大象传媒

My father came to the war via a more circuitous route than most.
He was born in Rawa Mazowiecka in 1914,I'm unsure if it was a village or a small town. Growing up in a large family of eight.I was told that,like many of the people living there, he rarely travelled more than a few miles, going occasionally as far as Warsaw, a distance of maybe thirty or forty miles. He had little or no experience of electric lighting or motor cars. Virtually all transport was horsedrawn,far more practical for a poor mainly farming area.
He went to school until the age of eleven, leaving to help out at home,and schooling beyond that too expensive. But soon followed his brothers' footsteps, travelling to Warsaw looking for work: waiting tables, working in a greengrocers.
Joining a couple of other lads with whom he shared a room in Warsaw,started training to become a cobbler. My father was then about seventeen.
The leather work was heavily unionised and it was difficult to get a job without their involvement. My father was signed up with the union and awaited finding an agreed work. After waiting some time and with money nearly gone,decided to find it himself.He no longer saw any advantage in belonging to the union, and within a couple of weeks found a job.
After a while the union official came round looking for union dues from the workforce, and spotted my father, and knew he hadn't been allocated this job by the union.
The official was upset that someone not only got himself the work but was now refusing to pay union dues. My father felt if they could get jobs for people joining the union after he joined, and not him, they didn't deserve any of his money.
The official tried to take the last upon which he was working, which my father had bought for himself, and which would have deprived my father of any future work until he could scrape money together for a new one.
At this threat my father became desperate,scared for his future livelihood and took a swing with the small hammer he was holding, hitting the man on the hand,causing a lot of pain but I don't think any damage.
My father kept his job and the union didn't trouble him again.

By 1938,when Germany was threatening war. My father and I believe many others took comfort that the Russian Army moved towards the border,which they thought was to help protect Poland and felt betrayed as the country was carved up between the two. He ended up being in Warsaw on the German side of the new partition, and the Germans used him and many other civilians to make war repairs; filling in ditches and craters.These work details were often 8 hours - but the Germans could come to them again and force them to work another 8 or 16 hours. Any complaints fell on deaf ears - and was sometimes dangerous to one's health.
My father feared for his life and tried to persaude one brother and his younger sister Channa,with whom he still managed to have contact, to run away with him to the Russian border - which was dangerous but no more than staying in Poland at this time. He had a fiance,but I understand she had died in first days of Warsaw being taken by the Germans. Only his sister decided to go with him - the brother decided to stay feeling things would settle down: something better was bound to happen.I am aware the brother was known to have died in the ghettos.
My father and his sister made it to the no-man's land between German and Russian areas, and spent several rain drenched days,with a large number of other people and fanilies, trying to persuade the Russians to let them through.
I believe through bribery, and charity from some officials many made it to the Russian side.
My father and Channa managed to sleep on the floor of an old building with some 30 or 40 families, thier money shared to buy food from the market. As thier money ran out the Russians wanted them to work in the mines.No-one had any experience of this kind of labour,and they spoke to the local people and were told how dangerous this kind of work was. They all complained saying they wanted work in trades they knew,since many had skilled trades as tailors,doctors,shoemakers and other various occupations.
The Russians decided they wanted rid of them and moved the people East. Both my father and Channa being sent to different work camps in Siberia,there were a large spread throughout the region.
My father found it hard to discuss those eighteen months.Their journey started on cattle trucks on a train.He recalled being given salty herring for food on the journey,and when the people asked for water they hosed down.
On arrival, after several days on the trucks they first had to make and fit out thier huts to live in.The camps were gaurded by Russian political prisoners who had already finished thier sentences but had to live thier remaining years the area they had their sentences were completed.
These guards resented these newcomers who recieved red cross parcels;luxuries they would never themselves see.
Those poles who came there with soft hands because they were unused to hard physical labour,or those who had an education were considered aristocrats and were treated more harshly. The work in the camp amounted to cutting ice to be sent back for refridgeration and cutting wood.
The workers had no real shoes,or they perished while there and had to cut tyres with inlays of newspaper to cover thier feet, to allow them to walk in the snow and ice.
Food was mainly cabbage soup,occasionally a little meat in it and bread - one loaf between four.The crumbs of the bread was shared each day by one of the four in a informal rota.
The red cross parcel was my fathers saviour - he didn't smoke or care much for chocolate - and he used to barter anything he didn't want with the guards for food or favours.
I was told a man in thier work gang who was walking past some carrots growing in a field, was so hungry he picked up one of the carrots and decided to eat it straight from the ground - covered in heavy mud - and was shot.
Those who survived - something like half those that were sent there - were saved by the attack on Russia by the Germans, and the Russians joining the Allies.
Channa went to Turkistan, and managed to worked as house maid for a Russian family, staying with them til the end of the war.
My father was one of a lucky third of the survivors who went to join the Polish Army - the others were made to join the Russian Army.
After several months of recuperation and feeding his unit went through Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Palestine.
Wherever my father went in the world there were local Jewish communities, however small. Many families would be on the look out for jewish soldiers on a weekend pass,to invite them for a friday night meal.
It was in South Africa he had his appendix taken out. While recuperating a Sargeant came to him and demanded that he get his hair cut which had been growing for several months. And quite reasonably I think, he told him where to go - he was recuperating and would get a haircut before rejoining his unit. The sargeant left and came back with gardening shears to cut the hair himself - annoyed my father took his hob-nailed boot lying next to him by the bed and hit the sargeant,and was was due to be court martialled for this action when the two were sent seperate ways: the Sargeant to America and my father to guard some prisoners of war to the UK.
Now stationed in Scotland he met other Polish soldiers who had been in various different Russian work camps.
The Polish Army eventually replaced the officers of the unit with Volksdeutsch - people from a german speaking region of Poland, as they were able to speak English,Polish and German. As many of these enlisted men were Jewish and the officers Polish Catholic, tention came to the fore and there were fears amongst the men of anti-semitic statements being expressed by the officers, saying how they would treat the Jews when they got back into the war,threatening the enlisted men under their command. They talked to the chaplain,and others about this and arrangements were made for them to go AWOL - around five hundred men - over one night. Those on guard duty put down thier guns and they walked out,to awaiting transport to London where the men were picked up and protected.Some staying in the Union Jack club and various other buildings in the East End of London.
Two MP's took up thier case to parliament,I believe one was called Dreiburg.
The Polish military police had no right to enter the building where they were living.I know several did venture out,evading the Polish military police.If caught by them could have been arrested and possibly shot as deserters,whilst on the streets.The Polish military police had to be accompnied by a member of the British military to carry out these duties in London. I believe they kept the Polish military police under tight control, to prevent the situation getting out of hand.
It took over three months of negotiations by the MP's with the Polish military for them to be released from the Polish Army and to join the British Army.The first release papers had to returned due to the fact they were due to the fact that AWOL soldiers being allowed to serve in the British Army after this desertion from duty,which would have been problematical in war time Britain. The paperwork was returned and redrafted.
I understand their case was spoken about in Parliament and Churchill took up thier cause personally with the Polish representatives, but there seems to be no records of anything in Hansard or other records that I could find.
Upon their release my father joined the Pioneer Corps,I think he served at Bovington Army camp, where he and his friends served a further 7 years.
While in the army the soldiers were asked about their previous trades,and my father tried to bluff his way by stating he knew something of tailoring as he and others of the polish men had altered thier own uniforms,which now fitted them better than many an officers kit. When the captain asked him to make the officers dress jacket, he at first panicked and then with a Sargeants assistance took apart one jacket as a model and used it as a pattern to make the new one, and quickly thereafter learned to become skilled in tailoring.
When he was on kitchen duties at camp he was astounded that with all food coming in,things such as chicken offal was not being used,but immeadiately thrown away. My father and friends went back to the kitchen later on and tried to persuade the cook to give them the offal, the cook was intrigued and let them have what they wanted as long as he could see what they wanted to do.They took the offal and made a very rough homemade pate.A deal was thereby struck to share cooked the proceeds in future.
One of my fathers friends who had met up with a London Jewish nurse and was thinking about getting engaged, showed the the photograph to my father. I don't think my father initialy thought much about it.
On his weekend leaves he would travel back to the East End of London and on one occasion was invited by a local family for a meal. While waiting to be introduced he noticed a photograph on the mantelpiece, the exact copy his friend has shown to him earlier.The daughter duly arrived from her work in a nearby hospital, and they quicky fell in love and they married less thn a year later. Being war time getting food for a wedding feast was difficult - I believe they were allowed sixpence worth of meat per person,not a great deal even then.
My father was landed on the beaches on the second day of D-Day,and was later in Germany, totally unaware for another 2 years after the war that his sister had survived and by then had worked her way down to a displaced persons camp in Germany. While in Turkistan, Chana had not heard of the Hplpcaust,and only began to hear of the attrocities in Poland whilst on her journey.
Once the Red Cross had located Chana,he sent food parcels to her,and hoped she would join him in England, but she had met a man from the concenration camps who had family in America and was in the process of travelling with him.

About twenty or so of the survivors from this group of ex-army Polish friends remained a close knit community,only a few now survive being now in their nineties,and I feel that much of thier story has yet to be found.

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