by Israel Kipen
Into our own home we welcomed first a rabbi and his wife and daughter, who lodged in the den; then another family called Liberman with two children. Mother and Bobe took to working full-time in the kitchen preparing warm food for such as needed it. Towards evening, Father would have me scour the streets for Jews needing shelter. More often than not, I would return with such needy in tow. My own bed was given to them; like my brothers, I slept often on the floor. The acute 200% increase in population placed greatest stress on the availability of food. The number of bakeries were too few to cope with the added demand and that basic commodity, bread, became scarce. To obtain a loaf, I would nightly rise between two and three, and join the long extending queue in the cold outside the bakery until I could be served. I did not miss a night.
By the second week of the war, Poland’s position had wholly collapsed. Its defences had crumbled, its bigger cities were encircled and the German army drove on relentlessly. Confusion and disarray spread all around. Fresh attempted call-ups of young men came to nothing; the opposing forces were so disproportionate in equipment, might and morale that Poland was utterly unable to overcome the Germans let alone contain them in their advance. No amount of Polish heroism could stem the tide of iron and fire. Within two weeks, Germany occupied Bialystok intact. It took its army a day to take charge of the town. There was no fighting there and orders were given for shops and businesses to continue operating. Meanwhile, the Russian army crossed the eastern border in a westward advance across Poland. That a division between the two powers had been agreed upon was clear, though less so was the actual demarcation line.
The uncertainty of the preceding two weeks turned into a reality to which swift adjustment was required. On the second day of the occupation, Father received a summons from the Chamber of Manufacturers to attend a meeting there by order of the German military. He went. The meeting was brief. Manufacturers were ordered to continue production in their factories; the Polish National Bank would stand ready to provide such credit as was required; a body was established to co-ordinate and supply the raw materials necessary for continued manufacture. Each man’s position and obligations were made clear at that meeting as also the penalties that were to be incurred for disobedience.
While we were amazed at the efficiency with which the German authorities took over the town and set about organising its life, which had over the preceding fortnight lapsed into chaos, such promptness was not without its reasons. The restoration of seeming normality was one thing, but more important was the fact that Bialystok industry constituted a vital contribution to the German war economy and military machine. The cloth produced in Bialystok was the very material the German army used for its uniforms, hence the question of likely customer did not arise. So within 48 hours, Bialystok returned to order and calm of a sort, however temporary this was expected to be. People went about their business, minding their own affairs, trying above all to be inconspicuous. German soldiers walked where earlier Polish soldiers had walked. They looked well-fed, well-dressed and were temperate in their behaviour, and their officers bore the satisfied look of victory as they paraded along Lipowa and Sienkiewicza Streets.
On the eleventh day of the occupation, the Russians reached the outskirts of Bialystok from the east and stopped there. A new uncertainty fell upon the town, for it transpired that according to the German-Soviet agreement, the German army had not been meant to take Bialystok in the first place. The pact had stipulated that it was to go to the Russians. According to rumours, military delegations representing the two sides met outside the town where maps were unfolded and argument ensued. In the event, the Russians remained adamant about their rights; the Germans relented, whereupon with the same efficiency they had manifested in establishing their hold upon the town, they relinquished it and withdrew westward. On their departure, the centre of town filled with people, the interregnum being marked by a sudden lifting of tension and accession of clear relief. But almost immediately, red banners began to appear on prominent buildings in Sienkiewicza Street. Soon after, a small detachment of Red Army soldiers entered the centre of town looking sloppy and battle-weary. A number of people greeted them effusively. A new era seemed to be ushered into Bialystok which within a mere four weeks was host to three successive authorities so disparate in culture, political doctrine and structure.
The transformation of society under Russian rule as also the nature and efficiency of its administration were in total contrast to those which had prevailed under the German occupiers. The first act of the Russians was to release the jail’s prisoners, many of whom had been Communist activists. Further, unlike the Germans who had governed by decree imposed from above and relied on its military to implement those decrees, the Russians established a leadership from within the society they had taken over, installing as leaders such people who showed allegiance and readiness to take the reins, notwithstanding their experience or lack of it in administration. Contrary to the German way, there was no-one to dictate to the people what to do or not to do, whether to keep factories open or not, or if they were to keep them open, then how to go about their work. In our own factory, the workers came as always, but their disposition was now different. They were unhurried and more ready to smile. They looked upon Father and myself differently. Our ownership of the factory was not challenged, but we had taken on a different mien in their perceptions.
Another change, too, became evident. With the German authorities gone, the most potent market forces operative were those dictated by the capacity of the local inhabitants to buy. And what was remarkable was the fact that people in great numbers came to buy. Some had been previous customers; others were total strangers. There was a rush on our products; before long, our stocks were depleted, even when the items were not for immediate use. Nor did the buyers ask for credit. Everyone suddenly came forth with ready cash, with Polish currency and Russian Tchervontsy mingling in the same money-bags.
Two factors contributed to that enhanced business activity. First, the people knew the state of affairs in the Soviet Union concerning the availability of goods; hence the possession of any commodity for re-sale or exchange was a decided asset. And second, the Russian soldiers themselves had an intense thirst for acquisition, whatever the goods.
Chasiki (watches) were the most sought-after items, but even these aside, they simply mobbed the shops. Story had it that one soldier stumbled upon a shop selling prayer books and other religious artefacts. Taking a fancy to a prayer-shawl, he determined it would make a fine dress for his wife. His friends were so impressed with the idea that the shopkeeper sold his full stock of prayer-shawls in quick time.
In the short term, then, Bialystok was not dependent on outside markets. Whatever it produced it sold. Goods became available at a premium, activity boomed, and for such manufacturers and traders as my own father who but a few months before was compelled to conduct business on most chancy credit arrangements, the change was welcome. In the excitement, it was easy to overlook the reality that had brought it all about and not take pause to reflect whether the money one gained was worth anything at all, or whether one would be permitted to keep it. I was not caught up by the same fever that had come to possess Father, and viewing with detachment his seeming accession to good fortune, I begged him to stop and ponder over the situation, asking him particularly whether he really believed that the Russians had come simply to make him rich and whether the paper money he hid in a suitcase under his bed truly represented any real security. He was impervious to my appeals. He was caught up in the same frenzy as others were.
Soon after, rumours began to circulate that Vilna to the north-east of Bialystok which Poland had taken twenty years before was to be returned by the Russians to Lithuania. In 1939, the small state of Lithuania, as also its other two neighbouring Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia, was independent. Although prudence should have warned me that I ought not bank on Lithuania’s continuing independence, to move there represented a legal way of escaping Russia�
�s immediate jurisdiction. My intuition dictated that I ought not become too involved in the business activity that had so overtaken Father. I recognised its success as ephemeral and as carrying the danger of infatuation with a potentially sorry delusion. Unlike Father, I had not lived through any war myself, but I could not but believe that if escape from the arena of actual or future war was possible, the seizing of such opportunity ought not to be passed up. If under the circumstances anything mattered, it was survival pure and simple. And in the hold of this conviction, I resolved to exploit the legal opportunity that still offered and move to Vilna.
Father resisted the idea. His arguments were two-pronged. He questioned my rationale for leaving town in the first place. If it stemmed from my involvement with manufacturing, I had only to look at other manufacturers, more established and prosperous than he, who were scarcely showing signs of fleeing. If they were not afraid of remaining, what could possibly justify my own fears? Where lay the logic in my own flight? If, on the other hand, it was the knowledge of my Zionist involvement that rendered me vulnerable, once again where lay the logic in flight when such other Zionist leaders as Klementenowski, Nochimovski and others were also remaining? On the face of it he was right. The facts he cited were beyond dispute. I could only answer that he was being as short-sighted as those he cited. I saw things differently. I felt that the people around me were in the hold of a grand delusion.
A sixth sense, as it were, urged me to leave. Against Father’s pleas, I packed a few personal belongings and made my way to the station to catch the night train to Vilna. I bought a ticket without difficulty and walked on to the platform. The train stood in total darkness. There were scarcely any passengers about on the platform. Every door I tried to open was either already locked from the inside or every carriage so packed that no further space was left. I realised my error. Those passengers who had managed to secure their place had clearly known better than to reach the station so close to departure time. They had obviously come much earlier in the day to be sure of getting away. I had left my own decision to leave till late in the day.
Pacing along the platform, I grew more forlorn. Only minutes remained before the train was scheduled to leave. Coming upon one carriage door, I acted in a swift and dare-devil flurry of desperation. I pulled at the door with all the force I could muster, ostensibly oblivious to every protest from other passengers that arose around me, and secured a foothold in the carriage, caught hold of an overhead rail and thrust my pack on to the baggage-rack above me, shutting the door behind me, its handle protruding into my ribs. I was inside at least, even if I was standing on one foot, there being no room on the floor for the other. And then the train moved off. The darkness was total and the silence complete.
The journey took eight hours. I was inclined to believe that most other passengers on the train had left for much the same reasons as myself, and that they too might be subject to the same reflections that were possessing me. For in the midst of that prevailing silence I had ample time to consider the step I had taken with the possible consequences that might ensue. I had been accustomed to travel, to being away from home and to adapting to whatever modest conveniences provincial townships could offer. This move, however, was wholly different. It was unprecedented. I had quite consciously set out upon a course that, unlike earlier ones, could not be predictably charted. No ready wisdom would help here in the planning of each successive step. I was apprehensive, to be sure, but what saved me from depression was the belief, or intuition, that I would still, in time, see my family again. I had left Bialystok, but not Poland. With Vilna still legally a part of that country, I was still close enough to home not to have to feel a final, complete and irrecoverable separation.
I knew Vilna from my previous business trips there, and had an address where I could stay. We had an agent in the town and Father must have found a way of notifying him of my coming, for he obviously expected me. He was at the time housing another refugee, a middle-aged man from Warsaw, with whom I shared a room. Our agent must have welcomed my coming for, not being a man with means, the money I paid for board appeared certainly to have been of use to him and his wife.
I learnt of the presence in Vilna of several of my former classmates and I made contact with them. We spent considerable time together, there being little of especial interest in that city to divert us. One of these friends was Moshe Porozowski with whom I had been particularly close at high school and who had delivered the oration on the Hebrew University when I had spoken on Maimonides. One day he took ill with high fever. I suspected he probably had pneumonia and there was one night on which I feared he might not survive. I sat with him throughout that night, sponging him repeatedly to lower his fever and, indeed, by the following morning his temperature had fallen. He had passed through the crisis that night. When his parents learned of his illness, they came from Bialystok to visit him. They stayed a short time before returning, Moshe being sufficiently recovered by then to farewell them at the station. I believe that was the last time he saw them.
Vilna was an old university town and I elected to enrol there. Although I knew that my study there would be of only short duration, it would at least provide me with a tangible interest and help to fill my days. I had brought my Warsaw papers with me and had no difficulties in enrolling. One lecture I attended was on nature study, a subject which held no strong interest for me. Nevertheless the hall was packed and I found myself entranced both by the lecturer’s oratorial abilities and by the way he presented his subject. His was a symphony of words. He could not have been more than in his early thirties, but through his clear brilliance he stirred out of dormancy my earlier appetite for learning.
One Tuesday morning I was on my way to the university. The streets were peculiarly empty. Shops were closed, there was little movement of any sort. I had heard nothing till then to prepare me for any change, other than a rumour that the Lithuanian authorities were to take over formal possession of Vilna any day. The reason the rumour had not been actualised, according to some humorists, was that during daytime the Lithuanian army was too ashamed to come, and during night too afraid. I spent half a day at the university, having seen nothing untoward in that time, and by midday I was ready to return home.
As I came out of the campus grounds, I saw a large gathering in the open space before the gates. Before I knew what to make of it, I caught the word “Zyd” (“Jew”) being shouted and saw fingers being pointed at me. I became immediately surrounded, beaten to the ground and kicked repeatedly until a policeman appeared on the scene. By then I was bleeding profusely from the nose; my face was a congested pulp; my eyes were half-closed from swelling. The officer escorted me to a gate opening out on a courtyard where he took down my name and address and accused me of disturbing the peace, threatening the while to take me to the police station. In the end, he departed, leaving me alone. The caretaker’s wife who had opened the gate for us took pity on me and gave me water to wash away the blood and cool compresses to reduce the swelling and heat in my battered face. I was in no hurry to leave the courtyard. I could not see through the closed gates the size of the crowd outside; I only knew that the longer I delayed, the safer would I be. By the time I took leave of the caretaker and his wife who had proven themselves most decent folk, the streets were empty again.
My landlady nearly collapsed when she saw me. I learned then that I had been the victim of a pogrom on what was to become known as Black Tuesday. The anger of the Poles in Vilna had been steadily mounting in the wake of the declaration that their town would be ceded to Lithuania, for they stood to lose doubly from the transfer. First, they were to lose their independence as Poles and, second, they were to lose their elitist status to which they had become accustomed. These considerations in tandem with the shortages and dislocations they experienced in the face of war fuelled frustration among them which, unable to release against the occupying Russians, they vented against their perennial ready target, the Jews who were, like myself, attacke
d in the streets or had their shops smashed and looted. My own injuries were a broken nose and black eyes for some considerable time which I concealed behind dark glasses. Loth to return to Bialystok in that state, I deferred any intention to make my way there to persuade my family to leave. By that time, return meant crossing the border illegally, for the Lithuanians had finally come to secure Vilna. The Lithuanian police dressed in the uniforms reminiscent of Napoleonic soldiers as they patrolled the town made the streets at first sight resemble an operetta stage rather than the grim reality that in fact they had become.
By the end of November, my face now recovered, I decided to return to Bialystok. The necessary contacts were made, money was paid in advance and on the appointed night I joined a returning party. It was a moonless night, ideal for crossing borders. As we neared the targeted perimeter, it began to rain and we heard dogs barking in the distance. We were passing through a cluster of scattered dwellings when our guide spotted an unfinished house and directed us to take shelter in it. We did as bidden and then heard footsteps approaching. As we crouched beneath a window hugging the wall, two soldiers also entered. They had apparently come in for a smoke. One of them struck a match which lit up the interior of the house. While shielding their faces to light their cigarettes, they failed to notice our silhouettes strung along the wall but a few feet away. We dared not breathe. The soldiers proceeded to finish their cigarettes, stayed on for a while out of the rain, and finally left. How long they had stayed I could not say, but it did fray our nerves. For myself, the episode represented my first experience of real fear.
