The Miracle Typist

by Leon Silver

  And Bernard kissed Tolek’s cheek, long and hard.

  * * *

  Jan wrote a scathing piece about the state of the released POWs and read it to Tolek before submitting it to The White Eagle:

  More than a million men were grabbed by the Russians off the Polish streets and sent to Siberia.

  Seventy thousand troops and about 40,000 civilians, including 5000 Jews, have now been evacuated to Iran. They are skeletons, weakened by two years of careless maltreatment. Many suffer from the full range of illnesses caused by malnutrition and sub-human living conditions.

  Despite urgent medical care, frenzied for food after being constantly hungry for so long, refugees ate as fast and as much as they could, leading to disastrous digestion consequences. Several hundred Poles, men and children, died shortly after arriving in Iran as a consequence of the frenzied overeating.

  We may die in the battlefield in the next campaign, but at least we die with dignity, full stomachs and weapons in our hands. Better than to live like slaves, in filth and degradation. When humans are dehumanised, controlled through terror and hunger, dignity is permanently dead.

  It was never published. The Russians were now Poland’s allies and it was bad politics to upset them.

  Tolek didn’t ask whether Jan had mentioned the 5000 Jews for his sake.

  The troops travelled first by trucks, then by boats up the Tigris River to Baghdad, a place steeped in history. Archaeologists believed the writers of the Bible placed the Garden of Eden somewhere in the Tigris–Euphrates valley. Babylonia was in the southern part of the basin, between the two rivers. Even Noah’s Ark was said to have come to rest on a peak on Mount Ararat near the Turkish border.

  Some of the keener history enthusiasts among the troops, including Tolek and Jan, managed to wangle a trip down the Tigris to the basin. The land was fertile and palm trees were abundant, and peasant farmers tended the land using primitive tools and irrigation, drawing water from ground wells with buckets and ropes. They cultivated the fields with horse-drawn ploughs, not a tractor, electric pump or milking machine in sight. Such a contrast from the Jewish pioneering settlements they had visited in Palestine, bursting with agricultural technology and farming-machine experiments. Tolek stood with Jan on the bank of the Tigris, possibly in one of humanity’s cradles, and closed his eyes, trying to picture the classic Garden of Eden. An ancient sprawling apple tree, a long snake curled around the tree trunk. A beautiful young Eve, tempted by the snake and beckoning to an innocent, not-too-intelligent-looking young Adam to come forward and taste the fruit.

  What if Adam had refused? Would humanity still be in the Garden of Eden right here in Iraq? Tolek could easily be one of these farmers sitting in the shade of a palm tree, playing with a string of worry-beads, while Klara and a horde of barefoot children toiled in the field. Tolek made eye contact with Jan… was he thinking the same thing? Peaceful farm existence instead of concentration camps, ghettos and pogroms?

  On to Iran. They set up camp, black oil spurting out as they hammered in the tent pegs. The ground was saturated. The soldiers cursed the black, smelly substance – it was a bloody nuisance. They were camped on top of probably the biggest black gold mine in history.

  Under the strict guidance of the British, the troops trained hard in Iran – marching, climbing ropes, swinging, crawling through mud, shooting, cutting sentries’ throats. The new arrivals were turned into a tough, well-disciplined army, ready for desert fighting. But in the changing fortunes of war, Montgomery was starting to win in Africa, and the British war effort redirected its sights to Europe. The Poles were no longer needed in the desert and just as well, as this brigade had had enough of sand. They were sent to Lebanon, where it was cool and green and very pleasant, for hard mountain training. It didn’t take a genius to work out that they were now being trained for a European campaign. For Tolek this news was a blessing – the start of his way back home.

  Tolek had been temporarily transferred to the British HQ to type Polish translations of English military documents, weekly training programs and daily notices for the new troops. This took a few weeks, and Tolek was beginning to appreciate the British environment. Apart from the normal elitist distinctions of rank, the British treated him as an equal. He didn’t have to be on constant lookout for anti-Semitic backstabbing and mistrust. He could now walk as tall as he liked. Tolek worked well for the British, putting in long hours, and they grew fond of him. So much so that he almost deserted the Polish Army without actually deserting it.

  When his work was complete, the British CO called Tolek into his office. The soldier stood at attention, but the CO smiled and told him to relax and sit down. An adjutant brought in a tray with tea and biscuits. The CO waved at it.

  ‘Help yourself, corporal.’

  This English Tolek understood.

  A translator arrived and sat down near Tolek.

  ‘Your CO, Captain Kasprowicz, has demanded that I return you to him, Miracle Typist.’ The CO gave a humorous chuckle. ‘We can use you here permanently. Do you want to stay? I can arrange it.’

  It was a difficult call. Life was easier under the British, but the war had turned the Allies’ way and there was huge optimism among the officers, so there wouldn’t be long to go now. Who would march into liberated Poland first? Polish forces? Or would it be the British?

  ‘Thank you very much, sir, for your offer. I enjoyed very much working with you. Can I think about it?’

  The British CO put in a formal request for a permanent transfer for Corporal Klings. Tolek himself typed it up in Polish. The British CO claimed that the two forces were working so closely that they needed Tolek Klings permanently on their staff. But Tolek’s employment soon became a touchy point of authority, another grey area between the two allies. Captain Kasprowicz showed up one morning with two men and ordered Tolek into his jeep while the men packed up his rucksack and placed documents into a metal box then threw them into the jeep’s back seat beside him. With Tolek safely in his possession, Kasprowicz confronted the British CO, demanding his Miracle Typist back.

  The British CO came out to the jeep and said with a thin smile, ‘Jewish Tolek doesn’t want to go back to you. He wants to stay here and we need him.’

  Kasprowicz turned to Tolek. ‘I will leave it up to you, Tolek Naftali Klings. Do you want to return to your Polish colleagues?’

  Tolek simply couldn’t do it. He couldn’t refuse the request. Kasprowicz was a decent man and he would take any refusal as a personal insult from his favourite Jewish son. The ‘desertion’ would not go down well with the other Jews serving under Kasprowicz and the newly arrived Jewish ex-prisoners. Nor with Jan Bielatowicz, and Tolek needed him on his side. Tolek apologised to the British CO and stayed in the jeep.

  ‘So you’re back? We thought we’d lost you, but looks like we can’t get rid of you, Miracle Typist. Twoje zdrowie,’ Jan toasted him.

  Tolek took a drink. ‘The British told me that things have badly deteriorated in Poland since the Russians have left and the Nazis moved in. But the British don’t have the underground sources that you do…’ Tolek looked Jan straight in the eye. ‘Tell me honestly, Jan, what is happening at home? I need to know.’

  Jan tried to look at him without blinking. ‘I don’t know details, Tolek. If I knew I would tell you.’

  Again Tolek had that gut-wrenching feeling that Jan was holding back. But what could he do? It was better not to antagonise the Correspondent.

  14 The Jan enigma – friend or foe?

  Since Jan’s return from his London mission, there seemed to be urgency in his treatment of Tolek. He was making a visible effort to become comrades, almost to the stage of over-compensating, like getting that precious typed note from Bóbrki and the mention of the released Jews in his unpublished article. Tolek didn’t permit himself to suspect that this friendly treatment was the result of a guilty conscience over some information about the Polish Jews Jan had learned in London but was reluctant to pass on
. Sometimes he went overboard, embracing Tolek’s company by using him as his inhouse critic before submitting articles to The White Eagle. It was as though he was saying, ‘Look how even-handed and unhypocritical I am.’

  This behaviour made Tolek apprehensive. Did Jan have a guilty conscience? Tolek lay awake many nights, suspecting that Jan’s curtained eyes were hiding bad news. He discussed it with fellow Jewish soldiers and they came to the conclusion that if Jan knew of impending disasters back home, he was probably strictly forbidden to pass this information on to Jewish soldiers, as they would certainly desert. But news from home was bound to leak out one way or the other.

  Whatever his secret, Jan was obviously grappling with his feelings for his Jewish comrade in arms, which challenged his views of all of Poland’s Jews. Tolek had come to represent the entire three million Polish Jews that Jan, as the Nationalist, token Polish intellectual, had to try and reconcile.

  This internal battle boiled over on a long, wet march through the northern Palestinian hills. The Correspondent and Tolek, true to form, were last in line. As they passed skinny trees bent in half by sudden wind gusts, the soldiers were solemn and quiet, wrapped in dreams of home. Their sleek rain ponchos were draped over their shouldered rifles, rucksacks and helmets, the ponchos’ hoods concealing their faces.

  ‘The Jews in Poland are cripples.’ The Correspondent broke the silence and injured their friendship with one fell swoop. He watched Tolek for a reaction, the rain dripping from his helmet past his blue, bloodshot eyes and onto the tip of his nose.

  With such an opening statement hanging over their heads, the hike back to camp was going to be anything but dull.

  Tolek guessed that Jan’s controversial statement was inspired by events of the previous night. The column had gone on a hike and become lost. Stumbling around in the dark, they finished up in the early morning at the front gates of the D’ganya kibbutz. The guards alerted the kibbutz management, who woke up their cooks to lay out a breakfast in their dining room that the hungry men would not soon forget. They ate for a long while in a warm, friendly atmosphere, Polish flowing like the freshly brewed coffee and hot baked bread.

  The Polish soldiers were pleasantly surprised by the red carpet treatment and repaid their hosts’ generosity by exchanging stories of their common homeland. In exile, apparently, they accepted the Polish Jews as equals. There were about 400 kibbutz members, some ex-Polish Jews, and in their unexpected reunion with their expatriates, all past hostilities were forgotten – including the reasons that had made the Jews leave Poland in the first place. The kibbutz Jews saw themselves as hosts to tired and hungry Allied soldiers on their way to fight a common enemy. They were brothers in arms, at least for the morning.

  After breakfast the company received the grand tour of the kibbutz: an efficiently run farming establishment, fertile fields, well-irrigated fruit groves, poultry, cattle yards and the latest tractors. Sheds with crude milking machines (a wonder to the Poles, many of them country lads). Tolek noticed a map on the dining room wall. The kibbutz was in a commanding position for future hostilities, lying just below Syria in the Kinarot Valley. They knew peace in Palestine would not automatically follow ceasing of hostilities in Europe; there would be serious fighting between the Arabs and the Jews. The British couldn’t wait to leave, seeing the mandate as more trouble than it was worth. Many thousands of Jewish refugees were clamouring to immigrate to Palestine, and D’ganya was making provision to receive a few hundred of them. When the war was over there would be many more. Six Arab nations, with a million men, tanks and planes, were vowing to push the arriving Jewish refugees back into the Mediterranean Sea. Syria and Egypt were the most vocal.

  Tolek pressed them to reveal their defence arrangements. Reluctantly, the kibbutzniks showed the soldiers to their defence room, and their contingency plans for eventual siege – their greatest concern. As soon as Jan brought out his notebook, he was told to put it away.

  Ilan Tzener, an ex-Pole, was in charge of defence and flung open a cupboard full of stacked broomsticks. ‘We use these for military practice.’

  Captain Kasprowicz laughed. ‘You can show us where the real guns are hidden, we won’t tell anyone.’

  Ilan, smiling, shrugged. ‘No guns, only broomsticks… but have a look at these.’

  From a large wooden casket he produced the most amazing revelation of all: a stack of Polish Army training books containing instructions on how to absorb and train recruits, brought to Palestine by one of the early Jewish Polish pioneers to help train kibbutzniks in resisting the British.

  Kasprowicz, Jan, Tolek and the others leafed through the training books as if they were lost national treasures. They were allowed to take notes from the books, asking Ilan Tzener endless questions about their techniques, as if discussing serious war plans with fellow Allied command. Tolek looked on in awe at the Palestinian Jews and Poles working together. Pity it had taken a war on foreign soil to attain that elusive magic.

  The kibbutz orchestra sent them off with locally brewed wine and a Polish marching song, ‘Marsz Pierwszej Brygady’ (‘March of the First Brigade’), composed in 1917 and sung by the soldiers of the First Brigade commanded by Jozef Piłsudski during Tolek’s father’s soldiering days. The unofficial national anthem of Poland. Jozef Piłsudski, what do you know? At any other time or place in the universe, an impossible phenomenon, thought Tolek.

  The marching from the kibbutz wasn’t half as painful, anaesthetised as they were by the good food, home-grown wine and nostalgic anthem.

  ‘Did you see those Jews?’ Jan continued. ‘They are normal, not cripples, like the Jews at home.’

  ‘Surprising how the cripples walk straight once out of Mother Poland’s loving embrace,’ Tolek retorted.

  ‘If the Jews in Poland were not occupied with dominating business and running the country but were more like these farming Jews, there would be no anti-Semitism in Poland.’

  ‘The Jewish farmers in the Galicia and Ukraine had their throats cut in pogroms as quickly as the city’s money-lending Jews in Lwów. Probably quicker, and by their own employees.’

  ‘I’m talking about the Jews’ attitude, not their occupation. Their attitude of never blending in with the Polish environment.’

  ‘Attitude? Don’t make me laugh. When were the Polish Jews ever permitted the luxury of developing an attitude? These people here are free. I was born in Poland – I had a yoke around my neck from day one. Forever reminded not to think of myself as normal. Always walk small, walk with my back against the wall.’

  Jan dismissed Tolek’s experience with a wave. ‘Remember what I yelled at you the first night in the canteen? “Hey, Miracle Typist, Jews always remain Jews because only race matters”? I know the answer to that now. These kibbutzniks aren’t Jews. Here we were equal.’

  ‘In Palestine you are equal, you fool, because they let you be. The wonders of war, Janek, the great equaliser. These are Jews all right, on their home ground. They fooled you by speaking Polish. They weren’t Polish Jews any longer. Couldn’t you see it in their faces? These people aren’t oppressed. They aren’t scared of you, they are free. Did you see how tall they stood? It’s only by their grace that you were allowed to feel equal to them here.’

  ‘The Jews in this kibbutz saw themselves in a different relationship to their environment than the Jews in Poland. They were there not to exploit, but to contribute. They did not seek to remain a divided pure race, but adapted to their newly found country.’

  ‘Old country, Jan. Old. We were evicted from here 2000 years ago.’

  ‘New country, Tolek Naftali. Two thousand years ago doesn’t count. They did not live on a kibbutz 2000 years ago. The women did not parade in men’s shirts and shorts with half their backsides hanging out.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Plenty. They’ve adapted to their new country. The Jews in Poland never made a similar effort to adapt to Poland.’

  ‘Not true. No cou
ntry gave us a chance to settle down long enough to adapt. We had to live with a packed suitcase. These are proud pioneering Jews, with cellars full of rifles. You weren’t fooled by those broomsticks, were you? Can you imagine the Bóbrki and Lwów Jews with cellars full of rifles for self-defence? You’d love that, Correspondent, a perfect excuse to wipe them out.

  ‘Freedom, Jasiek – that’s what it’s about. Heads pulled out from Mother Poland’s yoke.’

  The dribble turned to rain. They pulled down their hoods and walked on in silence, splashing water as their boots hit the bitumen road in cumbersome rhythm.

  * * *

  After that march Tolek applied for officer training school. Now that he was destined to stay with the Polish Army, he thought an officer’s rank would bode well in postwar Poland. Plus he wanted to get away from the Correspondent. His plan didn’t work. Kasprowicz tore up his application, saying that he was indispensable in the office.

  ‘You have a much better chance of surviving the war in the office. I’ll look after you, Miracle Typist. Besides, I trust you.’

  That much was true. They both knew that, as a Jew, Tolek was twice as trustworthy as anyone else. One hint of disloyalty or treason and it was the butt of a rifle to the head.

  Jan cornered Tolek in the office. ‘Heard you applied to become an officer. Second time I nearly lost you. First the Tommies, now Officer Klings.’

  ‘Absolutely, that “cripples” business was more than I could take. And I thought we were colleagues.’

  ‘My theories only apply when a Jew isn’t a Jew, Miracle Typist. If the Jews were as loyal to Poland as they are to Palestine, everything would be different. We would not hate them.’