by Leon Silver
‘I beg you, what do you know about the Jews in Poland that made you write this? Did the Jews survive the ghettos?’
Jan straightened up and took a deep breath. His chest swelled.
‘Do you know that your article – a settling of scores written by a respected war correspondent – will cause a negative reaction as soon as the war is over? It will encourage and embolden more of what happened to me when this war started… It will endanger the Poles that hid Jews.’
Tolek paused. After five years of silence, it was time.
‘I have something to tell you, Janek.’
Jan took out his notepad, pencil ready, watching Tolek.
‘When we crossed into Hungary, near Uzhgorod, I was having my lunch when Nowak and Kowalski stared whispering and pointing at me. I’d had anti-Semitic remarks from them before. Do you know them? Kowalski was killed at Monte Cassino.’
Tolek took a drink, it was hard to speak of this hurricane that had inhabited his head for so long. ‘Anyway, I picked up my equipment and food can and wandered off into the woods. They followed me, pointed their guns at my stomach and robbed me. You see, Jan, according to your Endecja Action group propaganda, all Jews are rich. Even the dead ones you honoured in your article.
‘Hah. They took all my money, Janek, my rifle pack, jacket and pants… I was so angry that I went crazy, I called them back and threw in their faces a few zlote I had in my shirt pocket. I spat at them, Janek, my colleagues, my countrymen…’ Tolek stared Jan down. ‘When they left, a kind of paralysis overtook me. If my own comrades in arms, wearing the same uniform, did this to me, who would protect my family at home?
‘I collapsed against a tree, half-naked, cold and hungry and hopeless. I dozed off, and was woken suddenly by terrible screaming, more devilish than human. I crawled between the trees to see who could be making such a sound.
‘Not far from where I hid, a naked man was tied to a tree trunk.’
Tolek gathered himself for the words ahead. Until now he had not allowed the fog to clear enough to see the full vision.
‘Three soldiers were hacking into this man like butchers, laughing as they did so. Using their bayonets, they cut him to pieces. They put his bloody arms and legs on the frozen grass near him so the man could see them. Only the man’s body, the stump, was left tied to the tree, all of his blood had spat out like a shower, staining the frozen grass in a red half-circle around the tree. I knew when the soldier had died because he had stopped screaming and his head – his Semitic profile – had fallen to his chest.
‘And then – my fellow compatriot, Jan Bielatowicz, the master storyteller – I couldn’t believe my eyes. These soldiers cut off the man’s penis and balls and, laughing some more, stuffed them into his mouth. They had to force the corpse’s mouth open with a bayonet.’
Tolek sagged, all his bravado gone. ‘I had no gun, but if I had, would I have shot them?’ He shrugged. ‘I retreated through the trees and once out of sight was sick in the forest. I crawled back to the clearing, waited until they were gone and then moved slowly towards my murdered comrade, just in case they were hiding, waiting for their next Jewish victim. The butchers had left the man’s Polish uniform on the grass, so I put it on. I forced myself to take the bloody penis and testicles from his mouth. The man was circumcised, but I already knew that. With my last shivering strength I cut the ropes and put the torso flat on the ground, next to the rest of the body.’
‘This is war, Tolek,’ said Jan. ‘Enemies butcher each other. Atrocities happen.’
Tolek saw it again: he was there in the frozen woods and he shivered as he said quietly what he’d been digesting for five years. ‘Yes. But this man’s butchers were fellow Polish soldiers. This man was no enemy. He was a compatriot. A Polish-Jewish soldier, slaughtered like an animal by his own countrymen. Ask me again why only one per cent have stayed.’
Jan put his notepad away. Not a word written.
1. Translated from Polish by the Australian Commonwealth Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs Translation Service. Reg. No. 39647/1982. Translation of an article published in Polish in The White Eagle, Sunday, 27 August 1944. No. 27(117), Polish Army Printing Works.
17 Suddenly the war ends
During the last few months of fighting in Italy, the Italians were fully invested in the Allied cause; it was now a matter of staying alive until the war ended. The Correspondent’s article turned out to be empty words. Poland’s military heart may have, on paper, been beating for its fighting Jewish sons, but the Jews were never truly trusted. Tolek started a determined search for news of his family. He sent letters and telegrams and registered inquiries with all the refugee agencies and the Red Cross.
Tolek was still assigned the CO’s secret documents, bundles of them; more accumulated after each battle and were kept in a locked steel box, which travelled everywhere with them. Tolek was personally responsible for the safety and security of that box, tucking it beneath his stretcher every night. He complained to Captain Kasprowicz about the pressure of this responsibility, but the captain stated that he couldn’t trust anyone else. A Pole – even with the best intentions – would get drunk and leave the box unattended. He then he added, ‘A Jew is much more trustworthy. A Jew has to be careful.’ Two guards were placed outside Tolek’s tent every night to make sure he stayed trustworthy.
The head of intelligence in their sector was a Pole from a German family, Lieutenant Walter Baran. He didn’t share the CO’s trust in Tolek and was furious that a Jew, and a mere corporal, was singled out to guard these highly sensitive documents. Tolek was sure that Baran believed he was stealing the Polish Army secrets to sell to the Russians. Twice, Tolek woke in the middle of the night to find Baran in the tent, going through his pants pockets with a flashlight, searching for copies of secret documents. ‘One day I’ll find where you hide them,’ Baran warned sleepy Tolek, his face twisted with anger.
Tolek racked his brain, thinking how to prevent Baran framing him. It would be ridiculously easy to place secret documents in Tolek’s possession then report finding them. He had nightmares of a court-martial for treason, just when the war was about to end; of facing his family back home in irons. Tolek refused to go on leave. Three times he knocked back trips to Palestine, where the Poles were visiting in droves using free military transport and billeting. There they purchased thousands of gold coins, smuggling them back to Italy in their ammunition belts – there were no custom checks for military personnel – and selling them for a huge profit on the black market.
Tolek’s fear of Baran cost him a fortune. He still harboured dreams of a larger laundry and dry-cleaning business in Bóbrki. A few thousand US dollars profit on smuggled coins would have gone a long way in postwar Poland. Yet he couldn’t risk it. He was sure that a few secret papers would disappear from the locked coffin. It would have been so easy for Baran to then accuse him of selling these documents in Palestine to Arab agents of the Russians or Germans, creating a perfect opportunity to search Tolek at the airport on his return, exposing the gold coin cache. Baran would make a public example of the thieving, profiteering Jew who was working against his country.
As well as the risk of being set up, if Tolek left even for one day, he could easily miss some important piece of news brought by the thousands of new arrivals. What if news of his family came while he was in Palestine?
But Tolek’s refusals backfired. Baran plied the office sergeant, Krol, with booze. Krol – a roughneck Polish peasant, brought up on a steady diet of anti-Semitism and alcohol – was persuaded that Tolek was turning down his leave passes to suck up to the CO, so that he could replace the sergeant in his office job. Standing outside the tent, Tolek heard Baran taunting Krol: ‘You are just the office figurehead. The Miracle Typist is the CO’s favourite. That’s why he gets to look after the official secrets, not you.’
One night the drunken sergeant confronted Tolek. ‘Now you are protected by the army,’ he warned, with red, bulging eyes, ‘but wh
en the war is over, when we are back home, you’ll be the first Jew I will kill.’
So much for hopes of a harmonious postwar coexistence.
The next day Tolek carried the metal coffin to Captain Kasprowicz’s tent and placed it on his trestle table. He told him what had happened with Krol and refused to look after the documents any longer. ‘What sort of postwar Poland will I face when my own colleagues threaten to kill me?’ he said.
Tolek told his CO that he was going to stay in a rented room near the camp when they were not in the front lines. Kasprowicz tried to persuade him to stay and promised to protect him. But Tolek refused and took up residence in rented rooms in between battles. He checked back with the office every day.
And then suddenly the war was over. The Poles fought their last offensive – Operation Buckland – through the undulating countryside of farms surrounding Bologna, capturing the city on 21 April 1945.
When Tolek heard the news in the office, he flopped in his chair and squeezed his face with his hands so as not to faint. He had been waiting for this moment for five and a half years. Now he could march victoriously down Bóbrki’s main street as a triumphant returning soldier who had helped liberate Poland. The moment of holding Klara and Juliusz in his arms and squeezing them tight forever was just around the corner.
The political news, however, was not as palatable. Whenever they met, Jan, furious at how the Allies had betrayed Poland, got drunk. He told Tolek, and whoever else cared to listen, the full gory details.
Of the Allied forces – the US Fifth Army, South African Sixth Armoured Division, the British Eighth Army and the Polish Second Corps – the biggest losers (apart from the Germans) were the Poles. Back in February, a conference of the Allies was held in Yalta, in the Crimea, attended by the three heavyweights: President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin. It was to decide how to divide postwar Europe. At that time the Russians were predicted to be the first into Berlin so the other two needed Stalin to cooperate.
Jan threw down his whisky and asked for a refill.
The British and American traitors – without consulting the Poles – decided to give a major part of Poland over to the Russians. Because of this, when the Polish commander of the Second Corps, General Władysław Anders, asked for his unit to be withdrawn from the front lines, Winston Churchill dismissed the Poles, saying that they could manage without them. But the American and British frontline commanders requested from Anders that the Polish units remain in their positions, as they were good fighters and they had no troops to replace them. Anders kept the Polish units engaged and they fought and died in the Battle of the Bologna for their country, which had already been given away to the Russians.
After that, Jan Bielatowicz would appear then disappear – to meetings, private talks, who knew where. The few times that Tolek saw him he was drunk, swearing to avenge the British and American betrayal.
* * *
On 7 May 1945, Tolek walked through the ancient red brick arcades of Bologna as people took to the streets, dancing. Hundreds of sirens and car horns blasted and bells chimed from every cathedral. Radio broadcasters bellowed, ‘The war is over!’ Allied soldiers yelled, waving their caps and helmets, drawing Tolek into the frenzied ecstatic mix. He jumped in. The celebration so very reminiscent of the horah dancing at his wedding; but unlike the wedding, girls and women of all ages broke through the soldiers’ lines, kissing, hugging and throwing flowers on the men.
So many people had died, but at least now it was finished. No more needed to die.
A pretty girl in an off-the-shoulder dress jammed a glass into Tolek’s hand and filled it to the brim with red wine. Tolek gulped it down. When he was done, she kissed him wildly.
Even though they were shocked over the Allies’ capitulation to the Russians, the Polish troops smiled, barely able to wait to be demilitarised and go home. The soldiers were housed in an abandoned villa in the port city of Cesenatico on the Adriatic coast. They got up at nine, had a hearty breakfast and were transported to the beach for the day, then out for dinner at night. The port was jumping with Allied soldiers, restaurants, con men and prostitutes. But not Tolek Klings, no beach holiday for him. He got up early every day and checked with headquarters and the Red Cross for telegrams or letters or any news. Then checked twice more over the course of the day.
Another Jewish soldier, Benjamin, the piano player mentioned in The White Eagle article, heard about a family nearby in Morrovalle, about a two-hour drive, who had a good piano. Benjamin asked Tolek along for the trip and the family welcomed the soldiers. They were introduced to the daughter, Bruna, an opera singer. As Benjamin played the piano, Bruna sang, her voice warm and rich. She captured the war’s devastation, but always finished with optimism and bright eyes. The melodies soothed Tolek’s aching heart. This woman offered hope.
The two soldiers spent many happy nights there. The Polish Jews didn’t speak Italian and the Catholic family didn’t speak Polish, but that didn’t matter. Hand waving and warm smiles and gestures went a long way, and the civility reminded the two men of their homes. The experience made Tolek search even harder for his own family.
* * *
Tolek was no longer busy in the admin office, so whenever he had the opportunity he went to Milan, to visit the Red Cross and refugee centres. Maybe his family were looking for him… Millions were missing and thousands of families had been separated. These Displaced Persons became known as DPs, a sure indication that they were to become a lingering problem. Tolek made frantic searches of DP lists, newspaper columns, even refugees’ faces in the crowds at the Piazza del Duomo, seeking news of any kind. A word, a sighting, a rumour. Anyone from Poland, from his district, his town, suburb or street. Anything.
A miracle happened at the Polish Embassy. Tolek’s battalion doctor, a Jew called Haber, could not leave his duties at the army hospital, so he asked Tolek to inquire at the embassy for his missing wife, Zosia, left behind in Poland. Tolek saw a note pinned up on the noticeboard that a woman called Zosia Haber was looking for her husband, a doctor. He rushed to the listed address, a shabby building with rooms full of women refugees. As he entered the room in his uniform, they all lifted their faces to examine him but of course Tolek didn’t know what Zosia looked like. He quietly said he was looking for a Mrs Haber, and one woman stood up, shaking with fear, anticipating that this Polish soldier was bringing the worst news. Without introducing himself, Tolek told her that he knew her husband and he was well, back in camp. The woman crumpled to the floor like a sack of flour.
But the miracle was yet to come. Tolek accompanied the woman to the post office to send her husband a telegram, but she was too nervous to sign it, worried that her husband would get a shock, so Tolek signed his name instead. Reading his signature, Mrs Haber screamed so loud that everyone turned to them. ‘You’ve found my husband and I’ve found your brother!’
Mrs Haber had shared a room with Tolek’s brother Ijio in a refugee centre in Budapest. Holding on to Mrs Haber, Tolek went dizzy. A surge of optimism speared through him like an infusion of warm blood. If his brother was alive then his wife, son and mother might well be too.
Ijio, who had been missing from Kot’s information list. Ijio had survived. If it was true that Klara and Juliusz were hidden by the church, the only missing one now was Mamme. There Klara stood, hugging two-year-old Juliusz to her chest. Her warm hand was back around Tolek’s neck. Those teardrops lingered on her face. Staying with the army till the end had been the right choice.
Tolek telegraphed his brother to come to Milan and to urgently send news about his wife, son and mother.
Waiting for his brother to send news or arrive, Tolek searched even more fanatically for traces of his family. He read all the refugee lists in the papers and went to refugee centres outside Milan. Just like Mrs Haber, Tolek’s wife or mother could be looking for him.
One day, in broad daylight in the Piazza del Duomo where he was feeding the pigeons, Tolek felt a g
entle tap on his uniformed shoulder as a Polish voice behind him whispered, ‘Tolek!’
He turned to see a man about his age, dressed like a typical refugee: worn-out jacket, torn shoes, hungry face, yet also wearing the typical proud demeanor. Tolek didn’t recognise him.
‘I’m Lieb Kamminger,’ the man whispered, then added, ‘You don’t want to recognise me. You’re ashamed of me. My tatte drank in your tatte’s bar. I talked to you when you came home from your legal work.’
Tolek quickly apologised, pretending to remember him and his family. He bought Lieb a big meal, promised him money and new clothes. Lieb ate like a man starving, looking around him continuously, while Tolek watched and listened. He had long ago stopped being embarrassed of being a clean, well-fed soldier.
Lieb survived the war by hiding in the forests with the AK Partisans. The man wiped the plate of vegetable soup clean with a piece of thick Italian bread, then looked up at Tolek and said, ‘You already know about your family – don’t you?’
Tolek’s mind went blank. The busy Galleria, the people eating, drinking, talking, laughing, disappeared as Tolek thought of Jan’s face as he’d told him his wife and son were being hidden by a priest.
‘All the Jews in Bóbrki have been exterminated,’ Lieb said. ‘I returned to Bóbrki with the Russian liberators. Tolek, the town is empty of Jews. There are none left. Not my family, not yours…’
The fog descended and Tolek did not care if it ever rose again. His heart was consumed by a hole. He stood up and shouted at Lieb, ‘My brother Ijio is alive and I had news from the underground army that Klara and Juliusz were hidden by a priest! What are you telling me?’