The Dentist Of Auschwitz (3 page)

A few kilometers farther on we were spotted by two other German planes. Since there were no Polish airplanes to fight them off, we knew what to expect. We had good reason to be frightened. On the right of the road an embankment ran down to the river. Suddenly an army unit passed us on the left, pushing us onto the slippery, grass-covered embankment. Papa jumped down and gripped the horses’ reins close to their mouths to steady them. “Out of the way,” people shouted, jockeying for space. At that point Mama, Pola, Josek, and I were walking behind the wagon. Suddenly Papa yelled, “Untie the horse in the back!” Just as my brother did, a bomb fell into the river, and an explosion drenched the road. Our wagon was pushed further to the side, and gravity pulled the horses and wagon down into the river. The Warta parted. After a gigantic splash, the water churned, foamed, and sent our belongings and valuables to the bottom of the river. Large waves rolled away in a circle and then dissipated. Only ripples covered our property and the grave of two horses. We had nothing left except what we wore and the horse Josek held on to. The Stukas departed, and we were stunned and horrified. People who had seen what had happened streamed by. They were frightened, and everyone just wanted us out of the way.

Papa suggested that we go to his brother’s home in Uniejów. “We’ll stay there until the war is over,” he said.

Uncle Chaim, Papa’s older brother, was a very orthodox and extremely pious Jew who often neglected his family. He and his wife and nine children lived on the edge of poverty in a small apartment. Toba, his oldest daughter, had lived with us for years. But in the months before the war she had returned home.

When we arrived at Uncle Chaim’s, the apartment was empty. Like most people in Uniejów, they had realized that our army couldn’t stop the Germans. They too were probably heading eastward. We could not turn back; we had to go on. Dragging our one horse farther made no sense. We left it grazing in a field, and bedraggled, despondent, and hungry, we left Uniejów.

Outside the town we heard Papa’s name being called. It was Mr. Chmielinski. A few years back he had bought Herr Heller’s bankrupted estate. My father had had lots of dealings with him since. It was an unexpected miracle. “Wigdor! What are you doing here?” he yelled. “Is that your wife and your children? Come on, we will take you with us,” he shouted, unable to stop for us in the traffic.

His tall, spacious wagon, pulled by stalwart Belgian horses, was a stark contrast to our scanty rig. We jogged along next to it long enough for him and his son, Karol, to help us up. Then Papa explained our dilemma. Chmielinski and his wife sat in front. Mama and Papa sat on the same seat facing the rear. The rest of us sat on the bench in the rear with Karol. We are more comfortable now, I thought.

When the traffic thinned out, Chmielinski pulled the wagon off the road so the horses could feed. He hung bags filled with oats on their necks and spread hay on the ground. Then the family shared what they had with us—home-baked bread, butter, and milk—with a hospitality that was easy to accept.

The Polish soldiers that passed us along the road didn’t resemble an army anymore. “Where are the Germans?” we asked.

“Keep going, keep going,” they replied. Although it was getting dark, we took their advice. Chmielinski set the horses off at a brisk trot. With fewer army vehicles crowding the road, we made better time.

Karol was a good-humored young man of twenty-seven who had been studying at Jagiello University in Kraków. He liked to talk about Marxism, pacifism, and Hitler. The falling dusk and the rhythmic sway of the wagon made me drowsy, and before long I was sound asleep.

It didn’t seem that I had slept long when I awoke to a familiar sound. I looked to the west and saw two dots on the horizon. The roar grew louder, and the dots grew bigger, until I could see the much-feared Messerschmitt. Chmielinski turned the wagon into a field that had already been harvested, and we climbed out. People ran, frenzied, slipping, staggering, desperate, but there was no place to hide. The roar was deafening as two bombers, side by side, circled above us. Suddenly I heard the bombs whistle. I dropped to the ground. The explosion sent earth flying, leaving huge craters behind. Terrified by the noise, the horses, sniffing blood and the odor of death, rose up on their hind legs. Although we were civilians and there was nothing military in sight, the Germans kept blasting their machine guns.

Finally, simply because they were out of ammunition, they flew off. I stood up, shaken. My heart was pounding. Above a wrecked wagon and a dead horse hung a bloodied jacket with part of an arm still in it on a telephone pole. We were all scared, and we thanked God that we had survived. There had been wars before but none like this. This wasn’t war, people were saying. It was cold-blooded murder. “This is the result of the new terrible weapons,” Karol mumbled, shaking his head.

As we continued moving east, the sun rose high. It baked us in an unusual September heat. We came across dozens of dead animals and wrecked vehicles. The smell of carrion was everywhere. I could not shake off my memory of the arm dangling from that telephone pole. After a few kilometers we stopped, and when Papa tried to buy provisions for zlotys, he discovered that what was plentiful just a few days before had all but disappeared. Although our friends’ food was almost depleted, they continued to share with us what they had.

We had a few hours’ relief from the bombings, but soon the familiar roar reminded us that the Germans ruled the skies. We now knew what to expect, and when the wagon pulled off the road we swiftly ran for cover. I followed my brother into some dry and thorny bushes. We flattened ourselves, to be as obscure as possible. The planes came as before. Swooping down, they covered the area with machine-gun fire and dropped bombs. But their guns did the most damage. I checked myself after each salvo to see if I was hit and bleeding.

Not far from us, someone lay slumped over. We went over, and we could see blood trickling from his right temple. A bullet had ended his life. A woman in her middle forties came screaming, “It’s Stasiek. My God, it’s Stasiek!” Two men were behind her. There was sadness and sorrow and much sympathy, but people were afraid. All knew they could be next and tried to get away. The cries of “Stasiek!” rang in my ears for a long time.

I understood then why my parents had so feared war. It was on this day, in the middle of a Polish field under a sky filled with the rapid fire of airborne machine guns, that I lost the illusion that war was an adventure. As we continued on, we passed Lodz and drove on eastward toward Warsaw. We had decided not to stop before dawn. We knew now that daytime travel was dangerous, and from here on we would move only by night. Living off our benefactors became increasingly embarrassing. Besides, their food was nearly gone. We agreed that we would stop in the next village and again try to buy provisions.

Dark clouds hung in the sky, threatening rain, but as the sun came out they dispersed into another sunny morning. We knew it wouldn’t be long until the planes returned. We feared the next bombing, concerned that eventually we would have casualties. But we had to go on. We were near the Kampinoska barrens. The village of Kampinos was dead ahead. We stopped at the first farmhouse. No doubt, a land baron carried weight, and Mr. Chmielinski’s status was the reason for the remarkable greeting we received. The exceedingly hospitable peasant allowed us to move not only into his yard but also into his barn. He kept chattering in a dialect that was difficult for us to understand. When he realized that we could hardly follow him, he began gesturing with his hands.

His wife had just milked their cows. She came from the cowshed with their two children—a girl about eight and a boy not over fourteen. They both peeked shyly at us. The plopping of the warm milk in the woman’s pail stirred our hunger. Thanks to the bread, butter, eggs, and milk, which we bought from this family, we had our first warm meal since leaving home.

After the long night on the wagon, it was comforting to get down and stretch our legs. But before long the Stukas came again. God, will this never cease? I thought. This time, though, the planes—on their way to Warsaw, no doubt—just passed by.

The next morning we heard that the German troops had been advancing rapidly. Poland could no longer offer them any resistance. What remained of our army could not stop the advance. Rydz-Smigy’s bravado, “Not one button will we surrender!” now rung hollow indeed. For us to run any farther east seemed useless. With the farmer’s hospitality assured, we decided to stay. The German planes headed toward Warsaw no longer fired upon us. They flew back and forth as if on a regular airline route.

In the next forty-eight hours we heard rumors that the Soviets had declared war on Germany. Great Britain and France were already at war with Germany, but we wondered where they were. Was declaring war just a political ploy? It was no longer a question of whether we would fall into German hands, but when.

W
e were homesick and tired of running.
We looked forward to the day our flight would end. Kaziek, the farmer’s young son, became my daily companion, eager to show me around the village. On September 10, just before noon, we went for a walk. We had gone barely one kilometer when we heard the whine of a motorcycle. It soon became visible at the top of an incline, speeding toward us with a strange-looking soldier in the seat. Its sidecar was empty, and there was a trail of heavy smoke and dust. We were the only people on the road. We were frightened, but it was too late to run.

The motorcycle stopped. The soldier shut the engine off and paused a minute. He then raised his goggles to his forehead and asked if we spoke German.

“Yes,” I answered, lowering my eyes in fear.

“Are you afraid?”

“No,” I said clearly.

“Are many Polish soldiers here?” he asked me.

“No,” I responded.

“Have any gone by today?”

“No,” I repeated.

He had seen no one on the road. He asked us where everyone was. “Are the people afraid of us? Tell them that they need not be,” he said. Then this soldier reached into his bag and pulled out bars of chocolate and German cigarettes. As he handed them to us, he said, “This is for you,” and stared at us both. I was not prepared to see such friendliness or generosity from a German invader and hesitated. He nodded then and repeatedly urged us to accept, and we did. By then several other motorcycles had pulled over to join us. Had these soldiers not been dressed in such strange uniforms, they would have looked like the locals. Many armored vehicles and trucks approached. It was an impressive sight as the soldiers roared away on their motorcycles. We could see why the Germans had won such an easy victory over us. Unlike our army, which moved around on foot and on horseback, theirs was fully motorized.

We ran back to the farm with the news and told everyone how decent the German soldiers were. Everyone knew the Germans had arrived. If this is how they all are, we said, we won’t have much to worry about. On the road German troops were steadily passing, singing their glorious odes to the Führer.

We could run no farther. The only choice was to return as quickly as possible to our home. The flow of German tanks and vehicles moving east, however, made that impossible. Furthermore, we heard that the Germans had announced a ban on all civilian travel for the rest of the day.

The next morning we left early, and we traveled all day without incident. On the second day, however, several German officers stood on a hill, watching the streaming refugees. Women and children could pass in silence, while men had to tip their caps in wary respect. As we went by that grandstand review, an officer shouted at us in an belligerent voice, “Look at the Jews! They wanted to escape. Damned Jews, we’ll get you now!” Chmielinski saw our faces turn white. He knew the impact this had on us.

“Those bastards!” he said, bristling with outrage. “Someday we’ll get even with them.” Little did Chmielinski know that two weeks later he would be arrested. Later he would return to his family as a handful of ashes.

With heavy heart, I recalled then what our uncle Shlomo predicted when we had talked about the Germans. He shook his head, saying, “God help us all.”

It was dusty and hot when at dusk we drove off the road and stopped for the night under a stand of isolated trees. This attracted others, and we soon had a lot of company. In the rumors of the night we heard that the Soviets had been occupying eastern Poland. That eventually turned out to be true. Those who tried to flee to the Russians were turned back. “Go home,” they were told. “Before long we’ll come to you.” The 1939 “mystery agreement” between Ribbentrop and Molotov became perfectly clear now, but no one believed that those two long-time enemies would stay on good terms for long. Throughout that night, thoughts of the Nazi’s ridicule and threats kept me awake. I asked myself the same question over and over: “Are we people of a lesser god?”

Thanks to the Chmielinskis’ kindness and generosity, we arrived home safely. Although nothing had changed in our house, the Nazis had nevertheless made their authority felt in the village. On the second day of their occupation, the Germans, at random, hung ten men on the gallows, while the rest of the people had to stand by and witness it. Their aim was to discourage any resistance. One of those executed was my best friend, Szymon Trzaskala.

On September 27 Warsaw fell. In a way we were happy the war was over, or so we thought. Annexing the Corridor and Warthegau was one of the Nazis’ first territorial grabs in Poland. Otherwise, except for food shortages, little changed initially. To win the Polish people’s cooperation in repressing the Jews, Radio Warsaw fed outrageous lies to them. Someone once said, “Blatant falsehood, if repeated often, eventually seems to be the truth.” So it was.

Before long Polish publications, as well as Jewish ones, were shut down. The eight-page tabloid that appeared in their place was filled with nothing more than bulletins and stories about the persecution of Germans in Poland before the war. It was the Germans’ attempt to justify their occupation. When all our radios were confiscated, we knew only what the Germans told us. The rest of the world became a remote place.