My Boyhood War

by Bohdan Hryniewicz

  By snooping around I found out that, after a few days, everyone in the camp went through a selection process and was separated into different groups. Each group left the camp in separate trains. Men and boys over 15 were segregated and sent for forced labour in Germany. From the men’s group, many, particularly the younger men who looked like they might have been in the Uprising or in the Underground, were further separated. It was suspected that they were sent to concentration camps. The women were likewise segregated and those between their late teens and their fifties were sent to Germany for forced labour. The rest, old men, women and children were sent to the Polish countryside and dispersed into villages. (It was determined, after the war, that from the more than 650,000 inhabitants of Warsaw who went through the camp, 200,000 were sent to Germany for forced labour; 50,000, including my father’s brother, to concentration camps; and the rest resettled, spread throughout the countryside.)

  On the morning of the fourth day came our turn for selection. A large group was taken from our building. There were very few men, mostly women, children and a few very old men. We were marched towards the siding and found ourselves on a platform between two railway tracks. On the left was a train of covered cattle wagons and on the right a train made of open cargo wagons of the type used for transporting coal. In front of us stood a Gestapo officer with a few SS men behind. Beside him stood an elegant woman in a black Persian lamb coat and black riding boots. As we moved forward it became clear that the younger women and few remaining men were being directed to the left, and the cattle cars. The others, older women, children and old men, were sent to the right. Mother told us to hold her arms, trying to look a small as possible. The Gestapo officer gave us a quick glance and pointed with his riding crop to the cattle cars. The woman behind, tapped his shoulder and quietly told him something we could not hear. He turned around, looked startled at her, waved his arm in resignation and pointed us to the open cars. My mother did not recognise her, but she thought that the woman was at one time a client of her beauty salon. Relieved, we entered the open car. Once the car was jammed full of people, the doors were locked. After an hour, the engine was coupled, the whistle blew a few times and the train slowly started to move.

  As we passed through suburban stations we saw people standing on the platforms waving to us. About an hour into the ride the train stopped at a small station. There were people with baskets selling food. We realised that the German occupation money was still in circulation. We had some since, in addition to the cash my mother had, I had received 1,000 zlotys as part of my soldier’s pay. We managed to buy a couple of loaves of bread and a kielbasa sausage. It was a quick transaction; we had no idea how long the train would be standing. I hung over the top of the car wall and the seller on the ground lifted the goods up in his outstretched hands. We were ravenously hungry, we had only had a small slice of bread the previous night and that morning, but we rationed the food to last two days. The train continued its slow journey, stopping from time to time to give priority to German military traffic. We passed larger stations without stopping. After a couple of hours locked in the car, the need for toilet facilities became urgent. One corner of the wagon was designated as a toilet. There was an advantage in being in an open car. My mother and I huddled together for warmth. The open coal wagon was not exactly a ‘parlour’ or ‘sleeping’ car. We noticed that Adam had decided to keep company with two middle aged ‘ladies’. Actually, this had already started in the transit camp, when these women began to entice him into their company.

  In the afternoon we passed through Piotrków and finally arrived on a siding at a small station. It was Rudniki, where people from two wagons, including ours, were disembarked. Awaiting us was a representative of the RGO (Rada Główna Opiekuńcza), a Polish civilian charity co-operating with the Swiss Red Cross and permitted to function by the German occupational government. Next to him were the elders of a few nearby villages ordered to accept the refugees. My mother and I were in a group of about thirty people selected to go to the village of Kościelec. We said goodbye to Adam, who had decided to go with the ‘ladies’ to another village. The sołtys, the elder of the village, was waiting with two other farmers and their horse-drawn carts. The luggage, some of the exhausted or sick people, and small children were loaded in. A procession of tired people followed the two carts, walking for about an hour. It was already getting dark when we reached the village. As we walked through it, the sołtys assigned people to different homes.

  20

  Kościelec,

  8 October–November 1944

  Finally it was our turn; we were among the last. Mother and I entered the yard of our assigned household. The door was open and a middle-aged woman appeared at the door when we were halfway across the yard. We entered a large room which served as a kitchen, living and dining room. It was obvious that the peasant family to whom we were assigned was poor. The room was dimly lit by a kerosene lamp. A large man got up from the table, came over and kissed my mother’s hand, murmuring welcoming greetings but, unlike his wife, without any warmth.

  We were invited to sit down at the table and were served a potato soup with bread and milk. I was ravenously hungry and stuffed myself to the obvious delight of our keeper. Following our meal, we were shown to an alcove off the kitchen which had a straw mattress on a wooden platform. There were two pillows and a couple of coarse blankets. We went to bed in our clothes and both slept like a rock.

  When I woke up next morning, mother was sitting at the table talking with the woman. I ate a breakfast of fresh bread with butter and milk. After breakfast, the woman announced that the first day’s business would be to have a bath and to wash our clothes. She noticed that I was scratching around my waist and surmised that we both had lice. She was right, as I had fully expected. When I scratched my waist, I found two of the creatures under my fingernails and they made a satisfying ‘pop’ when squeezed between my fingernails. A large cauldron of water was already heating on the stove. Our hostess prepared a wooden bathtub near the stove, where it was warm. We took turns to wash and scrub ourselves with homemade soap. It felt divine to have a bath, the first in over a month. As we sat next to the stove wrapped in blankets, our underwear and shirts were boiling in a cauldron of lye. In the meantime, the woman was ironing the inner seams of my trousers and my mother’s skirt. We were lucky as the preventative action worked and we had no more problems. Most likely we had been infected, but only for a few days, while we were in the transit camp.

  A couple of days later the village elder came and told me that I would need to be ready early the next day to work. The Germans had imposed a quota of about twenty-five men from the village for labour on their airfield. The next morning I joined a group of about fifteen men from our village and four elderly Warsovians. Led by a German Luftwaffe soldier, we walked a mile to the airfield. For the next three weeks I worked digging trenches or laying telephone and other wire. It was not particularly hard work; no one strained themselves and the elderly German who watched us did not show any particular zeal. Only when he saw his sergeant approaching did he yell at us and we pretended to work harder. But it was not all a picnic. Outside, it was cold, windy and there was quite a lot of rain. We were not given any food. We ate what we brought with us, which was very little.

  While I was working, mother got to know our hostess well. She was not a local woman. Her family was from the village of Rzerzuśnia near Miechów, north of Kraków. Her family name was Tabak and her father was a very well-respected master builder of watermills. It was an old family trade he had learned from his father and grandfather. Her two brothers worked with him. She also had two younger sisters, both married, living near their parents. She told mother that some people from that area were smuggling tobacco grown near Miechów. They sold it on the black market in Częstochowa, where tobacco was not available. On the return trip they would buy women’s cotton and woollen stockings made in clandestine workshops in Częstochowa. It was a good business but a dang
erous one. The Germans had prohibited the black market, particularly in tobacco. If you were caught smuggling, you could easily wind up in a concentration camp.

  Mother had already been to Częstochowa, where she had exchanged one of our two $10 bills for local money on the black market and purchased stockings. She showed me two sleeveless kaftans she had made by loosely stitching them together.

  The next day, wearing our stocking kaftans, we walked in the early morning November chill to the railway station in Rudniki. We boarded the local train to the Częstochowa station, where we managed to squeeze into the Kraków-bound train. All the trains were overcrowded; people were standing wherever they could find space. A compartment designed for eight people held at least twice as many. The trains in occupied Poland designated for civilian use were the least important for the Germans. Each train had one first-class wagon, Nur für Deutsche, for Germans only. Needless to say, the other cars were very old, some from the early 1900s. We changed trains at Kraków, where we had our IDs inspected. In the afternoon we arrived in Miechów and walked about 5 miles to Rzerzuśnia. It was a typical Polish village with houses strung out on both sides of the road. We found the house of the youngest Tabak sister, Cecilia (Czesia) Szczepka. A pretty young woman in her early twenties opened the door holding a 2-year-old boy. When mother explained who we were, she invited us in. She wanted to know all about her sister. I gathered that she was not very fond of her brother-in-law. She brought food to the table and invited us to spend the night and stay until we had finished our business. Towards evening her husband came in from working the fields. He was a quiet man, obviously devoted to his wife and son.

  That evening we took apart our kaftans and assembled about fifty pairs of thick women’s stockings. We gave ‘Czesia’ two pairs and she was very pleased. The next day she took us to meet her parents, who lived about a mile away. We met Mr Tabak and his wife and their older daughter, who had lost her husband in the 1939 campaign. She and her teenage daughter Tosia lived with them. The three Tabak women told us they would make sure that enough women came to buy our stockings. Sure enough, all of our stockings were sold by noon the next day. Later that afternoon, with our newly earned money we purchased about 13lb of tobacco. During the war, tobacco was very expensive and all of the tobacco grown in Poland had to be delivered to the Germans. Possession of even a small amount of tobacco and some designated foods was considered black marketeering and subject to draconian penalties.

  Next morning, after leaving some stockings for her mother and sister, we said goodbye to Czesia. She invited us to come back. On our return trip we had to wait hours for a train at Miechów station. Along the way our train was sidetracked to let German Army trains pass by. As we approached Kraków it was already evening and very dark. I was very hungry and we had no more food. We were sitting on a hard bench, in a crowded third-class compartment and squeezed in next to a man at the window. I noticed that he had pulled some food out from his bag and was slowly and carefully eating. The wonderful smell of smoked sausage permeated the air. Even though it was pitch dark I saw him slowly take a bite of sausage from one hand and from the other a piece of fresh crusty bread. I was practically drooling as he slowly chewed each piece, clearly enjoying it. The train stopped at a small station. In the dim light from a nearby lamp post I saw him alternatively taking a bite from a clove of garlic in one hand and hardtack in the other. With the last swallow I stopped salivating.

  It was already night by the time we returned to Kościelec. As we entered our quarters our hostess was very excited and wanted to hear all the news from her family. Mother spoke with her until her husband grumpily entered and sent her to bed. During the next few days, we made several trips to Częstochowa and sold all the tobacco without any difficulty. When we counted our money we had more than doubled our initial investment.

  We decided to repeat our trip and first repurchased our $10 on the black market. Next we invested our profit in more stockings, and towards the end of November we returned to Rzerzuśnia. This time it took longer to sell the stockings since most of the women in the village had already purchased stockings from us earlier. We walked to nearby villages and sold stockings door-to-door. Mother approached Czesia about having us move in with her. She was very enthusiastic and it was agreed that after we got back to Kościelec and sold the tobacco, we would return and move in with her. The price for ‘room and board’ was agreed upon. The ‘room’ was a large bed in the corner of the kitchen with a straw mattress separated by a curtain.

  While we were in Rzerzuśnia we learned that the Germans had intensified their searches of train passengers, looking for black marketeers. We decided to hide our tobacco in case we were searched. Mother made a small pillow with oil-cloth (to mask the odour of the tobacco) covered by a garish embroidered pillow cover. I had the idea of tying my trouser legs at the ankles and filling them with tobacco from the knees down. Though I thought it was a clever idea it turned into a torture. The tobacco irritated my skin and my legs started to itch; there was no way to scratch them. As the day progressed, there were innumerable stops and slow downs, and the tobacco started to feel very warm, further increasing my discomfort. The trip took longer than expected and when we arrived in Częstochowa it was already dark. Passengers disembarked and started to walk towards the exit; it was barred and guarded. As the train pulled out, we found ourselves surrounded by Germans. Everyone was herded into the large waiting room. After a long wait, people were taken, a few at a time, into the next room, where they were searched and interrogated; some were allowed to go while others were detained. We noticed quite a few people were walking towards the centre of the room and dropping packages of loose tobacco on the floor. The pile of tobacco on the floor was growing and from time to time a couple of Germans would come and remove it. We knew that we had no choice but to dump our tobacco too. We walked to the pile and my mother dumped her pillow and I, with great relief, untied my trousers and shook out all the tobacco. I spent the next few minutes gloriously scratching my legs. Finally, our turn came and we were told to go through to the controls. Men and women were separated. My backpack was searched. I was patted down and released. I had to wait about fifteen minutes and was beginning to worry that mother had been detained when finally she came out. She told me there was no problem with her bag, as it was practically empty, but that while a German woman had patted down her abdomen, she found a small bulge. ‘What is this?’ the German woman exclaimed. ‘You know, it’s that time of the month.’ With obvious disgust, the German woman told her to move on. In fact, mother had sewn a pocket onto the inside of her garter belt, where all our money was hidden.

  By the time we were released it was already near midnight and a German curfew was in force. We had no choice but to start walking. It was close to 10 miles. The night was very cold with a clear sky and bright moonlight. We carefully walked through the town, trying to keep to the shadows. Luckily, we did not come across any German patrols. Once, we heard the sound of someone running, what seemed to be two or three blocks away, then shouts of ‘Halt! … Halt!’ and the crack of shots being fired. We increased our pace and soon reached the road. More than three hours later we reached our house. Our host was not amused at being awoken at four in the morning.

  A few days later we bought a smaller number of stockings and made only one kaftan. We packed our meagre belongings and early next morning said our goodbyes. We walked to Rudniki railway station to catch the early train to Częstochowa, where we were to change trains for Kraków. When the train arrived it was already full – there was no way all the people waiting would be able to board. While trying to push our way to the carriage entrance, I noticed that the flexible passageway between two cars was not locked on our side. I climbed on the bumpers and with my hands was able to separate the passageway between the cars enough for a person to squeeze in. I motioned to mother and helped her climb up. While I held the sides apart she squeezed through. I followed her but as soon as I was inside the two halves snapped
together, behind me leaving my backpack on the outside. As I was trying to take my backpack off I heard German shouts and police whistles. Then I felt somebody pulling on my backpack and heard shouting in German to get out. I turned and saw a German railway policeman yelling, ‘Get out!’ At that moment, the engine whistle sounded shrilly and the train lurched forward, starting to move. The railway policeman was forced to jump off the bumpers where he had been standing. Without any more escapades we changed trains in Kraków, disembarked in Miechów and walked to Rzerzuśnia, arriving in the early evening.

  21

  Rzerzuśnia, November 1944–

  16 January 1945

  When we knocked and entered we were greeted warmly by Czesia. After a meal we unpacked and went to bed. Our new bed, which we shared, was much more comfortable. The straw mattress had clean linen sheets, two large pillows and an unexpected eiderdown. There was also warm water, soap and towels waiting for us. The next few weeks passed by very pleasantly. We managed to quickly sell the stockings we had brought with us. We moved to Rzerzuśnia for several reasons; most importantly, it was much closer to Warsaw, Czesia and her family were very friendly and the countryside, with rolling hills and streams, was more scenic than the flat countryside near Częstochowa.