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Michael Zimmermann
How I Survived the Wars and
Peace:
My Life in the Gulag
Chapter V. Goodbye Accursed Country - Hello, Accursed People
I do not use the adjective "accursed" lightly. My experience
with both the regime itself and the economic system of the Union of
Socialist Soviet Republics is based on six years of personal tribulations
and observations. Now, that the monster is not here any more, my criticism
is of little interest to the world.
I have been often reminded that by its harsh treatment of the Polish citizens in 1940 and forced deportation deep into their territory, the Soviet Union saved our lives from a certain death at the hands of the Gestapo murderous horde one year later. That may be true but it was not their primary goal and what they did provide us with instead lead to death by starvation and overwork.
Much later, when Gorbachev and his perestroika encouraged some Soviet citizens who spent years in the corrective labour-camps to ask for some kind of rehabilitation or even compensation for the slave work done in appalling conditions, I could not help but remember my contribution to the economy of the accursed ogre. This I know: that a country can intern nationals of the enemy country suspected of subversive activity in order to isolate them from the population at large. I also know that the Geneva Convention forbids the harnessing of internees to toil for the jailer-country. In this dilemma I wanted to consult a person with wider political horizons than mine and I wrote a letter to Prof. Zbigniew Brzezinski, erstwhile consultant to President Carter. Prof. Brzezinski is a Pole himself, very active as far as the welfare of his compatriots is concerned. In his response, Prof. Brzezinski wrote, and I quote: "You have a powerful case", however he could not recommend any effective line of action. That was five years ago. Nobody can ever compensate me for the hellish existence I had in their labour-camps, and nobody can deny me the satisfaction of calling the USSR an "accursed country" at the time of my departure from their soil.
As to the justification of using the term "accursed" in relation to people I was going to encounter the moment I crossed the Soviet-Polish border, I leave the reader be the judge.
Our train stopped at the station Przemysl. To our rather pleasant surprise, the Soviet border guards let the train through without any search or confiscation as predicted before our departure. Apparently it was a scare policy in order to make us leave the valuables in the country. The railway station was already on the Polish soil, and like many others, Bronka and myself went for a stroll on the platform. A uniformed Polish soldier was standing on guard of some building, and confusing us for gentiles felt free to express his frank thoughts. Turning to my wife, he said: "Madam, look what is going on. I am here every day so I can see. Every day, trains loaded with coal roll to the Soviets, and in exchange they are sending to us trains full of Jews. Something has to be done about it". A footnote: Poland has vast coal mines. Another footnote: Before the war, Poland had three-and-a half million citizens of the Jewish faith, 10% of the entire population. At the time of our arrival at Przemysl, in 1946, in the entire country you could count only thousands who somehow survived the Holocaust. Anyway, what I want to stress is the text of the first Polish words we heard from a Polish citizen on the Polish soil. The kind of greetings and an indication of what we can expect on our return to our "fatherland".
Next day, our train stopped at a small station on outskirts of the city of Wroclaw (renamed from Breslau after it has been ceded to Poland). Some of our friends among the passengers decided to leave the train here as they had some relatives in the city and preferred life in a big community instead the one in a small town our train was taking us to. Bronka strongly insisted on our leaving the train here, and I complied. A few minutes later the train left the place. From other people sitting on their luggage we heard that it is not safe to stay here overnight as the locals are known to rob the newcomers. A friend and myself left the place to look for transportation. We reached the city itself, and for a substantial bribe persuaded a man with a big truck to come and pick us up from the place where we camped. Other passengers on the platform joined us on the truck, and sitting on our parcels we moved to the city. Our caravan stirred general curiosity and emotion. People in the streets encouraged our driver to ditch the Jews and that they will take over. That was our second day on our native soil. We arrived at the address one of our friends was given by his relatives already in the city. The room was small and could accommodate only four people and we were six. Bronka and myself were those less entitled to be the invited guests who had a baby. In other words, we two had no shelter. It became late, and the city had a 10 o’clock curfew. As I was standing in front of the house entrance, desperate about my predicament, a couple was approaching. The woman stopped, looked at me and called my name. I recognized her immediately although it was six years since we last parted. She was one of the two sisters in whose apartment I rented a room in the city of Lvov before being deported to the Soviet Union. It was the one who was madly in love with me. The girl, by name Elsa, closed my mouth, stealthily indicating that I should not talk and asked me to wait where I was, she will be back shortly. After futile waiting for about 15 minutes I went upstairs where Bronka was sitting waiting for me. It was 10 o’clock, the front entrance was locked for the night. Bronka and I decided to spend the night in the staircase. To avoid any confusion of other tenants in the building, I knocked at the door on the same landing and informed the people not to be alarmed by our presence at their doors. When informed about our arrival in a strange city and hence our predicament, the people invited us in, allowed us to use their bathroom to freshen up after two weeks journey in a cattle car, and offered a separate room for our use until we find some suitable lodging in days ahead. Our new hosts were newcomers to the city as well, returning from the Soviet Union, and the apartment we were in belonged before to a German family who left the city for Germany. We were extremely lucky to find such understanding people. For the time being we had shelter neighbouring that of our friends. Miracle? Maybe, but that was not the end.
After a restful night in a real bed, we were invited to breakfast with our wonderful hosts. Later, I approached a window to have a look at the city where we were going to establish our home. I saw the rear of a tall building. On a gallery of that house, right across my window, a girl was feeding caged rabbits. The girl was Elsa. I hollered to her and she indicated that I should go down to the street and wait for her. Our greeting was really emotional this time. Here is her story. One year after I was deported from her apartment, the German-Russian war started, and the Nazi troops entered the city a few days later. In a short time, all Jews were either deported or murdered, an act in which the local population of Ukrainians took part avidly. Elsa and her sister Irene somehow escaped the Holocaust pretending to be gentile. In fact, Elsa was working as domestic for a German family. They never returned to their home town in order not to be recognized by some neighbours. After the war ended, the sisters decided to stick to their adopted disguise in view of the sharply anti-Semitic attitude of the post-war Polish population. When she saw me a day before, she was in company of her present fiance. Fearing that I might reveal her Jewishness in his presence she silenced me and later returned to the place to find me gone. It so happens that her boy-friend and his mother share the same apartment. Funny thing was that the man was half-Jewish himself, his mother a German gentile. His father was deported to the concentration camp and perished there. The mother somehow protected her son. The latter felt more secure with Elsa as a Catholic girl, a certain protection in the hostile environment. I assured Elsa that her secret is secure with me and she offered her house to us until we find a lodging for me and Bronka. We thanked our hosts for the night, and transferred our meagre luggage to Elsa’s home.
The city of Wroclaw presented a peculiar view. The German inhabitants were being massively deported to Germany, each family allowed to take along only the most essential belongings, a suitcase or two. The apartments were to be left undamaged, ready for new tenants to move in. We did not feel sorry for the deportees. They were going to their "Vaterland" which was ready to accept them. Germans were deporting us when they were victors except that we were sent directly to death camps.
We were given a small apartment across the street from Elsa’s house. Two rooms and a kitchen, all furnished, with bedding, linen, dishes, pots and pans, and roughly one million bed-bugs. A toilet serving four apartments on the floor was in the staircase. After the primitive living places we had in Uzbekistan we appreciated every detail of the European way of existence. Now, when the curfew time came, we locked our door securely and felt safe enough. Other apartments in the building were occupied by recent returnees from the Soviet Union.
My financial situation was catastrophic. The rice that we brought along had no takers. Poland was awash with rice brought by the returnees from Central Asia who had similar resale plans as we did. I had one package of coffee on me and this I sold to have money to buy some bread. I had an idea. On pieces of white paper I hand-printed an announcement that a teacher was giving lessons in the English language. I posted the notices on visible places around our district. Unknowingly to myself, I opened a floodgate. Within two days I had enough students to fill my day. What happened? In their programs, Polish schools had an obligatory subject, a foreign language, primarily German. Now, the general hatred to anything reminiscent of our bitter enemies and tormentors did not allow the revival of the subject. The English language became an obligatory subject in all classes and the more advanced school children found themselves face-to-face with something completely strange. My fee was quite steep. The arrangement worked like clockwork. I was with my student in the room, the moment one hour was over, out marched my student, the other who was waiting in the kitchen with Bronka marched in. The leaving student paid his fee to Bronka, and so it went the entire day. We were rich and could buy food even on the black market.
Let me now describe the general situation in the country, and the picture was ugly. The Polish authorities assigned one building in the city for Jewish charitable organizations. At any time of the day you could see whole families of Jewish newcomers looking for guidance and protection from the extremely hostile Polish population. Our Jewish leaders warned us not to travel on trains. There were instances when the Catholic passengers seeing a Jew among them, threw him out from a moving train. There were instances when armed bands stopped a train in the middle of nowhere, going from car to car looking for Jews. If found, they were taken to the nearest forest and shot.
Two weeks after our arrival in the country, a most heinous pogrom took place in the town of Kielce. A group of recent Jewish arrivals gathered in a house that was given by the city hall to the Jewish organization. Anticipating trouble, the organizers had some weapons and guards stationed at the door. The local chief of police entered the building and announced that the presence of weapons cannot be tolerated, he will take care of them and he, personally, guarantees the safety of those present. After the accompanying policeman took the guns outside, the chief approached a window and gave a signal. An armed band rushed the building and murdered everyone inside including women, two were pregnant, and children, altogether fifteen people. This event stirred the anger of the entire world, the details were given by the press everywhere. My version is taken not from the newspapers but from a witness I met a day or two after the outrage.
The mood among the Jews was gloomy, we knew that this country will never provide a safe environment in which we could establish our lives. I knew that I didn’t wish to spend the rest of my life among these accursed people (by now, you might understand the feeling that made me use the adjective in this chapter title). Underground Zionist organizations started an exodus of groups of people ready to venture a long and roundabout trip ending in Palestine which was then under the British mandate. The intended settlers had to be smuggled in; if caught they were transported to detention camps in Cyprus. After my bitter experience with existence in the Soviet camps, I should be forgiven if I developed a deep aversion to the term "camp" itself, never mind in what geographical area. Everything would be better than the "jungle" I was in now, feeling like a prey in danger of being attacked by two-legged ferocious animals. I once mentioned the natural law of mimicry which makes some vulnerable creatures adopt the appearance and colour of their surrounding. We noticed that the majority of Polish males were sporting a moustache. On Bronka’s advice, I let the hair under my nose grow, its purpose being somehow to muffle the impact of my big nose, a feature attributed by the anti-Semites to Jewish "race". I got used to it and the moustache stays where it was before. When you look at me now, please keep in mind that my moustache might have saved my life in 1946.
We could not leave immediately. Bronka got in touch with her twin sister, Gena, who survived the Holocaust, but was now in Romania with her husband, Beno Goldstein, a survivor as well. They were planning to join us in Wroclaw and, after the reunion we would leave together.
I was offered a job. Jewish youngsters who missed school for six years were ill prepared for starting life anywhere they wanted to emigrate to, and the appropriate institutions decided to start a vocational school based on the world renowned ORT organization. For a start, we had to organize a class for electricians, and add others as opportunity allows. About twenty youngsters applied. I had an assistant, an electrician by trade, and we both started literally from scratch. My students entered ruined buildings (the city was 50% in ruins, mostly by the hands of the Germans themselves who were systematically blasting street after street before withdrawing from the Red Army onslaught) and removed some electrical material like wiring, fuses, switches, etc which we were using in our instructions. My career here lasted only two months, it was time to take care of my personal plans.
The Goldsteins arrived with a one month-old baby boy called Steven. The reunion of the twins was highly emotional even more so in view of the ordeal each of them survived in different circumstances. I was prepared to meet a double of Bronka the way she always described their childhood and teen years, but did not see any special similarity. Granted, Gena was after a recent childbirth and it showed. It was time to take steps to realize our emigration plans. I notified the underground organization that we are candidates, and was told to wait for our turn. We said good-bye to our few friends who likewise had their own plans for leaving the country, preference being given to United States and Canada.
One evening, a man came and informed us that next morning we should be in front of our building ready for departure. Half of the night, we were packing and repacking so that each person could carry the possible maximum, no outside help could be expected.
The first leg of our trip was to Bad Kudowa, a former spa on the Polish-Czech border. We stayed there a day or two until a sufficient number of future emigrants accumulated. I had to admire the high efficiency of the organizers of our clandestine exodus.
On a day that will remain memorable in the souls of all those involved, we formed a column of about a hundred people and marched to the near-by border post. We passed the Polish border office without seeing anyone (apparently, by arrangement with our leaders) and stopped at the gate of the Czech side. Two uniformed guards, with smiles on their faces opened the gate widely inviting us inside with a hospitable gesture. For me, and the majority of the marchers it was the :FIRST STEP INTO THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD.
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