Read Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw Online
Authors: Norman Davies
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #War, #History
The group that wound up in Ravensbrück seem to have been the victims of a particularly cynical trick. They formed part of the female civilians from Warsaw who had volunteered for labour in the Reich. They had entered the cattle wagons expecting to be set to work on German farms or German factories. But when the doors were thrown open at the end of their journey, they were already inside the one part of the Reich that they had hoped to avoid.
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Meanwhile, back in the ruins of Warsaw in late 1944, the Germans were finding that they were not entirely alone. From time to time, especially at night, their patrols would hear voices, or catch sight of a furtive figure scurrying among the rubble. They lobbed speculative grenades into cellars, and dropped poison into wells; and on several occasions, after setting an ambush, they shot one or two of the ‘vermin’ dead. But the phenomenon was on a much larger scale than they could have imagined. For a group of men and women had decided not to trust German promises but instead to dig in and to hold out until the Germans departed. Numbering 2,000 to 3,000 and later known as ‘Robinson Crusoes’, they were predominantly Jewish, and in large part had belonged to the Home Army’s medical services. Helped by their departing comrades, they stockpiled canned food, bottled water, candles, and medicines; they fitted air tubes and peep-holes to their well-concealed bunkers; and in some instances they were physically bricked in from the outside before the rest of their units marched off to surrender. They had expected to lie low for a few weeks. But the weeks passed. The
Brandkommandos
toiled above and around them. Explosions and shuddering falls of masonry marked the progress of demolition. Searing heat alternated with acrid smoke, then the ever colder nights were followed by ever colder and ever darker days. Notches scratched on the walls recorded the movement of the calendar. As the year drew to a close, entrances were eased open, and night-time forage parties ventured forth looking for water and for information. If they returned, they reported little of interest: Germans bivouacking round a camp-fire: non-German footprints in the snow: the grandeur of a star-lit winter sky: an eerie silence: and no signs of Soviet soldiers anywhere.
Ladislas S. (1911–1999) was especially deserving of the label of ‘Robinson Crusoe’, for he had chosen to be marooned in isolation. He was a Pole of Jewish descent who had worked before the war for Radio Warsaw as a well-known songwriter, pianist, and bandleader. He had lived through both Risings in Warsaw, and had seen enough not to trust the Nazis. So he lived on his own like a sparrow in ruined attics, learning to crawl along roofs and gutters and above all to stay out of sight and earshot. His great find on an upper floor was a shell-shattered bathroom in which the bath was still filled with uncontaminated water. Yet, as the frosts set in, traversing the rooftops became ever more perilous. And the day arrived when he was sighted. Having accidentally driven a long wooden splinter into his finger, through carelessly climbing through a burnt-out doorway, he was busy contemplating the wounded hand, when he heard steps on the stairs:
I rushed towards the entry to the attic, but this time I was too slow. I was standing face to face with a German soldier, whose none too intelligent face was framed by his helmet and his gun. He was no less shaken by our unexpected encounter than I was. He asked me in broken Polish what I was doing . . . then, pointing the barrel of his gun straight at me, he ordered me to accompany him. I made as if to comply, then told him that he would have my death on his conscience and that, if he left me alone, I would give him half a litre of pure alcohol. He accepted the deal quite eagerly, saying only that he would be back and that I would have to give him more. As soon as it was done, I climbed into the attic and pulled up the ladder behind me, and closed the trapdoor. Within quarter of an hour, [the soldier] came back in the company of a sergeant and several others.
Hearing their steps, I crawled out of the attic onto a strip of the steep but undamaged roof. I lay there spread-eagled, holding myself in place by standing on the overhanging gutter. If the gutter had buckled or given way, I would have slipped . . . and fallen five floors to the street below. But the gutter held . . . and my life was saved once again. The Germans searched the whole building, piling up tables and chairs, and finally came up to my attic. But it did not occur to them to look on the roof . . . They left empty-handed, cursing and calling me names . . .
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By December, ice and driving snow rendered Warsaw’s ruins ever more inhospitable, and the fugitive had to scavenge for food even further from his base. One day, he had just found some food cans in an abandoned larder, and again was totally absorbed:
I never heard anything until a voice right behind me said, ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
A tall, elegant German officer was leaning against the kitchen dresser, his arms crossed over his chest.
‘What are you doing here?’ he repeated. ‘Don’t you know the staff of the Warsaw fortress commando unit is moving into this building any time now?’
I slumped on the chair by the larder door. With the certainty of a sleepwalker, I suddenly felt that my strength would fail me if I tried to escape this new trap. I sat there groaning and gazing dully at the officer. It was some time before I stammered, with difficulty, ‘Do what you like to me. I’m not moving from here.’
‘I’ve no intention of doing anything to you!’ The officer shrugged his shoulders. ‘What do you do for a living?’
‘I’m a pianist.’
He looked at me more closely, and with obvious suspicion . . .
‘Come with me, will you?’
We went into the next room, which had obviously been the dining room, and then into the room beyond it, where a piano stood by the wall. The officer pointed to the instrument.
‘Play something!’
Hadn’t it occurred to him that the sound of a piano would instantly attract all the SS men in the vicinity?
When I placed my fingers on the keyboard they shook. So this time, for a change, I had to buy my life by playing the piano! I hadn’t practised for two and a half years, my fingers were stiff and covered with a thick layer of dirt, and I had not cut my nails since the fire in the building where I was hiding. Moreover, the piano was in a room without any window panes, so its action was swollen by the damp and resisted the pressure of the keys.
I played Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor. The glassy, tinkling sound of the untuned strings rang through the empty flat and the stairway, floated through the ruins of the villa on the other side of the street and returned as a muted, melancholy echo. When I had finished, the silence seemed even gloomier and more eerie than
before. A cat mewed in a street somewhere. I heard a shot down below outside the building – a harsh, loud German noise.
POW
A POW, who was to become a priest and a headmaster, tastes the good life of ‘English’ prisoners
We marched from Ozharov to the ‘Cable Factory’. From there we travelled in sealed goods wagons. We cut a large hole in the floor of the wagon with my bayonet for our hygienic needs. We ripped up the trapdoor boards at the end of the wagon. Escape looked possible . . . The train moved off, but in the cab of the next wagon was a guard with a Schmeisser. Game over.
For two days we got nothing to eat or drink. We were thrown off at Lamsdorf, near Opole, in German Silesia. The Germans threw themselves at us in fours, yelling, like vultures and, attacking us.
Starving and exhausted, we marched sloppily for around ten kilometres . . . We could already see the gates and the barbed-wire of the camp when suddenly two German fighter planes collided overhead and struck the earth.
‘A good omen,’ someone said.
The Germans wanted to shove us immediately into the barracks, from which they had just driven the Bolshevik POWs . . . But our commander declared that a Polish officer would not enter such filthiness; they were to clean the barracks and generally treat us well. They were surprised at these pretensions of Poland being a great state. They rang General von dem Bach in Warsaw, who replied, ‘Yes, treat them as if they were English’. . . .
Our POW group was looked after by a sergeant, who we named ‘Dud Daddy’. ‘If we hadn’t been ordered to treat you like the English,’ he declared honestly, ‘I would have given you a hiding . . . You killed my son in the Rising, and when I was in Warsaw you twice took my weapons . . .’
We had no idea of how POW life looked in a ‘normal’ officers’ camp. It turned out that it was a rich life. In our honour, the local orchestra gave an excellent classical music concert. In the camp theatre,
The Marriage of Figaro
was performed. There were many university professors, engineers, teachers, and academics in detention. Throughout the last five years, they had passed their knowledge on. Some people even obtained academic degrees. We also acquainted ourselves with the full repertoire of Underground songs, that were sung during the Rising and by the Partisans: ‘Hey, we met in the last battle . . .’
‘Hey, lads, with fixed bayonets!’ . . .
And on a lighter note:
‘Every lad wants to be wounded, for nurses are fine ladies,
When a bullet gives you a scratch, will the lady give you a kiss . . .’
The chaplain, Father Ki., immediately bowled me over with his direct approach and sense of humour. We Home Army types did not meet with the approval of all the officers of 1939, [who had been in the camp for five years]. Father Ki. defended us, saying ‘Considering all that they suffered during five years of occupation, they are fantastic.’ . . . Unfortunately, Father Ki. was shortly discovered to have been part of a conspiracy, and was sent to Dachau. . . .
At last the day of freedom arrives: 29 April 1945. We know that liberation will come soon, because the sounds of battle are extremely close. German soldiers were already hanging up white flags on the gates, the guards came down from their watchtowers. Expectation, tension. . . .
A unit of the SS had stopped outside the town of Murnau. Officers were arriving at our gates in two cars. They did not see in time that tanks were approaching from the other side. Suddenly the tanks appeared. Instead of surrendering the Germans began to shoot. The tanks replied with cannon fire. The SS officers were killed.
Unfortunately, at the same moment, Lt. M. died from a ricochet. Five years of detention, and now that . . . One of the tanks ripped straight through the barbed wire. A hatch in the turret opened and an American soldier appeared. He waved and said quaintly in old-fashioned Polish, ‘How fare ye, yeomen?’ He was greeted with a shout of joy. They had sent us American Poles! . . .
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A. Janicki
Lamsdorf: a Jewish insurgent has other worries
Another ritual we were subjected to on our arrival [at the camp] was the so-called delousing in the common shower room. It was a waste of time, as the straw in our mattresses provided an excellent breeding ground for lice and we soon became adept at the technique of catching and squashing them between two thumbnails.
Once again, the mark of my Jewishness gave me some anxious moments. In the first few days I still worried that somebody might notice it in the shower room and give me away. But nobody bothered. Our guards did not care whether anyone was a Jew, nor did my companions. In captivity, for the first time in five years, I felt safe under the protection of the Geneva Convention..
2
J. Lando
The officer looked at me in silence. After a while he sighed, and muttered, ‘All the same, you shouldn’t stay here. I’ll take you out of the city, to a village. You’ll be safer there.’
I shook my head. ‘I can’t leave this place,’ I said firmly.
Only now did he seem to understand my real reason for hiding among the ruins. He started nervously.
‘You’re Jewish?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He had been standing with his arms crossed over his chest; he now unfolded them and sat down in the armchair by the piano, as if this discovery called for lengthy reflection.
‘Yes, well,’ he murmured, ‘in that case I see you really can’t leave.’ . . .
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The ‘Pianist’ had met one of the few human beings who were both willing and able to help him. Three days later, the officer returned with loaves of bread and jam. Before he left for good, he brought more food, an eiderdown, and an overcoat, and the invaluable news that the Soviet Army would be advancing at any time. The officer was destined to die in Siberian captivity. The fugitive was destined to live, and to play Chopin once again on Polish radio.
To the east of Warsaw, the NKVD continued to trawl for insurgents and for other ‘illegals’. (‘Illegal’ referred to anyone not specifically licensed by them.) Early in October 1944, they received strong reinforcements. But the reinforcements arrived at the time immediately after the Capitulation, when the pool of fugitive insurgents was drying up. So they concentrated on other things – on tracking down Home Army ‘safe-houses’, on eliminating radio stations that were still communicating with London, and on keeping an eye on the Catholic clergy, whom they regarded as uniformly subversive. In this latter regard, Serov wired Beria on 13 November seeking approval for a general roundup of the clergy. It wasn’t approved.
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Faced by the mass of statistics regarding the arrest of Home Army soldiers, ‘bandits’, ‘illegals’, ‘fascists’, and ‘bandit-insurrectionaries’, historians cannot always distinguish Varsovian insurgents from the rest. But time and time again, when named insurgents, especially officers, are known to
have been in the Soviet zone after the Rising, it turns out that one way or another they found their way into the care of the NKVD. Such was the fate of Capt. ‘Nora’, Boor’s radio operator, of Maj. André, the AK Commander of Praga, and no doubt of many others. Maj. André was among the luckier ones. Arrested by Lt. Light at his mother’s house on 27 November, he was given a death sentence, subsequently commuted to ten years, but was successfully sprung from jail in June 1945. A hundred or so of his comrades in Praga were less fortunate. Arrested in December 1944 for circulating an illegal news-sheet called
Alarm
, they were packed off to a camp at Stalinogorsk in the Urals.
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