QUARTERMASTER
QUARTERMASTER
Are the children asleep? Now we can talk.
I can stay with you for three days. I made a contract with a shoe factory. I am
interested in their production of clogs.
I was in London and visited Lila and her English husband. She remembers Tina
from Poland very well, even though it was a lot of years ago.
When did you come to Denmark? A year ago? Did comrade Gierek help you? Come on!
It took a long time to get out of this paradise.
I left in the mid-1950s, and Rita, your Tina's aunt, left in 1958. Dan, Tina's
uncle, left in the early 1960s. Did you already know that? After all, Rick,
your father-in-law, moved to Szczecin because Dan was there, but Dan very soon left
for Israel!
Do you know? I never had any illusions about this system there. Rita with her
husband and Dan with Roza woke up after 56.
Only Rick remained a Polish patriot until the end of his life. No. Not because
of marriage to a Polish woman. Others have done so. Love does not choose.
And what did all this patriotism give to Rick? The military trail from Lenino
to Berlin. The Grunwald Cross. Order of Polonia Restituta. Full colonel from
1947. The division commander. In the headquarters of the Pomeranian District
until his heart attack. But a place in the alley of merits in the People's
Republic of Poland was denied for him!
I knew them all from before the war because their mother was our relative, and
she took me when I came to Warsaw.
I've always had a flair for business. If something had to be done, she always said,
"Jake will take care of it."
How did we survive the war? I know that Rita and Henry, her husband, survived
on Aryan papers.
When the Germans invaded Poland, the government recommended evacuation to the
east. Rick, Dan, and Henry did it and ended up in a town near Łuck. Rita joined
them, and there she got married to Henry. Rita and Henry had almost completed
their dental studies and got a job as dentists in this town.
When the German-Russian war began, Rick and Dan fled with the Russians, and Rita
and Henry stayed. Germans immediately locked up all Jews from that town in the
ghetto. The head of the clinic where they were employed saved Rita and Henry.
Since Rita was blonde and did not look Jewish, she managed to obtain false
papers in the name of Lesznowolski. For safety reasons, she and Henry moved to
another town, where she worked as a waiter. Henry was a pianist in a cafe for
German officers. He did not feel safe there. He used his accordion skills and
joined a traveling group of musicians with whom he traveled as far as Kyiv.
There he found a job, and Rita joined him. They survived there until the end of
the war. They did not return to Warsaw after the war because there was nothing
to come back to.
They ended up in Bytom, where there were plenty of empty apartments left by the
Germans. I found them there after the war.
Rick and Dan survived in Russia. Rick remained in the army.
Dan quit right after he returned from a military mission in Vietnam, and had a
dentist's office in Szczecin until his departure.
My history? I also escaped to Russia. I found myself in the military too. But
first, I did business. Oh yes! Even in this war-torn country, some business
could be done! My last feat was the transport of the wagon of butter from
Georgia, and they caught me there. Are you surprised I got out alive? It was on
the brink. During the interrogations, I managed to bribe this NKVD man! It cost
me everything I had, but I got away with my life. And they took me into the
army right away.
And I got a quartermaster job. It remained the same in Poland. I was good at
organizing everything. I could deliver what you wanted. The quartermaster in
the army was not only about the supply of food, shoes, uniforms, boots,
weapons, and ammunition. There were also living quarters, houses, flats,
post-German porcelain services, furs, paintings, and supplies to shops behind
"yellow curtains". Yes. This was for the party and the state
apparatchiks.
When Rick was the division commander, he had a Russian adviser, General
Cheremuch. I also arranged supplies for this Cheremuch, and he sent everything
to his family in Soyuz. Cheremuch was influential, and that is why I was able
to stay in the quartermaster job for so long time. Cheremuch, despite his
peasant appearance, was well versed in politics. He probably liked me because
he could be painfully honest with me. With Rick, he was on a friendly foot, but
only as a general to a colonel if you understand what I mean. With me, he could
talk about things that were sometimes dangerous. He told me why the wagons with
grain delivery from the Soviet Union had the Hungarian consignment notes.
According to him, it was the only time the Polish communists convinced the
Russians that without preventing a pang of hunger in post-war Poland, it would
be impossible to preserve a new system. That is why a part of the Hungarian
grain was redirected to Poland. He also explained why communists of Jewish
origin are preferred. He told me, ""Jakow Dawidowicz! Polaki eto pany i
chamy! Pany, intieligiencziki ludowoj własti nie lubiut, a chamy nie znajut kak
ludowoj włast postroit nada. Polskich komunistow mało i oni toże chamy! Tolko
jewriejskije komunisty bolsze gramotny, a bolszinstwo s nich idiealisticzeskije
duraki!"(Yakov Davidovich! There are two kinds of Poles: educated gentlemen and
ignorant churls. Gentlemen are educated and do not like the new regime, while
the churls do not know how to build a new country. There are too few Polish
communists, and almost all of them are churls.
Only the Jewish communists are more educated, and most of them are
idealistic fools). He also talked about those old PPS men. They were too
nationalistic and therefore not considered to be trustworthy. He laughed that
all those Jews who believed in building a just, communist Poland would eventually
be swept away. They were about educating a generation of people fitted to
maintain the Soviet system of power. Hence the slogan "Not a high school
diploma, but a sincere intention will make you a good officer!". Russians
were well aware that those Poles, who enrolled in mass in the communistic
party, were not idealistic but dudes wanting to make an easy career. This
group, together with the old Polish communists, will start to kick their Jewish
comrades out of their positions.
These idealistic Jewish communists were the worst. I knew one of them. His
whole family was murdered. A large part by the Germans and the rest by the NSZ
(right-wing organization) partisans. A recluse. No females. He was a UB (secret
police) investigator. They called him "The Dark Death." He was a
Polish patriot. But he did not polonize his Jewish surname. He claimed that in
that Poland, he was fighting for the surname or one's ethnic origin would not make
any difference. No. He did not torture anyone. He had for this job some Polish
boys who always wanted to prove what they could.
He told me about one case. Before the war, the man was a well-known Polish
activist in Silesia. Well off, own house, university education. During the
occupation, he worked in the German administration, and no one picked on him
for his pre-war activities. Very suspicious. After the war, he became the
president of a manufacturing cooperative. Then a denunciation came. The
denunciations at that time were on the hoofs. Some had a hard time with those
on whom they informed. Others reported to please the new government. Others
pursued their careers. This was well known in UB, but it made their work
easier, and the statistics of the cases were impressive. When he interrogated
this president for the first time, the man looked at him with disgust. As if a
conversation with a UB investigator was below the guy's dignity. That irritated
the investigator very much. Perhaps this president had a higher education, but
the investigator managed to graduate before the war! If this pesky president
didn't turned-up his nose, they would talk like one intelligent person with
another intelligent person, and the case would be closed. But this individual
strained his words as if being in the same place with the investigator
physically tormented him! After two such interrogations, the investigator
became fed up and took on those who had reported the president. He didn't even
have to give them to the boys. They charged the president so much that the
matter gained importance and was reported higher in the system. There, a decision
was made to make a showcase. The order came to add the embezzlement charge and
the accusation of hostile activity against the state. The president turned out
to be a hard nut to crack. Fortunately, the boys "learned" from the
informers that the president personally ordered to delay of state supplies,
where the state's losses could be estimated to over 100,000 zlotys, which was a
deliberate act against the Polish state.
The president, despite the boys' "treatment," did not want to admit
anything. But the files with the testimony were transferred to the prosecutor's
office. A paragraph was founded, from which the president was sentenced to
death! The investigator had nothing to do with the sentence. He
"only" handed over the case files. This is how it was done then.
I also met another one. The camp
commandant. This one was a bit special. Germans had murdered his entire family.
He survived hidden by a Pole. What was left was his great hatred for the
Germans. In his camp, there were prisoners accused of collaboration! Some
Germans, Volksdeutsche, and others. Why were they put in there? It was enough
to work for the German administration or be accused of having German
sympathies. And for the Volksdeutsche, even this was not necessary.
For the commandant, all of them were a German plague, and he treated them as
such. He did not avoid the physical punishment of the prisoners, and he gave
his subordinates a free hand to do this too. Sometimes, he even encouraged
severe punishment for a trifle. He had difficulties with the medical staff in
the camp. The fact that he only had one medical assistant and an enormous
number of prisoners did not worry him much. When an epidemic of diarrhea broke
out in the camp, he even had at the beginning a satisfaction that finally
something awful met these bastards. It turned out that it was dysentery and
typhus and that people started to die. He received no reply to the letter
requesting a doctor and a supply of additional sanitary installations, but he
did not care.
It wasn't until the death toll passed 100 people that something started to
happen, but the epidemic could no longer be stopped. At first, he was afraid he
would get punished, but the prison authorities seemed to know that his first
letter had not been responded to. The case was drowned, and he got a promotion!
Did these two do all this as Jews? No! They were doing it for the new Poland's
sake. And for the Polish people who did not yet realize that in these
conditions no other alternative existed. There is no doubt that they felt
Jewish as well. The commandant was an ignorant fool, and he was good for what
he was doing. The investigator claimed that all those arrested, even those who
did nothing wrong, did not support the new "People's Poland", and
were potential enemies of the state. Whoever is not with us is against us. The
Bolshevik's motto was: "it is better to punish ten innocent people than
risk that one enemy escapes and harm the cause."
What are you saying? The Silesians? After the war, there were a few million
Germans in Silesia and a lot of others who felt to be German. The forced
displacement of these 3 million indigenous people did not end until 1947. When
the possibility of leaving as part of family reunification was opened, it
turned out that many Silesians had families in Germany.
I talked with one employed in the Interior Ministry before he left for Israel.
He claimed that these customs restrictions for those leaving Poland were not
directed against Jews. Neither at the end of the 1950s nor after that famous
March 68. About 50,000 Jews left Poland in the years 56-59. At the same time,
over 250,000 people left Silesia. Until 1970, over 500,000 applications for
departure to Germany were submitted, and these were only those who had families
in Germany!
After the death of Stalin and Bierut, what Czeremuch predicted began to prove
true. It didn't go that fast at the top of the communistic party, but on lower
stages, the Jewish party members were kicked out in flocks. The part of them
deserved it a long time ago because many were simply careerists. I even made a
suit at the tailor who joined the Polish United Workers' Party after the war
and was the manager of a small factory until 56, when the workers drove him out
on a wheelbarrow.
The worst was that verbal anti-Semitism got loud. Not officially. Just among
ordinary people. The old, pre-war anti-Semitism was given additional
nourishment - the Jewish communists in UB and authorities. Yes! These few
hundreds of communists of Jewish origin at the top of the party, in the
authorities, in the army, in the security police, in the prosecutor's office,
and in courts exempted Poles from responsibility for decaying their own nation
for years. At last, the Jews were useful for something!
That is why Rita and Henry decided to leave for Israel. Cheremuch was sent to
Soyuz in 1954. I already saw the signs and didn't wait for someone to kick me
out.
I left myself before they took that Gomułka out from the granary. My wife, who
had only surviving relatives in Israel, was drying my head about it all the
time anyway. So we went. Dan and his family did the same.
It was tough in Israel at the beginning. But this is our country where no one
will tell you that you are a stranger. Rita and Dan with their professions had
no problems getting a job, and I, with my flair, started doing business again.
Poland? What does Poland need me for? What do I need Poland for? The Germans
made sure that I had nothing to come back to. I have my own country, and that's
enough for me.
Alex Wieseltier
April 2020