But perhaps that day it was cloudy and rainy? There was automobile traffic. Around the barricade and into Nowowiejska it sounded wet. As if the roadway were slightly wet. That’s how I see it. And right after that, I think, a red-brick hospital. On the left. Brick facing. Because it, too, was slippery… That’s possible. But no. I see it, too, as wet. No one paid any attention to it. At all. We were too preoccupied with leaving. For the world. Whatever it might be. Not so certain. That world. But with hope. And for the time being not so distant. But it already seemed — beyond the barricade — distant. No one wanted to go beyond the distant world. That’s obvious. The Generalgouvernement — that was the prize. A great one. But people like me had no reason to count on it. Unless we were to run away somewhere, from Pruszków, on the road, from the train.
They intended to ship us off to the Reich. The Germans gave the impression of being knowledgeable, organized, sure of themselves. To the last. Impressive — I’d like to say. Such a tradition. It had been. And under Hitler, even worse. Besides which, they were shocked by our numbers. That so many of us were leaving. After all, so many had perished. So many had already been driven out before this. After the collapse of a district. A street. From various parts of Warsaw. But still — so many remained. We ourselves were amazed. That there were so many of us. Ahead of us, into infinity, a line. And that line filled the width of the street. Into infinity, because it was hard to speak of its beginning. Behind us — it was hard to speak of its end. The tail of the line walked out on October 9. In the exodus that followed our total capitulation.
From where did we get so much optimism? After all, the transports from Warsaw had been bad. Transports from the ghetto in chlorine-treated freight cars in which people died. Transports to the camps. Transports to forced labor, now that was good fortune. After all no one ever knew what or how. My uncle from Bielańska, Aunt Olimpia-Limpcia’s husband, was deported to Auschwitz on August 31. That’s why I said “that poor Stach.” Limpcia received a tin with his ashes. Perhaps we thought we had a good chance because there was such a mass of us. Like those ants in the woods in Buchnik near Jabłonna. Which I saw before the war; we were near the highway then, the woods went off to the left and somewhere there one walked a long way to the Vistula; we wake up in the morning and there’s a noise; we rush out: the Vistula had come to us, a flood; we look under our feet: a stream is flowing past, becoming wider and wider, it’s here, it’s there, closer and closer; it’s growing broader by the minute; until suddenly a great sphere comes floating, made of ants, and floats past; I don’t know if they survived, or if only the ones on the bottom didn’t, or if they all drowned gradually. They were counting on something and must have formed a ball immediately; or perhaps they pushed by turns into the center? Like those people in Miracle in Milan?[27] In one burst of sunshine very early in the morning they rush out from their freezing sleep, gather into a pile, each wants to get into the center, and they’re constantly pressing in centripetally; Ludwik just waved it off dismissively because he had experienced it without the metaphor at the Zieleniak camp — the first nights of the uprising were wet and cold and they were on bare cobblestones.
The feeling that “since there are so many of us somehow we’ll get through” can be misleading. Ever since the ghetto I don’t believe it.
So, we were walking on Nowowiejska. There was no choice. Choice was before Śniadeckich. We could have stayed with Kuba’s family in the ruins. Under the mounds of Sienna, Śliska, Pańska. But we didn’t stay. We walked. Slowly. We got there. To the intersection. With Aleje Niepodłegłości.
Here the stream of the line turned left. To Wawelska. Or rather, to Mokotów Field. And again to the right. Along the edge of the field. On Wawelska. There was a smell of carrots in the breeze. Greenery. The sun broke through. The line ahead of us dragged on and on. You could see far into the distance. For there was a distant view. On the right, burnt-out villas and the elegance of the Staszic colony with its garden plots and two-story houses in the gardens, and smaller ones. Everything empty, long ago. We were walking very slowly. We even stopped at times, because bottlenecks were created, jams. Every few yards an escort shuffled alongside us. I think they were accompanying us. Or perhaps one escort passed us on to another? They definitely were walking for several segments. These men were from the Wehrmacht. Different from the ones at the barricade. They shouted without hostility. With humor. In gibberish. They picked carrots, tomatoes. They called to the women: “Marijaa! Marijaa!” And handed them what they had picked. The Warsaw “Marijas” accepted it and ate. They said something in response in a contrived language.
At one bottleneck we began sitting down. The Wehrmacht officers allowed it, very politely. As soon as it was unblocked, they started shouting again.
“Hey, Marijaa!” And something else, about our moving on.
Wawelska cheered people up. Because Mokotów Field smelled fresh, and no bombs were falling, and those Wehrmacht officers. We could see that Germans, too, are people — as Mickiewicz’s Konrad Wallenrod said after the words “Enough vengeance already.”[28]
Perhaps I should describe more fully how Warsaw looked from the outskirts, as if in its entirety and as if we were bidding it farewell. Because that’s where Warsaw’s city limits were at that time. Mokotów was invisible. It had broken off earlier. And Mokotów Field, after hooking around protruding Grójecka and old Ochota (also smaller, shorter) went on and on, who knows where to, wide open, to Koluszki and Konstantynopol. So, Warsaw from its outer limits. Is that how we looked around then? A little. But after all, we had just left from the center of what stuck out here. And it couldn’t make an impression. I am exaggerating a bit. On one side, Mokotów Field, a lot of growing things. And no people to be seen. On the right side, streets, buildings stick up, one after the other, in a row — also everything dark and empty. But down the center, from front and back, we come. We are walking out and walking out. We sit for a while. Move on. And talk. We are all walking along the same street. Which was not so common. After Żwirki and Wigury, which at that time didn’t have many streets, we began entering the center of Ochota. Between destruction on the right and destruction on the left. There should be movement on Grójecka. But I don’t remember. The others of us from Zawisza Square — no. Arterial movement of German troops — no. I remember our route. Cutting across Grójecka. I remember the cobblestones and tram tracks under our feet. Ruins. The smell of burning. In our nostrils. In our eyes. I remember how we looked around. But I don’t remember at what. We exited into a small ruined area of Kopińska Street — what remained of small low buildings, wooden houses, carriage houses with stables. Kopińska had narrow cobblestones converging into a steep loaf-shaped slope. Onto two gutters with boards across them for a driveway into each entrance gate. It ended abruptly. Soon; that is — it went on, but already as a passageway to the Western Station; across a field with vegetable gardens, as if it were still Mokotów Field. One could see earthen mounds, platforms, cars. Freight cars. A lot of them. A curving line of people. And at the end, against the background of the platforms, a scene of mass confusion. Beyond the end, beyond the tracks and the platforms, the ruins of Wola and the rotundas and tank of the gasworks must have stuck out. I don’t know if it was then that we saw our last view of Warsaw.