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