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My War against the Nazis A Jewish Soldier with the Red Army
By ADAM BRONER THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS Copyright © 2007 The University of Alabama Press
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8173-5417-6
Chapter One German Occupation and Terror
The news was shocking and devastating. The German Wehrmacht staged provocations in several border areas and overran the Polish defenses. Poland was attacked and involved in a war that it had desperately tried to avoid. On September 1, 1939, World War II started.
Despite the news, the weather that Friday morning was nice and the sun was shining like nothing had happened. On that day I found myself at Uncle David's place, on 53 Cegielniana Street, in the city of Lodz, Poland, where I was helping run his grocery store. Pan (Mr.) Jozef, the building caretaker, started out the day as usual. He put on his high-heeled boots, attached the hose to the water faucet, and started washing the brick-red interior yard. It was a very solid, beautiful edifice, five stories high. The tenants were mostly upper middle class, businessmen and professionals.
September 1 was usually the day when the new school year started. However, that morning children did not go to school. People were glued to the radio, listening to the news. The first military communiqués did not reveal how bad the situation already was.
By noon the city government of Lodz organized a rally in Plac Wolnosci (Freedom Square), in which I joined together with several hundred thousand people. We listened to the pronouncement by Poland's president Ignacy Moscicki. A few words remain in my memory: "Oswiadczam wobec Boga i Historii, I take God and history as my witness" as he described the aggression of Germany against our fatherland. It was a very solemn speech, and it made a strong impression on me. I felt that I was participating in a momentous historic event. Although my spirits and patriotism should have been lifted, I was also aware of the brutality of the Nazi aggressors. I was only fourteen, but I knew that the Nazis mistreated people in occupied Czechoslovakia, in Austria, and in Germany itself. I was frightened and apprehensive about the future.
The war was not unexpected. I had heard Hitler's screaming speeches accompanied by wild cries of "Sieg Heil!" Hitler demanded that Poland give up the territories between East Prussia and the rest of Germany, the corridor that also contained the city of Gdansk (Danzig), which, according to the Treaty of Versailles, was a free city, inhabited by Poles and Germans. He called for more Lebensraum (living space) for Germans at the expense of other nations. His anti-Semitism was vitriolic, inciting hate and violence.
We didn't have to wait long that day to experience the Luftwaffe's bombs, which fell near the building where I was, by the railway station Lodz Fabryczna, presumably their target. For some reason, most of the residents of 53 Cegielniana Street would assemble by the gate during the bombardments. There they felt safer in the company of other people than staying alone in their apartments or even in the shelters. During one of the bombardments a rumor spread that the Germans were using poison gas. People panicked. Nobody was prepared for such a possibility. Some put wet handkerchiefs over their mouths. After a while we realized that there was no gas.
In the first days of the war we were confident that the Polish Army, with the help of the French and British, would be able to repel the aggressor. France and Great Britain declared war against Germany on September 3. We also believed in Marshal Edward Smigly-Rydz (who had replaced Marshal Jozef Pilsudski after his death in 1935), who had launched in the previous several months a public-relations campaign under the slogan: "Strong, United and Ready." On a large poster he was depicted against skies filled with Polish warplanes. The whole nation was ready to defend its independence, and the Polish Army was putting up a strong resistance, but the Wehrmacht overwhelmed it in the first days of the war.
On Wednesday night, September 6, commotion and cries woke me up. We were sleeping in our clothes, as in the previous couple of nights, in case we had to run to shelter. At first, I couldn't understand why everyone was preparing to leave, why the tears and panic. Soon I learned that, according to broadcast announcements, the Germans were rapidly approaching the city and the government was calling on all men capable of bearing arms to immediately leave the city and head toward Warsaw. Hundreds of people, not only men, were leaving town. Uncle David was leaving as well, since he was subject to mobilization at any moment.
Everyone was surprised at the speed with which German troops were advancing toward our city. The common wisdom, derived from experience in World War I, held that it would take the Germans two to three months to reach Lodz, more than 190 miles from the Polish-German border. Instead, they were approaching the city at a rate that would bring them there in five days.
Late that Wednesday night, I left Uncle David's home and hurried to my parents on 8 Wesola Street, a distance of about three miles. In the wee hours of the morning, I arrived home to discover that our room was locked. The landlord gave me the news that everybody had already left. I felt abandoned and couldn't understand why my parents had made such a decision. Father was not at the age likely to be mobilized. My mother and sisters and my baby brother were not ordered to leave the city. What were my parents thinking? Where were they going? And did they believe that they could move faster than the advancing German army? There was no logic in their decision! They must have been caught up in the panic spread not only by the government's call, but also by the neighbors who were fleeing. "Everybody is leaving, we must go," must have been their panicked thought.
I asked the landlord to let me use a ladder to enter our second-floor room through a window to pick up some clothes, which I thought I might need during the coming autumn chill. I stood alone on Wesola Street, seeing no familiar faces, wondering what I should do next, full of fear that something terrible could happen to my family. After all, it was much safer in the city, where one could hide, than to wander under open skies without any protection.
I decided to see whether my oldest sister, Chana, who lived at 15 Stary Rynek, was still at home. When I arrived, her husband had already left, but she was home with her two babies. During the next few dramatic days, I stayed with them.
Thursday, the sixth day of the war, started with intense artillery shelling. It was the first time I experienced a full night of bombardment. We were in the shelter in the basement of the building, and the sound of the shelling was magnified within its walls. Most of the buildings on Stary Rynek had basements that served as warehouses for stores on the first floor. The buildings were old and rather shaky. Children were crying, and the grownups reacted with fear at the building's trembling.
I had seen many retreating Polish soldiers on Thursday but only a few on Friday. They were tired, dirty, and dispirited, many of them wounded though capable of walking. The air was filled with the smell of exploding artillery shells. The city government was not functioning; its staff probably left on Wednesday, along with many others. We learned that an interim committee had formed to replace the city government. It was hastily decided to remove all the patriotic posters, to avoid offending the Germans. People were scrubbing the walls clean.
Friday, at twilight, the first Germans entered the city. I expected that this would be the most dreadful moment of my life. I could not imagine how I would be able to face such an event. Somehow I overcame my fear, eager to witness everything that was happening. I went out in front of the building. The first German soldiers arrived after a couple of hours of ominous silence. They came on motorcycles, a driver and a man in the sidecar, driving fast down Nowomiejska-Zgierska Street, then turning around and coming back. They may have been a forward unit, sent to report whether there was opposition, or, perhaps, I thought, they had missed the city government buildings on Plac Wolnosci about half a mile south of us. So began the German occupation and the frightful life to come.
On Saturday morning large units of the German army entered the city. Soldiers from a cavalry unit came into the yard of 15 Stary Rynek, which had a well, to get water for their horses. This was the time when I could look them right in the eyes and gauge the measure of their hostility. To my surprise, they were rather polite, joking, happy victors. Many of them were blond, and a surprisingly large percentage wore glasses. There was no killing of anybody, yet!
Over the next several days, I could witness the whole might of the German army passing through. Mechanized troops in trucks and artillery pieces with long barrels, which I had never seen before, began a relentless drive forward, day and night, at full speed, rushing to conquer the entire country. I did not see any tank units. Maybe they were roaming through the outskirts of Lodz, avoiding the city streets.
After occupying Lodz the Germans continued their offensive toward Warsaw, the capital. The Polish Army fought gallantly. We heard about the heroic defense of Westerplatte, the fortress protecting Gdansk's harbor. Also mentioned in military bulletins was the fierce battle near Kutno, a town between the western city of Poznan and Warsaw. The ultimate prize for the Germans, of course, was Warsaw, which held out until September 27, under severe daily bombardment by the Luftwaffe.
The final nail in Poland's coffin was the occupation of the eastern part of the country by the Red Army. The partition of Poland was agreed upon in a secret protocol attached to the Molotov-Ribentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, signed one week before the war started. For Poland it was a treacherous act, rightly called a stab in the back. The Red Army moved into those territories on September 17, after most of the Polish Army was defeated or on the run to the eastern and southern regions of the country.
The German blitzkrieg in Poland succeeded beyond imagination. Poland's air force was largely destroyed on the ground in the first days of the war. Inadequately equipped infantry divisions and cavalry units armed with lances were no match for the German panzer divisions and mobile motorized infantry. Polish bravery alone could not stop the avalanche.
At the end of the first week of occupation, I went back home to find that my parents and siblings, except for my brother Sam, had returned, all unharmed. They were the lucky ones. The Luftwaffe attacked thousands of people heading toward Warsaw. Unarmed civilians vainly tried to find cover from the bombers flying low over the potato fields, and were systematically shot. It was a massacre. Did I say that they hadn't killed anybody yet? Clearly, I was wrong!
My older brother Samuel, who walked faster than anyone else in our family, managed to reach Warsaw to find out that there was no mobilization. There he endured the cruel bombardment of the city over the next three weeks, running from one burning building to another. After several more weeks, he too returned home, but in very bad shape, limping from injuries and exhausted. He remained in bed for several weeks to regain his health and strength. But he was young, and he made it. His safe return was to play a critical role in my life.
The terror against the civilian population started almost immediately. Germans ordered all Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing, allowing them to distinguish between Jews and others. At the same time, Jews were forbidden to use the city streetcar that went to the downtown area (beyond Plac Wolnosci to Piotrkowska, the main street). Whenever the Germans needed people for work, to unload coal, to repair something, to move their people into abandoned or emptied houses, they rounded up Jews off the street. Several military trucks would suddenly stop; soldiers would hurry out, calling, "Kome, kome," and would chase people trying to run away. As a rule, the Germans did not feed the detained, prodding them to work harder, constantly yelling, "Schnell, schnell," and frequently beating them. Most of the time, they let the exhausted people go when the work was done. My brother Samuel and I were caught several times for such work. Simultaneously German soldiers started the public humiliation of shaving the beards of Orthodox Jews in front of smiling onlookers. Many times they shaved not only the beard but also the skin, causing the victims to bleed profusely. I saw such pictures printed in Polish newspapers, which by then had come under German management, of soldiers enjoying tormenting the Verfluchte Juden-damned Jews.
For a while, though, life returned to some semblance of normality. My uncle's grocery store reopened and, from time to time, German officers visited it. They were surprised to see that soap had not disappeared from the shelves. Apparently, there was a shortage of soap in Germany. In our area, around Wesola Street, it was very difficult to get bread and other food items. We had to be on the street long before curfew ended at 6 a.m. to be in the queue before the bakery opened. We managed to avoid German patrols by hiding behind the gates of houses surrounding the bakery.
Sometime in late September or early October 1939, rumors spread that, according to the agreement between the Soviets and Germans, Lodz would be turned over to the Soviets. The rationale was that the old border between the Germans and the Russians that existed before World War I would be restored, and at that time the Russians had occupied Lodz. The rumors were reinforced by the sight of a Soviet flag on the Województwo (provincial administrative office) on Zachodnia Street. This building had been the beautiful mansion owned by the Jewish textile magnate Israel Poznanski. Many people, including myself, walked to the place to verify that alongside the German flag a red Soviet flag was now displayed on the balcony. It was believed to demonstrate that a Soviet delegation was visiting the city and negotiating the transfer of Lodz. In light of the terror applied by the Nazis, it was hoped that the Soviets would introduce a much more lenient occupation regime.
Unfortunately, the Soviet flag was only an illusion created by the wind. What had actually happened was that a red Nazi flag had been twisted by the wind so that the swastika was hidden from view.
Among the first prominent subjects of German terror were synagogues. Fire and dynamite destroyed them. I was deeply attached to the large and beautiful Wolborska Street synagogue. That's where I attended services and listened to the wonderful choir, led by Professor Yitzhak Zaks. Many of my classmates from the Jakuba 10 Talmud Torah School sang in that choir, to which I also aspired to be admitted. Other synagogues, on Zachodnia 56 and on Aleje Kosciuszko 2, were also destroyed by the German occupiers.
Terror in the city intensified. There were shootings for any minor insubordination or for no reason. An ominous sign of what we could expect in the future was the Germans' attempt to destroy the tall monument of Tadeusz Kosciuszko on Plac Wolnosci. Kosciuszko was our most revered national hero, the symbol of Poland's struggle for independence. A group of Jews was compelled to destroy the granite monument; whether the Jews didn't try hard enough or their tools were inadequate, not much damage was done to the monument after several days' work. However, it did much damage to the Jews. This arrangement by the Nazis, in which Jews were set to bring down the symbol of Polish national heroism and freedom, was a clear subterfuge to provoke anti-Jewish sentiment among Poles. As November 11 approached, the anniversary of the 1918 armistice and German defeat and also Poland's Independence Day, the occupiers desired to commemorate it with the fall of Kosciuszko's monument.
On the night of November 11, a loud explosion was heard. The next morning, when I went to Plac Wolnosci, the Kosciuszko monument was lying in ruin. I wasn't aware then of the attempt to blame the Jews for the destruction of the monument, thereby inciting the Polish population and creating an excuse for punishing the Jews by destroying their shrines. Nevertheless, the Nazis destroyed all the synagogues in Lodz.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from My War against the Nazis by ADAM BRONER Copyright © 2007 by The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission.
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