1944 (Part I)

When I was eleven years old, we had to escape with my family from the bands of the UPA, who dreamed of nothing else—such were the times then—then to cut all our throats without exception. 

For almost half a year we holed up with partly Polish peasantry. In a medium sized farm house eighteen of us bedded, eleven adults plus seven children, more or less of my age. There were four of us boys and three girls, including two Jewish girls. 

This crowd came mainly from the estate of my aunt Marta and uncle Poldyk as well as the nearby woods. After two weeks mom and I separated for some time from this group and took up residence some dozen kilometers away in the county seat. 

Mom temporarily came into possession of a three-room apartment in a post-Jewish building, which was left under her care by some friends or distant relatives, who asked for some time if she wanted to reside there. 

This worked out well for my mom, because she counted on, the poor thing, that maybe I could go to some school there and interrupt finally such a long and wonderful for me era of non-learning. The town then was unlike anything else. For hundreds of years half the population was Jewish. 

When they were murdered by the Germans and suddenly disappeared, they left chaos and a total faltering of any balance. Despite everything else, the town bubbled with the life of a large base supporting a still far away, but constantly approaching, front. 

On the streets non-stop in both directions moved columns of different military vehicles. Several times a day at the nearby rail depot came from the East trains full of injured German soldiers, who were temporarily located in a fairly large local hospital as well as in several other larger buildings repurposed for this aim. 

As soon as the injured were capable of further transport, they were immediately sent to the West, from where constantly went East transports with army and heavy military equipment. Around town hung a stable of German army Krankenschwester, in characteristically short feldgrau smocks, and groups in the Organisation Todt uniform. 

Aside from the Germans there were also some Romanians, Hungarians, Kalmyks in German uniforms, Cossack horse riders, Tartars, Caucasian and far Caucasian tribes. 

Kilometers long columns of strange horse-drawn vehicles, which in panicked fear ran away before the Red Army, different unfortunate citizens of the Soviet Union and their families, armed to the teeth, these who absent-mindedly and blithely turned their backs on Stalin and weaved collaboration with Hitler, herds of horses spurned West by Asians armed with Schmeissers. 

The scenes were often just like from the Trilogy, which Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote during the long period of partition about the more glorious seventeenth century, and because of my inadequacy in printed text, caused of course because of my non-learning, systematically every evening it was read out loud to me by my poor mother. 

In this time I felt like Lieutenant Skrzetuski, the hero of the first book, but I was stressed by one certain very vital detail, specifically this, that to the charm of the Lieutenant’s woman, Princess Helen, I decidedly preferred the charm of Olenka Billewiczówna, who was with Andrzej Kmicic, the hero of the second book, and in my subconscious I considered this very immoral, and even perverse. 

The two cinema theaters that worked non-stop showed for the whole crowd some idiotic German comedies, which I liked a lot. I spent a lot of time in the theater, and the famous occupation slogan ONLY SWINES SIT IN THE CINEMAS, AND POLES IN AUSCHWITZ in this whole frontline mess on account of some oversight never got here and I heard it for the first time already after the war. 

And the constantly repeated from lip to lip local sensations, which I, eavesdropping, when only the adults discussed something interesting, noted in my memory. And here some guy ran down the street, chasing someone or running away from someone, alongside him very quickly rode an army truck, from which protruded something sharp, some scythe or other gigantic sharper thing. The runner wasn’t paying attention and quite simply in motion the thing sharply cut his head off. The blood spouted out, the severed head skipped down the cobblestones, and he already without the head ran on, still another some fifty meters. 

Or on one of the not too many intersections, together with the zugmaschine pulling it a giant cannon overturned, almost as large as the famous culverin, which Andrzej Kmicic destroyed, belonging to the Swedes at Czestochowa. 

Or somewhere in the outer limits of town was stationed some division of Własow collaborators. When in the evening they were already good and drunk and began to sing those Russian songs and dance their Russian dances, then from under the floorboards came out forty unlucky Jews hiding there, who hearing Russian song and dance were convinced that the Red Army was already here. 

Then the Własows brought several shovels and ordered the men to dig a considerable bottom, while they themselves through the entire night, abusing and injuring them, entertained themselves with the younger Jewish women. When almost at morning the bottom was ready, they stood there before this entire crowd and spraying with machine carabine killed them to the last one. 

Or nearby was shot down a Soviet scout plane, the so called Kukuruznik. 

Or some Hungarian formation got into a dogfight with some Rumanian formation. 

Or a German Dornier bomber returning from its war mission, injured and smoky, couldn’t fly its way to the nearest airfield and crashed into the ground, destroying several country hovels and killing a dozen residents. 

Or some Ukrainian girl in a nook in one of the two cinemas during a séance with a German enlisted man of the rank Feldwebel, and on and on. 

Each day brought something new, because constantly something interesting was happening. For now luckily there was no discussion of any school, indeed there was none then, because any buildings or space suitable for this was occupied by the army. 

Quite quickly I befriended several of my peers, with whom in a state of maximum ecstasy I wandered around the town and neighboring areas. We played wonderfully. Near our building, one of the bigger in town, there was a sizeable storage barrack, guarded by an armed with a Russian carabine Kalmyk in a German uniform. In this storage the Germans, apparently since June of the year 1941, kept a strange war machine left by the escaping in fearful speed Soviets. 

We constantly attempted to get in there, which we usually were able to do, because the guard for a pack of cigarettes or even just a few of them let us inside and turned a blind eye on our antics. In the barrack were treasures. 

Stacks of Russian gas masks, some Soviet field telephones and large spools of cable, which could be worn on the back, pieces of uniform, as I remember, mainly two types of hats, formal with a red star and bright amaranthine rims and the so-called budenovka, also with a large red star. 

Many large, round, flat, brass boxes, containing mostly Soviet propaganda films, very useful for making smoke skyrockets, which after lighting up and stomping on the flame let out very thick, white, stinking smoke. 

There were not really any weapons there, but once I tried with a friend to pull home a CKM MAXIM, of course on wheels, of course with a shield and wagon, but unfortunately we were met on the road by my mother and had to with this maxim worm our way back to the barrack. 

My mom continued to read to me in the evening from the Trilogy, and I uninterruptedly felt like Lieutenant Skrzetuski, constantly lusting for Olenka Billewiczówna, with whom I became acquainted earlier, because DELUGE, the second book, on account of some technical difficulty, not sticking to the chronology, my mother read to me first. 

It also occurred to me that what kind of Lieutenant Skrzetuski could I be without my own horse? So first for a few days I nagged my mother about purchasing one, and when I decide that nothing would come of this, I set out to work on my own.