As for those chair-o-planes, I heard that there were people who specially swung on them in order to watch what was happening in the ghetto.
Now we were the ones who were cut off, not admired. But at least we had the hope of the front. The Germans were defeated. Formally. In the west, the offensive had been going on since June. And for a longer time in the east. But the partisans had badly miscalculated the Germans’ strength. On the other side of the Vistula. They had thought before the outbreak of the uprising that only a remnant remained. But it turned out that several divisions (nine?) remained. Yes. And it was of no use at all that they were losing. Here they were strong.
August first, a bloody day,
The people of Warsaw arose
………………………
……………………… for
Germans were already at every door,
Dadada dada da…
I can’t remember the words. I’m thinking of that song about the uprising, naive, but… Later it went like this:
Such despair unfolds in one’s heart,
There is nothing with which to fight.
A girl hurls a bottle at a tank
To pay them back
For the destroyed, razed capital,
For…
Again, the question of the front. We still had hope. But there were already those cutoff places, partitions: into Żoliborz, Mokotów, Powiśle, Śródmieście, Stare Miasto.
Bugaj Street runs from the bridge beneath the castle, below Stare Miasto, to Mostowa Street. Rybaki Street runs from Mostowa all the way to the Mint (Mennica or Wytwórnia), that is, to Sanguszko.
The challenge was to hold the Mint. (Teik was there. And there were pitched battles there for entire days and nights for every room, every hallway.) And for the depot on Sierakowska Street, near the Gdańsk Station. In order to break through across the viaduct, the railroad track, to Żoliborz. The attacks were coordinated from two positions (Żoliborz and Starówka).
It didn’t help. We lost “no-man’s-land,” the ghetto. We lost the depot, one piece of Muranów after another. The Mint was still being defended. That was the most famous stronghold in our Stare Miasto redoubt.
Yes. Something else about this endurance. This obstinacy. Why mince words: it was forced on us. It was supposedly well-known that the Hitlerites were over there, on the other side of the Vistula, the Russians close by, the partisans here, and over there in the west the Americans, the English. The Allies. But it was all simply a wound-up machine, set racing into unconsciousness. Those fronts. And this uprising. Here. What was there to appeal to? That big tin can on Wybrzeże, on the viaduct, with its tangle of barbed wire? That abstraction? Because it was just a tin can and an abstraction. Farther along — we all know it — the skull insignia, the helmets—Raus! Raus! — the shouts, the yelling. The Hitlerites, the terror, we were afraid that they might leap out of one of those tanks, attack us, start hurling grenades into the cellars. Because that’s how it was. Everywhere. I always imagined those rumblings, the stamping feet, the shouts of “Raus,” “Hände hoch,” and crash! — a grenade, a string of them, into an entryway. A flash. Sparks. Crash! And that it might hit something. Or perhaps a pillar would act as a shield. We were especially afraid during our walks through those shelters, from one to the other, that we might suddenly see on a wall the shadows of those big helmets, at a slant, enlarged.
So there was that dread, that terror. And one wanted neither their sudden appearance, nor an unknown way out of the situation, nor any contact. With them. They weren’t seen, after all, people hadn’t seen them. All the more terrifying an abstraction. But the viaduct. Because once again, it seems, they announced that people should surrender, and who knows how many women went out with white kerchiefs, but there was something wrong about that viaduct. Apparently with quite a few. The planes, the shells — these were the typical signs of the machine. When and where in this place — in addition — in this uproar, cauldron, trap — could one decide anything, about oneself? Surrender with what? to whom? how? which way? when?
Ludwik, weeping and laughing, tells the story of 1939, the bombardment, the inferno, the crowds, he can’t control himself any longer, even here amidst these bombs:
weee-oooo
weee-oooooo
weee-oooooooo
Suddenly the women are bellowing, one of them, seated on her bundles, comes up with this: “Let’s surrender!”
And the others follow: “Let’s surrender!”
And the whole shelter repeats: “That’s right! surrender!”
But here there is nothing, only:
wee-ooo
wee-ooooo
wee-ooooo
Then the women, the crowd, the shelter keep it up: “So, let’s surrender!”
But nothing came of it.
Let us return to the uprising. An Aktion. Night. Freta Street. Saint Jacek’s. Rather, the Dominicans. August 17. It is Saint Jacek’s Day, exactly. And Saint Miron’s, too. But in 1922 the calendar had Miron M.B. (Martyred Bishop) — because Nanka chose my name, Miron, from the calendar. But it was always the name day of Jacek and Julianna.
There was no Church of the Byzantine Saint Miron the Martyred Bishop (Jacek Odrowąż was Polish). On this day something moved me to go outside and trudge up the hill. There. As if. And I did. At the best possible moment. Perhaps it was then that those bullets were flying about Freta Street? Or maybe not then. I was collecting the swirling, loose pages of Titchener’s Psychology from a demolished bookstore. The bullets were whizzing around my left ear, my right ear, and I bent down seventeen times, because that is how many double pages I collected. To read in the cellar. They came in handy. August 17—this I’m sure of — I entered the Church of Saint Jacek. I stood there. I looked around. It was empty. But already there were loud booms. From the shells. Churches, especially those large ones, are disastrous. Echoes resound in them. Like nowhere else. So there were booms and more booms. With echoes. But somehow it was too much. The echoes were already somewhere behind the wall. They were already landing right beside me. Now the church was shaking. Dust was swirling. Suddenly a splash; then it flared up, flew through the wall, into the center of the presbytery. So that a hole was blown right through the upper cornice, with the plaster of the shattered corbel sifting down. A dry taste in my mouth. I ran out. Why not? And then suddenly I could hear the winding up of the “wardrobe”:
krra… krra… krra…
krra… krra… krra…
krra… krra… krra…
In an instant I’m in a doorway with a crowd. A man with a briefcase. The door to the drugstore. Now with the crowd, on the steps. Now it begins to hurl us, to whirl us. And since we dashed upstairs to the first floor instead of downstairs there was even more dread, more cowering; no one knew what the rocking and our being hurled about really was. The wardrobes had this peculiarity, that not only did they rip and snatch up to the height of four stories but they also stupefied.
So that’s what my name day was like. Because I went home right after that. For boiled pasta. I think Swen’s mother congratulated me, however. She used to grind out that pasta. Like all the women. The cellars. Without a break. Also little dumplings, or “rosary beads.” The one or the other — in tiny pieces. A similar technique.