Once more we were faced with hard choices and the tortuous process of analyzing the pros and cons. Should we leave our home again and start a new life in a Communist country? We knew it would be very risky to stay in Hrubieszów and face the dangers of Nazi occupation, but the other choice was scarcely preferable. Father was known to be a rich man, and sooner or later would be singled out by the Soviets as a capitalist enemy. He and perhaps his family too might well be deported to the Siberian labor camps. The prospect of undertaking to make a new life for ourselves under the oppressive Soviet regime was almost as difficult to face as was the grim possibility of life under the Germans.
Should the Allies finally launch their long-awaited offensive and defeat the Germans, then Poland, and Hrubieszów, would be liberated from them—but what would happen in that event to eastern Poland, recently occupied by the Russians? Would the Allies be in a position to force them to give it back?
At last, after prolonged and agonizing discussions, we arrived at a decision. The men in the family—Father, Sam, Felek, and I (Fred was still in Warsaw, and we had had no contact with him)—would go to the Russian side. Mother and Hanka would stay home. Men, we thought, would be in much greater danger from the Nazis than women, who might be subjected to fines and indignities but whose lives wouldn’t be at risk. Mother and Hanka would be more comfortable at home, where they could look after our property, perhaps even get some income from the shop. As refugees under the Soviets we knew it wouldn’t be easy to make ends meet, and we hoped Mother would be able to send us some money. We believed too that, especially in the beginning, it would be possible to cross the border between German-and Soviet-occupied territory. Perhaps we could return home before long, and be with Mother and Hanka again.
With heavy hearts we packed some of our clothing, hugged and kissed Mother and Hanka, got into a waiting horse-drawn wagon we had hired, and waved good-bye as we left on our second journey to Włodzimierz.
Under the Soviets
We arrived in Włodzimierz that afternoon and spent the rest of the day looking for a place to stay. We found a small house in which an elderly Jewish couple lived and arranged for room and board with them. We had with us a substantial amount of cash in złotys, which were still in circulation along with the new Soviet rubles, and Father had also brought along a few of the gold coins that he had prudently saved for such an emergency. There was only one room with two beds for the four of us, but it was the best we could do for the time being. We unpacked, and soon our landlady called us for dinner.
She was not a very good cook, and I had been spoiled by Mother. I could hardly eat a bite. Not wanting to hurt our hostess’s feelings, I told her that I was too tired to eat. After dinner, Father took me aside and explained that I could not expect to find the comforts of home in our new situation. “You’re going to have to learn to adjust to a new set of realities,” he told me.
During the next few days we walked around town getting acquainted with Włbdzimierz. It was a livelier and more civilized place than Hrubieszów, with a large Jewish population of about twelve or thirteen thousand. I was very curious to learn about life in Soviet Russia, and engaged in conversations with Russian soldiers who could speak a little Polish. They were very friendly, but wary of talking about life in the Soviet Union. They gave only the typical, stereotyped answers, and it was obvious that they were afraid to speak openly with a stranger.
Finally I came across a Jewish soldier from Leningrad who at first was unwilling to talk, but after a while he sensed that I could be trusted and he loosened up. He told me that for the time being, Stalin was friendly to the Jews, so things were not too bad. But he warned that Stalin was unpredictable, and there was no telling when his mood would change. He told me how the people in the Soviet Union were scared of the NKVD (now the KGB), and how one had to be constantly on guard. He warned me to be careful whom I spoke to, because one could never tell who might turn out to be an NKVD agent.
Life grew more normal, but there were significant changes. All businesses and farms, except for very small ones, were being nationalized. The NKVD left most people alone as long as they behaved “correctly” (a favorite word of the authorities), but people learned to be cautious when discussing anything of a remotely political nature. Former officials of the Polish government and people who were considered wealthy were apprehensive about their future in a Socialist-Communist state, but for the time being they were left alone.
The big question in our minds concerned Soviet policy with regard to the hundreds of thousands of refugees from Poland, mostly Jews, who were arriving here to escape Hitler. Some were Polish Communists. In prewar Poland the Communist party had been outlawed, and its members who were arrested by the Polish police rotted in jail for years. Many were idealists who were prepared to give their lives to the cause of social justice. They had been stunned to learn in September of the flip-flop in the Party line on Nazi Germany, and arrived in the newly acquired Soviet territories breathing fire and eager to assume their well-deserved place of honor in the new Socialist society. They then received a second shock, from which most of them never recovered: The Soviet leadership decided that there was a danger some of them were spies, saboteurs, or “plants” sent in by the “reactionary West to do their usual dirty work against the forces of Communism and Socialism.” Since it was impossible to prove that one was not a spy, the NKVD came up with a simple solution: Most of these people, who had spent their lives fighting for Socialist ideals, were dispatched to Siberian labor camps. Many of them did not survive the hardships of the camps, and those who did either became the bitterest and most dedicated enemies of the Soviet regime, or turned into cynical apparatchiks—the ones who made things work—cold-bloodedly playing the game according to Soviet rules.
At that time the Soviet government did not discriminate against Jews, which made things much easier for us. The schools were reopening, and I enrolled in the Włodzimierz high school (a desatiletka, a ten-year school; the term gymnasium was no longer used, as having a decadent, capitalist ring). In education and in the professions, such as medicine and engineering, Jews were treated well. There were a few exceptions, where local anti-Semites were in power, but they had to be careful. Using abusive language, such as calling a Jew “parszywy Żyd” (rotten Jew), was illegal and punishable by a prison sentence. This of course was balm for my nerves, still frayed from the insults and name-calling and all the other injustices Poles habitually inflicted on their Jewish countrymen.
Attending high school was compulsory in the Soviet Union, and the attitude of the teachers toward the students was in general much friendlier than that in the Polish gymnasiums. The official language was Ukrainian, and classes were taught in that language. Fortunately, Ukrainian is very similar to Polish, and I had occasionally heard it spoken in Hrubieszów, so I had no difficulty with it. Writing presented more of a problem because Ukrainian uses the Russian alphabet, but I learned that too within a few weeks.
Russian language was a compulsory subject, and I well remember my first class. Many of the local students knew a little Russian, and some spoke it fluently. Before the war I had never heard anyone speak it. The Russian and Polish languages both have a Slavic base, but even words that look similar are often pronounced very differently. (It’s like French and Italian, which are both Romance languages, but the French and Italians are nevertheless unable to understand one another unless they learn the other language.) So when our new Russian-language teacher, a big man from Smolensk, came in and introduced himself to the students in Russian, I had no idea what he was saying. At the end of the class he called on a few of us to translate Polish and Ukrainian words into Russian. When he asked me to repeat a Russian word, I put the accent on the next-to-last syllable, as it is in almost all Polish words. It must have sounded funny, because the whole class burst into laughter. I promised myself right then and there to learn to speak Russian better than they.
To learn the language quickly, I decided to read aloud
and listen to the Russian radio. Every evening I listened to the Moscow radio for several hours, and within a few weeks I had the feel of the accent and was beginning to master the language. The rest of my free time I spent reading Russian novels aloud. I had difficulty at first and had to consult my dictionary frequently for both meaning and pronunciation, but soon it began to jell, and before the end of the year I was speaking fluent Russian.
After a few weeks we moved to another house in Włodzimierz, in which we were able to rent two rooms. Father and I occupied one, Felek and Sam the other. Mrs. Burstyn, our landlady, was a good cook and anxious to please. The Burstyns had a son in his late twenties who was very bright and a terrific chess player. I had considered myself pretty good, but Burstyn soon showed me how wrong I was. Even spotting me a rook, he won almost every time.
The border between German-and Soviet-occupied Poland was not yet closely guarded, and we were in frequent communication with Mother and Hanka. They were still living in our house, but the shop as well as all of Father’s other businesses had been confiscated by the Germans. Mother had managed to hide many of the fine wool fabrics, and she and Hanka were living on the proceeds from selling them off little by little.
The Gestapo was ordering the Judenrat (Jewish Council) to pay them large sums of money, which they called “contributions.” Mother was asked to make substantial cash contributions. She explained to the leaders of the Judenrat that Father’s net worth had been in real estate and other businesses that we had lost, but to no avail. The Judenrat continued to put great pressure on her, and she was forced to hand over most of her dwindling reserves of cash.
She had managed to stay in touch with Fred, who still had his office in Warsaw. We missed them all very much, but there was still no military action in the West, and our early hopes for a reunion faded, for the time being.
In December we received news of the Hrubieszów “march.” Without warning, SS Einsatzkommandos (special units) had arrived in town. They went from house to house searching for men, and soon they had gathered together a group of seven hundred Jews, whom they marched at a brisk pace to Sokal, a town farther south, giving them no chance to rest. Those who couldn’t keep up with the rest were shot on the spot. Only two hundred of the men survived. Similar Einsatzkommando Aktionen (actions) took place in a number of other Polish cities and towns.
It was clear that Hitler had escalated his anti-Jewish policy to a new level of ferocity, an ominous development that supported the pessimists’ view that he was prepared to carry out the threats against the Jews he had expressed in Mein Kampf. Many people we knew had been killed in the march. We were deeply troubled, and it was becoming clear that our decision to leave Hrubieszów had been a wise one.
The Soviets now announced that all inhabitants of the western Ukraine, including the refugees from Poland, would be given Soviet citizenship. The local inhabitants had little choice; their town was now part of the Soviet Ukraine, and they intended to remain there, for better or worse. With us, it was a different story. We were refugees, and hoped to return home as soon as the war was over; we didn’t want to live under the Soviets, who denied their citizens what was to us the most important thing in life: liberty. We were worried that accepting Soviet citizenship might jeopardize our freedom to eventually leave Soviet Russia. We knew that not following orders to apply for citizenship was taking a great risk, but we decided it was better to take the risk than lose the chance to leave, whenever that became possible.
The deadline set by the government for signing up came and went, and we, together with most of the other refugees, did not comply. I felt very uneasy, fearing the Soviets would consider our refusal an act of defiance and ingratitude, and that the NKVD would now consider us “unreliable” and perhaps deport us to Siberia. However, several weeks passed and no action was taken against us, to our intense relief. We couldn’t vote in the forthcoming “elections,” but that was a small price to pay.
Meanwhile, I was doing very well in school. Once again I was getting all A’s, and soon was at the head of my class in most subjects. Father was very proud of me. He had very little to occupy him, and I suggested that he try reading, which he had never had time for at home. I got him some interesting Polish books, and at first it was hard for him because he had never learned to read Polish well, but he was a quick learner, and in no time he was reading easily. Totally devoted to business before the war, he now became engrossed in books, in which he discovered a whole new world.
Winter came, and we learned of the Soviet attack on Finland. At first it seemed impossible that this tiny country, with a population of only a couple of million, would dare to challenge the Soviet colossus, but it did. It seemed certain that the Russians would defeat the little Finnish army in a matter of days. But days became weeks, the fighting continued heavy, and the Red Army was making no progress. The whole world watched in amazement as the brave Finns resisted all Russian attempts to gain ground. On the BBC and other Western radio stations we heard marvelous stories of Finnish fighters on skis suddenly appearing behind the Russian lines, wreaking havoc, and then as suddenly disappearing in the dark of night. My friends and I rooted enthusiastically for the Finns, waited impatiently for the war communiqués, hoped fervently that they could continue their miraculous stand. But the embarrassed Soviet High Command threw many fresh new divisions and thousands of additional tanks and planes into the battle, and with this overwhelming advantage in men and matériel they slowly gained ground. The Finns were finally forced to accept Soviet terms and cede part of Karelia.
They had lost the war but won the admiration of millions of people all over the world, and the Soviets had lost a great deal of prestige, revealing themselves to be inept in planning and strategy, and questionable in the quality of their equipment and the fighting ability of their soldiers.
This evidence of Soviet weakness might, we thought, encourage Hitler to strike at Russia, a possibility we viewed with mixed emotions. Fighting on two fronts might prove as disastrous for Germany as it had in World War I; on the other hand, we were only fifteen miles from Hitler’s army and didn’t relish the thought of falling into his hands.
About this time I became friendly with a girl in our class, Itka Kaufman, a blue-eyed blonde with lovely skin—and, unfortunately, a somewhat prominent nose. Itka was the first real girlfriend I had ever had, and it was very exciting. In Hrubieszów I had been shy with girls, and except for a quick kiss stolen here and there, I had never been at all close to a girl. For three years I was in love with a Polish girl in my class in the gymnasium and often had erotic dreams about her, but I doubt that she ever knew of my feelings; I was so afraid of rejection that I never allowed them to show.
The furthest I dared to go with Itka was prolonged kissing, after which I would open her blouse and feel her breasts. I occasionally played chess with Itka’s father and got to know him rather well. I felt it would be highly improper to “take advantage” of his daughter.
But apparently Itka didn’t agree. One evening after we started kissing, we leaned over on the sofa and I wound up on top of her. We were both fully dressed—I even had my jacket on—but we started moving our bodies in rhythm, until Itka asked, “What if I have a baby?” I thought she was joking, and laughed. Only later, back in my room, did it occur to me that Itka had seemed somehow disappointed, and the thought suddenly struck me: Might she have been willing to go all the way? I never found out, because whenever I was alone with Itka after that, the very thought of betraying Mr. Kaufman’s trust made me avoid any horizontal positions.
The winter of 1939–1940 was exceptionally severe. On many days the temperature reached –30°C (–22°F). This didn’t bother me. All in all, this was not an unhappy time. I was young, I had a girlfriend, I enjoyed studying and playing chess, and, most important, as a Jew, I had a feeling of equality with the Gentiles. Stalin, known for his ups and downs with regard to Jews, was, at that time, strictly enforcing Soviet laws protecting all nationalities from s
lander. I could see many of the inefficiencies and the brutality of the Soviet system in other areas, but for the time being, at least, those did not affect us personally.
The precariousness of our situation, however, was soon forcefully brought home to us. One night we were sleeping in our beds when we heard heavy knocking at the front door. Mrs. Burstyn got up to see who was there. A loud voice said, “Police. Open up.” Suspecting that this might have something to do with us, and showing great presence of mind, she whispered to her husband to go and tell us to hurry and hide in the attic, while she held the police off for a couple of minutes, long enough for us to straighten our beds and climb the ladder to the attic. An NKVD officer came in with two local policemen asking whether there were any refugees from Poland in the house. Mrs. Burstyn assured him that there were none. She must have sounded very convincing, because they promptly left the house and drove away in their truck.
The next morning we learned that the night visit had been part of an NKVD citywide sweep arresting refugees who hadn’t applied for Soviet citizenship. Those they picked up were given ten minutes to pack their belongings, then were loaded onto waiting trucks and taken to the Włodzimierz railroad station, where they were put on a train that departed the following morning, heading east. Over a thousand people were in this transport—men, women, and some children. The same thing took place all over Western Ukraine and Byelorussia; more than a hundred thousand Polish refugees who had failed to register—mostly Jews—were shipped to Siberian camps. In addition, many local people who were suspected of disloyalty to the regime were arrested and shipped east as well.
A couple of months later the first letters from the deportees began to arrive from several Siberian labor camps. Between the lines they told of the cruel cold and hunger. Fortunately, the NKVD permitted them to receive food and clothing packages. We had known all along that by not taking out Soviet citizenship papers we were risking reprisals; nevertheless, we were shocked and unnerved.
I Shall Live Page 6