by Halina Rubin
8
How to Be Stoic
Just before Easter, on the last Sunday of March 1937, four women, among them twenty-six-year-old Ola, took a train to Brześć. The four were a delegation representing the committee of families of prisoners in Bereza. Klara, a friend of Ola’s, took her twelve-year-old daughter; another friend brought her baby. Their plan was to see Kostek Biernacki, the head administrator of the province that encompassed Bereza.
Biernacki, eulogised by some and hated by many, had direct access to the president and wielded considerable power. A stroke of his pen could confine a person to indefinite detention in the camp. Crucially, with the same pen, he could reverse such a decision.
Biernacki, however, informed by his secretary about the delegation, became angry. Well-known for his viciousness and temper, he not only refused to see the women but had them thrown out of the building. By then, nine months had passed since Władek’s arrest and incarceration. Like other inmates, he was kept incommunicado. Occasionally, under the pressure of public opinion, the authorities relented. Only then, and under strict supervision, were detainees permitted to write. The guards made sure that nobody elaborated beyond a few formulaic sentences: I am well. There is nothing I need. Best regards. Later, these banal phrases – at once reassuring and disquieting – were read many times, as if something more could be gleaned between one word and another, as if it were possible to guess the state of mind behind the words and the handwriting.
Immediately after Władek’s arrest, my mother Ola turned for help to MOPR,15 of which she was a member. Originally known as Red Help, the international organisation assisted political prisoners and coordinated protest actions. She was drawn to people in the same situation and joined the committee of the families of Bereza prisoners. Mostly women, they collected money for the prisoners, providing them with warm clothes and sturdy boots, and helped their families who were left penniless when their breadwinning husbands were taken away. They knew some sympathetic cobblers who made boots for the men.
Klara, whose husband Michał was arrested not long after Władek, was terrified that he might not survive Bereza. A teacher and a journalist, unused to hard physical work, suffering from tuberculosis, Michał was not a robust man. Klara was determined to send him a coat and pants before winter. The problem, as always, was money.
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ Klara wrote in her recollection of the incident, ‘so I went where all the wives, sisters and mothers of Bereza inmates went – to Władek Bąk’s father. He made the outfit professionally, with great care. After all, his son, too, was in Bereza.’
If not for Klara, how would I ever know that my grandfather Henoch spent many hours behind a sewing machine, making clothes for the atheist rabble-rousers? How good it would have been to know him.
The women gathered information about the conditions and treatment of inmates in Bereza, publicising the illegality of the camp, the torture and suffering. They urged government officials to release the prisoners and close Bereza for good. They sought lawyers’ advice, met officials in the Ministry of Interior as well as parliamentarians of various persuasions. Meeting these mandarins usually followed the same pattern. The women were addressed from across large desks, in spacious rooms full of light, oriental carpets and tasteful furnishings. Some dignitaries were openly hostile and aggressive. Sometimes, behind the excessive politeness, lurked barely disguised contempt. On rare occasions they would meet someone sympathetic.
Despite – or because of – the illegality of the camp, the problem was intractable. Brushing aside worldwide protests, the government stood its ground: nothing was going to change. It warned the opposition that it would eradicate with a ‘white-hot iron anyone whose activities threaten public security, peace and order’.
Not succeeding in their mission to see Biernacki, the four women decided to go directly to Bereza. To cover the distance from Brześć to Bereza Kartuska, they boarded a horse-drawn carriage.
It was turning dark when the carriage pulled up at the cobbled market square. The town was quiet but news of their arrival had travelled faster than the carriage. No sooner had they descended than they were surrounded by several police officers waiting for them. The four women and their children were counted and escorted on foot to their lodgings. There they were counted again and their documents taken. They were warned not to go anywhere. They were not arrested, yet not exactly free. Ola tried hard not to show apprehension, not wanting to appear more frightened than her companions. If Władek could endure, she would too.
The following morning, a lone policeman turned up and – possibly because he was on his own – counted them again. Everybody in Poland knew there were usually two policemen on the beat: one who could read and the other write. But this one must have been the possessor of both skills.
‘Do you mind if we go for a walk around the town?’ Klara asked.
‘By all means, I’ll keep you company,’ the police officer replied, appearing uneasy as four pairs of eyes looked at him with derision.
The group consisting of four young women, two children and one police escort walked the unpaved streets of the quiet town. They walked carefully, mindful of their flimsy shoes, trying to avoid mud while the locals peered furtively at the unlikely procession. There was nothing to be gained by such a walk, the women soon decided; conversation in the presence of their ‘guardian angel’ was stifled. They chose to return to their rooms where at least they could be rid of him.
It was not the best situation but they decided to go directly to the camp and request an audience with the camp commandant. The police escort walked directly behind them. It was already late. As they reached the main highway, the red buildings of the old army barracks, surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence, came into view. Just think: not too far beyond it were their husbands.
Almost immediately, the women came face to face with a tight group of policemen, machine guns poised. It was chilly. The rain was sparse but constant.
‘We want to see the camp commandant. We are here about our husbands,’ one of them said, making an effort to overcome her nervousness.
The response was sharp: ‘The train to Warsaw leaves in one hour. You’d better get going otherwise the inmates will be punished.’
Drizzle turned into rain and the troops stood as immovable as before. It was clear: no one would deign to see them. It was a fiasco.
Władek did not think so, and neither did his comrades. With the women’s brave gesture, they knew they had not been forgotten. They felt as though they’d received a long and intimate letter. It overshadowed their daily misery, filling them with gratitude and hope.
‘We knew how to love,’ my father would say many years later.
9
Towards Spain
Dense and tangled is the stitch of events.
—Wisława Szymborska
We sit in a small restaurant, Jacqueline and I, by the impossibly blue and serene lake in Lausanne. Small boats bob on the water and all around us, under red and white parasols, people enjoy ice-creams. It’s a picture-postcard place. The irony is not lost on us: it would be difficult to find a more contrasting setting for our conversation. While the present stands still, we talk – not for the first or last time – about the stormy lives of our parents.
After thirteen months in Bereza, Władek returned home to Ola – his face drawn, his bones unbroken and also, it seemed, his spirit. He enjoyed everything that freedom had to offer. He relished telling me about his first meal: scrambled eggs with rounds of sizzling sausage and thick slices of bread, which he and his comrades wolfed down in some godforsaken railway station. There were four of them, famished and weak, eating greedily, their hands trembling. When it came to payment, no matter how many times they counted what money they had, it was not enough. They offered their labour instead. The owner threatened them with police before asking, ‘Are you out from Bereza?’ They nodded. ‘Panowie,16 you don’t have to pay.’
The year was 1937, Hitler
had already taken the Rhineland and his progress seemed unstoppable. In Germany, just across the border, the Nuremberg Laws were in force and German Jews stripped of all their rights.
A civil war was raging in Spain, placing it at the centre of the political stage. The bloodless birth of the Spanish Republic a few years earlier read like a modern fairy tale: the king forced into exile, ushering in a new era. For those involved, it had felt as if a powerful wind had blown over the country, taking away the centuries-old traditions of poverty, backwardness and turpitude. In their place progressive reforms of equality, emancipation of women, free and secular education, and separation of Church and State had been introduced, fuelling both euphoria and loathing. Five years later General Franco staged a coup against the new Republic giving rise to the Spanish Civil War.
Fought with great ferocity on both sides, it was largely a war by proxy. Conservative nationalists were supported by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and the republicans by the Soviet Union and the International Brigades, comprised of volunteers from all over the world.
Within weeks of Władek’s return home, my parents volunteered to join the International Brigades. They felt passionately about the future of the Republic, and the decision to fight in Spain was a natural thing to do: they were prepared to risk their lives.
Poland’s official position towards the war was ostensibly neutral. In reality, it was loyal to the Catholic nationalists. The country’s impartiality manifested only in selling outdated arms to both sides. Joining the International Brigades was against the law and those who were caught were stripped of their citizenship. Ola and Władek decided to travel separately. Passing through Germany was out of the question so Władek, like most volunteers who travelled illegally, took the roundabout route through Czechoslovakia, Austria and Switzerland to France. As far as her mother Brana and the rest of the family were aware, Ola went to Paris to visit our cousins, although no one in our family had ever been abroad for the simple pleasure of travelling.
How does one pack for war? Ola liked telling me about her stay in France, just as she was fond of talking about her preparations for the trip. I still remember her description of the colours and styles of the blouses, dresses and two-piece ensembles she packed in her suitcase before leaving for Paris. Thinking about it now, I am fearful for my mother – which is irrational, considering no further harm can be done to her; besides, she was far from the front. I should stop speculating whether her suitcase included a single pair of sensible trousers and the boots she wore when walking in the Carpathian Mountains. I should stop worrying, as I do, about her inability to use a rifle or how to dress messy war wounds. She was a midwife. How much do midwives know about combat or amputations? Could she imagine the war – being caught in gunfire, of daily life in the trenches, of the stench of latrines, the hunger? All of it, at once?
When she arrived in Paris, our cousins, the entire clan of them, all from Grodzisk Mazowiecki, welcomed la petite cousine de Varsovie warmly, taking turns to show her Paris, the city that had offered them safety, which they loved as though they’d been living there for generations. As it happened, Paris of 1937 hosted the World Exposition. After years of preparations, the latest in science, trade and art was displayed on the Trocadero and Champs de Mars. Millions came to see technological novelties, new trends in art, or simply for fun. It was all about modernity and looked spectacular, especially at night when long jets of water shot across the river and hundreds of fountains were illuminated to the music of Stravinsky, Milhaud and others, all of them contemporary composers. The buildings, the river and the bridges were flooded with light. It looked magic. Paris was indeed the City of Lights.
But not even the Exposition was exempt from the battle of ideologies. The Soviet and German pavilions stood in perfect symmetry on either side of la Tour Eiffel. Monumental in scale, they loomed over the other constructions like two mortal enemies facing each other across the fields of war, spoiling for a fight.
Ola visited the Spanish pavilion, the centrepiece of which was the recently completed ‘Guernica’. Created by Picasso soon after the bombardment of the civilian population of the town, the painting depicted a tragedy that was still fresh in Ola’s memory; its effect on her was intense. Meanwhile, day after day, Parisian newspapers brought the latest news and photographs of atrocities from across the border, making the names Segovia, Madrid or Barcelona intimately familiar. At night, the images turned up in her dreams. Only a year before, with Blum’s socialist government in power, trainloads of volunteers had crossed France on the way to Spain. Now, with the border closed, Ola had to wait for its sporadic opening, or be taken on foot across the mountains. Waiting for Władek, she was stuck in Paris.
There are worse places to be marooned, but Paris was expensive and when she mentioned her plans to her cousins, the atmosphere turned glacial. She could no longer work in her cousin’s factory. What migrant from impoverished eastern Europe, having just reached a level of respectability, would risk rocking the boat? From then on, Ola had difficulty paying for lodgings.
Shop windows continued to display a mouth-watering variety of food and ripe, aromatic fruit she could no longer buy. All she could afford were baguettes and a few apples. Ola’s flirtation with la vie parisienne came to an abrupt end, and Paris lost its gloss.
At this point the paths of Jacqueline’s mother and my mother began to intersect. Not literally, as back then they did not know each other, but only because of the similarity of their circumstances. Jacqueline’s mother, like Ola, stopped in Paris on the way to Spain.
Janina, a dark, skinny girl with Sephardic looks, made her living as a cleaner in one of the many small hotels near the Sorbonne. I seem to know them well, if only from countless French films: their poky rooms and wooden stairs, none too clean; their ubiquitous concierges. This is where she met Józef, a young anarchist who, after his spell in Spain, called himself José. They fell in love.
Their affection disregarded circumstances and common sense, and crossed the political divide. Janina was a communist. José was a refugee on the run, as much from Franco as from the war within the war behind republican lines. The Spanish communists, under the spell of Moscow, turned against anarchists and anyone under suspicion. José could not return to Poland where people like him would be imprisoned; nor could he stay in France without risking internment. Paris was swarming with refugees: people with the wrong papers, without money, for whom only some distant, benevolent country was the answer.
Jacqueline and I have no way of knowing when Janina discovered her pregnancy. Perhaps out of pride, or to spare José yet another dilemma, she kept it to herself. By the time she did, it was too late. José was in Chile.
When the baby was born Janina was alone, with Poland already under occupation. A few months later, when the Germans entered Paris, she joined the exodus south to the Free Zone. A few more years had to pass before Jacqueline, who was that baby, and I would sit at the same wooden desk at the primary school in Warsaw, and even more before we’d sit comfortably in a café by the lake, talking about the strange lives of our parents – their political imbroglios and choices, the all-too-frequent necessity to flee, or to fight.
Janina and Jacqueline’s escape to the Free Zone was not the end of the story. Both mother and child would suffer the terrible conditions of an internment camp from which – because they were Jewish – Auschwitz was the only destination. Amazingly, Janina managed to escape interment twice. Neutral, peaceful Switzerland, seemingly so close beyond the Alps, was the closest and the only country where they could seek shelter. Unfortunately, Janina’s fate was of no concern to the Swiss. Refugees were barred from entry, sent back if they succeeded in crossing the magic line of the border.
The second attempt, however, brought her luck. Perhaps someone, an official, felt compassion towards the emaciated woman and her sick child.
Of course, Jacqueline remembers nothing of these first years of her life, nor of being left with a stranger, who took her in
and loved as her own, as Janina went back to France to join the Resistance. And even this is not the conclusion to the story. These stories might not be long in the telling, and the child knows how they end, but it takes a lifetime to tease them out and puzzle over their meaning. Jacqueline carries the deep pain of a child who knows that she played only a minor part in the saga of her mother’s life.
I wonder if my mother would have left me in similar circumstances and, if so, would I carry the hurt for the rest of my life?
Ola never made that crossing into Spain, just as Władek never got past Czechoslovakia.
Stalin ordered all the Comintern17 parties to withdraw their support for the Spanish republic and stop sending volunteers. From then on, those fighting Franco would be on their own.
Did my parents perceive this abandonment of their Spanish comrades as a betrayal or merely a change of tactics? My parents’ political ideals gave sense to their lives. The party was all they had and it had to be supported even when it made ‘mistakes’. And where would they be in the late thirties without the Soviet Union?
The fall of the republic, its pain, was their personal tragedy and, like a congenital condition, some of their grief was passed on to me, too. The three years of the Spanish Civil War pitted left against right, anti-clericals against the church, workers against factory owners, republicans against monarchists, communists against anarchists, brothers against brothers. Villages were pillaged; the once cosmopolitan streets of Barcelona and Madrid turned into battlefields and dust. Nearly one million people were killed.
PART TWO
10
September 1939
The world is never ready
for a child’s birth.
—Wisława Szymborska
Not many things delighted Ola as much as the anticipation of motherhood. As with her trip to Paris, she would remember every detail of her preparations. She told me how she bought the best produce, describing exquisite berries, pears and apples – her favourite fruit. I was to be a strong, robust baby. Nor did she economise on baby paraphernalia. My first cocoon-like bedding was made of white Swiss cotton filled with down, trimmed with lace and ribbons, definitely on the frivolous side. And there was nothing sensible about her peach-coloured négligée.