootings.’
‘My family survived well under the Russians. I had a letter from Klara in the internment camp in Hungary. What will happen now, we don’t know. I’ve had meetings with other Jewish soldiers and we feel that the Polish military leaders aren’t telling us the truth about what’s happening at home because they don’t want more Jews to defect.’
Tolek showed them the typed note. The family offered condolences and hugs for the loss of Tolek’s father. Herman had known Mendel well.
‘Let’s hope the Germans are so preoccupied with Stalin that they’ll leave the Jews alone.’
It seemed unlikely. ‘Anyway, there is no question now of defecting. I’m staying with the army to rescue my wife, son, mother and brother as soon as the war is over.’
‘I rang kibbutz Ma’abarot when I knew you were coming, Tolek. Neche Merkur still hasn’t returned from Poland.’
Should he be glad that Neche was still in Poland? She was a tough woman and would be a great help to her family. She could even keep Klara company in these hard times.
That evening they went to the Haifa synagogue to say Kaddish for Mendel Klings. The next day it was time to leave Haifa. Tolek gave a long, tearful goodbye to the Solomon family, one member at a time.
From Palestine, the Carpathian Brigade was moved by trucks to Iraq for training with the British Eighth Army, then to Kurdistan to defend against the Germans, who had reached the Caucasian Mountains in Russia. So many different people and changing scenes: cities and villages, so many families with children out playing in the streets, free from danger. Tolek yearned to be in his last ride in an army truck down the Bóbrki streets to find Klara, Juliusz, Lieba and Ijio waiting with open arms and beaming smiles.
It was a good time to be with the Polish Army. Optimism pervaded the air; the tide of the war would soon turn in their favour. The Poles felt virile and strong now that Russia and America were with them. Tolek was certain that the Germans would be too busy fighting these strengthened allies to target civilians.
The Correspondent was correct: the Russians had released thousands of Polish prisoners to fight the Germans. These soldiers made their way to Iraq overland from Russia through Turkey. The Polish brigade was in an ecstatic mood as the first contingent was processed into their army ranks. The plan was to absorb these men into a full-strength Polish corps.
But when Tolek saw the released prisoners his heart sank. They were skeletons in rags, with drawn faces and dead eyes. Their boots were patched-up with scraps of material, string and newspapers. Many weren’t even soldiers, but civilians kidnapped off the streets by the invading Russian Army. Tolek puffed out his cheeks in exasperation. The Polish troops had forgotten what a few years in Siberia could do to human beings. The plans for a revitalised army were suffering a severe setback.
The approximately 2000 new recruits shook with fear as the officers approached. They stood at attention, clutching dirty cloth satchels to their sides. A row of dilapidated crows.
An officer said, ‘You are now free, among your brothers, you need not fear any longer. You are under the army’s protection, and will soon become part of the free Polish fighting forces, the Carpathian Brigade, Poland’s most famous fighting unit. Unshoulder your satchels, place them at your feet, then march into the tents for haircuts, showers, fresh uniforms and a big welcome lunch.’
No one moved. Perhaps these men had forgotten their mother’s tongue in captivity. The officer explained again that they were now among their own kind. Their colleagues would look after them.
Still no one moved. The commander walked up to the first one in line, hugged the man warmly, called him his dear colleague and tried to
take his satchel.
A tug of war ensued.
‘What have you got in there that’s so precious?’ the officer asked. He opened the satchel, still in the man’s grip, and turned it over. Pieces of mouldy black bread fell to the ground, and the ex-prisoner watched them with ravenous eyes.
‘You don’t need to worry.’ The CO tried to laugh. ‘There’s no shortage of food here. Meat, potatoes, bacon, coffee, even cigarettes and beer.’
But those words couldn’t compete with the reality of the stale bread. In the end, the men were allowed to keep their satchels. Some kept them for weeks under their pillows. Desperate hunger was very difficult to forget.
When Tolek returned to the barracks late that night after processing his batch of recruits, he was greeted by excited shouts from his colleagues. ‘Bring in Fischer!’ they cheered like it was Tolek’s birthday party.
Out stepped a smiling childhood friend called Bernard Fischer. Bernard had been among another batch of released prisoners and was asked, after others learned he was a Jew from Bóbrki: ‘Do you know the Miracle Typist, Tolek Klings?’
The men fell into each other’s arms and didn’t part for twenty-four hours.
Tolek listened to Bernard’s account of the horror of life in Siberia.
Thousands died. They worked in snow blizzards chopping down frozen trees and building railways in the wilderness. They slept on boards in unheated huts and were always starving and freezing. The ones who died were left in the snow for the wolves. Bernard didn’t know how he survived.
His eyes shone like moonglow as he delivered Tolek a message from Klara. She had accompanied Bernard and his family to the railway station when he was drafted. ‘If you should find my Tolek in the war somewhere, remind him to keep the promise he made me… I kiss your cheek now, Bernard, let him feel my lips when you meet him.’