Jewish Communism in Poland
Jan Sulkowski: Secretary of Krzemieniec County.
The Red Army Invades
At 5 a.m. on September 17, 1939, our telephone rang. It was the third week of war and it had been ringing day and night with urgent messages for my father Jan in his capacity as county secretary. Before I could throw on a housecoat, he had already run from my parents' bedroom and picked it up. He was used to the routine by now.
On the other end was the Starost of the county and a family friend with the latest news.
"Hello...I'm listening...Yes...When?...Where?...I see...I see..." my father's voice trailed off chocked with emotion and chronic bronchitis.
My father slowly hung up. I watched him as a silhouette swaying against our veranda doors, his gold bracelet glinting in the early dawn as he cradled his forehead in a pair of graceful hands. He said nothing as he tried to compose himself.
Finally he whispered: "The Soviet army has crossed the border...it's all over...it's the end."
"Maybe they're coming to help us against the Germans!" I spoke up trying to bolster both our spirits.
He just put his arm around me and shook his head. We both realized that it was all over for Poland. But what lay in store for us now?
That day the sound of artillery echoed from the hills east of Krzemieniec as our lightly-armed Frontier Defense Corps opposed the Red Army which was pouring across the border. Locked in mortal combat with the Nazis, we did not anticipate an attack from that direction and our shock was considerable. Confusion reigned as to the intent of the Soviet Union, but Poland was not privy to the secret protocals of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which would see us divided between two age-old enemies. A horror unimaginable by any of us was unfolding....
Later that morning my father dispatched a county car to pick up my mother Natalia and my two younger siblings, Czeslaw and Wanda, from a vacation spot in the country where they'd been sent following the German Stuka attack on our town a few days earlier. Home was the only place now for the Sulkowski family to face a dark future together.
Greta Garbo and Jewish Collaborators
The very next morning a nauseating smell of crude burnt fuel and a rumble of tanks and tractors announced the arrival of the Red Army into our beautiful town. I ventured into the streets to see what it was all about.
My introduction to the Red Army were rag-tag soldiers marching out of step and tanks that constantly broke down. Even the NKVD officer wore canvass boots and tattered greatcoats. Though they were well-armed, they didn't bring supplies with them, and an occasional soldier would break from the ranks to make a quick purchase. Their eyes bulged at the amount and quality of goods in the stores, even as they insisted that they had "plenty of everything in the USSR--including Greta Garbos!"
The Poles watched the Soviet invaders with a mixture of revulsion and fear. Not a few of us cried. But as disconcerting was the emergence of a local Jewish militia which was friendly to the Red Army and had made its apperance even before the enemy had marched in. Armed and organized its first task was to arrest the students and Boy Scouts who had been posted as guards and who carried old carbines in some cases taller than them. The Jews roughed up the shocked youngsters who had considered their captors as friends and classmates, before turning them over to the Soviets from whom they had prior directions. What was the fate of those young Poles? In many cases torture and death. This Jewish militia would help carry out the Soviet's dirty work during their occupation. My family would fall victim to them.
In town, Jews and Ukrainians were cheering and ingratiating themselves with the Soviets. I recognized many neighbours and acquaintances among those who were now jostling Poles and eyeing their property for future theft. Jewish men offered gifts to the Russians while their wives and daughters kissed their tanks. Among this rabble were criminals released from jail by the Soviets to create mayhem. They were all emboldened by posters that had suddenly appeared urging various groups to attack Poles with axes and scythes. And the Soviet officers indicated they would not stand in the way of slaughter which was already turning the countryside red with the blood of the Polish minority outnumbered by Ukrainians and Jews.
On that day I had my first encounter with a swaggering group of traitors attired in leather jackets, red armbands or sashes, pistols, and hatred in their eyes. I beheld a number of classmates among them, including girlfriends. These mostly young Jews, often well-educated and from rich or religious families, now addressed each other as "comrade". One of them gestured a slash across the throat at me. Their love for Communism and Joseph Stalin knew no bounds--especially human sacrifice. They were much worse than the blackmailers and denouncers who emerged in great numbers among the Jews and who were mostly interested in the goods and jobs of their Polish victims.
Starting as communist sympathisers who flocked to the militia or acted as informers, these political types would soon graduate into "agitators," administrators and even sadistic interrogators for the Soviets as they filled positions in the new order. A knowledge of the language and the local scene, combined with their fanaticism, would be essential to the NKVD's reign of terror; they eagerly compiled lists and arrested Poles--and Jews, whom they considered to be enemies of the state. They were the ones who on horseback would chase my father down the main street like an animal, to act as interpreter for their torture victims.
A sizable minority of Polish Jews from all levels collaborated, usually passively but often actively, with the Soviet occupiers in their liquidation of Poles in eastern Poland in 1939-1941. For many, including my kin, the last sight they had of Poland or of their loved ones, was a cattle train bound for Siberia--and a Jew or a Ukrainian, or both, with a rifle on every wagon.
Soviet Occupation 1939-1941
The Russian Commandant of Krzemieniec immediately arrested the senior city government and our leading citizens--the first in a series of incarcerations and deporations, torture and execution, which also would claim my family in Krzemieniec and elsewhere across Soviet-occupied Poland. (I had secretly joined the underground and this would lead to my arrest as well.)
My father was removed as secretary of the county and now worked in the office of a peat mine where my brother Czeslaw toiled at digging. Much of our home had been requistioned and my mother was forced to barter or sell our remaining possessions. Shortages of everything were the order of the day as Soviet soldiers and officials simply bought up or confiscated what they could. Our friends and relatives in German-occupied Poland were suffering similar deprivations and oppression.
For Poles and those among the Ukrainian and Jewish communities who opposed the occupation, life was hell. The NKVD made good use of collaborators especially the local Communist party which was almost exclusively Jewish. From their headquarters in the requisitioned Treasury Office, lavishly refurbished with plundered riches, the NKVD would decide the fate of victims over vodka and fine food--aided by Jews who for reasons ranging from politics to settling old scores, turned in their neighbours. They eagerly fulfilled the duty of every party member to spy on and denounce the citizenry, resulting in brutal interrogations and show trails where the usual sentence was eight years at hard labour in Siberia. Even walking down the street was an ordeal as the Russian secret police and the Jewish or Ukrainian militia would arrest a person on any pretext--even for being well-dressed.
Krzemieniec Lyceum Humiliated
What particularly distressed me was the humiliation of my beloved Lyceum which was revered as a great Polish institution that welcomed students of all backgrounds: rich or poor, Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish. The Soviets methodically set out to transform it into a dreary and repressive model based on their Soviet system, and this required mass firings and arrests of Polish professors, staff and pupils. New directors and teachers were appointed from local unqualified Communists whose main attribute was loyalty to their Soviet overlords, and later personnel would be brought in from the USSR.
I could never forgive those Krzemiencian Jews, including friends, who played a great part in the destruction of an institution from which some had themselves graduated Many Jews and Ukrainains however mourned the loss of this respected school, even as new students, Jewish and Ukrainian, were brought in to eradiciate the despised Polish presence. With my own arrest I would only witness the early stages of the destruction.
My younger sister Wanda brought back horror stories of scholastic life under the viscious directorship of Pinchas Pinczuk, a Jewish former student of the Lyceum who had been imprisoned in Poland for his Communist activities, and who now used Jewish students to betray Polish classmates who wore religious symbols or were patriotic, often with deadly consequences for the student and his or her family. As the deportations started, fewer and fewer of Wanda's classmates would appear in class....
The Soviets emptied the school libraries and dumped the books into a pile for destruction, while the priceless Lyceum Library of 40,000 books was put into the hands of a young Jew who functioned as head censor and book-burner. The duties of school curator fell to two local Jews, one who was deemed qualified as he was an accountant with the publisher of Lyceum texts and material. School inspector was taken over by a young Jewish female doctor who demanded that students donate money to the "International Organizations of Revolutionaty Help"--with dire consequences for those who didn't pay. Jewish "assistants" in uniforms spread terror and enforced the new order which would see the number of Polish students decline drastically, including the arrest of a Polish professor and several students for belonging to "a counterrevolutionary organization."
Our Doomed Conspiracy
My surviving friends (some had perished or disappeared) slowly returned to a Krzemieniec under Soviet rule. Our schooldays were just a memory, but we were determined to fight on by underground means. At first we held secret meetings at which we memorized passwords--and consulted a Quija board!
But we soon contacted the forerunner of the Armia Krajowa (Home Army), Poland's main resistance force, and in early 1940 I took my oath to defend Poland and was assigned as a courier between our clandestine cells across Wolyn. Our leader, Colonel Tadeusz Majewski (codename "Szmigiel") arrived from fighting the Nazis in Warsaw with explosives and five officers trained in sabotage.
Dressed in the shabby clothing of a studnet, I began travelling from Krzemieniec to Dubno and other cities as a courier. The railways were chaotic and Soviet inspections frequent; my favorite hiding place for messages was a hollowed-out bar of soap while another one was a child's rubber duck!
One of our first actions was to smuggle a typewriter from the Lyceum--all devices of communication were being confiscated by the Russians. The school was guarded by the local militia and we despaired of getting anything out until my mother stepped in. She cooly smuggled out the typewriter in several pieces, wrapped up in cotton and hidden in her vegetable basket--right under the nose of the armed and bullying Jew.
Our group had plans for a vast insurrection....but then news came of the arrest of some of our members and their teachers at school. Someone had betrayed us and our cache of weapons was discovered by the Soviet secret police. We split up and individually headed home even as mass arrests took away family and friends across eastern Poland....
My Arrest - March 24, 1940
My mother, brother and I returned home in a dejected mood from the election for delegates to the Soviet of the Union, in which the citizenry was "encouraged" by teenage Jewish thugs working as "propagandists" to publicly deposit a pre-filled ballot directly into the box--with a warning not to write anything on it.
We immediately began preparing a package of food for my father who had been arrested on Good Friday and was spending his third day at NKVD headquarters. We knew his arrest had been inevitable, but it was still a shock when they bundled him off like some terrible criminal. Little did we know of the beatings he was presently undergoing. Later he would face a sham trail conducted by the Soviets and be sentenced to hard labour--on "evidence" given by his Jewish and Ukrainian employees.*Jan's Trial
My mother and brother left with the package while I stayed to help feed the few refugees still staying with us. At noon my sister returned from church describing how so many of her little friends were missing and how churchgoers were being forced to vote at the end of rifles. It was then that they came for me. There were three of them. I surmised they had been sent by my old schoolfriend, Marek Tkaczuk, who had been present at the polling station as a Soviet official. Did he know our underground organization was planning to assassinate him as a traitor?
I recognized Truchun as the NKVD officer who had arrested my father; he was accompanied by an ordinary Red Army soldier and a local Jewish militiaman. I did not know that most of my underground comrades were similarly being rounded up, or were already in custody and undergoing interrogation. Our underground organization was being methodically smashed by the NKVD.
Truchun announced that I was under arrest and we were pushed into a corner of the kitchen while a search was conducted. The house was ramsacked and my personal property scatterred; Truchun threw my letters and a school photo of me into his briefcase. They were searching for "evidence"--and for booty which they could claim. I was frightened that they would discover my secret messages and orders which I kept in a hollowed-out soap near the stove. False ID's and other incriminating documents were hidden in our sofa and in an old wine-skin. The Jew had heard something rustling in the wine-skin and was greedily throttling it like it was an animal that had swallowed something valuable. But luckily for us he abandoned the search to go with Truchun to get a car. We were left under the guard of the young soldier.
A few minutes later my brother and mother returned from NKVD headquarters where they had delivered the package, but weren't allowed to see my father. Learning now of my arrest, my mother flew into a rage and began cursing the Soviet soldier in Polish and Russian. And then a strange thing happened. The young soldier suddenly broke down, and through genuine tears explained that he had a family just like ours and that he meant us no harm. My mother took pity on him and gave him a slice of cake while I boiled some tea. He propped up his gun in the corner and thanked us for the hospitality, eagerly wolfing down our decadent Polish delicacies.
When shortly Truchun returned to this scene of domestic bliss, his fury now exploded on the soldier, and he began smacking the poor boy who kept saluting and demanding to be punished for his cimes. And my mother inisisted it was all her fault! While this mad scene was unfolding, I managed to whisper to my sister and brother about my secret documents--to my horror the soap had split and revealed its contents! My brother Czeslaw deftly managed to dispose of the evidence in the stove.
Truchun allowed me to change into something warm before I was led out the door to the waiting car. The last memory I have is of my mother with her hands at her heart, my brother consoling her, and my sister crying and cradling her cat Zbik. They too would shortly be taken away. And so I said goodbye to my family for many years and to my beloved Krzemieniec forever. I have now lived twice as long outside of Poland as in it--but how the memory endures!
Dubno Jail and Nachalnik Vinokur
I was driven to Dubno by car and immediately taken to the office of NKVD Colonel Vinokur, the Nachalnik or Commandant for the region. His office was crammed with an assortment of furniture, food, and plundered items that included commodes, sofas, tapestries and a glass-case with jams and conserves. I was very tired and hungry, and did not know what to expect.
Vinokur was seated behind a large desk and politely asked me to sit down across from him in a plush chair. He treated me as if I were an old friend who'd just dropped in for tea and gossip. Chaim Vinokur spoke to me in Ukrainian (he was a Jew from Kiev) while I answered in Polish. The Colonel impressed me with his knowledge of Polish literature, but when he discussed my university studies, I was shocked at his knowledge of names and dates that only friends knew.
During our conversation, NKVD officers would silently enter the office, sit down, and closely observe me. The Colonel introduced one of them, Titov, as my "personal" interrogator who with two others, had been sent from Moscow to handle our case. Titov smelled like a beauty salon--there was a rage among Soviets for dowsing themselves with perfumes and talcs.
My reaction to all this attention was a mixture of pride and foreboding--I felt like a mouse being toyed with by cats, and I would shortly find out that Vinokur, who purred so well, had the sharpest claws of all. The interrogators peppered me with questions in Russian, but I'd shrug my shoulders and shake my head, though I knew enough to understand. A rather dim-witted Jewish girl was called in as a translator but I was able to befuddle her. She was quickly sent away by Vinokur who would soon demonstrate to the boys from Moscow the finer points of an interrogation. I continued to act the part of an innocent soul who was indignant and even amused at being dragged into such a misunderstanding. I denied every name they mentioned. Vinokur only smiled and sipped his tea.
The session had been going in circles for several hours and I was very tired. A quiet moment ensued and Vinokur wheeled his chair around, and with his back to me, began to fiddle with his requisitioned radio. Pleasant music filled the room and relaxed everyone. My gaze was wandering over a tapestry hung upside-down on the wall, when the Colonel quickly turned back and in perfect Polish asked me: "And how is the health of Pius Zaleski?"
"Oh better now, thank you, " I replied--and immediately recoiled in horror.
"So you do know Pius!" Vinokur growled and fixed me with a gaze that was now utterly soulless.
A numbness came over me as I realized that Pius Zaleski, and probably many others, were in Soviet custody. After all how could Vinokur know about Pius's frostbite that he'd suffered in crossing the Nazi-Soviet border on underground business? How easily I had fallen into his trap! I felt like a child caught with her hands in the cookie jar.
"Take this polskaia kurva [Polish whore] out!" Vinokur waved his hand as the men from Moscow nodded their heads in awe. |
