(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!