The View from the Ground

by Martha Gellhorn

  * * *

  The Communist Founding Fathers and their latter-day disciples either have never heard about human nature or regard it as weak, contemptible, not here to stay. The result is a perpetual war between the State, which does not care for individuals, and the people, who continue to be individuals since they cannot deny their nature and become sheep. The most obvious battlefront in this war is religion. You cannot push your way into any church in Poland on Sunday morning; overflow crowds stand outside the doors listening to distant liturgy and music. Anyone, except the State, would realize what the Catholic Church means to the majority of Poles, to each one alone, in his heart. But the State does not learn about people; it only interferes with them. The last stupidity of the State produced a riot. This happened at Nowa Huta, and none of us saw it because the police arrested all journalists who appeared on the scene. About eight hours in the clink for foreigners; no news of what became of foolhardy Poles.

  We heard about it within fifteen minutes of its start; all Poland heard about it presently, although nothing was printed in the papers for three days, and finally only a dotty paragraph which spoke of “irresponsible elements.” Nowa Huta is the State's favorite showpiece; the steelworks are reputed to be first class, and though the housing is hideous, it is habitable, and there are special advantages—the theater, movies, a cabaret, cafés, library, sports grounds, and so on. The peasantry was then uprooted, brought here, taught skilled work, and paid well. Nowa Huta was meant to be an example of the brave new Communist world. The State did not, of course, build a church.

  There are 110,000 people living in Nowa Huta, and they collected money amongst themselves to build a church, which must have depressed the State. They had a plot next to the theater; a cross was raised and foundations partly dug. One morning three workers arrived and began to dismantle the cross. Workers’ wives, in nearby flats, saw this and rushed out to ask why. The State, the workers said, had decided to build a school here, which was more necessary. The housewives hurled themselves on the unlucky workmen and beat them with bits of the cross; in no time there were 30,000 people rioting. They burned the Nowa Huta city hall, which is standard operational procedure when rioting; the object is to burn all the dossiers. They fought the police and some contingents of the army who were called in. There wasn't a policeman left in Krakow. Reports from Krakow residents who lived near the military hospital said that there was a heavy traffic of ambulances. Truckloads of workers were seen driving off to jail. Curfew was declared at Nowa Huta. There were excited rumors of a partial strike at the steelworks. After four days, the cross was back in its place. The workers would have their church. People laughed and congratulated each other in the streets of Krakow; this was a victory for human nature.

  Communist countries are prisons in the simplest sense; people are not allowed freedom of movement, to leave and to return when they want to. Since 1956, Poland has been a prison with small doors opening to the West; much better than the doorless prison lands. But the Communist rulers’ attitude toward travel in the open world is not only a total admission of failure—contented people need not be denied the right to roam; it also proves their contempt for human needs, or indifference to them. People cannot bear to be locked up. Maybe they would not be able to travel if they were free to do so; money is a problem everywhere. What eats into the soul is the sense of being trapped.

  If a Pole can arrange to be invited by someone, preferably a relative, living in the West who will pay for his round-trip ticket in hard currency and guarantee to support him while he is away, he can, with luck, and after both his and his host's massive struggles against red tape, get a passport. This may take anywhere from three months to a year and a half. The passport costs from ten to sixty dollars (I have no idea why there is this price range) and is valid for a short period, a few months. And the Poles long to travel in our world; not to leave Poland forever, but only to breathe another air for a while, see another life, learn. They have been jailed for twenty years.

  A young painter asked me where I had been since last he saw me. I tried to remember the countries: various visits to France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, all over America. He laughed as if I had told him a magical tale, something between the Arabian Nights and the best joke of the year. He laughed with joy to think that all the countries were there and that someone he knew could actually go to them. He no longer talks of traveling himself.

  I heard of a man who had been coping for over a year with the maddening, wearing obstacles put in the way of travel: at last he had his passport, at last he was to leave for Paris, whereupon the police advised him that it would be better not to go. Why? No reason. At this point, sane people go almost insane from the stupid, oppressive frustration of it all. My informant said, “It is not now like eyes burned out or somezing like zat; it is only ze tedium, ze tedium, it sacks ze nerves.”

  Every day these people are forced into contact with the deadly, cheap, E. Phillips Oppenheim spy-story mentality of the State. Every day they have to swallow sickening doses of illogical bureaucracy, a bureaucracy which is Kafka mixed with Asiatic deviousness. And what for, what for? What does the State want? Clearly, everyone is guilty until proved innocent (crime not specified). Is the sole intention of all this hateful, invisible controlling to intimidate the Poles? It intimidates me all right; it does not intimidate the Poles.

  The enslaving State is itself a slave of the Russian master; and Russian government has relied for centuries on the degrading practices of a secret police. The only long-term hope of the Poles is that the Russian people will demand more and more personal freedom, more human dignity, and so, by contagion, government in Poland might eventually become an open, daylight business.

  One night, four of us were having a feast in a room like a stage set: it was an abject-poverty room, a tiny cell in a dark, dirty, overcrowded flat on an ugly street. There was an iron cot, three folding chairs, a table, an unshaded light bulb, and we were gloriously happy. I haven't been to such a good party since the last time I was in Poland. Our host, the youngest of the three young Poles, had spent his money, to my anxiety, on lots of bread and butter, some salami, a tin of sardines, withered apples, and vodka. We sat in the cold room, on the hard chairs and harder bed, for five perfect hours, eating, drinking, and laughing.

  I almost wrecked the party with an outburst against the State, and I learned much of great importance to me. “The worst hotel rooms are supposed to be those with numbers ending in 2,” I said. “It's so revolting and so pointless; and where are the mikes? And coming back to a hotel in the north and asking for your key, and the brute of a police agent at the desk says you must have taken it with you; but you couldn't take any room key anywhere in Poland—either it has a wooden turnip attached to it or a ring like a handcuff. Then the second police desk clerk arrives with your key in his hand and says blandly he was just checking to see if the room was still occupied. And never daring to speak anyone's name on the telephone, not that you have anything to say except ‘Where shall we meet?” but you're afraid someday they'll get in trouble because they've talked to you.” I was breathless; I had been at it on a large scale for some time. I saw that they looked uncomfortable. Julek patted my hand and offered me more vodka and another withered apple.

  “Police, spying, terror, all that, we are so used to it; no one pays attention to it any more. It becomes a form of entertainment for us. It is much more irritating if you can never get the sort of shoe polish you want.”

  The others laughed, the conversation changed, and I stood deeply corrected. I had behaved like someone who comes, for a few hours, to the front, where others live in constant peril, and babbles fear, spreading panic or dismay. This is not acceptable behavior at any front, nor in Poland. What the Poles’ private secret feelings may be I do not know; singly and collectively they are sardonic about the hazards of their lives, always a little more weary, unyielding.

  I listened to my friends and thought of all the Poles I knew or had met in p
assing. I thought of the extreme individualism of this people, which twenty years of different forms of tyranny has not chipped away. Each person owns his mind, and they are original, interesting minds, too.

  Bits of conversation, pictures of places float about in my memory: the entrancing barmaid, who looked like a Bryn Mawr Brigitte Bardot, teaching historical fact to a long, lean, foolish young American. He was saying, “It's better to get any story over with. In a week, who is going to remember Chessman?” “I disagree,” she said. “Don't you remember the Rosenbergs? People will remember Chessman.” The taxi driver who spoke perfect Italian; his father had been killed by the Germans as a Communist; he himself hates all politics. He wished he could have met in his life Jack London and Hemingway; he had all their books in Polish and Italian. He admired America—"all Poles do"—but he deplored “the war against the Negroes in America. That is not good; that is racialism. America would rise very much in our eyes if they stopped that war.” The student's cabaret, in a small, vaulted, grimy cellar: I could not understand a word and grasped at snippets of translation, but even with such a handicap it seemed to me wildly, irreverently funny and professional, better than any expensive night-club show I could remember. In the middle, the young performers sang “in honor of our American friend” Tipperary in Russian, to the howling delight of the audience, which continues to regard anything in Russian as automatically, killingly comical.

  “Antoni,” I said, “could you ever live outside Poland?”

  “No, I would not even try.”

  The evils that befall their country have no effect on the love of the Poles for their country, which is unique in the line of passionate patriotism. I think, at last, I know why. The very evils that befall them, and have through the centuries, and most cruelly these last twenty years, feed the love: one loves what is hurt and needs help. History treats Poles almost as specially and nearly as badly as it treats Jews. In another, very different room, a Pole, whom history had flung about from Manchuria to Lithuania to Brazil, said, “If our country were rich and happy, we could all go away. But, as it is not, we will never leave it.”

  “Julek,” I asked, “have you ever been bored?”

  “I don't know. Perhaps I have been bored all my life without knowing it. But what are you to do if you are kept waiting for half an hour in a restaurant? Hang yourself?”

  Great backhanded compliments can be paid to poverty, suffering, and oppression: if they don't kill, they sharpen the mind and strengthen the spirit. The sharpened mind is lively, hungry, daring, and singularly free. The strengthened spirit is generous, loyal, grateful for life and for any small chance blessing. A visit to Poland is like stepping through the Looking Glass, but it is a highly therapeutic step. You remember again the splendor of human courage, and you learn humility.

  I wonder if this is any sort of balance sheet on what is good and what is bad in Polish life today.

  The Arabs of Palestine

  THE ATLANTIC MONIHLY, October 1961

  According to Arab politicians and apologists, this is what happened, this is the authentic view, these are the facts. Doubt is treasonous. There can be only one truth, according to Arab politicians and apologists, and it belongs to them:

  In 1948, war took place between five Arab nations of the Middle East and the Jews in Palestine. This war was caused by the United Nations, whose General Assembly resolved to partition Palestine into two states, one for the Palestinian Arabs, the other for the Jews. The Arab nations and the Palestinian Arabs would not accept this monstrous decision. They were obliged to protect themselves against it, with force. The United Nations operated as the tool of the Western Imperialists, notably Great Britain and the United States. The United Nations wanted the Jews to proclaim the upstart state of Israel. Because of the Western Imperialists, who favored Israel, the Arabs lost the war. By massacre, threatening broadcasts, pointed bayonets, and the murderous siege of cities, the Jews drove hundreds of thousands of Arabs out of their homeland. For thirteen years, these Arab refugees have languished in misery around the borders of Israel. The United Nations (Western branch) bears the blame for these events and must repair the damage. The condition of the refugees is a sore on the conscience of honorable men. The Israeli government refuses to welcome back to their homeland the refugees, now swollen to more than a million in number. This refusal demonstrates the brutality and dishonesty of Israel, an abnormal nation of aliens who not only forced innocent people into exile but also stole their property. There is no solution to this injustice, the greatest the world has ever seen, except to repatriate all Palestinian refugees in Palestine. Palestine is an Arab country, now infamously called Israel. Israel has no right to exist, and the Arab nations will not sign peace treaties with it but will, by every means possible, maintain the state of war.

  The details of the Arab case vary, depending on the political climate of the moment and the audience. However, the Palestinian refugees always remain the invaluable, central theme. The case is painted the color of blood in the Arab countries: Revenge and Return. For the Western public, tears replace blood; the Arab case rests on the plight of the refugees and is a call to conscience rather than to arms. But no Arab statesman has ever promised final peace with Israel if only the million Palestinian refugees may return to their former homes.

  The best way to consider this case is close up, by looking at the Palestinian refugees themselves, not as a “problem,” not as statistics, but as people. The Palestinian refugees, battered by thirteen years in the arena of international politics, have lost their shape; they appear as a lump and are spoken of as one object. They are individuals, like everyone else.

  Despite the unique care and concern they have received, despite the unique publicity which rages around them, the Arab refugees, alas, are not unique. Although no one knows exactly how many refugees are scattered everywhere over the globe, it is estimated that since World War II, and only since then, at least thirty-nine million non-Arab men, women, and children have become homeless refugees, through no choice of their own. Their numbers grow every year; Angolans are the latest addition to the long list. The causes for this uprooting are always different, but the result is the same: the uprooted have lost what they had and where they came from and must start life again as handicapped strangers wherever they are allowed to live.

  The world could be far more generous to these unwilling wanderers, but at least the world has never thought of exploiting them. They are recognized as people, not pawns. By their own efforts, and with help from those devoted to their service, all but some six million of the thirty-nine million have made a place for themselves, found work and another chance for the future. To be a refugee is not necessarily a life sentence.

  The unique misfortune of the Palestinian refugees is that they are a weapon in what seems to be a permanent war. Alarming signs, from Egypt, warn us that the Palestinian refugees may develop into more than a justification for cold war against Israel. We ignored Mein Kampf in its day, as the ravings of a lunatic, written for limited home consumption. We ought to have learned never to ignore dictators or their books. Egypt's Liberation, by Gamal Abdel Nasser, deserves careful notice. It is short, low-keyed, and tells us once again that a nation has been ordained by fate to lead—this time, to lead the Arab nations, all Africa, all Islam. The Palestinian refugees are not mentioned, and today, in the Middle East, you get a repeated sinking sensation about the Palestinian refugees: they are only a beginning, not an end. Their function is to hang around and be constantly useful as a goad. The ultimate aim is not such humane small potatoes as repatriating refugees.

  The word refugee is drenched in memories which stretch back over too many years and too many landscapes: Spain, Czechoslovakia, China, Finland, England, Italy, Holland, Germany. In Madrid, between artillery bombardments, children were stuffed into trucks to be taken somewhere, out of that roulette death, while their mothers clung to the tailboards of the trucks and were dragged weeping after the bewildered, weeping childre
n. In Germany, at war's end, the whole country seemed alive with the roaming mad—slave laborers, concentration camp survivors—who spoke the many tongues of Babel, dressed in whatever scraps they had looted, and searched for food in stalled freight cars though the very railyards were being bombed. From China to Finland, people like these defined the meaning of refugee.

  No one could wish to see even a pale imitation of such anguish again. In the Middle East, there would be no high explosive, no concentration camps, but the imagined, expected scene was bad enough; lice and rickets and tuberculosis, bodies rotting in the heat, the apathy of despair. Why, in 1961, did I have such a picture of the Palestinian refugees? Obviously from what I had read, as one of the average absorbent reading public; notions float in the air exactly as dust does. Nothing that I had read or heard prepared me for what I found.

  What do they look like, the undifferentiated mass known as the “Palestinian Refugee Problem"? What do they think, feel, say? What do they want? How do they live, where do they live, what do they do? Who takes care of them? What future can they hope for, in terms of reality, not in terms of slogans, which are meaningless if not actually fatal, as we know.

  The children are as fast as birds, irreverent as monkeys, large-eyed, ready to laugh. The young girls, trained by carrying water jars or other heavy household bundles on their heads, move like ballerinas and are shrouded in modesty and silence as if in cocoons. The young men, crudely or finely formed, have in common the hopefulness and swagger of their new manhood. The middle years seem nondescript, in both sexes. After this the women, who age quickly but not as quickly as the men, wear unpainted experience on their faces; they look patient, humorous, and strong. When the men have grown visibly old, they turn into a race of grandees. Their color, infant to patriarch, ranges from golden fair to mahogany dark, all warmed by the glaze of sun. The instinct for hospitality, the elegance of manner have not been exaggerated.