Joe Jezioranski

Again life became very nomadic. Our furniture was stored in my father’s office, we lived in my godfather’s apartment, my brother lived with my father. Originally my mother was still exhausted after her long sickness and we had no facilities for cooking. My godfather’s wife (who was also my mother’s relative) cooked some of our meals. Her name was also Maria but she was not the lady that looked after me in the early part of my life. They had a daughter who had just completed her matriculation (in a secret ceremony, as high schools were strictly forbidden). I think this was another one of those things that could incur the death penalty, but then who cared? If Hitler won we were all going to go kaput anyway.

Warsaw’s population was growing by leaps and bounds. The southern part of Warsaw was designated as the German section; before the war this area housed many government buildings, embassies, etc. In the central part sprouted an enlarged ghetto. Jews from all over Poland were being transported into it. Poles from the western part of Poland had to declare themselves as a kind of lower member of the Reich, I forget what it was called. The low quality of their status did not exempt them from serving in the German army, unfortunately.

Of course if one did not want to be a low-quality member of the Reich, one had to get out. These people could go wherever they wanted within the GG, and a lot of them chose Warsaw. After all, this was the capital of Poland (not of GG – the capital of GG was Krakow). Even in the Polish section of Warsaw, buildings that used to house the Polish government now displayed the ugly stylized German eagle holding in its paws a swastika.

A current Warsaw joke, referring to this sign, had it as a prediction that the Polish eagle would rip the swastika with its talons.

In order to keep appropriately designated areas uniformly populated, Jews were evicted from the German and Polish sections and Poles from the Jewish and German sections. The better stores were turned into German stores. With much of Warsaw destroyed by the war and the Polish and Jewish populations now reaching a million and a half each, the place was packed.

Other places that were packed were Pawiak prison, which now housed only political prisoners (criminals being moved to Mokotow prison), but also the remaining coffee houses. You may be surprised to know that Warsaw enjoyed coffee houses long before the “flower generation.” Of course there was no grass yet, but there was bimber or samogon, which was a home-made wodka.

The German occupation had no laws against drinking, pornography or prostitution. There were more prostitutes on the streets than ever before. Equal Rights were also extended as far as going to concentration camps or being shot, women and men were treated alike. A standard way of people selection by the authorities was to surround an area of town and surround with troops. People contained in the area would have their documents checked and be appropriately selected for prison, concentration camp, forced labor in the Reich or release. This method was called Catching (Lapanka).

In addition SD patrols wandered through the street and shot so-called “criminals” on sight. Anybody who the SD believed was on their political enemy lists was subject to be shot that way. If the wrong person was shot, it was just too bad. While one was walking through the streets, one often heard people walking in the opposite direction saying “Lapanka” or “Careful.” It was advisable to turn back if one heard the warning.

My days were full. I had to travel to school changing streetcars three times. Streetcars were neither reliable nor accommodating. They were overcrowded. School ended about two or three o’clock, but by the time I got home it was closer to five. My father ate his meals at a restaurant started by a religious order of Wizytki. They had a place at Theater Square (Plac Teatralny). Originally the eating place was intended only for the members of the order but now the ladies considered it charitable to feed many lost souls who had nowhere to eat. The price of the food was very reasonable and the supply of the food to the restaurant was helped by the connections of the Polish Church.

My father’s salary, very generous in peacetime, became rather inadequate. Slowly, things were being sold. My mother’s jewelry went first, then my father’s painting collection. Then some books (these brought next to nothing on the black market). One day my father went to Byki and sold the old place. Good riddance, I thought – but he had tears in his eyes.

During the school summer break I was bored. All at once, from being very busy, I had nothing to do. My mother was still not well, my father tried to reorganize the WTU Insurance Company in the very strange new environment, and my brother took advantage of the irregular conditions to finish matriculation rather early in his life.

I roamed through Warsaw, finding out a lot more about the city than I knew before the war. I enjoyed the river. On the left side there was a beach and boats for rent. I used to rent a kayak and row up the river, somewhere up to Wilanow where the old king Sobieski had a palace, now occupied by some official German institution, with the owner (I believe one of the Platers), confined to a single room. After some minor exploration on the shore, I would let the river carry the boat, sometimes precariously close to the Poniatowski bridge, tempting fate (approaching the bridge on the river was another of those things penalized by death!). I got to know most of the amusement parks, even those now designated as German areas. Well, it was fun to tempt fate.

My mother got concerned about me after listening to the stories about my excursions. Consequently she arranged with my godfather a trip during the later part of the year to Brodowski’s farm in the Bilgoraj district. This was a medium-size farm, about 150 acres or so, but it was well run and lay in an area where the soil was good. The farm was really run by three Polish ex-officers who were hiding from the Germans during the day and leading the partisans at night.

This kind of activity was not appreciated by the Germans. Near the end of 1943 a number of German divisions surrounded the district. All men and women were evicted, with some killed and the others taken to work in Germany. Young children were separately treated. They were sent to Germany to be distributed for Germanization. A whole railway truck of those children, while passing through Warsaw on the way to Germany, was stolen by the underground organization and distributed to Polish families throughout Warsaw. During my stay in the Bilgoraj area it was relatively peaceful. There was a balance of power: days belonged to the Germans, nights to the partisans.

It was again harvest time, but this time I could participate. This included chasing girls during lunchtime. I had no idea what to do when I caught one. My thorough observation of others convinced me that the process was rather hot and sweaty, although it seemed to produce a lot of gaiety. I tried to learn horse riding but was unnerved by the brutes holding me in a sort of disdain. They seemed to have been always going wherever they wanted to, not where I directed them.

When I got back home after the vacation, I tried to go to school conspiratorial style. Since high schools were prohibited, many schools met in private homes. The one I chose was taught by ex-teachers of Rey HS, since I attended that school before. As before, I did not fit in. This time, poor George, who was a pushover when I attended it last, was a hero because he had family links with the underground. Every boy attending the class was seeking his favours. I was not going to lick his boots. Pride was always my downfall.

Since we had to move from one end of the city to the other while attending classes, a lot of hanky-panky went on in the streets of Warsaw. One game was to climb into the destroyed houses. This is when I found out that I am prone to space sickness. I was not to be outdone by my classmates and sometimes climbed to the top of the fourth story building and marched along the crumbling wall of the bombed or burned-out building shell. Occasionally, in order not to jump, I had to close my eyes.

The other game was to taunt the prostitutes. Of course when they got mad we had to scatter. Knowledge of the surrounding area was of great value if you did not want your head bashed in with a makeshift blackjack (they used to carry a weight in their purses). When I got hit once, I couldn’t move my arm for a week. Although I kept up with the fun and games, I got so sick of the group I was with that I stopped going to classes around Christmas.

About that time, my father got permission from the Treuhänder to move us into the WTU office building. We lived on the fourth floor. Below us there was a transport office run by a Volksdeutsch; next to us lived a retired couple in a small apartment. I got to know the couple very well, and, through them, many of the occupants of the apartment house. Across the staircase there was an empty apartment. Later on a manager of another insurance company moved in. He was evicted from his apartment by the expansion of the ghetto.

The ghetto now was enclosed by a wall and was guarded by Latvian auxiliary troops. These, like many Quisling troops, were even more cruel than the Germans. At one point the streetcars from east to west were moving through the ghetto, without stopping in that district. I observed the brutality of the ghetto guards and often wished the Latvian guards dead – not very Christian, what? I stopped feeling Christian. My lack of belief in anything made me very unhappy. I saw no purpose in life. I hated especially the people around me; they seem destined to hurt one another. I guess I reached puberty. I don’t know how anybody can remember this period of their life fondly. I hated it.

I travelled often to Mlociny to see my friend Marian and on one of these trips I found out that the German troops had moved out from our house. I guess by now they had advanced far enough into Russia to remove some of the air troops from Warsaw. We were one of the lucky ones. There was little to steal from our house. Houses where furniture and utensils were left for the Germans, were now empty and vandalized, probably more by the local population than the German army. We had to contend with human excreta on our parquet floors. I wondered why the people did it – did they not have bathrooms in their houses? My mother said, “Many poor people don’t.”

So we cleaned the mess and repaired any damage done. But we were settled in the city now and it made sense to try and keep the family together, so my mother rented the house out.

Hope returned to our lives, although I did not feel its blessing until much later. My family brought me out of my depression.

I think that my brother was a really impressive person. We now lived together in the same room and when he was home I could observe him. His life was full of activity. He attended a number of (secret – higher education was not allowed for Poles) higher institutions of learning, all lectures being given in private homes. In time he had a degree in languages, with stress on Polonistic studies, which was very popular with the girls, or at least it seemed to me that his class was full of them. He spoke fluently in English, French and German.

As a matter of fact his German plus his ability to converse with people got him out of trouble a couple of times: he was arrested twice and somehow talked himself out of getting imprisoned. He also obtained a commercial degree before his demise, but his real love was philology. I asked him once what use was this stuff and he tried to explain that religion and philosophy really describe the character of people. Well I was still lost after this explanation.

When he was settling to bed, he would surround himself with books in many languages (even including Sanskrit). He would read a book for ten to fifteen minutes and then grab another one. I asked him why he did not finish reading the first one. He would say: one, he would get bored with it; two, he had to absorb the stuff that he read. So how could he read something else when he was absorbing it? Well, that was different; the new book was on a different subject. Whereas I borrowed books from the public library, he obtained access to the university library. One of his professors knew the German custodian of the university.

My mother was always worrying that all these illegal activities under the nose of the Germans would get him into trouble, but in fact it was quite something else that proved to be his downfall. I discovered one a day a pistol under my mother’s gown and the game was up. My mother had to tell me about my brother’s involvement with boy scout groups (or SS – Szare Szeregi as it was called). The pistol was used in teaching the members of his platoon how to use the weapon.

At my insistence, he involved me as well, and in BS at that, which was the middle age group of Szare Szeregi. He was a group leader in BS, and also a substitute member of GS – the famous platoon S which was a regional group of “Small Diversion,” a group that used to destroy communications around Warsaw (railways, roads, etc).

In order to have papers, he had to work, and so my father’s counterpart gave him a job in his insurance company, where he would do work on a more or less piecework arrangement – when he finished his part he could leave. His boss claimed that he did more than two other guys. Finally his social life appeared to be extremely busy. If it was not for the curfew imposed on Warsaw, it would certainly interfere with his other activities. Even then he often stayed out for an overnight party, and spent hours in the evening talking to various people (or should I say girls?).

He wrote some great love letters. I read many of the rejected ones out of the wastepaper basket. He had a great talent for writing; two or three of his short stories were accepted to various underground literary journals – I wonder if many people read them. In any case I began to wish I could emulate him. But then of course my brother’s standards were a bit high…

When I felt inadequate there was always mother, who tried to mend my broken wing. She used to say that maybe I have no ability to go beyond primary school, which infuriated my brother (no Jezioranski could be that stupid!) and caused him to try and tutor me some. Still I could always run to my mother for protection from life since she seemed to have a soft spot for me.

My father got sick. His long-term sickness was very similar to diabetes and he had to inject insulin every day.

Apparently he injected some air into his leg muscles and had an internal infection. With his chronic condition, healing was very slow, so I found some use for myself in attending to him: reading books, playing chess with him and listening to his stories. My father had many favorite stories. They could be divided into types, ie language changes, literary, foreshadowing, business tricks, historical events and musical anecdotes. To recount the stories of the different types might take a long time.

One example of language story was one about the place he saw in Czechoslovakia called “Hodovla Divok” which apparently was a high school for girls. In Polish this would mean breeding of girls of ill repute.

An example of a literary story would be one that he had to listen to from a man who wanted to insure his farm with my father’s company. The man said that he was a great hunter. One day he hunted boars in the woods on his farm. A boar came out of the woods and was running toward the hunter. He shot the boar but only wounded it. As the boar charged toward him, he jumped and grabbed a tree branch above his head. Unfortunately the branch broke and here he was sitting on a speeding boar, facing the boar’s tail. He hung on to the tail and managed to stay on the boar. As the boar sped through the forest, suddenly it passed another boar which also carried a passenger. He recognized the passenger as his friend count Jack Whats-his-name. So he shouted, “Hello, Jack, have a good ride!” Sort of a Münchhausen type story.

The foreshadowing story was one called “Möbelfabrik” – anyway I guess I will not tell any more of my father’s stories. My father had a great writing talent and had at one time written a series of stories for the newspapers, but of course my ability falls short of his expertise.

We spent the summer in our house at Mlociny. It was almost like old times. Besides our family there were Alka Paprocka and her daughter, Louise Sztembart, and miscellaneous guests. I was pleased to renew acquaintances with many of the kids in Mlociny. I was happy during this summer. Not so the people to whom we rented our house: they had to contend with a large influx of people and with the influx of many rambunctious kids (me and my friends).

One day we fought a mock battle between two groups, which extended from the garden into the house. The entrance and the passage were literally covered with potato fruits. Potato fruits are little green balls which appear on potato bushes shortly before the harvest. Mrs What-you-ma-call-it (the lady we rented the house to) walked into the passage and announced that she had had enough of that and she would see what she could do about it. Having been challenged in front of my friends I replied that she could whistle, this was our house. Well, this meant war.

The first part of her campaign was the appearance of the underground literature which was dropped at our door every morning. Although we received some of the same literature, through my brother’s connections, accepting such delivery from strangers spelled trouble. We devised therefore a way to throw it out immediately into the garbage shared with the tenants. Apparently this stopped any follow-up and a second stage of the attack developed.

Mr What-you-ma-call-it worked for the local labor office (Arbeitsamt). One day I received in the mail a summons to the labor office with the request to show proof of my employment or be prepared to leave for forced labor in Germany. I was fourteen.

My mother told me to stay at home and immediately left to talk to my father. He decided to ask for an audience with Dr Fischer, head of GG for Warsaw (nothing like going to the top). What was more remarkable is that he was actually granted the audience. In his discussion with the governor, my father did not question the necessity of obtaining labor for the Reich, but pointed out that the quality of work might be enhanced if further schooling in a trade were permitted. He also pointed out that the age of the potentially identified worker (me) was not consistent with the likely goals of the Reich and since, as the request stated, I was to be a part of the quota for the district, he believed that there might be some higher quality human material to fill the quota. Dr Fischer told his assistant to look into the matter and find out why a youth was chosen rather than a mature individual. And so I had to find a trade school, seemingly to improve my ability to work for the Reich (pfui!).

By the time our vacation finished I was ready to go back to school. It turned out that Warsaw City Schools came up with an idea how to cater to exactly my problem. One attended a school with a name like Carpenter Educational and this meant 8th grade. The year after, one attended Fitters General and it was the 9th grade and so on. In fact I went to, what before the war, was called the 3rd City HS but now was called the 3rd City Trade School on Sniadeckich St. I was conditionally accepted to the Carpenters’ class, but had to prove that I could cover material missed through my truancy the previous year.

I worked hard at the new challenge, with my brother continually at my elbow telling me that if I did not make it, I would be a disgrace to the family and all that. He showed me a whole shelf of prizes earned by my Aunt Jadwiga, by my father and by himself, which resided proudly in our library. There was not really much fear that I would get a Carpenter prize but still… Anyhow, I passed somehow.

In fact I felt at home in this class. It was apparently known as the most misbehaved class in the Warsaw district. Our class teacher was Zosia, and a grand lady she was. She happened to put me in a group with the brightest kids in the class, but also next to a rather dense, huge, apelike fellow. He had a great memory. One had to tell him what page the answer was on, and he would tackle any question of the teacher. Of course sometime we would give him a wrong page just for variety, and some teachers were terribly put out that the answer did not relate to the question. His nickname was Mammoth. When I went back to Poland in 1945 I travelled in a streetcar, and, lo and behold, here was Mammoth telling everybody of his great achievements in the underground. So I called him by his nickname and told him to stop reading from a certain book of widely published memoirs. He did not recognize me as it was dark and the streetcar was not lit.

My greatest friend was Stan Kossak. He had a fantastic talent for drawing, especially horses. I was sure he will become another painter like many predecessors of the same name. I was all the more impressed as I could not even draw a straight line. He lived on Dworkowa, almost next to the infamous German SS stronghold. I hope he survived the Uprising.

The class was not only unruly but out of control. Most of the students now belonged to the Underground and often carried prohibited literature, training material, and even guns into the classroom. Teachers not only had to contend with this mob, but were also active in the Underground themselves and often were arrested. We lost two of our best teachers that way.

A teacher had to be acceptable to the class to give a lesson. One means of getting rid of an unwanted teacher was to read aloud during the lecture; remove the little bleed-out tap from the steam heater, whereupon the steam would produce a whistle through the hole; congregate in one corner of the classroom with the back to the teacher, or even start a fire in the middle of the classroom. It is no wonder that the school had a hard time finding teachers for our class. Probably the main inducement was the need to have papers acceptable to the occupying authority. After all our class was supposed to be the training ground for the slaves of the Reich.

1943 will be remembered as the year of the lost hope but found determination for the Polish people. That year begun with the tragic death of General Sikorski, who represented the single unifying force and hope for the Polish people. Since I am not a good student of Polish affairs during early 20th century, Sikorski was a great enigma to me. Since he participated in forming an organization parallel with Pilsudski in 1909, why were the two constant enemies? And since they were enemies how come Sikorski became chief of the 5th Army during the Polish-Russian war in 1920? The only part I understood is his exile after the unfortunate civil war of 1926. How then, after formation of front Morges he suddenly becomes a head of the Polish emigrant forces? Well, anyway he was a great statesman and a rallying force for the Poles during the dark days of the war. The Germans proudly announced his death through the loudspeakers throughout Warsaw, even though previously they have not admitted the existence of the Polish government in London.

To further depress the Polish population, the commander of the Underground army (Grot-Rowecki) was caught by the Germans and despite a mobilized effort of the Underground, not recovered. He was subsequently tortured and murdered by the “victors.”

The last of the sad events of that year was the ghetto uprising. All through the winter one could smell the stench of the crematorium on Gesia street. Germans were in such a hurry to kill off the remaining Jews that in addition to daily trains leaving for Treblinka and Majdanek, the extermination camps, they were killing the Jews right in the Warsaw’s ghetto. People were so used to the Jews going without protest to the slaughter, that the ghetto’s uprising took everybody by surprise – well, it took me by surprise, anyway. Apparently it must have been a great surprise even to the population of the ghetto.

Years later I met a merchant in Ottawa who claimed to be a member of the Jewish Council (administering the ghetto under the German occupation). He told me that the ghetto uprising was German propaganda and such event never took place. He was very offended when I described to him the part of the fight that I observed and told me I must have been mistaken, and what I saw was not what I believed. Still whatever anybody believes, over a million Jews disappeared from the Warsaw’s ghetto and some of them were last seen with a gun in their hand.

Those events put us all in mourning but also created a resolve to get back at the occupier. At least this is how I felt. And so during 1943 I devoted myself wholeheartedly to small diversion as the SS (Szare Szeregi) action was called. I don’t suppose my efforts amounted to much, but for once my heart was there.

I was attending the simulated commando training twice a week and did all the minor efforts to annoy the occupier: plastering walls with literature, changing directional signs, painting PW (Polska Walczaca) signs on the walls. My favorite literature was “Hitler said…” followed by all the things the great Führer uttered and which did not come to pass. This item was not only printed in German but confused the occupier to the extent that they did not take it down for months. The idea was to put it in obvious places where the Germans congregated. I remember I plastered one on a guardhouse and another on a public sign in the area designated for Germans only.

The occupier replied in kind. Now for reprisal, 100 to 700 people were shot at the location where some German was allegedly hurt or killed. The prisoners of the infamous Pawiak prison were brought to the place of the execution. For some time now it was a practice to steal or take away guns from single German soldiers. Two of the boys in my brother’s platoon decided to take one by stopping a German soldier and holding him under a gun.

Normally a soldier would give the gun away, because he could always buy one from his friend coming from the front. In fact many in the underground would buy such guns from soldiers needing ready cash. This time the German was obstinate and tried to grab his gun and shoot the assailants. In the skirmish they had to shoot and kill the soldier. The standing order did not permit such unilateral action, without a distinct order of a superior. The penalty for such action was up to and including death.

Thus the boys were prosecuted by the Polish underground. It was touch and go, but with my brother’s defence the boys got away with a penalty of a house arrest. They could not leave their house except to go to work for six months. I always wondered whether they really obeyed, but then I am a cynic.

I was very proud when I was asked to tutor the boy next door. Who, me? I couldn’t believe it. After all my troubles with leaving school and all. But my grades that year were really good. And somehow Mrs Sliwinski believed in me (or did my mother talked her into it?). Now I had my own money which I promptly spent on pastry. I love home-made pastry, and this was the type now being sold in the stores – after all everybody had to find some additional way to make money.

Mr Sliwinski, an insurance executive, was evicted from his old apartment when the ghetto was consolidated and the Poles who lived on the territory designated for Jews were told to leave. He was very happy to obtain an apartment from WTU, by the order of the Treuhänder. In order to express his gratitude, he invited the Treuhänder and my father to supper at his new apartment. A leftist underground paper devoted a scathing story about the fact, noting “…we wonder who licked whose…” Mr Sliwinski was incensed. An officer of Polish reserve, active slightly in the Underground and the president of Polish Hunt Club at one time, he was not going to pass it up. My father advised to cool it. He identified the writer and demanded that an honorary court be held to decide on the merits of the case.

The court decided that this was a case of minor slander. But what was to be done? The paper could not retract as it would pose a danger to Mr Sliwinski (from German police, who would now know his relations with the Underground) and he did not want any other recompense. As usual my father had a point, and as usual his listeners were not as logical as he was.

My brother completed his officers training with some partisan groups in Chojnowski Forest, and I continued my commando training without leaving home. We had now many armaments at home, as well as a radio receiver and information distribution center. Occasionally the demolition platoon S would have a meeting in our house with all the trimmings, banging with his boots on the ceiling of the Volksdeutsch below. Why we were not arrested, I really don’t know.

These were crazy, pathetic, desperate days. So many boys died. I remember when Schiele’s name appeared on the list of people to be shot in the streets for some reprisal or other. He was a single son of the owner of the largest brewery in Poland. His parents were willing to give the whole brewery away to get him off the list. But his case was too well known. Money-grabbing as most of the official German policemen were, they would not touch this case.

While the posters with the lists of hundreds of names were appearing daily, so were the verdicts and executions of the German officials by the Underground court. Three consecutive commandants of the Warsaw Police were executed by the Underground for their crimes against the Polish population. Besides shooting hundreds of political prisoners in the streets, the German command penalized the city by a monetary retribution. Everybody had to pay a dollar, I believe. No sooner the money was gathered and placed in the bank, than the Underground stole it away.

This occasion caused me a bit of trepidation. Right after the robbery I found myself in the square surrounded by the German police and the army detachment. People in the square were being searched and subject to an arrest. I was carrying training manuals and could not be searched or would finish up in prison or worse. I was very small for my age. I decided that I might play a stupid kid. So I went to the corner of the square where three Germans were manning a machine gun, sat down on my haunches and started to investigate the machine gun. The German in charge grabbed me by the neck, gave me a kick in the rear, and told me to scram. So I ran away from the square holding my behind and crying. Other Germans had a good laugh and so had I, despite the soreness in the rear.

Normally I carried different armaments, which were used in our training. One day it happened that my brother came to inspect our squad, which was meeting in the old city. He insisted on taking the gun used in the training. I could not object to the order of my platoon commander.

As I got home, a patrol of security police was marching, moving through the square. I had to ring at the door, as the office building where we lived had a private entrance. As the patrol approached, the door opened, I was admitted and the janitor was locking the door when the glass was broken by a spray of bullets from the submachine gun. Then the door was pushed open. The janitor was spread out on the floor and I quickly turned raising my hands. I was held under the gun, searched, my papers examined, asked why I ran away ahead of the patrol.

I explained that I did not run. That this in fact was my home. Please check the papers. That this was a normal way of entering the premises. After a while they let me go. It took me a while to relax (like a couple of weeks).

And so the painful 1943 came to a close. What else happened? Alina visited us, coming from the mountains. She had changed. She was now a strong, steadfast, resolute but somewhat sad woman. I enjoyed her visit but did not have a chance to tell her that I love her.

Kazio Paprocki died. Alka and her daughter moved away somewhere.

My brother won a bottle of champagne and a coffee cake from his present girlfriend. They had a bet. He claimed that the war will not finish in 1943. All my brother’s ex-girlfriends attended the party. His friends and the squad leaders of his group: George, Henry and Bolek. This kind of fraternizing was strictly forbidden, since it might lead to too much knowledge about your co-conspirators. In my brother’s case it led to too excess of friendliness. I was excluded from the festivities and was a bit hurt. After the party my brother announced that they were getting engaged. She was a beautiful girl and a singer to boot. His friends considered her unlucky. Two of her previous boyfriends were killed in action. I think that she had a look of a tragic beauty.

My father took piano lessons. This caused me to take the piano lessons as well. Of course his were refresher lessons. He wanted to be a composer once. He loved to play with his friend who played a violin. I took the violin lessons as well. Never learned to play a darn thing. My brother’s girlfriend was a reasonable piano player and used to sing occasionally to my father’s accompaniment.

My mother sold the house at Mlociny. How else could we live? Anyway…

We sat now every evening listening to the radio. This of course like a lot of other things was punishable by death but we already “died a thousand deaths.” The news were good. Monte Casino. Landing in Normandy. Russian troops marching into eastern Poland. Suddenly London signalling for uprising by AK in the Wilno district and Lwow? Lwow was a weak point of the Polish Underground. We recalled losing a number of our friends back in 1942 and 1943. Ukrainian troops aligned with the German occupier were murdering all Poles. In fact we had a boy in our platoon whose parents were killed while he was hiding under the floor of the house.

We were sitting one day in the apartment next door. Mr and Mrs Sliwinski were waiting for a call from her sister who lived in Lwow. It finally came through. Yes, she can hear the artillery. Are German troops and others moving west? Moving? What do you mean moving? They are running like scare rabbits. Any fighting in the city? Dangerous to talk about it, more like killing… Can you move here? Much too late, we are very uneasy… Sadness.

Tense, hot summer. All at once I noticed girls and women.

I had a crush on the girl bringing milk everyday. I flirted with her and waited every day for her to appear at the door. She had beautiful dark hair and green eyes. Helped her with pouring the milk and sort of hung onto her rather than the milk, giggle, giggle… My father thought I had good taste, whatever that meant.

I managed to visit Marian at the beginning of the summer. Boy, all the girls in the neighborhood got so big and pretty. They were wearing skirts which ended half way between hip and knee, sort of nice… We put records on an old gramophone and danced. I was self conscious. Didn’t dance since the children parties. But I soon forgot about the embarrassment. I was engrossed in the daughter of our old shopkeeper. Other girls were laughing, “Why don’t you take him home, Marge?”

“You must be hot, Joe. Why don’t you and Marge take a skinny dip in the pool?” I was embarrassed again. I decided I must go dancing more often.

Warsaw was plugged up with the troops moving west. Hungarians, Roumanians, Vlasow’s Russians, Cossacks. Finally Germans as well. One could not cross the street at main arteries. Nighttime Warsaw was bombed again. Russian bombs were falling on Polish houses. Don’t they ever bomb German establishments?

My brother was trying to get us assigned to the staff battalion. In the meantime we got our duties defined in case of the uprising. I spent a lot of time examining the routes in and around Ochota. This was where I was supposed to be a runner between different combat groups. Over most of the area towered a big block (Dom Akademicki) at the main square (Plac Narutowicza). It was solidly fortified. Bunkers at all corners and a fortified penthouse. My specialty was communication. I identified the manholes through which all the wiring was going in and out from the block. It would be very difficult to get into them unless one got in before the uprising. I reported my findings.

If I had to run to the next district? Best way was along EKD railway tracks. The view was shielded from most of the buildings occupied by the Germans. There was no way to get into the water filtration station without the major battle. The uniform factory was not a significant target.

Lublin fell to the Russians. Pro-Russian government formed in Lublin. Uprising in Wilno. We will be putting a proclamation on the walls of Warsaw. A proclamation preceding a potential uprising. Do I want to be a part of the group distributing it, or do it myself? I will do it myself, Bolek. Bolek is my squad leader.

OK, here is the stuff. Some pamphlets to distribute and the stuff to put on the walls. Be careful, you are vulnerable when you are carrying the glue, try to put it down from time to time. And move fast. OK, Bolek.

My area was not far from school. I decided to walk through the side streets until I got there. I put my glue and brush in a school bag. Other stuff under my arm, so that I could drop it fast. I started with the side streets and move towards the main squares. Put some on both guardhouses leading to the infamous German area, housing Police and SS. Put it on all main advertising posts despite now moving traffic. People were gathering at the tram stations. I distributed the pamphlets moving in and out from the places utilized by public. Pinned some on German trucks waiting for the convoy to form. Jumped on the moving streetcars and threw some into the inside of the car. I was done. I rushed home, watching for anybody following, changed streetcars. Walked a couple of blocks. The doors of the office building were already open. It must have been close to seven o’clock.

My brother was coming down the stairs carrying his bike. “They have caught Henry and his group. I am going to see where they are taking them.”

I couldn’t say anything. Grief took hold of me. I knew Henry and the other guys. “When are you coming back?” I shouted.

“As soon as I find out.”

I never saw him again.

By noon I burned all the remaining literature and somehow notified the head of Radiowo (our group). His name was Zdzislaw [27]. He told me to keep away from all the others. Well, I knew that – it was the first commandment of the conspiratorial life. What could I do with arms? I just hid them deeper in the junk storage in the offices below. There was no way I could take them out easily.

For days now it was murder to get anywhere. Troops were continually moving through the main artery going east to west. Suddenly there was no more troops.

Mother was trying all possible channels to find out where did they take my brother. No luck. Even the Germans were in disarray. Russian troops were within twenty miles of Warsaw. Somebody called relatives across the river and talked to Russian tank commander instead. We tried to go to the side of the railway station where the prisoners for the concentration camps were loaded on the trains.

27. All members of the Polish Underground were known by a pseudonym rather than their proper name in order to avoid easy identification by the occupier. My brother’s commander’s pseudonym happened to be Zdzislaw.

A boy from my squad came. I did not expect him. He was my final contact, the one that had to tell me about the uprising. This was it then. Only now I knew that there was no hope to get my brother back. I was crying as I retrieved the rifle and the pistol. I wrapped them the standard way: rifle in broom sticks and brushes, to look like painter utensils and the pistol somewhat like a book. Then I changed my mind. I put the pistol in an empty paint can. Mother watched and gave me a school bag full of food. She sprayed some paint on the school bag. I think I kissed her good-bye. Never said anything to my father…

I was on a streetcar. Lots of people with all sorts of similar packages. People were giving me knowing looks. Why we were not all arrested God only knows.

I got to my destination without any problems. They let me in quickly. Somebody was watching the street already. They were very happy with what I brought. They gave my arms to combat guys who did not all have arms. I was supposed to be a runner. Very soon it turned out I was needed to watch the German factory across the street. At 4:30 pm my new squad commander brought a grenade. And that was it.