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.

Five years of war had branded Warsaw's face, or rather her two faces. Today Warsaw had certainly two faces and this was her Signum Temporis. We saw busy streets, undamaged houses, shops full of attractive goods, old firms, old advertisements. In the corner newsstand was the same old invalid selling 'Kurier Warszawski'.
We were walking along, remembering old times. Marushka was pointing to the house where she used to live whilst studying in Warsaw. Quite suddenly the view changed - we entered a field of ruins. A whole street block was gone. A desert of bricks and rubble, overgrown with grass. Here and there dark, empty holes; remnants from old basements looked like eye sockets of a rotting skull. Between the rubble goats were grazing, climbing nimbly over heaps of bricks. Next was a street full of people, trams and cars. Then again, on Marshalkowska Street, children were sunbaking and swimming in a tank which had been built between the ruins to fight the fires. Children were jumping into the water from the gatepost of a house which long ago lay in ruins. On the opposite side of the street once again an undamaged fragment of old Warsaw. It was like this everywhere - a city between ruins, and ruins between the city.
We also saw other, more strange faces of Warsaw. We saw barbed wire entanglements sometimes surrounding a single house, sometimes squares and also whole suburbs. We saw sandbags piled high along walls and, poking through small holes, were the ugly ends of rifles protecting the entry. A town existing between fortresses. Where was the enemy hiding in a town long ago captured? The people going through streets seemed to disregard the barbed wire. They talked animatedly and walked energetically.
On the streets of Warsaw were rickshaws drawn by push-bikes. The cabmen of the fiacre looked down on the Japanese way of commuting. Where was the enemy? One could not see him.
The next side street was blocked by barbed wire with only enough space left for a tram to pass. Soldiers were on guard - soldiers in steel helmets, their rifles at the ready, were looking full of distrust at the tram covered with people hanging on to it. They watched that none of the transit passengers could leave. People on the tram were going by 'transit' through this German 'ghetto'. It was like a dead town. Only rarely some German female with a shopping basket ventured out. The tram continued through the famous Aleja Szucha - the head offices of the infamous Gestapo. Belveder, Botanical Gardens, Aleja Ujazdowska were torn out of Warsaw. We, the Poles, were only allowed to look through a moving tram at the trees and lawns in the beautiful parks of Warsaw. On the other side of the street lived the 'Herrenvolk' (master race) in charming little palaces and villas.
At last the barbed wire finished and, at the next stop, most of the passengers left the tram, joining the busy traffic. Even the pigeons cooed happily on the place of 'Trzech Kryzy', fluttering down from the roofs of the surrounding buildings onto the steps of the church. This face of Warsaw seemed pleasant and friendly. We went to a cafe which was very crowded. Artists from the theatre were employed as waitresses and former waitresses were sitting at the tables, escorted by men in very well-tailored suits. Some men with bulging briefcases were discussing something leaning close to each other. Some women in long ago outdated hats and shabby coats were looking around carefully. They were the people of Warsaw's war years who fought for her during the September days of 1939. Today the city was being crushed by the occupants.
Soon we learned how to recognise these people who were careful and distrustful.
Those two gentlemen with bulging briefcases were certainly in possession of documents stating that they were working for the army and were indispensable but their briefcases were packed with goods like saccharine, tobacco, ladies' underwear. Black marketing was blooming in Warsaw. Everyone was trading with anything and anywhere. Employees, judges, postmen, railwaymen, doctors, solicitors, janitors and paper boys. In a cafe one could buy ladies stockings, combs, silken lingerie; in the gates of houses one could buy shoes and clothing. Food was brought to houses. For money one could purchase anything - tropical fruit, Russian caviar, a hundredweight of butter or machine guns, whole trainloads of coal from Selosia which were intended for the east. During our stay in Warsaw there appeared on the black market rice of American origin. U.N.R.R.A. had sent it from America to East Poland which was occupied by the Soviet Army, for distribution amongst the Poles. This rice in some mysterious way crossed the Front and appeared on the Warsaw black market. Ration tickets, by which the Germans tried to curb Warsaw's consumption, played only a small part.
The vigorous speculation opened the doors wide for trading. All German orders, round-ups, executions were to no avail. Trade continued to blossom. German price control offices were drowned under all their orders, announcements and records. To us, arriving from the East where we were used to ration tickets which covered everything beginning with baby nappies and finishing with a coffin, these conditions seemed exotic. Shop windows displayed tempting foods; oranges, halwas, pure cream ice-cream. We were unable to resist. Part of our financial reserves, given to us by Granny, such as golden earrings and a brooch with semiprecious stones, ended up on the very sensitive scales of a jeweller. We received a few thousand zloty and, feeling very rich, invited our friend for dinner to the restaurant 'Pod Bulkietem'. Some herring, a pork steak and a few glasses of vodka. For dessert, on a silver salver, the bill of 1,000 zloty. This shook us. (It was the equivalent of the golden earrings). Granny's earrings disappeared into the pocket of the waiter. We decided to live more frugally. Warsaw asked a high price for goods which, by some detours and lanes, carried on backs of hucksters, by railwaymen, army tourists, hidden amongst the wood in the carts of peasants, arrived in Warsaw to be sold by many middlemen. These middlemen made a fortune as they were selling the most valued goods - food. They were buying the cheapest goods: furniture, good pictures and villas. Those were the principles of war economy and her upside-down theory of prices. For a few kilos of bacon fat one could buy a valuable picture. Again the two faces of Warsaw. Nightlife with cabarets, elegant restaurants, secret gambling houses and a multitude of people always hungry looking for new queues in food stores with ration cards in their hands. People whose main diet was a watery soup supplied by cheap eating places. Their houses were bare, their furniture sold. To them war was a curse and disaster. They were waiting for the war to end but others wished war to continue.
During our first days in Warsaw the paper boys were selling sensational news. Hitler was assassinated! People were grabbing the newspapers. The price for 'Kurier Warszawski' reached 30 zloty (a price never reached before even on the black market) and the price was gladly paid for such news. Hope surged up for a short while. Hitler was war, and war was Hitler.
The Kurier wrote: "A group of stupid and ambitious officers tried to kill Adolf Hitler ... miraculously the Fuehrer was spared ... under the providence ... the nation ... The Reich is peaceful."
The people of Warsaw were reading, shaking their heads and rushing home to read the secret London bulletin that was passed from hand to hand. The newsletter came from the underground and was brought to houses in shopping baskets covered by foodstuffs. The delivery was usually made by old ladies, children and old men. In these bulletins Warsaw was seeking the truth and sometimes an elusive hope. This time the hope was delusive. The bulletin was writing about riots in Germany, about Prussian regiments marching towards Berlin, about the new government organised by the authors of the attempt. Everyone tried to read the newsletter and listen to the prohibited London radio. After a few days the disillusioned Warsawers decided that the 'New Kurier' was right - it really was a group of stupid officers! They did not dispose of Hitler but they themselves were marched against a wall and shot.
Not only the town and people had their special expression, but also the daily Press. The official papers were the 'New Kurier Warszawski', 'Warschauer Zeitung', 'Signal' and 'Krakauer Zeitung'. They were displayed in cafes, at hairdressers and in waiting rooms of doctors. They were gladly used by shopkeepers for wrapping. These papers were hanging quite legally in public toilets as proper toilet paper was not available.
The Press was flowing by the underground of the fighting Warsaw, a Press much alive and full of passion, formulating new political thoughts. London was sending its bulletins and Moscow its red armies. The front lines came slowly nearer, the time started to get ripe. More signs appeared on the walls. Written by unseen hands - "Poland will win,鈥� "Out with Invaders,鈥� "Long Live the Polish National Army" (Armies Krajowa - A.K.) Between all these were large dark shapes on the walls of a bent, listening man with a hat, crossed through by a yellow question mark - a sign of suspicion, distrust and anxiety. "The enemy is listening". It stood as a watchword for the enemy as well as for us.
The time of the bloody terror seemed to have passed. We did arrive in Warsaw when the regime became milder. Herr Frank (General Governor for Occupied Poland) was trying to draw the Poles on his side against the approaching Red Army coming from the east. The announcements of shot hostages disappeared from the walls. The transports to extermination camps of Auschwitz, Treblanka and Maidanek were not as numerous as before and even the round-ups in the streets were less frequent. Herr Frank was even speaking sweetly to the Polish peasant. But time was running out. Siedlce, Malkinie, Garwolin were re-taken. Refugees from the Front started arriving. Food stores were besieged and rising prices did not matter. Warsaw was buying 'just in case'. Under Zelazna Brama crowds of people buying, discussing and joking, full of good hopes. Around the stalls of the previous large market place stood German soldiers looking distrustful and gloomy at the masses of people, separated from them by barbed wire. The market halls were now being used as army garages. Next to them were the ruins of the ghetto with its narrow, empty streets. Empty and quiet, a cemetery of three hundred thousand slaughtered Jews. We looked with futile horror at this dead panorama of one of the most tragic events of war-torn Europe. I had to think back to five years ago when it was full of life here, lives of people connected by blood ties, temperaments and demands. Life was pulsating in the yards covered with playing children, in the shops, gates and stalls, bustling life was flowing into streets and halls ... and now this silence, this gloomy, eerie and majestic stillness - 300,000 dead.
"Ausrotten" (exterminate) were the words in the gospel of 'Mein Kampf'. "Ausrotten,鈥� his disciples were calling.
The drunken followers of the Fuehrer started their war of annihilation. They battered the brains of women and old men, they crushed the children with their boots, they guzzled their vodka and continued crushing Jewish skulls. This is what the Fuehrer ordered for the good of mankind, for the good of the New Europe.
The order was obeyed. Reeking of blood and vodka, his servants left the smouldering ruins. Smoke from the dying ghetto covered with legends this bit of damned soil, rumours that there, under the ruins of the houses, were somewhere still living ghosts. The Warsaw ghetto was slowly dying away. The soil, nourished with blood, was showing signs of sprouting weed.
I tore my eyes away from the empty streets. A few steps further on streets were seething with life. The square near Zelazna Brama was crowded. The traders were Aryans - they had inherited the empty stalls from the dead.
On the way home we were stopped by an air raid. People disappeared from the streets, sheltering in basements - only empty trams were left. Far away one could hear the noise of flight squadrons and anti-air raid guns. Soviet planes circled over the city, diving towards singled-out targets like bloodthirsty hawks. Today bombs were falling on Bielany. A few small bombs ruined the library in Nowy Swiat.
Soviet air raids became more frequent. One of them bombed out many holiday houses near Otwock.
Although July was still very hot, people started to return from their holidays. They brought news from the approaching Front. They told us that on the far outskirts of Warsaw one could even hear the Soviet cannons. The places near Warsaw mentioned were Lachew, Zukow, Minsk Mazowiecki. Excitement ran high. It was remarkable that no-one was leaving Warsaw. Just the opposite - those who could were coming back under her wings.
Warsaw - she will defend us, the enemy is scheming, the unknown is coming, Warsaw will protect us.

颁辞苍迟颈苍耻别诲鈥︹赌�
'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.'

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.