by Jana Petken
Anatol appeared. He got down beside Paul and ran his fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. “Paul, you’re a sight for my sore eyes.”
“And you mine. Have you been here since the day the uprising began?”
Anatol nodded. “I lost my battalion on the second day. I’ve been in that basement for days. Six of us treating hundreds of wounded.”
“Where is Vanda?” Paul asked.
Anatol’s jaws tightened. He bit the inside of his lip and stared at the ground. “I lost my Vanda. She was killed two months ago.”
“My God … no, Anatol, I –”
“It’s taken a while for me to come to terms with her loss, but I’m getting through it,” Anatol interrupted Paul. “She went looking for food with her mother and sister. They were on a tram when the SS boarded it. They ordered the passengers off, and when the Poles began to leave, the Germans counted out the first fifty people. Vanda and her mother were numbers forty-seven and forty-eight. I know this because Nadia, my sister-in-law, told me she was standing some way behind Vanda, and that she would have been number fifty-four. She watched Vanda and their mother being marched to the wall of a damaged building, then being pushed against it and shot. Fifty people chosen at random and wiped out.” Anatol stifled a sob. “Paul, my Vanda was murdered because of where she stood on a tram. Does that make any fucking sense to you?”
Paul’s face drained. Amelia, also listening, stifled a sob as Anatol broke down in tears.
“I don’t know what to say, my friend, except to give you my condolences, which are probably of no comfort to you,” Paul eventually said.
Anatol sniffed. “It’s been two months, but sometimes I wake up and can’t believe I will never see her again.” He wiped his nose with a handkerchief. “We weren’t even supposed to be in the city that day. We had been with the Resistance for months, but Vanda begged me to take her into the city centre to see her family. We knew about the executions going on. Every time the Home Army struck a convoy and killed a German soldier, the SS took their revenge with a hundred Polish lives. I made her promise not to leave her mother’s house – damn it, Paul, she promised she wouldn’t.”
Kurt appeared. Anatol stood, and the two men hugged.
“I wish we had more time together, Anatol, but I need Paul,” Kurt said.
“Where do I go now?” Anatol asked.
“Get on the last truck with Amelia. What’s left of us are retreating to the forest to regroup. Paul and I will meet you there tonight.”
Paul kissed Amelia goodbye, then said, “I’ll see you soon, my love.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Romek and his assault group, including Kurt, Wójcik, and Paul, rendezvoused with the Zośka scouting battalion in the newly formed armour platoon of the Home Army’s Radosław Group. In possession of a German tank and one armoured car, they advanced on the Gęsiówka concentration camp, situated inside the ruins of the old ghetto. Its three-metre walls were still heavily defended, and German snipers were reported to be atop a few buildings in the street leading to the main gates.
One of two Panther tanks that had been captured by Polish insurgents on 2 August began the assault on the camp with its main gun firing on the wall. Romek’s volunteers, along with the Scouts – both men and women under the command of Ryszard Białous and Eugeniusz Stasiecki – began firing at the enemy blockade. Thus far, no anti-tank guns had fired on the now Polish-owned tank, and this, along with the foot soldiers’ success at taking out the German defenders at the barricade, spurred the platoons to advance at a run until the tank finally blew the gates wide open, and the men stormed inside.
For ninety minutes, the two sides fought a battle for control of the camp, and before the end, most of the German Sicherheitsdienst – SD security guards, were either killed or captured, although some had fled towards the nearby German-held Pawiak Prison.
Paul tended to the wounded Scouts, determined to treat the German guards who were injured only after he had tried to save Polish lives. Two of the Poles had been killed upon entering the camp, and another three had non-life-threatening wounds. Buoyant in victory, he treated the men with minor first aid, and then, as ordered, sent them off in the armoured car to the forest to receive proper treatment from the battalion doctors.
As Paul was laying out the two young Polish Scouts who had died only minutes after the platoon had smashed through the gates, he saw Wójcik approaching.
“Two dead,” Paul reported.
Wójcik removed his cap and gazed solemnly at the teenage boys. He cleared his throat and said, “Leave them for the moment, Paul. There’s something you should see at the subcamp.”
“What about the wounded Germans?”
“Fuck them. After I show you what we found, you won’t want to help them.”
Unhappy about leaving groaning Germans lying on the ground, Paul buckled his medical rucksack and reluctantly followed Wójcik. He had come to realise that he didn’t hate Germans; he hated the Nazi war machine that had conjured monsters from previously mild-mannered men.
Paul brought himself up short and gasped as he neared the front entrance to a building.
Before him, hundreds of men and women wearing the typical striped inmate uniforms crowded around the Polish resistance fighters. The sight of the emaciated men and women, on their knees trying to kiss the feet of their liberators, heightened the Scouts’ already palpable emotions.
Many of the prisoners collapsed on the ground with relief, but most swayed weakly in silence.
Paul, a man accustomed to seeing starved, downtrodden Jews, tried desperately to keep his tears at bay. Romek’s eyes flooded. Kurt, the toughest man Paul knew, was trembling as he gave what water he had to some of the prisoners.
Ryszard Białous, one of the platoon’s commanders, asked the confused Jews, “Where are you all from?”
A young man answered in broken Polish, his voice breaking on a sob. “We are not from Poland. We were expecting death today … we thought we were going to die … thank you. Thank you.”
Paul caught the German accent as he helped the prisoner who had spoken to a window ledge. The lad, about seventeen, looked pained as his skeletal frame with only a fine layer of skin covering his bones pressed into the hard concrete.
“Danke schön,” the boy said. “I am Mordche Buchsbaum, from Munich.”
“I will translate,” Romek told Białous, the commander.
“Very well, ask him where his fellow inmates are from, how many of them are here, how long they have been here … what happened after the ghetto closed … and ask him how they managed to avert deportation.”
Romek asked the first question, but then the man continued uninterrupted as he surged ahead with the whole story.
“There are three hundred and forty-eight of us. We are mostly Jews from Czechoslovakia, France, Greece … Hungary … Belgium, and a few of us left over from a larger German contingent. At the end of July, the SD Guards began to evacuate this part of the camp. They were sending us to Dachau. Many of the inmates were too weak to march. The Germans shot about four hundred of them.”
Paul sucked in his breath and swallowed painfully as Romek translated what had been said to the Poles.
Mordche continued, “The Germans marched off about four … maybe over four thousand prisoners. We don’t know if they ever reached Germany or another camp in Poland.”
“Why were you left behind?” Romek asked.
“The guards you killed retained us as labourers. They planned to rebuild parts of this camp and extend Pawiak Prison next door. They were going to use them as a concentration camp complex. When the fighting began in the city five days ago, the guards took some prisoners and strung them up, and they executed others by firing squad this morning.”
“We will try to get you to safety now,” Romek said, on behalf of the Polish commanders.
“There are no safe places for us,” the boy snapped despite his frailty. “Put weapons in our hands. We will give you a Jewish b
attalion, ready to fight.”
******
Warsaw, Poland, end of August 1944
From the middle to the end of August, pitched battles raged around Warsaw’s Old Town and nearby Bankowy Square. Paul, who was now stationed in a damaged hospital – recently dive-bombed by Stuka ZXC aircraft, despite being clearly marked – was working tirelessly alongside Anatol, Amelia, Red Cross helpers, and three Jewish doctors who’d been in hiding for years. Tremendous casualties were being inflicted by German bombers that struck the city every forty minutes.
‘Do not surrender,’ a woman had warned Paul that morning. ‘The Wehrmacht and SS are not accepting prisoners. They are shooting everyone they see, even those with white flags and their hands clasped at the back of their heads.’
Romek and Kurt appeared. Paul had not spoken to them for over a week and was, as always, relieved to see them looking comparatively healthy. He handed his patient over to Amelia and joined the two men.
“If we sustain one more attack in here, we will have to evacuate,” said Paul after hugging Romek and Kurt. “How much time do we have?”
Romek said, “Wójcik has been hit. He’s outside. Come with us. We’ll talk on the way.”
Paul collected his rucksack with his personal and first aid items. When they got to the street, he rushed towards Wójcik, lying on the ground. He’s dead, Paul thought, without even examining him. He had suffered at least four bullets in his torso and was lying in a pool of blood.
“We tried to get him all the way to you, but he was in agony, and we couldn’t get him up the stairs,” Romek said in a broken voice.
For Romek and Kurt’s sake, Paul went to Wójcik and felt for a pulse. His stethoscope was hanging around his neck, so he also listened to his heart. He looked up at the men’s hopeful faces and shook his head. “I’m sorry. He’s gone.”
Paul felt sick with sadness for the man who had been his mentor, but his grief was smothered by the shock of seeing his surroundings. He’d not been outside the hospital for days, and although he’d known they were in a dire situation, he hadn’t imagined that every building would be virtually destroyed or that dozens of dead bodies would be strewn throughout the street.
Two of Romek’s men carried Wójcik off to some temporary resting place. Paul watched solemnly, then returned his attention to Romek. “He was a good man. By the looks of it, you’ve been having a tough time out here. What’s the latest news from command headquarters?”
“The Germans are attacking, and we are counter-attacking all over the city. They’re throwing their heavy artillery and tactical bombers at us, and we don’t have the anti-aircraft artillery we need to defend ourselves. We’re surrounded, Paul, and the only way we’re going to get out of Old Town and get to the city centre is if we use the sewers. We will begin evacuating civilians and the wounded tonight. One of our battalions will stage diversionary attacks to keep the Germans busy as we go into the tunnels.” Then Romek warned Paul, “Only those who can walk unaided can go. Those who cannot…”
“I know … I know the drill by now, Romek. They will be left behind.”
“We do have good news,” Kurt said, inhaling deeply from the cigarette shaking in his blood-stained fingers. “The Soviets have attacked the 4th SS Panzer Corps east of Warsaw, and the Germans have been forced to retreat into Praga. It’s a major setback for them.”
“Does this mean the Soviets have finally decided to help us?” Paul asked, hope rising.
Romek sniggered. “No. They are helping themselves. We’ve been trying to get them on the radio for days, and they won’t answer our calls. They won’t even cooperate with us to get supplies into the city. We will not be doing a supply run today or tomorrow.”
The patients and medical teams had not eaten since the previous day, and even then, it had been a meal of spit soup, thus called because it was made from ground barley that hadn’t been husked, and consequently, the husks had to be spat out. For almost the entire month, Warsaw’s citizens had lived mostly on barley from the Polish-held Haberbusch i Schiele brewery complex on Ceglana Street. Every day, up to several thousand people organised into cargo teams, reported to the brewery for bags of barley, and then distributed them in the city centre. With the heavy fighting, no one was now baking bread in their cellars, or running with water buckets to thirsty fighters, nor even to the medical stations where it was desperately needed.
Paul was dismayed by the breakdown in the supply chain. The people in the hospital were not only being bombed from the air but were also being starved to death, and worse, deprived of potable water. It was an untenable situation, and unlike at the beginning of the uprising, there was now a shortage of safe zones to escape to.
Paul aired his thoughts, “Well, it looks like it’s over for this hospital. We can function for a couple of days without food, but we haven’t had water delivered for two days.”
“Most of the water conduits are either out of order or filled with corpses, Paul,” Kurt said.
“The main water pumping station is still in German hands, but our authorities have ordered all janitors to supervise the construction of water wells in the backyards of every house still standing,” Romek added.
That won’t help the hospital’s situation, Paul thought.
******
At 2300, Paul and Amelia began their long journey through the murky waters of Warsaw’s sewers, right under German positions. They, along with over a hundred people from the hospital and houses surrounding it, had been instructed to follow the Home Army soldiers until they were told to ascend to street level. No one was permitted to stop, loiter, or turn back, for if the orderly line, going through what was a very narrow tunnel, were disrupted, a pile-up could ensue and endanger lives.
Romek and Kurt’s fighting units led the group, intending to get to the city centre before the German strike force overwhelmed the Poles who were already there and trying to hold it. The Germans had received reinforcements and were crushing the Polish Home Army with superior weaponry and concentrated numbers, and, although no one was thinking about giving up the fight, some Poles were calling this the final stand.
As they advanced under the Warsaw Streets, Paul and Amelia were positioned halfway along, right in the middle of the crowded pack. For six hours, Paul saw nothing but a woman’s backside in front of him. The air was rancid and hot. People cried with exhaustion and despair as they lumbered under the weight of their belongings, and all too often he heard splashing sewage water, as someone stumbled and fell into it neck deep.
Their fear was tangible. Every now and again the Germans threw grenades and gas canisters into the manholes at street level, to put a stop to the fleeing civilians and block the sewers with piles of dead bodies. Regardless of stench, danger, and universal terror, the sick, old, young, and fit struggled to reach the manhole at the end of their journey.
“Keep going. You’re holding everyone else up,” Paul snapped at the middle-aged woman in front of him. She had stopped numerous times to face the wall and cry for her lost children, but Paul, who had for the last hour been patiently urging her to keep moving, finally lost his temper. “Move now, or I’ll put you over my shoulder and carry you. I’ve had enough of your complaining.”
She turned, glaring at him through eyes that were red and raw from sewer fumes. “I’m going blind, I tell you. I can’t go on. I want to go back!”
The long line of people behind Paul, including Amelia, tried to continue, but their passage was blocked by the woman’s determined stance and her feet planted firmly on the ground.
“Get your hands off me,” she told Paul when he pushed her for the second time. “I will not walk another centimetre. If we don’t die in here, we’ll die when we get out. The Germans will be waiting for us. I want to turn around. Get out of my way. You’re not even Polish!”
Paul slapped the woman’s face. “Shut up and keep moving.”
“No, I can’t … I can’t do this. The smell … the shit in the water, the darkn
ess. I can’t. I would rather die!”
“Move!” someone shouted behind Paul.
“What’s the hold-up?” another voice yelled from further down the line.
Pushed violently, Amelia was shunted into Paul’s back. Paul, in turn, shoved the woman causing the danger. The shouting became louder as more people began to lose their nerve. Men were cursing, women were weeping, and within moments, Paul expected an onslaught of mass hysteria to disrupt the hard fought for, steady pace.
“Paul, do something!” Amelia begged, as she tripped and fell into the filthy water.
Again, Paul tried to push the Polish woman forward.
“No!” the woman screamed, then with calm, shuffling baby steps, she turned a semi-circle to face Paul. They locked eyes, and in those seconds that seemed to stretch to minutes in Paul’s mind, she raised a knife to her own throat, slicing across it with one long circular movement.
“My God!” Paul gasped, as the woman’s carotid artery burst, and blood spewed over his shocked face.
Blinded, Paul wiped the blood from his eyes, looked down at the lifeless body at his feet, then pushed it under the water. “Amelia, walk over her. We must go forward,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. Then he shouted down the line, “Watch your feet. There is an obstacle in your path!”
Is this what he had become? he thought as he started moving again. He had just described a dead woman as an obstacle. Too wrapped up in his own desperate situation to notice the knife or the moment she had slit her own throat, he had failed to halt the suicide of a despairing woman, grieving for her lost children?
Two hours later, Paul peeked his head over the drain hole onto the street and found himself just forty-five metres from the advancing Germans. After he had pulled Amelia up, he helped several others get out until his position was unsustainable, and he and Amelia were forced to run under a cacophony of weapons fire blasting their ears.
Paul gripped Amelia’s hand and sprinted with her towards the Poles who were preparing to defend the area. Halfway across the street, however, German SS troops advanced en masse and shot people still trying to climb out of the manhole.
