(11) On the run

I thought about what had happened, but not for long. I was going to die in this place unless I made a move. At the first opportunity I sneaked out, cut the wires, went through the water, and ran like hell for the railway line, followed it to the station and jumped on the first train I saw.

I sat in the carriage trying not to look too scared. I don’t scare easily so I soon relaxed and waited for the ticket collector. It was a girl and I thought , “Great, I can turn on the charm here, I’ve got a chance."

The girl came up to me, looked me in the eye and said straight out, "You are an escaper"

I was stunned, but stayed calm and said, “In a way, I suppose I am”.

"What do you mean?" she said

“Well there are so many lives in that factory over there, so I could be.”

“What, you mean Rieche? I'll have to report you to the SA you know. In half an hour the train will stop near headquarters, and I'll turn you in.”

Well the charm was not working and I was shaking in my trousers by now. I'd got this far to be stopped by a ticket collector. I began to wish my father had stuck it in a wall and left it for people to hang their hats on instead of producing me.

The ticket collector continued punching tickets, then came back to me and and asked

"What nationality are you?”

“Polish, born and bred, my father and my grandfathers before me!”

“You speak good German, what other languages do you speak”

“Russian, French, Czech,” I was swinging from panic to arrogance now.

“I still have to hand you in to the authorities”, but she then told me that in a few minutes, the train would slow down as it went up hill.

She seemed interested in me and came back again , so I decided to have one last go at the charm.

"What are you running away from? Tell me about yourself.” she said.

“All I can I say is, I'm a POW, I've worked in factories and on farms.”

“Well once Germany win the war you'll have to stay here for good.”

“I've heard that all us foreign men will be castrated!”

“Yes, that's what I've heard, she said, We don't want people breeding with foreign blood, as Hitler says we all become pure Aryan, pure blonde.”

She returned again later and said, soon the train will go very slowly up hill.”

I said, “look Frauline, when the war finishes, we might meet again, and we can celebrate the fact that you helped me, and saved my life.”

"What do you mean?" she said.

“Well you're helping me by telling me that the train will go slowly, that there's a forest, and so forth.”

“Oh well I suppose so, she said.

“I said that I'd like to meet her after the war, so that we can celebrate.

“Oh, yes? Well are you single or married?”

“Well I'm single at the moment, I'm a POW.”

The charm was working as she said, “now look, when the train goes slowly, I can look the other way while you jump off, otherwise I'll have to report you to the SA. The next town has an SA headquarters”


I now realised that there was only one thing for it, I would have to put my trust in God and jump off the train. So I waited my chance, sure enough, the train slowed down and I opened the door and leapt from the train.

Now, unbeknownst to me, running along side the track was a signal cable, and as I leaped, I landed astride the cable and with such a force, I nearly did Hitler's job of castrating me for him!

To this day, I still get pain from that fall, even at 90.

I lay, dazed, in the ditch between the track and the road, I don't know for how long, as I just could not move as the pain was so excruciating. Some hours passed, but in the end, I stood up, half-conscious with the pain, and decided I had to get away and get some cover. So, I crept over the road and headed in to the forest. I walked for hours, passing close to villages, I believe I was somewhere in the region of Aachen. I was hungry, thirsty and half-dead with the pain in my bollocks from where I hit the signal cable. Again, I found myself wishing that my dear old dad had stuck it in a wall for people to hang their coats on, instead of producing me! I wondered what I'd done for God to punish me so!

I continued to walk through the forest, until I came across what I assumed to be a deserted German bunker. Inside it was dark, and infested with rats and mice. Just inside, I saw the half-eaten remains of a sandwich that the rats were eating. I was so hungry that I chased the rats away and eat that sandwich! The rats looked at me and I stared straight back they were not going to get my gourmet meal!

My meal gave me some more encouragement, so I kept walking, walking, walking.


Early in the morning, before dawn I heard voices in the distance and the persistent yapping of a dog, so I found a large tree, climbed up in to its branches and fell asleep. When I woke again, it was daylight, so I shook myself fully awake, climbed down from the tree and started walking again. I vaguely knew that the forest led me towards the area of Aachen where I might be able to find somewhere to stay and work. I walked for maybe three days. I eventually reached what I assumed to be the Maginot line, the old French defences against Germany.

(10) The Reiche factory and my "helpers"

I could tell that the war was getting closer to us, it was 1943/4 and the bombing in the vicinity was increasing in frequency and level.

One morning the postman brought a letter to Herr Rottlander. This contained rail tickets and a letter saying I had to report to Overath Rail station, as I was to leave and go to the Reiche factory.

Next day, I packed up my few belongings, said goodbye to the Rottlanders and reported to the station as ordered. The journey took a few hours, and I arrived at Reiche in the mid morning.

We were pointed to our huts. They stank and were cold. I looked at my bed. I'd never seen a mattress that moved on its own. I looked at the old guy in the next bed and he said

"Don't you know what that is? It's lice doing that"

A German came in, looked me up and down and took me to the office to register. You had to register, there were over a thousand people working there.

At registration they asked me where I learned to speak German.

"Well I learned it at High School"

"Why did you learn German?"

I just told him the truth, it was our second language where I came from. We didn't learn English, because we knew very little about England in those days, we learned German. There were a couple of Frenchmen there as well, one said "Bonjour." I said "Bonjour, comment allez vous?" and continued to introduce myself in French. The German said "Oh you speak French as well?" "Well yes", I said, "and a bit of Russian and Czec as well".

After registration, a second German took me and started to show me round the factory, showing me what I was expected to do. I was told that I would be working on a furnace melting metal. There were three furnaces, It was so hot the sweat ran from you all the time. You took the molten metal on a crane, and cast in to ingots. I looked round at the men working there, they were only skin and bones. I longed to be back with Rottlander on the farm.

After a few days there, another German, sidled up to me he looked me up and down. He said to me,

"What about your tongue? Is it a rubber one?"

I said "I don't think so, what I hear and what I see, I keep to myself"

"Oh that's good!" he said. "That's good, come with me."

He then started to show me round the camp. Rows and rows of barracks, double wire netting fences topped with barbed wire, and a ditch filled with water outside that. Around the perimeter were lookout towers with machine gun emplacements. This was a real high-security unit, unlike anything I'd been to before.

He said "Why did you learn so many foreign languages?"

I said that in School in Poland before the war, we just learned languages, and I liked languages.

"What did you learn Russian for?" he asked.

I explained that my father was a Major in the Tsar's Russian army.

"Oh, so you were in the Russian area of Poland then?"

I told him that where I lived was now the Russian/German frontier.

"Come with me" he said.

"Look, there are four guard posts on each corner of the camp. The SA man these. If you try and escape, they'll shoot you.

Every hour, the guard changes, OK?

Look, there are 30 or more barrack huts here."

"Come with me," he said

"See this one here, look at the barbed wire fence, about one metre from here, there is a shadow where the guards can't see you. It's the only place on the fence where the view is obstructed.

He said "what're you thinking about?"

Well I couldn't really say what I was thinking as I'd no idea who this fucker was! They might have been trying to find out if I was reliable and could keep my mouth shut.

He said, "You got it?"

I said,,"Yes, so far, it's a blind spot for the guards".

He went on, "And you see that wire netting and barbed wire? And you see the ditch? The other side of that is a forest, there's a road, a railway line, and a big forest. He said it again "You got it?"

"I'll leave you now, another bloke'll come along, you have a chat with him, eh?"

Sure enough another bloke came up to me.

"So you're the one who speaks so many languages are you?"

I said "well, yes, I've been around a bit (actually I said "on the Windmill and the electric mill" which probably translated badly from Polish...)

"What're you talking about, grinding corn or something!" he replied

"No, I mean I've been through the Education mill"

He looked pointedly at me and said "What did you learn all those foreign languages for?"

I said that I just did them at school, I learn languages quickly.

"Oh come now," he grinned, "there must be some other reason! You're not just an ordinary person! You are a Somebody.
I just smiled, I thought I'd better play along with these people. I was intrigued.

So he said, "is your tongue rubber, or do you keep it inside your mouth?"

I told him that I kept it inside my mouth

"What do you think about the war and the Germans?" He asked, "We'll win the war you know".

I said "Well good luck, I'll stay here for good in that case."

"Oh that's good" he said. "Did you come here by train?"

"No" I said, "I don't really want to travel, I'll work on a farm or in a factory, I don't mind."

"Did that man show you the the fence?"

"Yes."

"What do you think about that?"

I said, "well I don't think much really…"

"Did he show you the one blind spot in the fence by the barracks?"

"Yes."

So he looked at me and said nothing, just looking me up and down, up and down, remarking that I was not very skinny. Working on the farm meant I eat quite well.

I think they must have thought I was some sort of spy.

He said "look, give me your hand," and he gave me a pair of wire cutters and said "I don't know you and you don't know me do you? Right? There will be another man coming to see you.

By now I wasn't sure what the hell was going on, here I was, expecting them to make soap from me, and they were encouraging me to escape!

Then another German came up and told me that there was a train past every day at a quarter past midnight. "Here are some tickets".

I now had the information, the tickets and the means of escape. but I was unsure whether they were trying to help me or kill me.

(9) Abel

Life was hard on that farm, the whole family worked from dawn to dusk, as well as us foreigners. At first I was the only foreigner, but later they sent two more French prisoners, another Pole, Stephan, and a Ukrainian man, who later poisoned himself as he just couldn't cope with life.

One of the Frenchmen, his name was Abel, really did not like to work too hard. He would regularly go for breaks, and spend ages sitting on the toilet.

There were three toilets, one for the Boss, one for the German workers, and one for us Foreigners. Despite this segregation, they all drained in to a single huge concrete tank, along with the cow and horse manure. Every spring, we used to pump it out and spread it on the meadow. At least we had equality when it came to excrement! They really were just a seat with a hole that led via a pipe in to the cesspit. If there was "a blockage", my job was to fetch a long stick ram it up from the pit side and undo the blockage.

Stephan and I were working in the yard when Rottlander came up to us and said

"Where's Abel?"

"He's on the bog again sir" I replied with a smile.

Well Rottlander went purple and stormed off towards the toilet block closely followed by Stephan and me. We just saw Abel's feet below the stall door. Rottlander gave us a conspiratorial wink, and tiptoed round the back. He picked up my unblocking stick, chose his pipe carefully and rammed it hard up in to the unsuspecting Frenchman's backside. Abel let out an almighty scream, and shot forward, through the stall door and landed outside with his trousers round his ankles!

"Get back to work you lazy bastard" thundered Rottlander.

Stephan and I were just doubled up with mirth, as Rottlander chased the unfortunate, Abel who was trying to pull up his trousers and run at the same time muttering something about the Boche.

(8) Saved by the skin

In the beginning, the whole family was really nasty to me, I was just a slave. There were about 16 or so dairy cows on the farm, so one of my jobs was to work the little cutting machine that was used to cut up Turnips, and similar to make cattle feed. I had a pitchfork, and just pitched the turnips up and put them in the grinder.

Well, old Rottlander didn't think I was doing this fast enough, and he regularly beat me with the yard broom, shouting "Faster, Faster!" Well after four or five days of this I was hating the man and looking for an opportunity to get him back, but I knew if I retaliated they would hand me over to the SS. I was given the job of looking after the cows as his two cattlemen had been called up for the forces. I had to feed the calves, fattening them up so that they could be taken to the market.

One day, Rottlander came to me and told me that I should not feed one particularly fat calf that day, as someone was coming to collect it for market. In those days, all the cattle from the farm were sent to market, to "feed the Reich," and the farmers were paid. No farmers were allowed to sell or trade any of their own.

Later that evening I watched him heading out to the forest with a spade in his hand, and as I watched, he began to dig a hole. I though to myself,

"what's he up to?"

I started making connections. "Don't feed that calf today" Well after midnight, I heard a noise again, and I saw old Rottlander heading out towards his hole with a bundle under his arms. Suspicion got the better of me, I just had to know what he was carrying. I crept downstairs to the outside toilet.

I walked over the cowshed, and saw as I suspected the fat calf had gone. I realised that Rottlander must have killed and skinned the calf to sell on the Black Market. In Germany at that time things were very strict, and you had to have permission from the government to kill animals. If you did it without permission, they'd most likely hang you or put you in prison.

He was burying the skin! Now I had something on the nasty little man!

I carried on with my work with the cows, milking morning and evening, getting up at 6am to milk the cows, taking the big milk churns out to the main road for the collection lorry, in the morning.

Rottlander was a slight man, I think if you kicked him he would blow away, but his temper tantrums continued, urging me to go "Faster, Faster". One particular day, I think someone had upset him down in Overath, and he was looking for someone to take his frustration out on. He came up to me shouting,

"Faster, faster"

and took his yard broom to me in a way he'd never done before.

"Swine Pole! When we've won this war, you're all finished!"

Well he was beating me so much, I think the survival instinct kicked in, and I lashed out at him with my pitchfork and knocked him to the ground. I hit him two or three time more, and stood over him.

"You Bastard"

he shouted, and got up and went back to the house where his telephone was.

Well I knew what was going to happen now, and sure enough, in 20 minutes the police van arrived, and three SS men got out. Black uniform, death's head on the lapels, the genuine article.

"Come with us!"

One grabbed me by the collar, kicked me in the small of the back and bundled me in to the van.

"You are under arrest for trying to kill a citizen of the Reich"

They took me down to the SS headquarters in Overath, and threw me in a filthy, tiny concrete cell with water dripping from the roof.

"In three or four days you'll be hanged. Not shot, because the rope is cheaper than bullets. We need bullets for the war, but a rope can hang many people, it's cheaper."

"Well at least it will be quick and finish my suffering", I thought

I was wet, cold and hungry and I was wondering where Jesus was now? I prayed; I've always prayed throughout my life.

After 3 days in the cell, The SS called Rottlander to come in and sign a statement saying what I'd done, so that I could be hanged. The Germans never did anything without the correct documentation. The Guard came up to me and joked with me

"Your boss is here to see you!

Rottlander and I stood in the cell while the two Gestapo men, were just outside the door. I realised that I'd nothing to lose now, so I leaned over to him and whispered in his ear.

"Hey, Mr Rottlander, what about that calf skin? We'll be all hanging together if I tell these men what I saw!"

Well, his face went white, and I'm sure I saw the sweat burst out on his brow, I thought he was going to collapse. He knew that he would be hanged or shot as well.

"That skin will be there, in that hole"

I went on,

"You might have put a few leaves over it, but I could take them to it and show them."

At this point one of the Gestapo men came in with the statement in his hand.

"Please sign here Herr Rottlander"

I looked at Rottlander, and he spluttered,

"I've changed my mind! I'll take him back on the farm, I need the workers"

The Gestapo man looked at him, then at me and said,

"What if he tries to kill you again, he's a Pole! These Poles are rough people!

"No, Sorry for wasting your time, I'll take him back."

We went back in the car to the farm without a word. He dropped me off, told me to get back to work and walked over to his wife, Maria, who had come out to meet us. He told her what had happened, and Maria came over to me looking angry. This big woman stood in front of me, hands on hips and said,

"Czeslaw, how could you tell those lies about my husband?"

"It's not a lie, it's the truth", I replied, "do you want me to go get a spade and dig it up to show you?

Maria told me to go in to the room where us foreigners eat our food, and she came back a few minutes later with a sandwich and sat down next to me. She could see that I'd not eaten properly for days. Rottlander came in and sat down and we talked small-talk for a while until Rottlander looked at me and said that we should agree to say nothing more about the incident, unless I wanted both of us to be hanging from ropes together.

Well from that day onwards, I was treated much better on the farm. I was a good man from then onwards, "Chassa" they called me.

No more "Faster, Faster" no more beatings, and I turned a blind eye to Herr Rottlander's black market activities.

(7) Farmer again

I was eventually evacuated from Krupp because of the intensifying allied bombing of the factory. They sent me to Overath, a nice little town surrounded by farms. About 1km away was an Aluminium mine where many prisoners of war and forced labourers were working. I decided that I should try and get a job on a farm, as I'd heard about the conditions in the mines, and you were usually guaranteed better food there.

At Overath I was chosen for work by a farmer, Herr Rotlander, a member of the SA, I remember him going off to the Camp at Overath every second day or so in his yellow uniform. He was going to select more prisoners to work on the farms, because of course, by this time, all the fit working men were in the army. The French prisoners there were regularly picked up in lorries and taken out to work on the surrounding farms.

Rottlander was married to a big woman, Maria who had three children, two girls and one son. She used to say "When we win the war, all you foreign men will be castrated, and we'll build a little hut on the farm for you to live in" She showed me the place, it was near the main road, in some bushes, and close to a well.

Chroniclers' Diversion - thoughts on a visit to Auschwitz, 1997

Words are really not enough to express the feel of this place, you have to experience the faces of the dead looking down on you from the photographs on the walls of the Auschwitz museum, carefully numbered and catalogued and see the piles of belongings; shoes, spectacles and human hair.

Our guide to the museum was a rather stern, sad-faced Pole of 66 years who explained that he was a retired chemical engineer whose mother-in-law had died in the camp. He began by telling us the grim statistics of this place. 1,500,000 people killed here, not in an orgy of emotion, like a battle, but by an efficient, planned, killing factory, designed with the sole purpose of disposing of unwanted people, and using the remains in an effective way. Being an Engineer, a designer of machines, and hearing it coming from an Engineer, I found this thought particularly chilling.

To visit Auschwitz 1, where so many came back from a day’s work and died, you must first walk through the gate with the cynical motto over it, “Arbeit mach Frie” (Work makes you free). The initial feeling is one of visiting a tourist attraction, the sight is so familiar. Then you remember the grim statistics, look down the double line barbed wire electrified fence and you begin to feel the horror creep under your skin.

The museum is housed in the original brick barrack buildings, the tour takes you in to a number of these, each one focusing on a different aspect of life and death in the camp. The tour is cleverly designed to give you an increasing level of horror as it progresses. Blocks 12 and 14, -Dr Josef Mengele’s former experimental medical hospitals are closed to the public.

The tour starts with maps of the places where people were taken from, and you see the convenient central location of Auschwitz. People from as far apart as Norway and the Greek Island of Rhodes were “resettled” in this place. It then moves on to show the living conditions in the camp, down corridors of numbered and named portraits of the camp inmates, each with their date of entry and date of death. Dates in most cases separated by 2-3 months.

The rest of the tour passed through pathetic piles of the day to day items of people’s lives. Suitcases, spectacles, shaving brushes, and shoe polish. Each reminds you that these people really did not know their fate. Would you bother to bring shoe polish unless you really believed that you were being re housed?

Nothing was wasted here; useful belongings were given to the good people of the Reich. The soldiers made sure that all belongings were taken and not misplaced on the trip. Everyone knows about the recycling of gold teeth and jewellery, it is almost a symbol of the Holocaust, but what about the recycling of hair to make cloth? The recycling of the ashes of the dead to make fertiliser, shoes to make artificial leather? This was a factory for recycling people.

The wall against which thousands were shot is now a shrine, as if scripted by some director the heavens opened and it snowed violently.

None of the visitors seemed to care.

We moved on to the very place where Father Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish Catholic Priest, now beatified, made the ultimate sacrifice by asking to replace a family man who was sentenced to die by starvation. We visited the cell where he finally starved to death.

The tour ended inside the gas chamber, a converted underground munitions store, our chemical engineer explaining the process in graphic detail.

We were left with the words of Pastor Niemoeller, a Holocaust Victim

“First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists and I did not speak out - because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics and I did not speak out - because I was not a Catholic

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me”

(6) Otto

Around this time, the Allies began to bomb the Maginot line, close to the Stassen farm, so eventually we all were evacuated East and I was sent to work at the Krupp factory in Essen.

I remember I cried when I said goodbye to the Stassens.

At Krupp, I was put in a drawing office. I remember that there were six work booths, all made of glass so that the draughtsmen could see each other, each with a drawing board.

Now I'm a pretty smart fellow, I usually get chosen as the leader, but this time I volunteered for the job just because it was inside, in the office.

"Can you draw?"

"Why of course can!"

My motto was becoming, "If they ask for a hairdresser, you're a hairdresser!" Anyway, I thought I'd done my stint outdoors on the farm, on the straw mattresses and the gritty soup.

One small problem, though.

I lied.

I just did not have a clue about technical drawing!

They sat me down at the drawing board, gave me a plan and told me to transfer the plan over on to sheets of tin-plate. You laid it out on the table, got a paper drawing and you had to take the paper and copy it on to the material, and afterwards, when you'd done it properly, that material had to go under a cutter.

Well, I just hadn't a clue! I was not sure how I'd be able to get out of this. If they found me out, I'd probably end up hanging, or at worst working myself to death in somewhere much worse.

I sat and stared at the drawings, the instruments, rules, dividers, compasses, and for the first time in my life, began to panic. But, like many times before and since, I prayed for guidance.

I'd noticed an old German next to me, watching me. He obviously could see that I was in trouble. He looked furtively around, then introduced himself as Otto. I think Otto was a Catholic, he could see that I had no clue and he knew what would happen to me if I was found out.

He looked round and out of the view of the manager, came into my booth and started showing me what to do; he helped me, and even did my work for me for a while. The foreman would come along measure up my work, and said what good work I was doing. Otto was taking a great risk himself because he was not doing his own work while he was helping me, but within a few days, under his careful guidance, I began to get the hang of the job. After a week or so I was a skilled draughtsman!

May God bless that man!

(5) Farmer

Later that day, farmers and factory owners came to the camp to choose their workers. We lined up in the yard, while the German camp staff allocated groups of men to each farmer and factory boss. A farmer called Gustav Stassen chose me. He must have thought I looked like a strong lad, and would work well for him. He seemed kind enough, and I remember he gave me a sandwich to eat. I was grateful for this after the long train journey and the "interview" with the SA man. I was later to learn that Gustav Stassen was a very important farmer and he was known for looking after his workers very well.

"Very well" turned out to be something of a relative term, because after a few days I began to wonder what was happening to the men who were not as lucky as me.

The work was hard, we worked long hours in the fields. We were fed on a really bad, thin, gritty soup. Our sleeping quarters were no better than a barn. I remember looking at my "mattress" and seeing it moving, it appeared to be alive. Alive with bugs. If they had been mice, and rats, at least you could eat them. In fact, if you happened to find a mouse or a frog in that soup, you couldn't eat it by yourself, you had to share it with the others!

Stassen had around 40 breeding sows, about 1000 chickens. The pigs, really weren't doing very well, they were not fattening up the way that he wanted. Close by was a factory that produced cheese and other dairy products. One of the by-products was whey from the milk. Well I knew a little about farming from my father; we had some pigs in Poland on our smallholding, so I went to Stassen and asked him if we could get hold of some of this whey. I explained to him that we could boil it up with wheat and feed it to the pigs. Well my father's old recipe really worked and the pigs fattened up nicely. He sold those piglets, and he even gave me 5 pfenigs in payment!

Stassen was very pleased and I think he had decided that I would make a good farmer, so he thought it would be a good idea to made me responsible for the chickens, as the previous man was stealing the eggs to eat himself.

On almost every farm I've worked at over the years, the farmers always seemed to have one boy that is a bit "simple". On Stassen's farm his name was Peter. Peter used to smoke a lot, not take any notice of women and was only interested in his work.

Before I got the job, Peter gave me an egg, and told me to eat it raw. Well I thought, if I show I like this, he probably won't give me the job. So I took the egg and put it in my mouth, only to spit it out dramatically, pretending I didn't like it.

Well it worked, I got the job, and Peter went to his father and said,

"Czes is the man for the job, he won't eat any eggs!"

Well those eggs kept me alive and healthy, I used to eat them whenever I could.

I was happy on the Stassen farm, he was a good man and looked after me as best he could. It was winter 1940, a cold hard one. Our poor living conditions and meagre food caused me to catch pneumonia. I was so ill, I could hardly move, but rather than just let me die, Stassen took me to hospital. One of my lungs was just completely gone, they cut me open and drained the other one.

Slowly I recovered. A Polish couple visited me regularly from a nearby farm. The Goralczics had been in this part of Germany since the First World War and had their own farm. They brought me food to help me builds up my strength. I got to know them so well, they even hoped that one day I would marry their daughter! She was not my type though, I had my own ideas, so it was not to be!

(4) Interview

After a long, long journey, we finally arrived at our destination station, somewhere.

By the length of the journey, I would think it was near the Belgian border. We were taken by German soldiers to a camp surrounded by high wire fences topped with razor wire and inside were long barrack huts. Not the sort of place I would choose to work.

No time to settle, we were herded in to a room, and made to queue outside two doors to offices, one marked "Germans" one marked "Poles" We were told to line up outside the door for our nationality and I couldn't help noticing a number of Poles I knew queueing outside the "Germans" door. Being of pure Polish blood I went to the "Poles" door. When my turn came, I sat down in front of a SA officer who asked me

"Do you speak German?"

"Yes", I replied, "just enough!"

"So why are you in the Polish room?"

"Because I am Polish, born and bred," "My Father and my Grandfather were Polish"

Yes, he said with a conspiratorial wink,

"but you come from Kalisz, in the West, are you you really sure you are not German?....."

"No" I said, "Polish from the top of my head to my feet!"

I think he thought I was a fool. By saying I was German I'm sure I could have got an easier time, and I now realised why some of my Polish compatriots were queuing by the "German" door.

Now the SA man changed from a smile to anger and drew his side-arm.

"So tell me why I shouldn't just shoot you like a dog, Polack?"

I just stared him out and said "Better to be a dead Polack than deny my birthright!

At this, he holstered his gun and shouted,

"Get out"

As I was bundled in to another room full of people, I smiled and thought

"I am and always will be, Polish and I am prepared to go to my grave Polish."

Chronicler's Diversion - Slovenia July 18th 2008

I just spent an hour walking amongst the alpine flowers and treading on the ashes of the 3000 souls who died building the Ljubelj tunnel between Slovenia and Austria. On the alpine border between these two countries, overlooking a steep ravine lies a little known outpost of the Mauthausen death camp. Here between 1943 and 1945, slave labourers, political prisoners from France, Yugoslavia, Poland and other places were worked until they were too ill or exhausted, building the road tunnel between the southern border of the Reich and the occupied territories. The ill and exausted either died here and went up in smoke at the little crematorium, or were sent back to Mauthausen to meet the same fate.
The hole in the ground that was the crematorium, lies in a now-beautiful ravine, shielding its work, from the camp barracks, the wash houses, and the football pitch. It's hard to imagine these tired and exhausted souls taking such recreation in such a place, but for them, the zwangsarbieters, the slaves of the one thousand year reich, this was their home, the place where they lived and more often than not, died.

Now marked only by ruins and few memorial wreathes, Ljubelj-Mauthausen reminds us of the depths and the heights of the human spirit. The guards and the guarded. Their long-dead voices whisper at you through the pines and the ruined buildings, and the memorial iron skeleton reaches up to heaven looking for a god that 60 years ago looked the other way.

(3) Invasion

Poland at that time was in a desperate position, sandwiched between Germany and Russia; both so powerful in their own right; modern industrial nations with mighty war machines.

The Russians came in from the east, and took many of the Polish soldiers away; the German Blitzkrieg came in from the west flattening everything in its wake, a fatal pincer that in the space of a month removed my country from the map of Europe.

The Germans sent three hundred bombers to Poland, dropped chain bombs on us and blasted our cities.

Over the borders they poured.

We Poles tried to resist for a short while, but what was the Polish cavalry against tanks and field guns?

What could they do on a horse? Go chase a fox or something?

Poland never prepared for war, despite being surrounded by enemies. To the west the Germans, to the east the Russians. To the south the Czechs. To the north the sea!

Only God was with us, but at the time we wondered whether even He wanted us. Many people said,

"Oh Poland should fight!"

But with whom, with what? What do you with cavalry against one hundred tanks? We were soon overwhelmed.

When the Germans reached the banks of the river Prozna, my bridge, the first thing we knew was when placards were put up in the streets saying,

“All soldiers are to lay down their arms and report to the railway station at Kalisz.”

We had no real option; Poland had surrendered to the overwhelming force of the Wermacht.

In Kalisz over a thousand of us were loaded on to trains and taken west. The remaining able bodied men, rounded up and taken prisoners of war, to make space for the German expansion east.

We were told very little other than we were now part of the Reich, of Greater Germany and that we were being “resettled”; sent to work.

My train rattled westwards.

(2) The War Begins

It was early 1939 and I was 21 years old. In Poland we couldn't really do much about the coming war, except to wait. In the East we had the Russians and in the West we had the Germans. Flanked by the two largest powers in the world, we Poles felt we could do nothing but wait.

I was called up to the 29th Regiment near my home town of Kalisz, in an area where Poland was given German land after WW1.

In preparation for the invasion we all knew was coming from one side or the other, the Polish Army had destroyed two of the bridges over the river Prozna; one on the road going East to Lodz and on to Warsaw, and the other going North to Konin. My friend from the village of Żydów and I were tasked to guard the one remaining bridge. We were more or less like the English Home Guard, “Dad’s Army” with very little equipment or even proper uniforms. Despite this, we still came under military command. Our Headquarters were at a little station in Piwonicka, and if anything happened, or we arrested anyone, we had to take them there.

One night, around midnight, we were on guard; me with my stick, my military jacket and hat. My friend with a rifle, our one bullet and his military trousers and hat! The real soldiers got all the good equipment, so with these weapons we were expected to defend the bridge, and ourselves, against the mighty Wermacht!

A man walked up to us, looking furtive and carrying an attaché case. At that time there were many German spies in the area. This was, at last, our chance for some action, so I stopped him and asked,

"Where are you going?"

As soon as he opened his mouth, I knew that he was a foreigner." On the other side of the bridge was a lovely village called Lisov. Instead of saying "do Lisov" in Polish he used the German form of speaking. I turned to my mate and said

"He's a German!”

"What've you got in that case?" I shouted.

At this he started to run away so I called over to my mate,

"He's a fucking German, and he's trying to blow our bridge up!"

We chased after him, and I caught him and gave him one or two whacks with my stick. I got my mate to hold him down, and told him,

"If he tries to run away, shoot him!"

(We had to make good use of our one bullet).

Well, he was scared and shouted out

"I am Polish!"

"Polish like my foot!" I replied.

We opened his case, and inside were 8 sticks of explosives and detonators. He looked like he was stronger than me and could have given me a good hiding if he'd had the chance, so I gave him another beating with my stick, then we tied his hands with string and took him to our headquarters where I handed him over to the Military Police.

After we filled in the paperwork, I never saw him again, nor knew what happened to him.

That really was my first and last action as a Polish soldier, because soon after that, the Germans invaded and the main Polish Army went south to defend Warsaw, leaving us to do our best and look after ourselves.

(1) Prologue

My father in law’s tale is fascinating and inspiring, but probably not unique.

Czes was born in Kalisz, Western Poland in the year that the Great War ended, the son of a former soldier in the Russian Tsar's army. Before 1939 he had the simple and straightforward life in a family of what we might call "gentleman farmers", but on the 1st of September 1939 when the Werhmacht roared Eastwards his life changed forever.

Many of his generation, born in that hopelessly strategic country once referred to as "God's Playground" went through similar tragic and sometimes humorous events that will be described here. Some didn't survive, some survived in body alone and some, like Czes, live to to a ripe old age to tell their tale with humour and humility.

This work bears witness to two extremes of the human condition; to those that have the spirit to survive against the odds and to the lost ones who allowed their government and system to evolve almost overnight in to the Monster that was National Socialism.

Czes was an ordinary man thrust in to extraordinary circumstances by this system. He would probably have become a doctor or a gentleman farmer if he had not chanced to be living in an area that was considered "Lebensraum" (living space) by the German Aryan peoples across the river from his home.

The story follows his exile to Germany, forced labour; escape to the Allies where he worked with the displaced homeless diaspora in Koln–Ossendorf camp, to final settlement in England.

His journey takes us from pre-war Poland to Germany, to rural post war Yorkshire, and finally to the Essex and Cambridgeshire countryside.

I ask the reader to take what Czes has told me as a genuine memoir. His mind even at 90 years of age is still razor sharp. Nevertheless I'm sure some of it will have been mis-remembered after more than 60 years, and some of it may even be downright embellished, but I hope reading it gives you as much pleasure as it has me hearing it first hand, and it gives you a first hand insight in to what it was like between 1939 and 1945 for those who were non-combatants, but still prisoners of war.

In this year of his 90^th Birthday, I'd like to thank Czes, for all the hours we sat and he talked and I listened.

John Worsnop: July 2008