It was early morning. A completely drunk German soldier came staggering around the corner surrounded by small boys who were taunting him. I asked him in German where he was going and he held out a piece of paper with the address of his hotel. I sent the boys packing and hauled him there. He was muttering something barely audible, but from his rambling I gathered that he had been involved that night in a massacre of Jews.
I must behave like a German, no, a Pole I thought, and said nothing.
“One and a half thousand, can you believe it, one and a half thousand.” He stopped and began retching. “I don’t like them, but why should I have to do this? I’m a linotype operator, a linotype operator. The Jews are nothing to do with me.”
He did not look like he had enjoyed shooting people.
I got him to the hotel at last. It would never have occurred to anyone that a drunken German soldier was being helped back home by a Jew. That same evening I sought out Bolesław’s farm. He was very welcoming. Two Russian prisoners-of-war who had escaped from their prison camp were already in hiding there, and a Jewish woman with a child.
That night, lying in the boxroom after a good meal, wearing clean clothes and, most importantly, feeling safe, I was filled with gratitude to God who had gone to such pains to rescue me from these traps.
I fell asleep rapidly, but was wakened a few hours later by bursts of gunfire coming from the direction of Ponary. I now no longer had any doubt what was going on there. Much of what I was to encounter is unacceptable to any normal human mind, and what was being enacted just a few kilometers away was even more unbelievable than any miracle. I had personal experience of miracles as expressions of a benign supernatural will, but what I now experienced was an agonizing sense that the supreme laws of life were being violated and a supernatural evil was being perpetrated which ran counter to the fundamental order of the world.
I lived on Bolesław’s farm for several months, working in the fields with other hired workers, but in mid-October the Germans issued a law imposing the death penalty on anyone who hid Jews.
I did not want to endanger Bolesław and decided to leave. An opportunity soon arose when the local vet, who had come to deliver a calf, suggested I should move to Belorussia. His brother lived in a place so remote that no Germans had even been seen there.
The day came for me to take to the road. I was very frightened and thought as I walked along that I would not survive unless I could conquer my fear. My fear would betray me. It was a fear of being a Jew, of looking like a Jew. I decided I must stop being a Jew and become the same as the Poles and Belorussians. My outward appearance was fairly neutral, and in any case, I had no way of changing it. The only thing I could change was my behavior. I must behave like everybody else.
The road was full of German cars. From time to time men would hail them, and sometimes they would get a lift. Women were afraid of hailing anybody and preferred to walk. I overcame my fear and hailed a German truck, which stopped. Two days later I reached the remote Belorussian village which was my destination.
Except that the Germans had not overlooked it. The week before I got there all the Jews had been shot. The largest building in the village housed the school, which had had to make room now for a police station. In one place there was a store for clothing which had been taken off people while they were still alive, or removed from them after they were killed.
Most of the police were Belorussians. There were fewer Poles because around one and a half million of them were deported from the eastern regions to Russia in 1940 and early 1941.
I went to the police station the next day to obtain a permit to live in the village and was seen by the police secretary who was a Pole. My cover story about my parents aroused no suspicions. My school card was my only identification document and could not be faulted. It gave no indication of ethnicity and Polish really was my first language. I now received documents confirming that my father was German and my mother Polish which conferred the right to become a Volksdeutscher, an ethnic German, a privilege of which I did not avail myself. Knowing German was to prove sufficient.
Thus I became legal. At first I earned my keep by shoemaking and was paid not in cash but in food. Later I was invited to become the school cleaner and given a small room next to the one occupied by the chief of police. My duties included cleaning, cutting firewood, and keeping the stoves alight. Soon, teaching German to the pupils was added to my duties.
When the cold weather arrived, I had no warm clothing and the police secretary, who was in charge of the store, invited me to choose some new clothing. I had a dreadful feeling when he opened the door and I saw the piles of clothing which belonged to Jews the Germans had killed. I was frightened even to touch them. What should I do? I prayed and mentally thanked my murdered kinsmen. I took a worn sheepskin coat and several other items. There was no telling how long I myself might be fated to wear these clothes.
When German authorities came, I was summoned to translate for them. This was worrying, because I knew very well I should keep as far away from Germans as possible. On one occasion the district police chief, Ivan Semyonovich, arrived at the police station. The Belorussian Auxiliary Police of the German Gendarmerie in the Occupied Territories was a Belorussian organization subordinate to the Germans, and its chief had a bad reputation as a brutal drunk. He was accompanied by some German high-up and I was asked to translate. That evening Semyonovich summoned me and invited me to work for him as his personal translator and German teacher.
I had no wish to work for the police and had just one night to come to a decision. The very thought of a Jew collaborating with the police was appalling, but even then it occurred to me that if I did work for Semyonovich, I would probably be able to save the lives of at least some of those the police were hunting, to do something at least for people in need of help. The Belorussians were a very poor and downtrodden people fearful of anyone in authority, and were impressed even by such a paltry post as interpreter in the Belorussian police. The job would give me influence.
I agreed to work for Semyonovich and, oddly enough, felt a sense of relief that I could now be useful to the local people and those in need of help. Many simply did not understand what was required of them, which led to their being punished. That opportunity of mediating gave me back a sense of self-respect, and it was only by doing something for other people that I could salve my conscience and retain my integrity. From the instant I started my new job I understood that the least slip could be fatal.
I began acting as an interpreter between the German gendarmerie, the Belorussian police, and the local populace. I shed the last trace of my Jewish legacy, the clothing from the police store, and now wore a black police uniform with a gray collar and cuffs, breeches, boots, and a black peaked cap which did not, however, sport a skull and crossbones. I was even issued a pistol. SS units wore a black uniform and ours differed only in having a gray collar and cuffs.
I thus became in effect a German policeman with the rank of Unteroffizier. I entered military service with the rank my father had risen to when he retired. Nobody could have foreseen such a quirk of fate. It was December 1941, I was nineteen, I was alive, and that was a miracle.
21. June 1965, Haifa
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ULLETIN BOARD IN THE VESTIBULE OF THE
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ATHOLIC
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HURCH OF THE
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ORMITION OF THE
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(Notices in Hebrew and Polish.)