by Primo Levi
Gedale’s band moved forward by short marches, alternating them with cautious diversionary actions. Gedale had no difficulty obtaining money and ammunition, but it was becoming more and more difficult to exchange cash for provisions. The semi-abandoned fields yielded practically nothing, and the little that was left to the peasants was regularly decimated by requisitions from the Germans or by only slightly less feared requisitions from authentic partisans or bandits who claimed to be partisans.
At the beginning of October, two of the men from Slonim, who had been scouting ahead, brought back reports that at the station of Tunel, on a siding, a freight train had been halted; in all likelihood it was transporting food. It was a long train, so long that its last few cars stretched back into the tunnel that had given the village its name; it was guarded only by the “bluecoats” of the Polish police. Gedale ordered the band to set up camp a kilometer away, near the railroad line, and at night he went to the station with Mendel, Mottel, and Arie. There were only two bluecoats, one a long way off, at the head of the train, and the other back at the tail; this second bluecoat was not inside the tunnel but, rather, outside its mouth, so that he couldn’t see the last few boxcars. Gedale told the other three men to wait for him quietly and vanished into the darkness. He returned a few minutes later:
“No, Mottel, for once there is no need of your skills. All it took was a little money. Hurry, run to Dov and come back with four strong men.”
Mottel set off, and came back twenty minutes later with Pavel and three others: eight in all, nine with the bluecoat at the end of the train, who helped them uncouple the last car. He had seen it being loaded: it contained potatoes and turnips for forage and it was being sent to the German command in Kraków. Once the car had been unhooked, all nine of them placed their shoulders against it and pushed, but it didn’t move an inch. They tried again, with Gedale issuing the order to push in a low voice to make sure their efforts were coordinated, but nothing happened. “Wait,” whispered the bluecoat, and moved away.
“Did you cast a spell on him?” Mendel asked in admiration.
“No,” said Gedale. “Along with the money, I promised him some potatoes for his family, and I offered to take him with us. He lives not far from here.”
The Pole took some time coming back. Gedale’s men watched uneasily for his return, by the faint bluish glow of the blacked-out platform lights. Across from the station they could just make out a field: unfamiliar roundish shapes lay scattered across the ground. Mottel, his curiosity pricked, went to see what they were; they were pumpkins, nothing interesting or dangerous about them. Silently, the Pole came back, carrying a tool that he called “the slipper.” It was a long lever that ended in a wedge-shaped steel shoe; when you lowered the lever the shoe lifted a few millimeters. “It’s designed to move railcars,” he explained. “You have them in every freight yard. Once you get the cars moving, they’ll continue on their own.” He wrapped a rag around the slipper to keep it from making noise, slid it under one of the train wheels, and lowered the lever. The freight car moved, imperceptibly, then it stopped.
“Good,” whispered Gedale. “How long is the tunnel?”
“Six hundred meters. A little farther on there’s a switch; a spur line runs from there through the forest and leads to an abandoned foundry. You’d better run the car onto the spur line: you can unload it there without anyone seeing you. Shall we go?”
But Gedale had something else in mind. He sent four men to gather a dozen pumpkins and put them up on the poles that supported an electric power line, one pumpkin per pole.
“What are they for?” asked Mendel.
“Nothing,” Gedale replied. “What they’re for is to make the Germans wonder what they’re for. We might have just wasted a couple of minutes; but the Germans are methodical, and they’re going to waste a lot more time than that.”
The bluecoat told them all to get ready and then he applied the slipper again: “All right now, push.” The railcar moved again, and this time it continued, silent and exceedingly slowly.
“Farther along it’ll go faster,” said the Pole. “The spur line runs downhill.” Gedale sent Arie ahead to alert the band that the freight car was coming: they should go to the spur line and be ready to unload.
“But it’s ten tons of freight!” said Mottel. “How can we unload it all?”
Gedale seemed unconcerned. “Someone will help us. We’ll keep only a part for ourselves, we’ll give the rest of it to the peasants.”
They emerged from the tunnel and found themselves in a bank of fog, with the early light of dawn filtering through it. They saw human figures emerge from the fog, six, twelve, more and more: too many to be the vanguard of the band. An energetic voice shouted in Polish: “Stój.” A dozen armed men, in uniform, stood barring the train track. Taking advantage of the surprise, the bluecoat ran off, vanishing into the fog; Gedale and the others did their best to halt the rolling freight car, but it continued another ten meters or so until Mottel climbed up into the brakeman’s cabin and activated the hand brake.
The same voice as before repeated, “Stój!” this time reinforcing the order with a short burst of submachine-gun fire, and then added, “Rece do góry! Hands up!” Gedale obeyed, and after him so did all the others: they were armed only with handguns and knives, they had left their automatic weapons with the rest of the band. It was pointless even to think of offering resistance.
A slender young man stepped forward, with a serious face and regular features. He wore round wire-rimmed eyeglasses.
“Who is your leader?”
“I am,” Gedale replied.
“Who are you? Where are you taking that freight car?”
“We’re Jewish partisans; some of us are Russian, others are Polish. We come from far away. We took the freight car from the Germans.”
“You’ll have to prove that you’re partisans. In any case, we’re in charge of this district.”
“You who?”
“We, the Armia Krajowa, the Polish Home Army. Come with us. If you try to escape, we’ll shoot you.”
“Lieutenant, we’ll come with you and we won’t try to escape; but before long the Germans will be here. Isn’t it a pity to give them this freight car full of potatoes?”
“The Germans won’t come here, or at least not right away. They’re afraid of us; they attack us if they catch us out alone, but they won’t venture into the forest. We’ll take the freight car into the forest. What were you planning to do with the potatoes?”
“We were going to keep some and give the rest to the peasants.”
“For now, we’ll keep them for ourselves. Go on, keep pushing,” said Edek, the lieutenant, but he detached six of his own men to help them and to get the freight car moving faster. As they went, he fell into step next to Gedale and asked him again:
“How many of you are there?”
“You can see for yourself: there are eight of us.”
“That’s not true,” said Edek. “You were seen marching a few days ago, and there were a great many more of you. There’s no need for you to lie to me; we have nothing against you, as long as you don’t bother us. There are Jews in our ranks, as well.”
“There are thirty-eight of us,” said Gedale. “Thirty or so are armed and fit for combat. Five are women.”
“The women don’t fight?”
“One woman fights and one man doesn’t; in fact, two men don’t.”
“Why not?”
“One man is too young and he’s not that bright. The other man is too old and he’s been wounded.”
Even if Gedale had persisted with his lie, it would have been pointless: the freight car was rolling silently, the fog had grown thicker, and the bulk of the band of the Gedalists, trustingly advancing toward Gedale, were well within sight of Edek’s vanguard before they could think of trying to hide. The Polish partisans (roughly a hundred in number) surrounded them and ordered them to continue, with weapons and baggage; Gedale explained to Dov
what had happened.
After walking for an hour they found themselves in the thick of the forest. Edek gave the order to halt: their quarters weren’t far now. He sent a messenger, and in short order had organized the unloading of the freight car. Jews and Poles went to work energetically, one sack per man, shuttling back and forth between the freight car and the camp. The freight car was pushed all the way to the abandoned factory, the sacks were piled up in the camp storehouse, and the Gedalists, all of them, were locked into one of the half-underground wooden barracks that served as the base for Edek’s detachment. The Polish partisans were well armed, efficient, chilly, and fair. They offered the Jews something to eat, but after the long night of excitement the Jews preferred sleeping to eating. The bulk of the Polish platoon went out, armed, early that morning; only a few sentries remained behind in the barrack, and the Gedalists were left in peace, the women on military cots, the men on clean straw. But they were obliged to hand over their weapons “temporarily”; the arms were inventoried and stacked in another hut.
Edek and his men came back toward evening, and the ration was distributed: a grain-based soup, cans of beer, and tinned meat with a label in English.
“You people are rich,” said Dov, admiringly.
“They drop this stuff down to us by parachute,” said Edek. “The Americans drop it, but it comes from England; it’s our government in London that sends it. The Americans are always in a hurry and the drops are done in a pretty slapdash way: they’re flying all the way from Brindisi, in Italy, and they’re stretching their fuel to the maximum. They fly overhead, make the drop, and fly away again. It means that half the stuff winds up in German hands; but there’s always plenty for us because there are so few of us left.”
“Have a lot of your men been killed?” asked Mendel.
“Killed, or missing in action, and others who’ve just given up and gone home.”
“Why have they gone home? Aren’t they afraid of the Germans deporting them?”
“They’re afraid, but they leave all the same. They don’t know why they’re fighting anymore, or who they’re fighting for.”
“What about you, who are you fighting for?” asked Gedale.
“For Poland: for the freedom of Poland, but it’s a war of desperation. It’s hard to fight like this.”
“But Poland will be free: the Germans will leave, they’ve already lost, and they’re retreating on all fronts.”
Edek, through his spectacles, turned his gaze to his three interlocutors, Dov, Mendel, and Gedale. He was much younger than they were, but he seemed burdened by a weight unknown to the others.
“Where are you going?” he finally asked.
“We’re going far away,” Gedale replied. “We want to go on fighting the Germans until the war is over; and who knows, maybe even afterward. Then we’re going to try to leave. We want to go to Palestine; there’s nothing left for us in Europe. Hitler won the war against the Jews, and his pupils have done excellent work, too. Everyone has learned from his gospel: the Russians, the Lithuanians, the Ukrainians, the Croatians, and the Slovaks.” Gedale hesitated, then he added, “You’ve learned it, too; or perhaps you already knew it. Tell me, lieutenant: are we your guests or your prisoners?”
“Give me a little time,” Edek replied. “Soon, I’ll be able to give you an answer. But meanwhile I wanted to tell you that the idea of the pumpkins was a good one.”
“How do you know about the pumpkins?”
“Around here we have friends everywhere. We have friends among the railroad workers, too, and they told us that the Germans in the garrison still haven’t dared to touch them. They’ve shut down the railroad line and have sent for a squad of explosives experts from Kraków. They’re more worried about the pumpkins than about the railcar that you took away.”
He opened two packs of Lucky Strikes and offered the cigarettes around to the astonished admiration of the Gedalists. Then he went on:
“You shouldn’t be unjust, even if there have been Poles who were unjust. We weren’t all enemies to you.”
“Not all, but many,” said Gedale.
Edek sighed. “Poland is a sad country. It’s always been an unhappy country, crushed by neighbors who were too powerful. It is hard to be unhappy and not hate, and we have hated everyone for all the centuries of our servitude and our division. We’ve hated the Russians, the Germans, the Czechs, the Lithuanians, and the Ukrainians; and we’ve hated you, too, because you were scattered throughout our country, but you didn’t want to become like us, dissolve into us, and we didn’t understand you. We began to understand you when you revolted in Warsaw. You showed us the way; you taught us that it’s possible to fight even in the midst of despair.”
“But by then it was too late,” said Gedale. “We were already all dead.”
“Yes, it was too late. But now you are richer than we are—you know where you want to go. You have a destination and a hope.”
“Why shouldn’t you be able to hope, too?” asked Dov. “The war will end, and we’ll build a new world, without slavery and without injustice.”
Edek said, “The war will never end. From this war, a new war will arise, and war will go on forever. The Americans and the Russians will never be friends, and Poland has no friends, even if the Allies are helping us now. The Russians wish that we didn’t exist, that we’d never been born. The Germans, when they invaded us in 1939, immediately deported and killed our professors, writers, and priests; but the Russians who were advancing from their borders did the same thing; what’s more, they handed over to the Gestapo the Polish Communists who had sought refuge in their country. They wanted to strip Poland of its soul, both the Germans and the Russians did; they didn’t want Poland to have a soul when they were allies, and they don’t want it now that they’re enemies. The Russians were happy when the Warsaw revolt failed, they were happy that the Germans exterminated the insurgents: while we were dying, they were waiting on the far bank of the river.
Dov broke in: “Lieutenant, I’m Russian. Jewish, but still Russian, and many of us were born in Russia, and that tall young man you see down there is a Russian Christian who is traveling with us. This man”—and he pointed to Mendel—“and many others who are dead now were soldiers in the Red Army: I was one myself. Before we set out on our journey, we fought as Russians rather than as Jews: as Russians and for the Russians. It is the Russians who are liberating Europe. They are paying with their blood, they are dying by the millions, and the things that you say strike me as unjust. I myself, when I was tired and wounded, was cared for in Kiev, and then the Russians brought me back to my comrades.”
“The Russians will drive the Nazis out of our country,” said Edek, “but then they’ll refuse to leave. It’s a mistake to confuse wishes with reality. Stalin’s Russia is the same thing as the tsars’ Russia: it wants a Russian Poland, it doesn’t want a Polish Poland. That is why ours is a war of desperation. We must defend ourselves and the populace from the Nazis, but we also have to watch our backs, because the Russians who are advancing want nothing to do with the Armia Krajowa. When they find us, they incorporate us piecemeal into their units; if we refuse to go, they disarm us and deport us to Siberia.”
“Why would you refuse to go?” Dov asked.
“Because we’re Polish. Because we want to prove to the world that we still exist. If necessary, we’ll prove it by dying.”
Mendel looked at Dov, and Dov returned his look. They were both remembering the words that Dov had shouted to Mendel at Novoselky, in the midst of the battle: “We’re fighting for three lines in the history books.” Mendel told Edek the story, and Edek replied, “It’s stupid to be enemies.”
A few days went by as Edek tried in vain to establish contact with his superior officers and obtain instructions on what to do next. The Poles had a modern, powerful radio set, but they seldom used it. After the collapse of Warsaw, the Armia Krajowa was in full crisis, perhaps more moral than material; contacts were vanishing one after a
nother, and many of the leaders were dead or had been arrested by the Russians. A messenger finally came back, and Edek, with a wan smile, told Gedale, “It’s all right now. You’re no longer prisoners, you’re our guests; and soon you’ll become allies, provided you still want to.”
Edek was twenty-three and a medical student. He had just enrolled in his first year of medical school, in Kraków, in 1939, when the Germans summoned the entire faculty. Some of the professors had caught a whiff of something fishy and hadn’t showed up; the rest of them were deported immediately to Sachsenhausen. “After that, all of us, professors and students, began organizing a secret university, because we didn’t want our Polish culture to die. In much the same way, in those years, we had a secret government, a secret church, and a secret army: all of Poland lived underground. I studied, and at the same time I worked in a clandestine print shop; but I even had to study in hiding. Hitler and Himmler had decided that Poles needed no more than four years of elementary school; it was sufficient to learn to count to five hundred and sign their names, and unnecessary for them to know how to read and write—in fact it was harmful. So my fellow students and I studied anatomy and physiology out of textbooks, without ever getting so much as a glimpse of a microscope, without dissecting corpses, without setting foot in a hospital ward. But I, too, was there in Warsaw in August, and I saw more wounded, sick, and dead than an army doctor at the end of his career.”
