When the procession had moved on a little, we began to hear the squeals and shrieks of children in the streets. A whole generation of little Polish kids had been brought up having to keep their voices down. Poles were forbidden to talk loudly, and could be punished for doing so. Now the children had just discovered shouting, and were ecstatically yelling at the tops of their voices, revelling in the newly revealed power of their lungs. The children’s shrieks of emancipation reverberated through the city.
While this diverse, multilingual carnival was pulsating so vibrantly on the main street two quite different things were happening. Firstly, the Germans were preparing a major offensive to retake Bromberg–Bydgoszcz, something that for the present was known only to those privy to such matters, of whom I was not one. But the second thing was happening in full view of me in a quiet side street adjacent to the main road.
Here there was a straggling line of people with their belongings loaded on carts, sledges and on their backs. They were German smallholders, driven off their farms by the Poles, from villages where they had been settled for centuries, now wandering with only a few possessions to heaven knows where, but westwards. A posse of Polish teenagers were skating around them, whooping. Their ringleader broke away, skated ahead, and completely blocked the refugees’ way. An elderly German woman, with a coarse, heavy blanket on top of her coat, which our own village women, too, were wearing at that time and calling a shawl, tried to explain something to him, but he was not listening and frenziedly beat her bundle of possessions with a stick and shouted furiously, ‘Why you not speak Polish? Why you can’t speak Polish?’ I took him by the shoulder and said, ‘What are you doing? Leave them alone!’ He looked up, his face full of anger and with tears in his eyes. He stared at me, or rather, at my army jacket and the red star on my hat, and skated to one side. But I saw him watching bewildered from a distance. He found it unbearable that today Germans were being allowed to walk away freely after all they had done. Beneath this festival of brotherhood there was an undertow of fury and violence that had been building up under the yoke of brutality and was ready to break out and rage.
It was frosty, and fine, prickly snow was falling. Where on earth were these people headed? Who was likely to give them shelter, where, on which remote country track would they finally perish? Far from the great highways of history, from the global cataclysms and satanic dreams of world domination, these people who had known only the hard toil of a peasant life had been driven into a trap by the play of diabolical forces and now were being held responsible for everything that had happened. Neither the heavens under which they were born, nor the land they had cultivated for centuries, nor the ancient roots their families had put down in this soil counted for anything. Everything had receded, repudiating them. People are judged, brought together, or sundered by blood. It was Germans who had caused such suffering here, and now these pariahs were cut off by a front line from those with whom they had blood ties. What did they face? Where was the refuge that would take them in? For hatred and vengefulness these were irrelevancies. Who would argue their case?
Everything was a mess: the jubilant spirit of universal brotherhood, and this dark murderousness – these persecuted German peasants and the fury of the young boys pursuing them. People herded here, to ‘Bromberg’, to build a rampart against the Red Army, who, under the yoke of the enemy had lost their ties with the outside world, had so jubilantly, so inspiringly found them again, here, now. But if you can cut someone else off, expel them, is this not the beginning of a road that leads over the cliff edge? ‘If at one end of the world you cause harm, the effect will be felt at the other.’
At the entry to the commandant’s office, seated on a very serviceable stallion, the commandant, without dismounting, was issuing urgent orders in the light of the military emergency threatening the city. Along the highway a column was approaching, and the commandant peered impatiently at it, his horse pacing restlessly beneath him.
We could already make out a flag, the tricolour of France, but these people were not marching like soldiers but spread out across the highway like an odd crowd of private citizens. The French came closer and stopped, and from among the ranks of the soldiers, grey, dishevelled figures separated and grouped together to one side of the road. The commandant, high up in his saddle, was the first to notice, and was aghast.
‘Whatever next!’ he muttered angrily, leaping down from his horse, pointing with his chin and raising his stubbly eyebrows, signalling to me to follow. He walked quickly to the main road. The French greeted us as soldiers but the commandant appeared not to notice. He walked a little to one side of them where those strange, grey creatures were huddled, clinging to each other and, from a distance, looking like a ghostly, dustladen grey cloud. It was difficult to recognize them as women.
The commandant addressed them loudly. ‘Hello!’ I translated into German. ‘Once again, hello!’ he repeated furiously and with strained courtesy. The cloud stirred, and a yellow star was briefly seen on one woman’s back. That was the first time I had seen the yellow, six-pointed star, one of several the commandant had been shocked by when he saw them in the distance. Before that we had only heard about them.
These were Jewish women from a concentration camp, in sackcloth, with a blanket over their shoulders or a piece of hessian hiding those stars. Some had already cut the stars off, but those that remained were more than enough to leave you feeling pierced by an unbearable emotion. ‘Tell them they are free. You are free!’ the commandant said, beating me to it.
One woman in the crowd asked in Polish in a low, hoarse voice where they would now be sent. ‘Nowhere, of course! You are free!’ the commandant said, bestowing upon them all the conquered kingdoms of the earth. ‘See those buildings over there? There are empty apartments in them. The Germans have run away and abandoned them. Go and take them over, and everything that has been left there, all the property is yours. Take it! Did they understand you?’ he asked. I nodded.
The French soldiers, exhausted, in worn-out greatcoats, looked at us tentatively and smiled. General Giraud’s adjutant was not among them. These were rank-and-file soldiers, probably from a different camp. They went over and again mingled with the grey mass, giving the women back their small bundles and sacks. Their belongings were very basic but nevertheless a burden. The Frenchmen had carried them the ten kilometres, and lent a shoulder to those of the women who were too desperately weak. Now they bade them farewell with great warmth.
‘Vive la France!’ I said quietly and very sincerely. That was the extent of my knowledge of French, but they responded enthusiastically, joyfully.
‘Listen here!’ the major shouted. ‘French comrades…’ Not understanding what was being said to them, they rapidly fell back into line. ‘First of all, I sincerely welcome you.’ ‘Please, does anybody understand German?’ I asked. ‘Please tell the French soldiers that the major welcomes you warmly.’ There was silence. ‘I must apologize on behalf of all of us,’ someone in the ranks said in good German. ‘But we hope our contacts with Russians can take place without our having to use the language of the Germans.’
‘What’s the problem?’ the commandant asked impatiently. He was in a hurry. ‘They don’t want to use the enemy’s language for talking to us.’ The commandant grunted approvingly. ‘Do you know French? No? Well, where does that leave us?’ He looked round anxiously at his horse, which a courier had just brought up. ‘Well, that’s for them to sort out.’ ‘I can translate for you.’ A woman emerged from the grey mass of women. She moved her hessian head-covering down to her shoulders, revealing a head of blond hair and a young, enchanting face.