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The War

Translated by Sara Mages

I was sixteen and a half when the war broke out, a grown boy, but rather spoiled and not ready for the hardships of war.

The summer vacation of 1939 began in an atmosphere of international tension, especially between Poland and Germany. At that time we were once again at the resort town of Konstancja near Warsaw. My father only came to spend the weekends with us because he couldn't leave work for a longer time.

The tension grew day by day until a general mobilization was declared in Poland at the end of August 1939.

On 1 September 1939, when the Germans broke the western border of Poland, we were still in Konstancja with our mother. In any case, my studies were due to start on 3 September, but no one thought of studies. We returned home immediately, to Warsaw.

My father was appointed head of the civil defense of the entire street. He took care of the blackout in the evenings and the pasting of adhesive paper on the windows to prevent breakage during the bombings. He couldn't think at all about the work in his office.

The day after our arrival to Warsaw our relatives, uncle Hipek, his wife and two daughters came to us from Czestochowa. They were Swiss citizens because Hipek studied in Switzerland and there he also met his wife, aunt Zosia. A relative, Olek Meissmer, a boy about my age that I haven't met before also came with them. The next day Hipek and his family went to the Swiss Embassy. Later, they were evacuated abroad together with other Swiss citizens. Olek disappeared within a day and we only heard of him that he joined the Polish civil defense and that later he moved to the newly formed Polish Army in England. Over time he joined the RAF and reached the rank of an admiral or something similar.

For about a week we followed the aerial battles over the city. The propeller warplanes were relatively slow and it was possible to follow the aerobatics - the strange dances between the Polish and the German planes. The Germans had not yet attacked the city itself, they only tried to bomb the facilities of the Polish Army.

Within a week or so, the Germans reached the outskirts of Warsaw and put it under siege. The German artillery was positioned a short distance from the city and every two or three hours they bombed the city for half an hour. German planes passed during the intermission and threw explosives and incendiary bombs. The civil defense placed special guards on the rooftops. They tried, without much success, to cover the incendiary bombs with sand to prevent fires. The shelling stopped at night and German planes, which left from Warsaw airport, bombed the city's buildings.

In one of the first days of the bombing a shell hit the top floor of our building. At that time we were at a neighbor's apartment on the ground floor and we weren't hurt. The building wasn't severely damaged, only a big hole opened on the fifth floor, but there was a great panic. The next day we moved to an apartment in the building where the offices of my father's company were located. My uncles, Olek and Tonya, also joined us.

The Polish Army tried to entrench itself within the boundaries of the city. One day, two officers came to our building and recruited all the men for the construction of the trenches. We, a group of about thirty men in various ages, walked in the direction of the city's suburbs. The tumult of the battles intensified as we moved away from the city center and it made us, to say the least, feel very uncomfortable. At first, I walked at the head of the group, but when I looked back I noticed that the group had dwindled a bit. The officer walked ahead of us and didn't see what was happening behind him. While walking, I saw that several people moved aside and disappeared through the gates of the nearby buildings. Slowly slowly I also moved to the end of the group and entered the gate of a nearby building. When the last member of the group, which, in the meantime, was reduced to ten men, passed, I retraced my steps and returned home. In this manner ended my active participation in the war.

Despite the siege and the bombings the city's headquarters tried to engage the residents and bring them to, more or less, normal life. Uncle Olek, who was a lawyer, was asked to help in the regeneration of the workshops in our temporary residential area. One day he asked me to clarify something in this matter at the police station which was about a kilometer from our apartment. The city was quiet when I left the house, but a heavy shelling started when I got to the station. The policemen explained to me from which direction the shooting was coming and on which side of the street it was safer to walk during the shelling. I started to walk calmly, but when a shell suddenly fell about a hundred meters behind me, I got scared and started to run. In this way I passed several streets, but in one intersection I saw a long line of people standing calmly despite the shelling and waiting for bread. My fear vanished at the sight of the people who stood so quietly, or maybe I began to be ashamed of my fear. I stopped my run and started to walk quietly. When I entered the apartment I saw my entire family sitting in great tension around the table as if they were saying “we have sent a child to this danger.” At that moment I burst in a great laughter - and in this way all my tension burst out.

All in all, I didn't wander around the city a lot. I only remember that there were a lot of dead bodies in the streets from the bombings. They were buried temporarily wherever it was possible to find a piece of an unpaved land - public gardens and even the area around the trees in the boulevard. I also remember a picture of a dead horse in one of the streets and two men who removed chunks of meat with big knives. Later, we also ate a lot of horse meat.

My parents, who were under pressure, reacted in different ways. My father simply slept - we weren't able to rouse him even when bombs fell near our building. My mother - ate. Once, during a heavy bombardment, she ate a kilo of cherries - with the pits.

There were more and more bombing and shelling. To this day I can recreate in my imagination the sound of an aerial bomb that falls nearby. It's like a shaking whistle, which gradually changes its sound and continues for a relatively long time. There were several destroyed buildings in our neighborhood. An aerial bomb destroys a building in a strange way. It shaves a section from top to bottom - and such building looks like an open doll house - in the remaining section it's possible to see made up beds, pictures on the wall and furniture.

The last day of the siege, I think it was 27 September 1939, was especially difficult. The bombing and shelling continued almost all day without a break. We sat very tense in the apartment. The neighbors, who lived on the upper floors of the same building, came to our apartment and stood in the hallway because there was no place to sit in the apartment. There were about twenty people - all Christian Poles. Suddenly, one of them opened with a prayer for Saint Mary, the “Litany,” a prayer which glorifies the Lord and asks for mercy. Those who stood joined the prayer which repeated itself, over and over, for hours. This prayer, within the whistles of the aerial bombs that fell around us, created a scary apocalyptic impression.

The bombardment ended at nightfall and a strange silence reigned. I left the apartment and looked out of the building's gate. The sight before me was unforgettable. The building across from us stood without a façade after an aerial bomb hit it and shaved off the front wall. Dozens of buildings burned around us in a flame that stretched for dozens of meters, and several people, who held a bundle in one hand and a bottle of water in the other, wandered around.

The building that we were in survived the bombings.

The next day it became known that Warsaw surrendered.

During the siege, our apartment in 17 Poksal Street was broken into and robbed. The robbers found embroidered napkins with something that looked like a swastika and complained about my father to the police. Today it seems ridiculous, but they, the robbers, weren't arrested. My father was arrested and interrogated for several hours at the police station on charges of “espionage.” However, the interrogation stopped when the news that Warsaw surrendered reached the police station and my father returned to our temporary apartment.

Parallel to the German occupation, the Red Army, the army of the Soviet Union, moved west. Rumors circulated in Warsaw that they would reach the outskirts of the city and many Jews decided to walk towards them in order to escape the German occupation. So did my uncle Olek with his family and also my aunt Stacha. At first, my parents were not sure if we should do the same, but in the end they decided to stay in Warsaw. Maybe the hardship and the revolution that they had experienced in Russia during the First World War deterred them.

A day or two later we moved to another apartment. Here, my memory fails me. Our building in 17 Poksal Street remained intact. It was only destroyed during the Polish Uprising of 1944. It's possible, that after the surrender we returned immediately to our old apartment which was robbed during the battles. Even if it was so, we didn't stay there for long. We moved to live in our relative's apartment, a young couple who were lawyers. The reasons for this aren't clear to me at all. In any case, we no longer lived in our old apartment on 17 Poksal Street. After the war, when I returned to Warsaw, the building was already destroyed.

We lived frugally in our new apartment. My sister and I slept on folding beds in a room which served as a dining room during the day. The Germans confiscated my father's business and he wasn't allowed to return to his office. He remained at home most of the time. Later, he started to volunteer for public work and together with a group of acquaintances founded the “Toporol” company.

I don't know what our financial situation was. It's not clear to me from where we had money to live on, but I also don't remember any monetary problems. Maybe the banking system continued to operate as usual, or maybe my father still had some liquid resources.

In the meantime, German soldiers appeared in the streets. They had a frightening trait - they didn't talk - they barked: Komm hier - come here! Geh weg - go away! Such a bark, especially from a man who holds a drawn weapon in his hand, paralyzes the will to defend oneself. So, we tried to leave the apartment as little as possible.

The Germans established the Jewish council, the “Judenrat,” at the beginning of the occupation. The personnel appointments were made by the German authorities. I don't know what the considerations were or if they had followed someone's advice. Anyway, among the first council members were also my uncle Olek and a family friend, Polak Hartglas. The latter somehow managed to leave Warsaw and tp immigrate to Israel. Olek disappeared with his family and only later we learned that he moved to the Russian occupation. Later, he managed to immigrate to the United States via China.

The Germans quickly took control of the city. German planes continued to dive low over the city, as if they wanted to bomb it again to keep things quiet and prevent any idea of rebellion. The German planes, the “Stukas,” were equipped with a powerful siren which was activated during the dive. This caused a total paralysis to the city's residents who undergone more than two weeks of siege and bombardment.

Warsaw, together with the remote territories of Eastern Poland, was included by the Germans in a special administrative unit called the General Government. It was, so to speak, an independent rule which was separated from the western territories of Poland that were annexed to Germany. Therefore, we didn't wear the yellow patch like the Jews in Germany, but the “Lenta.” It started sometime at the beginning of December 1939, when the German authorities ordered all the Jews to wear a white ribbon with a blue Star of David on their right arm. The order specified in details the width of the white ribbon (20 centimeters) and the dimensions of the blue Star of David which was painted on it. At first, we made these ribbons at home from paper and ink, but soon the ribbons' industry, “Lentas” in Yiddish, was created and it was possible to buy cardboard, fabric or celluloid ribbons in stores or from street vendors.

 

dvi005a.jpg
The “Lenta

 

My father's older brother, uncle Lotek, converted to Christianity long before the war. He didn't do it out of religious conviction, but, as he explained it to me once, because of his solidarity with the Polish people who were deeply attached to the Catholic religion. When the “Lenta” decree has been issued, Lotek swore that he would never wear it. He locked himself in his house and a few weeks later died of heart disease from which he suffered for a long time. He was buried in Warsaw's Christian cemetery. After the war I located his grave and made sure to erect a tombstone on it. This is the only tombstone of my immediate family.

Uncle Lotek didn't have children and I was his favorite nephew.

He left me in his will his share in the family business - a brokerage company, and his silver watch. I don't know if the company still exists, but the watch was taken from me in 1945 by a Russian soldier- “in exchange for liberation.”

 

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On an outing with uncle Lotek

 

I wore the “Lenta” with a slight hesitation, but, when I went out for the first time and a Gentile tried to find out “to which organization I belonged to” - I got more courage. When I met one of my classmates, I felt that he just wanted to be seen with me - kind of a demonstration of something unusual, but certainly not his solidarity with my Jewishness. However, this interest passed relatively fast, and the anti-Semite Poles exploited the special marking to harass the Jews. Therefore, I tried to walk around the city as little as possible.

Meanwhile, German soldiers walked around the city and “recruited” people for various jobs - men for portage, women for cleaning. It was fairly simple. A military truck stood in the street and those who walked buy were immediately loaded on it. Once I helped to move furniture to a new office, and another time I worked for about three hours in a vegetable garden. The people in the street learnt pretty quickly and warned each other - “don't go there - they grab!” So, the Germans changed their method and simply entered one of the buildings and took all the men they've found in the apartments to work.

As long as it was related to work - so be it, but there were also other raids. One morning the men of the SS entered our apartment and took the owner - a young lawyer. The SS were special German military units, storm troopers, which mainly dealt with the suppression acts of the occupied population. Later we learned, that it was a raid on the Jewish intelligentsia (probably also the Polish), and the people were taken according to prepared lists. Despite all the efforts of the community council - the “Judenrat” - all signs of those taken were lost and we never saw our landlord again.

Fortunately, my father wasn't home because they might have taken him too. They asked me who I was, and when I told them that I was a student - they didn't mess up with me. On this occasion they also removed the jewelry from my mother's hands.

My school year, I was then in the twelfth grade - opened late. Our school was damaged and we started to study in a temporary school which was located on the right bank of the Vistula River which crosses Warsaw in the Praga neighborhood. My classmates, some of which were recruited when the Germans broke through to Poland, participated in the battles of the early days and told their experiences. We didn't study much, but this also stopped very quickly because a week or two later, the Germans closed all the schools. We stayed at home doing nothing except for my sister who found employment in a doctor's laboratory.

At that time I used to go to a big public library and there I searched for various reading books. I couldn't borrow them and take them home, so I sat, together with people of all ages, next to a long table and read my book.

Before we were ordered to wear the arm band my father decided that I should study a trade. He sent me to a locksmith who once worked for him. It was, in fact, my first experience with physical labor. I worked there for a few weeks. I didn't study a lot of trade besides one important thing - manual labor. It was a very strange experience when I was sent, together with another apprentice, to install protective screens to the windows of a store in one of the main streets of Warsaw. I kept on thinking how I would feel if someone who knows me will pass by- a teacher, classmate, or one of my parents' acquaintances. I don't know if this feeling was kind of shame mixed with pride that I, “of a good family,” work in a simple job. However, this job ended quickly because the welding workshop was closed.

I started to study again at the beginning of 1940. Indeed, the Germans closed all the studies, but the Polish education system organized itself underground. Underground schools, which were scattered in small groups throughout the city, were established. There was also an underground university. I, together with two boys my age, studied the curriculum of the twelfth grade. We had three teachers - mathematics, literature and history. Every day we met for a few hours in one of the apartments - each time with a different teacher. The studies were very intensive and a few months later we took the matriculation exams - three students under the close supervision of three teachers. I remember that I chose the “Polish ecclesiastical literature in the Middle Ages” as a subject for my matriculation exam in literature. Indeed, the teachers, who were all Jewish, were amazed by my choice, but this subject was studied, over and over, in literature classes in the previous years so it was the easiest and most convenient choice for me. The fact is - I received a high grade for this work.

The grades were recorded at the office of the underground Polish Ministry of Education. After the war I was able to receive an official high-school diploma signed by the “government committee for underground studies” - with all the grades.

The Germans prepared the atmosphere in the city prior to the introduction of the ghetto. Not that it was necessary for the anti-Semitic Polish population, but the authorities' intention was to divert and inflame the hostility towards the Jews, especially when some of the Poles might suffer from the changes in the map of the city. The authorities used different propaganda methods for fanning the hatred and fear towards the Jews. Thus, for example, huge posters with the image of a lice the size of a meter and the inscription - “Jews, lice, typhus” - and similar posters were pasted on the walls of the buildings. Such propaganda also took place in cinemas where anti-Semitic slides with hatred and incitement rhymes, which were easy to absorb, were shown. The fact - I still remember some of them.

At the same time rumors began to spread among the population that the Germans intend to concentrate all the Jews in one location. Indeed, negotiation took place between the Germans and the community council, the “Judenrat,” about the area in which the Jews will be concentrated. The matter took a long time. From time to time, maps, which pointed out the approximate boundaries of the Jewish area, were published in the newspapers and one map contradicted the other. Eventually, by order of the Germans, the final borders of the ghetto were published in the newspapers and posters on the walls of the buildings.. Within a month all the Jews had to move to these boundaries and all the Poles had to get out of there. The trading-selling of apartments began, and the construction of walls, which crossed the width of the streets and set the boundaries of the Jewish area, began in certain streets.

We found an alternative apartment in an area close to where we lived - just two streets away. We moved there with our few belongings. At first, we thought that it was just a concentration in one location and the contact with the rest of the city will continue, but on the date that was set for the conclusion of the transfer it turned out that the gates, which were built for the passage between the ghetto and the city, were closed. German military police and Polish policemen stood at the gates and didn't let anyone pass. For many it was a total surprise. Many conducted business on the “other side” or the “Arian side,” as it was called, and many Poles also worked in the Jewish area. The sudden closing of the ghetto led to chaos. Over time it was possible to get a short-term transit permit for dealing with business, but most of the Jewish population remained locked in the ghetto without the possibility to get out of its boundaries. The Poles were also banned from entering the area of the ghetto. Large warning signs: “closed area - danger of epidemics” were posted at the gates.

 

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