大象传媒

The following story appears courtesy of and with thanks to Marushka (Maria) and Zygmunt Skarbek-Kruszewski and George (Jurek) Zygmunt Skarbek.

October, 1941. Trees bare of leaves, cold winds whirling leaves high, grey clouds over the rusty coloured bare fields. Our white shutters were rattling against the walls. I returned to the farm. Today I spent ploughing all day - it was cold and the wind penetrating. My feet were tired after a whole day of walking behind the plough. With pleasure, I returned home to sit down on a comfortable couch in front of the open fire while my mother prepared dinner by the light of a flickering kerosene lamp. My Jurek was sitting on the carpet among his toys. The wooden rabbit and the car without its wheels did not interest him any more. He was over a year old and loved chewing his big toe which he preferred to his old dummy. Marushka was ill and so was in Kaunas with her parents.
Next morning the cold wind was still blowing. I had to go to Kaunas to deliver my requisition as ordered by the Germans. I was sitting on wheat bags, wrapped in a fur coat. I had to hurry and was whipping the horses as the wheat contributions were accepted only until 2 p.m. in the suburb, Sloboda, behind the river. I had to pass the so-called small ghetto. Behind its barbed wires it was quite empty. Boards were nailed over the broken windows and doors. In the empty street of the dead suburb only the wind was howling. I remember how Marushka and her friend, Karaliene, were able to rescue some of the Jewish children. The despairing mothers were throwing their little children over the fence to be picked up by Marushka and her friend. They were trying to save some life - some uncertain life of the orphans but still life. Marushka and her friend were finding places between the Aryan families which did adopt them later on. There were no more Jews behind the barbed wires. I hurried my horses along, wishing to leave behind me this nightmarish suburb as quickly as possible. After delivering the wheat, I drove through the city to see Marushka. On the walls of some houses and on posts I saw some placards. I stopped the cart and, pushing myself through a crowd of people, started to read. It was a new order by the German occupational forces. This order was concerned with Poles, previous Polish citizens and their families, as well as Russian civilians who had stayed in Lithuania after the arrival of the German Army. All the aforementioned had to leave their present place of abode and, within three days from the date of this order, had to move to Sloboda suburb, to the small ghetto vacated by the Jews. This order was signed by the General Commissar and dated 16th October, 1941.
That meant ghetto for the Poles. I could still see those empty, broken-down wooden houses in Sloboda. I began to shiver. The Jews vacated the place for us. Would our future be the same as theirs?
All Poles were greatly alarmed. At home the atmosphere was very depressing. 鈥淲hat to do?鈥� Everyone was asking. There were still many thousands of us in this country. Nobody had any intention of going to the ghetto. Better misery and quick death than to be behind barbed wires in a ghetto, waiting for certain death. The very thought of the ghetto filled one with horror. The decision not to go was quite definite and unanimous. The results of this decision were definite beyond all expectations.
After three days when Mr. Jordan arrived before the ghetto to satiate his eyes with the new conquest, there was not even one Pole there. Only ten poor Soviets took up residence in one small house on the edge of the ghetto. All the other houses were quite empty. The Poles simply left Kaunas, this town of grim ghettos, and dispersed in all directions into the country.
I had to save Marushka who was ill, and my son Jurek. Because before the war I was a Polish citizen, they would have to go to the ghetto as Marushka had committed the crime of marrying a Polish citizen. Thanks to the law, I found a way out of it. Marushka and I got a divorce - she could keep our son and had to take her maiden name again. I hid in the country. Many Poles followed my example but some fled to Wilno, maintaining that, should the Germans order people to the ghetto, the whole town would become one big ghetto.
Some took to the roads, tracking along small lanes, sometimes getting a lift or, like tramps, finding sleeping accommodation in empty freight trains and following the railway tracks, looking for some lucky break. Here in Kaunas everything was against them. Just the thought of the ghetto filled one with horror. The evacuees were like pilgrims, searching for human rights in this world. Would they find it in their own country, their country trodden down and suppressed by war? Even they doubted it.

BELLUM VOBISCUM

Winter was approaching. A hard, ominous winter of 1941-1942.
The bare soil, not yet covered by snow, became hard as rock. Even the small sprigs were covered with white frost and a greyish frost hung in the air.
I was bringing milk to Kaunas, peddling my pushbike vigorously from Karmelowo where I was living in the house with the white shutters, hiding from the Germans. My breathing was becoming laborious, my eyelashes and eyebrows were covered with hoarfrost. The highway led past empty paddocks, the telephone wires were ringing hollowly and the frost was tightening its forceps. My hands were becoming blue from the cold. On the misty highway a long column of Soviet war prisoners appeared. They walked bent, their heads pulled as far as possible into their collars of their trench coats. On their shoulders were visible the big letters SU. SU. SU. (short for Soviet Union). The column progressed slowly and tended to stretch out more and more, never ending with those who already were weak. They just shuffled their legs. Their grey faces were very thin, their eyes deep and hollow. Some of these human skulls covered with skin were wrapped in rags, under which the wounds might heal. It seemed that some of these prisoners would be unable to reach their camps behind wires. They were dragged by their mates, their heads hanging down, their feet dangling along. They were slow and lagging behind. The impatient German soldiers were prodding them along with the butts of their rifles. Why should they hurry? Where to? Death would find them anywhere - in the labour camps, behind the barbed wires, in barracks erected quickly from thin planks, and on the earthen floor among dirt, lice and various infections ... and in the queue to the kitchen with its pots of frozen potatoes and rotted cabbages ... and there in the streets being used as horsepower, dragging heavy cartloads, as there were more prisoners than horses. Death was lurking where they had to shovel the snow away, where the frost was coagulating the blood of the starving S.U....SU...SU..., living skeletons, chopping trees in the forests or digging peat in frozen swamps. Everywhere! Everywhere! ... Where the hundred thousand humans could be disgorged from the Front. Why should one care about these humans? Should they perish, others would take their place. Victory was assured. The Fuehrer's army was at the gates of Moscow. In eight weeks the war would be finished. Conventions and humanitarianism were only for declaration in the Palace of the League of Nations. In the 'New Europe' this herd of prisoners of war would be looked after by the 'Arbeitsartit' (Employment Office).
It was a terrible winter for the people with the SU... SU... SU... stamped on their backs. They were branded like cattle taken for slaughter. The dead ones were grabbed by their legs and thrown into a common ditch. The sick ones were allowed to stay on their wooden bunks to wait for death.
BELLUM VOBISCUM
January, 1942.
General 'FROST' became the victorious Chief Commander of the Soviet Army.
The snow became hard, the water frozen and like rock on the rivers. The air looked grey - it seemed that at any moment it would get hard too, that it would turn to ice.
I was on the railway station. On the first platform stood a long transport. The engine was covered with ice but there were clouds of white steam from the engine. Behind the engine were freight cars with a most unusual load. The Fuehrer's victorious soldiers, suffering severe frostbite, were lying on the floors. Bandaged soldiers covered with blankets, shawls, rags and torn Russian army coats, were lying on the floors of the freight train. They were untouched by enemy bullets, not even scratched by shrapnel. They were the victims of 'General Frost', the enemy without mercy who started his offensive in January, armed with the most powerful weapon. This weapon was the freezing air. At the Front the mercury in the thermometers was still contracting, the silver column was going down the minus Celsius scale 30 .. 35 .. 45鈥�
'General Frost' was tightening his pincers without mercy. His wind was chasing the transports, his snow massed on the railway lines, the waiting engines were covered with ice and the soldiers were freezing in the unheated wagons.
The white general took the side of the Red Army. Now he was not only the general, but Marshal Frost, stopping the attack on Moscow, halting the Fuehrer's offensive. Already in 1812 he had struck down Napoleon's army at the same Moscow gates. Now he intended to repeat the debacle a second time.
The transport with the frostbitten soldiers of the twentieth century's Napoleon was standing a long time at the platform in Kaunas railway station. Those who could climbed to the platform, using sticks and dragging their swollen legs, covered in rags. They could not wear boots. Sisters from the Red Cross were serving hot coffee. Some had to be fed by spoon like helpless children. They could not manage by themselves as, instead of arms, they had only two useless stumps frozen up to the elbows. There were also some who could not drink at all. Their faces were too stiff and they looked ghastly.
With a piercing whistle and screeching of brakes, a new transport appeared from the tunnel. The engine was covered with a shield of ice, the cars were covered with stiff, frozen snow and the Red Cross signs covered with white hoarfrost. It surely was a transport of the White Cross as the victims were cut down in a bloodless battle by the white enemy. At last thousands of frost-bitten soldiers were returning to the Fatherland, to their home towns and their hospitals, to wait there for amputation of their limbs which they were still dragging with them. They were hoping for a miracle but the gangrene was spreading in the badly frost-bitten and neglected limbs. In the Fatherland the hospitals were getting ready to receive them.

BELLUM VOBISCUM

A young shepherd arrived, panting. "Sir, the Germans are digging up corpses."
"Where?"
"There, in the woods where the grave is."
I pushed the scythe into the field, put my whetstone alongside the pitcher with water and went across the river to the woody hill in the direction indicated. I saw a group of people and three white coffins made from planks. I came nearer; the smell was putrid. Two Russian war prisoners covered with aprons and wearing long rubber gloves, were carefully removing a large rag from the bottom of the pit. A few German soldiers were standing nearby supervising the exhumation. One of them was making some notes. A few young shepherds watched, full of curiosity. When the Soviet prisoners removed the sheet from the pit we could see three German soldiers. They were lying huddled together like sleeping brothers. One, with his outstretched arms, hugged both the others. In the dry sand of this hill their bodies were fairly well preserved considering that a year had passed since shells from a Soviet tank had ended their lives. The broken fir stump was still there. They had been sitting under this fir tree on this, their fatal date - 27th June, 1941. I remembered the shelling very well as it happened barely 200 metres from our house. Our house had trembled, the windows shook and a large dust cloud rose over the hill. Only later did I see the new grave and the broken fir tree. On the ground remained the metal helmet with holes, a few shell fragments and a dirty notebook. I read his name: Obergefreiter Stanislaus Kuzzawa from Selesia. On the last page was a short note; 27.6.41. In the woods near Kauen, Soviet tanks are shooting from the village .... These were his last notes. The most important fact he was unable to note in his diary was that in a few seconds he would be dead. He, a Pole on Lithuania's soil, fighting for the ideals of the aggressive German. Now he was lying in his grave - I did not know which body was his; the one with the smashed skull, the one without legs, or the one holding his comrades in his arms. Their faces had no expression, stiff in a deathly grin.
Many of these graves marked the roads of Hitler's war up to the Volga, the Krim vineyards, reaching even the far hills of the Kaukas. The Fuehrer was at the peak of his victory. He gave orders that graves far behind the Front should be opened and his soldiers returned to their native soil, the soil on which they grew up for the 'Fuehrer, Volk and Vaterland'. They were to be buried near the battlefields only as a temporary measure.
Crosses topped with German helmets were standing guard on the conquered lands. The living went forward to conquer new lands as per the Fuehrer's orders. The victorious army advanced through the Volga steppes, through sandy Libia and climbed the hills of the wild Kaukas.
Victory, Victory - the words of the paean were on the stages and on screens with a background of thousands of planes and tanks and innumerable columns of captured prisoners. The song was echoed by the marching army. The German radio repeated it in their news: "Special announcement. Krasnodar has been taken, Majkop is taken. The enemy suffered great material losses.. Thousands of war prisoners have been taken ... Tobruk has fallen .. Solum has fallen ... Marshal Rommel is standing with his unconquerable army at the frontier of Egypt ..." and, finally, among these names marking the triumphal march of the Fuehrer we heard the two: STALINGRAD - and EL ALAMEIN.
BELLUM VOBISCUM

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'This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by 大象传媒 Radio Merseyside鈥檚 People鈥檚 War team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with his / her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

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