There are sidings. Shouts. Movement. Masses of people and things, crowded together. We are not far from the platforms. We push our way through very slowly. At the end of Kopińska, we can suddenly see a group of Poles. They are carrying shovels, sacks, bags, onions, tomatoes, potatoes. Near us are Krauts. Railway workers. Platform attendants. Also Krauts. We draw even with the Poles, the ones who were digging. Only one German is guarding them, and not very strictly at that. The Poles are carrying their sacks on their backs, their shovels in their right hands. I look: among them is an acquaintance of mine. I walk up to him. It works. All around there’s turmoil. Here — indifference. My acquaintance greets me. I ask him what they’re doing here. They have been coming here from Pruszków for several days already to dig potatoes. I ask: Wouldn’t it be possible to join them. He gives me his shovel immediately.
“Try it, maybe you’ll pass.”
I take the shovel in my hand. After all, I have my own sack. I didn’t think I was particularly conspicuous. My people, our people from Warsaw, are jostling and swarming in floods. Everything takes only a moment. We are going. The German checks from memory. Everyone: Links!… I can already see. But I’m afraid. Halina. Zocha. With those sacks. White ones on their backs. Will it work? No-oo. Fear of… what?… a beating?… In my nose the smell of a miracle… treason. But! In the first place. To leave my own people! Practically without an arrangement. Nothing. Yes. Already. They’ve barely noticed. It’s not important. I don’t know. Suddenly I’m shoved to the right, something like “fafluchter” and nothing else, no digging, back to the transport, I immediately gave back the shovel, farewell, Pruszków freedom — Halina again — the white sacks, Zocha, Papa. The herds. And already I am among them. Who noticed? No one. And Halina? No. I was certain then. But I felt like a traitor. Disgusting. From them. Here comes the punishment. We’re moving already. Nothing happened. What else was there? Taking our places? After all, we just boarded an open flatbed car. It began drizzling. It was gray. A long time. Sad. Suddenly, nothing matters. Where to? What is it? Stupid tracks — tracks — to eat… — Włochy — a stop. From the streets, from the windows, from platforms, from stairs, people throw large quantities of carrots, onions, radishes, beets at us. The Germans do nothing. We grab. Father and I, too. An onion. Crunch. At once. Half of it. Raw. Father devoured it immediately. I couldn’t. We were moving. Very slowly. Very very slowly. Past Warsaw. A sensation! What happened in Piastów? In Ursus? It was drizzling. Tossing of vegetables from the platforms. Dusk. Small clusters of observers-helpers.
We rode on and on. Those fifteen kilometers. In those cars. Red. From under a Christmas tree. (When I was four, I got a freight train with four freight cars. I know that one was for coal and one, a very long one, for lumber. My family and I were riding now in the one for coal.) There was already a dense crowd in Pruszków. Get out. Lots of jumping, crawling, shouting. Because not only were there a lot of us. But also many people who were waiting. Germans. And our people from the RGO — the Central Welfare Council for helping with survival, serving soup. And from the Red Cross. From the tracks we went directly to the right into the flow of an organized line. And we set off walking into the interior, into the Pruszków railway yards, industrial sites, now — camps; because first there were concrete fences, tracks under foot, and then depots, depots, and still more depots. The camp was a depot. Meaning, the camp was multiple depots. A series of depots had begun already back in Ursus. Similar ones. Not these. It’s correct that after Włochy there’s Ursus. After Ursus, Piastów. And only after Piastów comes Pruszków. I associated it with colored pencils. Because Pruszków got its start from that industry and from those pencils. At least that’s the reason it’s a city with a station. The right part. The one where we — a transport— transmission — or rather, a constant stroke, stroke, stroke after stroke, dragged on — it was that part, the right one, the lesser Pruszków, with less pseudo-Gothic than the left.
Germans. Schmucks. We — a transport. To the depots. A conveyor belt. Was it raining? If so, then very little, it wasn’t visible. We walked. At once we encountered. These characters. Every meter, every half meter. From the Red Cross, from the RGO. On this side and that. We were walking ever so slowly. Under our feet, who knows what. They stood in place. Wearing coats. To be recognized. Because it was clearer. And clearer. And calling out. Aloud. Addresses. Names. Seeking. All the time. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Addresses, names. They’re making announcements. Constantly. The ones in the coats, from the right and the left, by turns. The Germans pass them, the ones from our group, with rifles. And we trudge on and on.
“35 Marszałkowska. Jadwiga Szamotulska.”
“18 Chmielna. Andrzej Polkowski.”
“5 Bracka. Zofia Węgrzyn.”
“Malwina Kociela, 5 Mazowiecka.”
“8 Napoleon Square.”
“13 Grójecka. Pelagia Wąchocka.”
“Antoni Marzec. Artur Marzec.”
“Malawski… 2 Chopin Street.”
“Kazimierz Czeladź.”
“35 Hoża.”
“Jadwiga Penetrowa, 12 Poznańska.”
“Mieczysława Puchałowska.”
“43 Współna.”
“Zenon Kołodziej.”
“Jerzy Burza, 94 Marszałkowska.”
“Jerzy and Barbara Poroscy, 5 Złota.”
“Borowska Barbara, 5 Chmielna.”
Why couldn’t I fend off thoughts about All Souls’ Day? Because we were walking in a crowd, just as one leaves the cemetery on All Souls’ Day, between statues of angels that were palely glimmering (because it was already dark) and tombstones of ancestors laid out in rows. The strangest thing was that during that whole time no one, but no one, neither ahead of us nor behind us, answered the roll call; no one stopped or even looked around. Total indifference.
My All Souls’ Day metaphor was definitely not a metaphor at all. And if it was, then I’ve never experienced one more strongly.
We enter new terrain. If I say roundhouse number 5 for steam locomotives but minus the locomotives, that will explain nothing. Exactly: a new terrain, without edges, without end, and not so much dark as filled with a crowd of people entering, separating, and arranging things, crouching down with candles in separate plots… Exactly as in Powązki, the sections divided by paths and each plot having as many graves as belong together; on each grave candles and a family tidying things up or sitting there talking and praying together… So, after leaving a cemetery (Bródno or Powązki) we enter a cemetery — the natural order reversed. For a long time I couldn’t believe that this was not a cemetery and not All Souls’ Day. Even when the Germans and their helpers had already settled us in some kind of billet on something… or maybe simply on the bare concrete; the stones were built and continued to be built, it seemed, of bundles and valises. Because Halina and I immediately started looking around for a board to sleep on.