Chapter 5:
The Danse Macabre of Bromberg Spreads
The next morning, as the Polish front-line troops flood back in retreat, evidently soundly defeated in their very first encounter with the enemy and already entirely out of their officers' control, and as their escape takes them through Bromberg, the wave of destruction swells once more to gruesome heights. Is it a desire for revenge for the lost battles, for the collapse of their vastly exaggerated confidence in expectation of an easy victory - in any case it is the typical reaction of inferior characters, which by its very fact removes the Polish nation from the ranks of civilized nations: its army runs as fast as it can from an enemy whose armaments are equal to its own, but an unarmed civilian population is fair game for its unquenchable blood lust - defenseless civilians become the object of the Polish army's legendary bravery, whereas such bold daring is embarrassingly rare at the front...
The murderous frenzy escalates to heights that history has not seen since the time of Genghis Khan. All the streets of Bromberg are now a witch's cauldron, seething with pushing, shoving masses of many thousands. Anyone who falls into their hands during these hours breathes his last only after endless agonies, for now hardly anyone is still shot - almost every victim is now beaten and bludgeoned to death or ends his life under dozens of bayonets. They are nailed to the ground with bayonets, bayonets are used to dig out their eyes, old sabers serve to slice open their abdomens, and cutting off their private parts is the height of enjoyment. Outside every German house several dead lie on the pavement, the corn market square is littered with bodies, and even the last few forgotten houses are sought out now. Time and again gangs of teen aged students can be seen searching through the streets, but many businessmen also participate in the manhunt: the Polish baker denounces the German baker, the Polish shoemaker reports the German shoemaker - are these days not a god-sent opportunity for getting rid of the hated German competition once and for all? Even the educated elite participates in the turkey shoot: the Polish lawyer reveals to an eager pack where the German lawyer lives, the Polish bank director slips his German counterpart's address to another bloodthirsty mob. But at the vanguard of all these bloodhounds are the teachers, who personally lead their hordes into the German schools and act in every case as the most merciless executioners.
Is there no stopping any more in this city, is there no single pillar of humanity left? There is none, there is nothing. A minister's wife and her six children flee into the Catholic cloister - but the nursing sister, with whom she is well acquainted, won't even let her in the door: "Get out of here, be gone, there's no room here for damned Germans..." The minister's wife pleads with her, for behind her the raging mob is already closing in. But the Polish sister, the children's nurse, only yells at her more harshly and finally slams the door in her face... An old Catholic priest has only scorn for two old German men who beg him for help: "Why don't you pray to your god for help, pray to Adolf Hitler, our god means nothing to you..." No, everything is surrounded by this acid torrent, not the smallest island is left. And when anyone turns for help to his neighbor with whom he has been the best of friends for twenty years, then in most cases it is precisely this good neighbor who brings the henchmen himself just an hour later...
At long last the hordes leave the city - is the enemy so close already? Those civilians who participated in the monstrosities join up with the soldiers - do they suddenly sense the impending retribution?
Infantry Regiment No 63 from Thorn, which is still somewhat under its officers' control, moves out along the road to Hohensalza in several closed groups, but their path as well is marked by a long line of dead. In Hopfengarten, at the crossroads to Labischin, it comes across the Protestant church; the leading group immediately breaks down the church door and the first hundred flood into the silent house of God, howling wildly. They tear the church banners off the walls, fire their pistols at the crucifix, and one even climbs onto the altar to the cheers of his comrades, there to answer the call of nature. Finally they drag everything flammable onto a big pile, and from the door they throw hand grenades at it until tall flames suddenly shoot up. Within only a few minutes the old church is engulfed, a gruesome torch to light the countryside all that night long.
Moving out towards Eichdorf, the commander orders the regiment to set up a temporary position. The majority of the soldiers take cover and set up their machine guns in a westerly direction, while the rest of the gang gathers together into a small camp near Eichdorf. For the first few hours the regiment is busy, but when the enemy still doesn't arrive the majority of them again begin to roam through the countryside. Did one of them learn, by unhappy chance, that Eichdorf and its surrounding farms is a purely German settlement, created out of nothing by German farmers hundreds of years ago, inhabited by not so much as a single Pole until 1918? On the regiment's approach most of the men wisely took cover in the meadows, for by now the news of the Bloody Sunday of Bromberg has spread even to here but the women and children calmly remained on the farms. For one thing, somebody has to stay there to look after all the livestock, and for another, surely the Poles would not attack women...
The first farm they come across is that of Lange, where they find only two old men aged sixty-five, and an eighty-year-old woman. They no longer even consider it necessary to hide behind the fig leaf that to date was used to justify each of the murders - they no longer accuse anyone of having fired on them from cover, and also no longer claim to be searching for weapons: without much ado they simply beat the three old people to the ground with their rifle butts, stab them with their bayonets, continue stabbing them...
As though this deed had inflamed their blood lust anew, they now range from one farm to the next, yelling fanatically, and since there are some twenty-five farming estates in just a three kilometer stretch of this road and the regiment is positioned only a hundred meters west of this line, the first few shots also attract the other soldiers standing guard at their positions, so that just a few minutes later the entire host of them descends upon the three villages. In each of the houses several inhabitants are immediately beaten to death - and if the children manage to run away the laughing soldiers fire at them as they flee, "to teach them the meaning of running". Several women are felled by bayonet stabs in the abdomen before their faces are smashed to a pulp with the soldiers' rifle butts. In many cases the men are tied together with ropes and lined up, and only then are they beaten down, one after the other, preferably with blows from rifle butts to their faces. When one old farmer is unable to reply in Polish, a young officer taunts him: "For twenty years this land has been Polish now, but you, you son of a dog, still haven't learned it? But now you won't need to bother any more, it's no longer worth it for you..." And he personally presses his revolver against the old man's eye, and pulls the trigger to the applause of the other soldiers...
On their way to the Wollschläger farm the soldiers run across the farmer Jannot's three children. The youngest is twelve, the next fifteen, the eldest has just turned eighteen years old. The soldiers stage a little interrogation, but the fact that the children do not speak Polish well quickly reveals them to be German. At that, the soldiers, laughing, stab them down despite their pleas: "That'll get rid of you, you German dog spawn..."
Farmer Renz, though he has found a safe hiding place, leaves it when he sees his two children looking for him. Little Gisela is only four years old, his son Günther has just turned nine. Out of the sole desire to take the endangered little ones into his hiding place, he softly calls their names across the meadow. The two children hurry towards him. Joyfully he takes them into his arms, snuggles them down beside him in his hollow - but already two soldiers approach, searching. They have observed the children running and followed them like dogs on a scent. They might not even have found the threesome, if the little girl had not suddenly begun to cry - and no matter how quickly the father put his hand over her mouth, the very first sound had already given the hiding place away to the searchers.
"Out with you, you damned zwab, or we'll shoot you right there in your grave!" they shout, laughing, clearly pleased with their find, and curl their fingers around the triggers.
Renz comes out, pale as a sheet, a child at each hand. "At least let these two go," he begs hoarsely, "if you won't let me..."
"That German brood? They'll go with you! Or in ten years they'll be German men, siring more German dogs, in ten years they'll be German women, giving birth to more German dogs..." Then they quarrel for a time about which of them should die first, and to top it all the most depraved of them wins, who wants to make the father suffer even the final horror. And so he finally lifts his rifle, and with one blow from the butt he smashes the four year old girl beyond recognition; the little boy, however, they have to beat to death on the father himself, who covers his son with his own body until he himself collapses from blows to the head...
But not all of them are beaten to death right where they happen to be found on the farms. One officer orders forty-six of them driven together and lined up on an incline at the edge of a little forest. "We're going to use you for target practice," he explains cynically, "that's the best way for my soldiers to learn!"
He sends a messenger to the regiment to tell the marksmen there that live targets will soon be coming over the incline and that they should practice diligently. Then he divides his victims into three groups, orders them to line up in pairs, and with an evil laugh he tells the first pair: "Now run, up that incline there - anyone who is not hit may live!"
The forty-six Germans stand as though rooted to the ground. The first two are men, one if them is Gustav Schubert, already sixty-five years old, the second is Kurt Kempf, he's only twenty-two.
"You've got a chance," says the older of the two, "but my old legs..."
"What's taking so long!" the officer yells, draws his pistol. "I'll personally shoot anyone who won't run..."
And they take off - the young one in leaps and bounds, the old man can only limp. The remaining forty-four follow them with staring eyes, but even the nimble youth does not get far - there are simply too many soldiers on the hill with guns at the ready. Gunfire rattles cheerfully across the field like at a rabbit hunt. The young fellow is even the first to fall, and then the old man drops face-first...
"The next pair!" yells the officer. "Such marksmen!" The soldiers standing close-by clap their hands, and not far off someone begins to play an accordion, he plays a lively Polish folk dance.
The next pair is a married couple, old farmer Jaensch and his wife. "All right, then, Hedwig," he whispers hoarsely, "give me your hand - we went through life together, we'll go together in death as well..."
These two also do not get even halfway up the hill before they fall into the tall grass, together as they had run.
The third pair is again a married couple, Hemmerling is their name, newly wed, both of them thirty years old. At the last moment the young woman loses her nerve and it takes blows from rifle butts to drive her away from her husband. "Be sensible, Erna," begs her spouse, "you'll see, we'll make it, we're still young, we just have to run a zig-zag course..."
"Let's go, get a move-on!" the officer yells through his teeth, between which he has a cigarette.
And they run too, but the young wife is so weak in the knees that he must virtually drag her along. And so she is hit first, but from that moment on he does not run farther, he kneels on the ground beside her and takes her in his arms and rocks her back and forth, a heart-rending sight, until he himself collapses silently above her...
And so it goes on, until the first group, six pairs, twelve people, are reduced to little heaps littering the hillside. Just as the officer tells the first pair from the second group to start running, a higher-ranking commander comes down the hill towards them. He gives the other only a brief glance and then says, in a voice that almost sounds choked: "That's enough murdering - the rest of you can go."
Else Kubatz, a courageous young girl standing in second position, steps forward and asks: "If you do wish to save us, please, give us some kind of paper, otherwise they'll just shoot us down in the end..."
The officer looks at her for an instant, pulls a pad of paper from his pocket and writes a few lines on it. "Now you can go home, and don't be afraid!" he says, and hands her the paper with a sketchy bow.
Someone in the group breaks into loud sobs, the girl takes the paper and takes the lead, and so the group of the saved return to their village. But they have barely reached the village street when the murderous soldier reappears, accompanied by a mob of howling accomplices. "Back with you!" he roars in a rage. "I'll teach you..."
The soldiers attack, and a few who resist are beaten to the ground. The girl offers the paper, pleading. "Give me that scrap!" yells the officer, snatches it from her hand, tears it into tiny pieces. And so they are returned to the previous place and soon are exactly where they were before. Standing in first position now is Johanna Schwarz, holding by the hand the three-year-old boy Erhard Prochnau, whose nanny she has been for years. The second pair is a young girl named Irma, and beside her the courageous Else Kubatz; the third pair are Frau Hanke and her foster son, a blond boy seven years old.
"Now move - like before!" the officer yells and draws his whip through the air.
Erhard Prochnau, 3 years old. One of the group murdered in Eichdorf-Netzheim. The nanny, Johanna Schwarz, 45 years old, was murdered along with the child. Bullet exit wound in the lower left clavicle. The corresponding entry wound is in the upper right shoulder blade area at the same height of 71 cm. The horizontal course of the bullet at such a low height indicates that the child was shot in the arms of his nanny.
Sekt.-Nr. - Br. 76 (OKW./H.S.In.) Enlarge |
With a sob the nanny makes the first move, but because the boy cannot keep up on his tiny legs she stops after a few steps and takes him in her arms. Johanna Schwarz has a deformed foot and can hardly run at all, only hop forward in odd kinds of leaps, and so it does not take long for one of the many bullets to find her - but she does not drop her little charge, she sinks to her knees still holding him, rolls over him protectively even in death, even though bullets also already plowed through the child's chest. A piercing scream comes from the group remaining; a young woman, bent far forward, watches the girl's course. She herself holds a six-month-old infant in one arm and a four-year-old girl by her left hand. These are little Erhard Prochnau's siblings, the woman herself is the mother of the three...
Now it's the girl Irma's turn, but at the last moment she flings herself backwards, scrambles trembling back through the line-up, and so Else Kubatz suddenly finds herself standing alone. For the time of a breath she looks questioningly at the line, but does not say a word. Just as she moves to start her course alone, Frau Hanke abruptly shoves in front of her:
"Let me go first!" she gasps out. "I can't stand it any more, I won't do this any more..." She turns a little, pushes the boy ahead of herself, and says hollowly to the officer: "At least let this child live, he's an orphan, my foster son..."
"No exceptions!" he just says, "The nests have to be cleaned out too..."
The little one turns around, throws himself against her, buries his face in her apron and cries, muffled: "If they shoot you here then I don't want to live any more either..."
At that, the woman silently takes her foster son by the hand, and with a face of stone, stance erect, she silently begins to walk her path to death - the little body by her side trembles like a leaf, the little hand shivers in her large one like a bird, but not another word of complaint crosses this child's lips either. The howling soldiers fall silent for a moment - are even these monsters in human form touched by this woman's composure? Only the accordion's long-drawn tones continue, still played by the same soldier sitting on a box beside the nearby field kitchen. The fire under the cook pot crackles audibly, blue smoke curls peacefully out of the field kitchen's chimney, and only a hundred meters further on the soldiers' camp life takes its normal course as though nothing at all were happening here...
Now it's irrevocably Else Kubatz's turn. But in that instant the same commander as before comes over from the camp, stops in front of the other officer, lips pressed thin with rage, and says almost inaudibly through clenched teeth: "I already told you once that this is enough murdering!" He again takes out the pad of paper, again writes a note of free passage, again hands it to the big girl, Else...
Livestock watering hole in the forest of Targowisko, into which the bodies of 15 murdered ethnic German children, women and men were thrown - together with an animal cadaver.
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None of the surviving thirty recall how they got away from that place of death, but all of them reached a house and none were molested further. Still that same day the soldiers dragged the bodies of the shot into Targowisko Forest, an old stand of pine trees between whose great reddish trunks many snowy birches stand in silent beauty. In the middle of this copse there is a watering hole for livestock, a deep hole in the yellow loam, into which they threw the dead bodies. But it was not deep enough to hold all of them, and so several faces remained above the water. The last to be thrown in were the little children, so that these ended up lying almost uncovered on top of the other bodies. Three-year-old Prochnau happened to come to rest beside his loyal nanny, but the seven-year-old foster son Busse lay in the arms of an old woman.
As coup de grace one of the Poles had brought a dead dog and thrown it in among the bodies with a wild laugh of victory: "Let them lie there together with the dead mutt, those cursed Germans, seeing as how they're dog-blooded themselves..."
the flame also reaches the three hundred year old settlement in the town of Slonsk, to which a Polish king had once granted many a privilege. In this town, populated by dyed-in-the-wool Lower Saxons, there is only one single Pole among the citizenry - what could have been the reason for the persecution here? Whom had the Germans oppressed here?
Chapter 6:
Murder on Jesuit Lake
At the same time another group was being herded along the road to Hohensalza, but this one passed the burning church and followed the straight road towards the Jesuitersee (Jesuit Lake). This group included some fifty townspeople from Bromberg who seemed initially to have been taken out of the city merely to be evacuated. But shortly after they had passed the church the transport leader had them stop, and then ordered the women and children separated from the rest of the group.
The women were torn from their husbands and the children out of their fathers' arms, and then the men were chased into a nearby forest clearing where they had to line up in rows of two while the women were forced to watch from their places. Two soldiers lifted a machine gun from the truck, set it up in the middle and swung it back and forth to test its mobility.
A second group of Germans arrives at that moment, but these are handcuffed together in groups of two. The machine gunners pause, and a long debate begins with the new arrivals. The German women stare numbly at the quarreling group - will their escorts get their way or will the newcomers? But in the end the new ones prevail, the machine gun is loaded back onto the truck, the new prisoners are merged into the first group, and all of them are marched off again, eastwards. Only the women and children must remain behind. They follow the procession with their eyes as long as they can but soon all that's left for them to watch is a tall dust cloud that hovers ominously over their men like a moving column.
The long line marches silently. No one is allowed to speak to another, else the guards quickly descend on them with their cudgels. Their guards are members of the military police, already infamous for their brutality. They cannot go more than ten steps without kicking someone or hitting them in the kidney area. Most of the prisoners' wrists are bloody from all this sudden yanking - since the sharp-edged handcuffs join them together without any room between, when one man is hit the other almost always suffers the blows as well. And so blood runs from almost everyone's hands, and also from many faces grown puffy and swollen from the many blows.
As they pass the Jesuitersee, which at one point comes within a hundred meters of the road, they encounter a military formation camping there. A new discussion ensues; it seems the military police do not want to go further but would rather remain in their home jurisdiction, and so they hand the prisoners over to the new military group and drive their truck back to the city. Hardly have they moved out of sight before an officer again orders the prisoners to line up in a long row, facing the lake.
There are now forty-one men in all. They stand in the white sand some ten meters from the shore. In front of them the water splashes in gentle waves, the warm wind whispers faintly through the nearby rushes, the sun glints off the wide watery expanse with summery brightness, and the sky is an unbroken holiday blue. Most of the men have come to this lake countless times to go swimming; wasn't it the most popular destination for an outing for all the townspeople? How many of their best holidays did they spend here, playing merry beach games with their wives and children from dawn to dusk? And now they are to die here, here of all places, where they spent so many happy hours? They see before them the long boat dock, reaching some sixty meters into the water, from which they launched countless times, in groups of four in one of the light paddle boats, or even in a larger group in a sleek sailboat. They know that behind them there stand the many little pavilions where the vacationers could buy coffee, or lemonade for the children, and where bands would play in the evening to accompany carefree dancing. And now they are to die here, in their favorite place...?
They are not allowed to look around, and so the minutes turn to hours for them. They also cannot see what's going on behind them, but they certainly can hear the clanking sound of repeating rifles. It's over, they all think - farewell, you beautiful lake and blue water... Never again will I swim here, never again cross your mirror surface with light paddle strokes or glide across you with white sails... And yet not a single cry rings out, not one plea for mercy is to be heard, no matter how long the line of the doomed and no matter how many young people it includes. One of them sees his wife's reflection in the water one last time, another recalls his children playing in the sand before him, and another young fellow, strangely enough, suddenly sees again in his mind's eye a painting which he has loved for many years like no other: the execution of eleven of Schill's officers! In that painting they too stood handcuffed in groups of two, just like he and his fellow prisoners stand here today - and so he resolves to die like those officers; does he not die for Germany, just as they did? For that great Germany that he loves so ardently, for which he has worked his entire youth - now he will not see that beloved country again, now he can do only one more thing for his ancestral land, he can die an honorable death...
He has just arrived at that thought, just to die an honorable death, he keeps saying to himself, honorably like they did, like my beloved Schill officers when a dreadful sound of firing breaks out behind his back, descends upon them from a dozen roaring guns and a hail of lead pours out at them from a dozen pistols. Half the victims collapse at once, but off to the right the boy still stands, alone, his comrade lies dead at his side, only his arm still reaches up to him, tied forever to his wrist by the handcuff. And then that young man tears open his shirt with his left hand, pounds himself on the chest with his fist, and in the pose of the famous Lieutenant von Wedell, cries until he too is mowed down by gunfire: "Heil Hitler... Heil Hitler... Heil Hitler..."
Unknown man, approx. 40 years old, one of the group murdered on Jesuit Lake. Explosive nature of bullet exit wound in face proves the weapon used was a rifle. The murdered man was one of a sub-group of Jesuit Lake victims, 12 men who were tied together with livestock ropes.
Sekt.-Nr. - Br. 21 (OKW./H.S.In.) Enlarge |
At his last cry the gunfire unexpectedly ceases. Did someone come along after all to bid the shooters stop? Did a savior turn up after all, at the last moment? Some of the dying now turn their heads, and in baffled amazement they see the soldiers flee. Most of them run in long leaps behind the pavilions, but many of them just leap in panic into the rushes. And in the sudden silence the dying men see the reason - high above them a German plane roars across the sky. The soldiers around them took cover out of fear of the German bombs.
"Can you see us up there," the prisoners' voiceless inner cry rises into the sky, "can you see what is happening to your brothers down here? Oh, drop your bombs, even if you hit us with them - give us the final triumph of letting them end in your fire..."
But a few of the victims have suddenly regained perfect clarity. In mad desperation they yank at the handcuffs that chain them inexorably to the heavy bodies of their fallen comrades. If they cannot use this moment to get away... But all in all only six men succeed in using these few seconds to flee. One of them even manages with the strength of despair to pull the handcuff off his dead comrade's wrist. The other five were unfettered, and luckily only slightly injured. The one who freed himself of the handcuff, an older man named Reinhardt, instantly runs down to the water and swims unseen to a reed isle that hides him, and another man named Gruhl reaches one of the pavilions, among whose pile supports he vanishes. Fate catches up with the remaining four nonetheless. One of them is already so badly wounded that he dies soon afterwards in one of the boats that he just managed to reach undetected; the others are shot down like rabbits in their flight along the lake...
Willi Heller, 19 years old, one of the group murdered on Jesuit Lake. 33 stab wounds from daggers or bayonets; the arrow indicates the fatal blow which damaged the spinal cord in the neck.
Sekt.-Nr. - Br. 23 (OKW./H.S.In.) Enlarge |
The German plane, however, continues on its roaring course across the sky. The pilot didn't see the massacre from his great height; and how could he guess that such things were going on! And so the Poles soon emerge again from their hiding places and descend like berserkers on the last of their victims - has the fear they just went through robbed them of their senses, has the escape of some few of their victims enraged them to the boiling point? Now some of them beat the last few dying Germans with their rifle butts, while others stab their bayonets into the falling bodies until some of them are covered in up to thirty stab wounds. Then they drag all thirty-eight people up to the dock, drag them by their arms or legs the sixty meters across the planks to the outer edge, and throw them from there into the deep lake.
But since barely half of them are dead, while most are "only" severely injured and still try to save themselves by swimming away, a renewed spate of gunfire ensues in their direction from the bridge. Some clutch the posts of the dock - blows from rifle butts smash their fingers, bayonets are stabbed into their arms - while others use the last of their strength to swim to boats nearby, where they cling to the sides with bullet-riddled hands. Their pale faces, which barely even still seem human for all the mad horror they have seen, serve as target practice until these unfortunates also let go of their last anchor and are jerked into the water by the impact. For a long time, bloody heads still surface among the waves here and there in their battle against the water, and pleading looks are directed towards the bridge, but the soldiers' fire does not cease until even the last of them sinks helplessly into the depths...
Chapter 7:
The Massacre of Slonsk
The great manhunt extends farther and ever farther. Hardly has it run its bloody course in the old German border provinces before it ranges greedily into the open countryside. Wherever there is a German settlement, even if it be deep in Polish territory, the searing sparks take hold. And so, after destroying the Bromberg region, turning the entire province of Posen to ashes and exterminating the Germans in the Thorn Basin, the flame also reaches the three hundred year old settlement in the town of Slonsk, to which a Polish king had once granted many a privilege. In this town, populated by dyed-in-the-wool Lower Saxons, there is only one single Pole among the citizenry - what could have been the reason for the persecution here? Whom had the Germans oppressed here?
A few days after the events on Jesuit Lake, the estate of Friedrich Elgert, master smith of the town of Slonsk, is visited by a cavalry sergeant and several auxiliary policemen wearing white-and-red armbands with blue imprints. Elgert and his three sons are just sitting at the table having lunch when the sergeant kicks the door open with his heavy riding boots. "What kind of gathering is this?" he barks grimly at the Germans.
"We're having lunch," the master smith says calmly.
"Do you have a radio, do you have weapons?" the sergeant asks.
"Neither," the master smith replies, and opens the adjoining door so the police may search the house.
The auxiliary policemen rummage through everything, and finally the sergeant says in German: "Tell your sons to dress warmly, I have to take them with me, they're to shoe some horses for the squadron..." And they take the three sons in their middle and lead them away in the direction of Chiechozinek.
That same evening a cavalry patrol rides into the town and searches all the houses for publications from Germany. The ulans pull out each and every drawer, scattering the contents through the rooms. The patrol leader pockets a fountain pen, while the soldiers help themselves to the silverware. A civilian auxiliary policeman who happened to have gone to school with one of the young farmers manages to tip his acquaintance off that he should flee as quickly as he possibly can, since General Bortnowski had ordered that all Germans are to be exterminated. Bortnowski is the leader of the so-called Corridor Army that is posted in the ancient German provinces. Since the young farmer takes this advice immediately, he is one of the few men to survive the massacre of Slonsk.
On the estate of farmer Koerber the same patrol demands oats, and the farmer's son must deliver sixty kilos of it to Chiechozinek. Some time later the son actually returns to the town unharmed. But that same afternoon the patrol returns and demands another sixty kilos of oats, and this time the farmer goes along with his son, urged to do so by a vague fear. After they have unloaded the oats, both the son and the cart are detained further. "You can go," the old man is told.
"But I already have two sons in the war, he's my last, how am I supposed to do the fall tilling without him?" the farmer asks.
"If you want you can stay yourself!" is the reply.
So he returns home alone, without the beautiful horses, without the cart, without his son.
The farmer Gläsmann is visited by an officer from a mounted patrol who also demands a two-horse cart full of oats. Before leaving the officer examines the farmer's papers as well as those of his son, and then returns the farmer's passport with the comment that since he had served in the Polish army he was probably innocent. "So your son will drive the oat cart!" he adds unexpectedly.
"But my son's innocent too!" the farmer cries, in dread.
"Maybe he is," the officer replies, smiling, "but he's a young German..." And so this son as well drives away, looking back for a long time.
This patrol also makes the rounds on all the five neighboring estates and fetches all the old men, marches them to the oat-laden cart of a farmer who had already given up all his horses to earlier patrols, and forces the men to pull the heavy cart four kilometers to Chiechozinek, at a run. The ulans, that respected mounted troop from Polish days of old, ride to either side of the procession, striking the men's heads with their swords so that soon all the faces are streaked with blood. Whenever any of them fall down in exhaustion - there are several eighty-year-old's among them - the ulans strike down from their horses, splitting the aged victim's skull. Only a few of them reach their destination; most of them meet their end prematurely on the dusty road...
The same day a cavalry patrol, accompanied by three civilians evidently familiar with the town, pass and then stop at the school estate belonging to the teacher Daase. Only the teacher's wife and her two adult daughters are home. The Daase estate includes a sizable house comprising not only the teacher's home but also a school. There is also a large adjoining prayer room almost resembling a small church. On the other side is the cemetery, shadowed by ancient pine trees. In the orchard, lining the street, stand sixty bee hives - are these the reason why the riders suddenly stopped here?
Example: after a house search.
The home of Raiffeisen Bank manager Symosek in Gnesen after 20 Polish soldiers ransacked and looted it. Enlarge |
They come crashing into the house and ask first about the radio, second about German books and third about hidden weapons. The radio is immediately smashed with their rifle butts. Some few German books are thrown onto a pile. The search for weapons is in vain, as always. After the search the interior of the house looks like a battle field; in the bedroom the riders stomped around on the bed in their boots, while in the kitchen they threw all the food and supplies on the floor. They also helped themselves to whatever took their fancy: all the zloty they could find, a pocket knife, a golden lady's watch.
When they enter the prayer room, a touchingly plain and simple affair, the patrol leader contemptuously spits on the floor in front of the altar table. "Protestant heretics!" he says grimly.
"Your husband is a minister...?"
"My husband is a teacher!" Frau Daase says quietly.
He whips around and grabs her by the arms. "Where is he?" he hisses.
"He was already taken away the second day of the war," Frau Daase replies, "to be imprisoned somewhere in the east."
"Psyakrew!" the officer curses. "That's really too bad, but they'll get him, even there they'll get him..."
The last room he searches is the school room, a bright airy room, almost charming to look at, with its little bench seats. "And he taught German - of course in this devil's den?" he forces out through clenched teeth, and spits again, in a wide arc over the benches. "Well, that's over forever now - you won't teach another German word - in our holy Polish nation! Just a few more days and we'll be in Berlin, and then we'll dictate you our terms..." He turns on his heel and goes back into the kitchen. "And now, hand over the honey - at least sixty pounds!"
Frau Daase bows her head and fetches all the jars. Close to sixty pounds, that's all she has in the house... But she hands it over almost gladly. What does any of it mean, in light of the blessed fact that her husband isn't here, that he did not fall into their hands! And it seems that they will leave her daughters alone too, apparently these fellows are not interested in harming them...
The riders stuff the honey jars into their saddle bags and ride back up the road to Chiechozinek. As they pass the beautiful bell tower that stands on the left near the Daase estate - a marvelous old timber-frame construction dating from an earlier century which now in a sense provides the church tower to match the Daase prayer room - the patrol leader spits at it too.
Frau Daase and her daughters are almost cheerful that evening - but their relief at the harmless end to these events is premature. Shortly before midnight there is again a resounding knocking at their door, and when Frau Daase opens, the three civilians from that afternoon enter. One of them immediately leads Frau Daase into the kitchen, orders her to stand in a corner, and sits down to guard her with his bayonet at the ready. The two other civilians, of which one carries an old saber and the other a Browning, each take one of the daughters. The first takes the older sister into the bedroom, the second leads the younger into a smaller chamber.
"I have to body-search you!" says the one in the bedroom. He orders the girl to sit down on the sofa, sits down awkwardly beside her, and begins to grope her all over her body. Drool runs from the corners of his lips. The girl sits still, trembling, and begins to cry softly. Suddenly he throws her on her back and yanks her skirt off. She fights him off with all her strength and shrieks for help. For some time they fight each other, but in her desperation her strength is a match for his. Then he angrily draws his Browning and holds it to her temple: "Give it up, you dog-blood, or I'll shoot you..." But she does not give up even now, and bravely fends off each new attack. Finally he backs off and puts the revolver away. "If I shoot you, what good would you be to me then, do you think I want a corpse..." he sneers.
He goes into the smaller chamber, where he finds the second girl sobbing on the bed while the civilian is rolling himself a cigarette. "You've got to help me," he says darkly. "Seems you've had better luck than me..."
The second civilian laughs hoarsely and follows him back into the bedroom. The girl has fled into the farthest corner of the room, but now all her fighting no longer does any good. The two men leap at her and knock her to the floor - and while one of them chokes her by the throat so that she grows weak from lack of oxygen, the other furiously throws himself on her and has his way with her with inhuman brutality...
The following morning, more patrol appear. They are all coming from Chiechozinek, where a higher cavalry commando is based. Once again some farmers are conscripted, along with horses and carts. So far not a single shot has been fired in the town, and yet fewer and ever fewer men are left with each passing hour. This goes on for several more days, and finally there is hardly a man left in all of Slonsk. Where, for heaven's sake, did they all get to - are they never going to come back to their town?
No, they are not coming back, and they are never going to come back. One day, by accident, a mass grave was discovered, containing the corpses of fifty-eight men from the town of Slonsk. In this grave were found the master smith Elgert's three proud sons, with their faces so horribly mangled that their father was able to recognize them only by their clothing. One had been relieved of his new shoes, and all of them were without their warm winter coats. Young Koerber was also found in this grave; they had not let him go again. They must have shot him in the face while he was holding his hands before his eyes, for both his hands were shot through. The grave was also found to contain the young farmer Gläsmann, whom the officer had pronounced guilty for the sake of his German ethnicity, and it was also found to contain all the sons of Gläsmann's neighbors; some of them had had their bellies cut open; others were found to have been blinded, their eyes stabbed out. One man's tongue had been cut out, another's heart torn out of his chest.
And finally the grave also contained the old men who had been forced to drag the oats cart out of town. One ninety-year-old was among them, and many an octogenarian. Not one was under seventy.
So it was only as corpses that the men of Slonsk returned home - to their cemetery under the pines.
Chapter 8:
The Fate of Factory Owner Mathes
and his Sons
Already on the day the war began, groups of people to be "evacuated" were herded together in Bromberg. Evidently they were at first supposed to be shipped off by train to be imprisoned in the East, but since the rail lines were totally jammed they were eventually marched off on foot. One of the first major groups of "evacuees" was that from Bromberg which included Dr. Kohnert, today the leader of the ethnic Germans in Poland. Another such group was "evacuated" from the Thorn region under the leadership of the Reverend Dietrich, and one of the last was the small column of some two hundred men who were assembled outside the train station barracks in Bromberg.
In the evening of Bloody Sunday the furniture manufacturer Mathes is among those being herded into the barracks. He is accompanied by his two sons, one fifteen years of age, the other only thirteen. In the middle of the riding hall they see a waist-high podium beside which stands a young officer holding a riding whip and making sure that each new arrival jumps onto this podium with a single leap. Anyone who can't do it on the first try and attempts instead to climb up is beaten mercilessly for his efforts. The hall grows more and more crowded with each passing minute; most of the arrivals are fathers with their sons, and the majority of them already have blood running down their faces, some have crushed lips, and most have had their noses broken by blows from truncheons. Finally, four hundred men are crowded together on the podium. Even though the soldiers standing guard over them behave like a horde of devils, the captured men uniformly maintain their firm and calm composure.
This composure is shaken only once, around midnight, when a young man about twenty years of age suddenly steps to the edge of the podium, raises his arm and cries down at the soldiers: "Heil Hitler!" He cannot even finish his cry, for already in the middle of the Fuhrer's name a bullet tears into his body, and with arms outstretched he falls into the sand of the arena below. A gurney is dragged in and the man is rushed out of the arena. "We'll teach him to give your salute..." the soldiers rant, and entire groups of them follow the gurney out.
After a while, the officer calls, "Anyone who has military papers, report down here!" A number of men climb down from the podium. Their papers are simply taken from them, and they are told to pick them up again from the Commissar tomorrow. Some time later about half of them are chosen to unload ammunition from the trains in the yard. How could these men have guessed that they would get off with their lives, as almost the only ones among all those in the barracks? About two hundred men are selected for this work, the other two hundred are marched off. They are led onto Kujawier Street and herded off into the direction of Brzoza. Already outside the barracks gate a wild mob awaits them, armed with all sorts of murderous implements. Some are swinging ancient sabers, others hold daggers, many clutch wooden axes in their tense hands. These civilians lose no time beating down on the captive Germans from all sides. The guard soldiers do not try to stop them, they only see to their own protection so that none of the blows land on them - but when some of the older men cannot keep up for lack of oxygen, the soldiers themselves urge these men on with stabs from their bayonets, so that even after the first hundred meters many of them collapse, and the mob descends upon them like a black swarm of crows.
Just outside the town they are suddenly told to "Stop!", an officer gives a brief speech and closes with the order to give three cheers for holy Poland. "If you do it loudly enough, you can go home right away..."
The prisoners comply raggedly, but their cheers can barely be heard over the raging mob. Then, oddly enough, they really are permitted to go. The entire group turns back to the town. But hardly have they made it back to Kujawier Street No. 50 before suddenly gunfire rips into the group from all sides. "Didn't I know it!" cries the furniture manufacturer Mathes, covers his two sons with his body with the experience of an old front-line soldier and pulls them down onto the pavement.
After the gunfire has ceased, the survivors are again herded together and marched off in the same direction as before. Only some one hundred and fifty people are left now. Those that remained on the pavement, injured, were killed by the surging mob. For two hours the survivors are marched quickly towards Brzoza. At first everyone who cannot stand up to this forced march is shot, but soon the officer gives the order not to shoot any more because of the noise the shooting makes. And so the soldiers now use their rifle butts to beat to death anyone whose age proves to be too much for them. Time and again the prisoners hear the dull blows, which resound through the night despite the sound of the many marching feet and are usually accompanied by another sound, that of something shattering and bursting.
At Milestone 10 the vanguard turns left into the woods, and from here the column is led three kilometers to Piecky, where the remaining survivors are penned into a rickety cattle shed that threatens to collapse at any moment. It's about five o'clock in the morning and growing light enough to see again. Mathes does a head count and is horrified to find that there are only forty-four of them left now, that more than a hundred had lost their lives on that last short stretch of road. After the forced march everyone is beginning to suffer from thirst - the dusty road has parched them all. But they cannot even lie down, since there is not nearly enough room for them; and so they fall asleep still standing crowded together.
Around six o'clock a Corporal enters and asks if anyone present can speak Polish well. Little Heinz Mathes, the younger of the two sons, such a cheerful-natured lad that no-one can help but like him, immediately goes outside with the Corporal. A short interrogation ensues, during which the soldiers doggedly try to find out whether there are not some among their prisoners who had shot at Polish soldiers from ambush. The lad manages to talk them out of this notion, and cleverly hints that his father is a wealthy man who has many valuables with him. "If you take us three home alive," he finally says, "we'll give you all our money at home." They laugh at his boldness and send him back into the shed...
A quarter of an hour later they call him out again and resume their interrogation. When he returns into the shed this time, his face is pale. "I happened to hear that they've sent for gasoline, to burn us up right along with this shed!" he whispers in his father's ear. "We children are to be sent home, but that's all I could achieve..."
Another hour passes - what an hour of torment! Will they really be burned to death? Can no-one save them from this at least - do they really have to beg for a bullet to ease their end? The prisoners wilt visibly at this thought, and after learning of their intended fate many of them no longer have the strength to remain on their feet and to repress the tears.
But suddenly, at six o'clock, they are all called outside and are given a cup of coffee and a piece of rusk at a Polish field kitchen standing outside the shed. Hope rises in them: "We're going to live!" Only the lathe operator Döring says, with tears in his eyes: "But what if it's our last supper..." Young Heinz as well is hopeful again, especially since he just overheard that there was no gasoline to be found anywhere.
But poor Döring was right. The group had barely finished their coffee and returned to the shed before the soldateska suddenly surrounds the old hut and begins to yell, over and over again: "Out with you, three at a time..."
The three standing closest to the door go out. Hardly have they taken a few steps outside before there is a crack of shots. The soldiers roar: "The next three..." And another three go out. What else should they do? And they are all so tired, so inhumanly worn out, so unbearably tormented, in their spirits as well as their bodies, that most of them even long for death and see it as a blessed release...
Another three, and another three. Gradually there is more room to move in the shed, and some of the prisoners quickly drop to the ground to feel one last time the bliss of rest, no matter how brief. Finally, even though it's not his turn yet because he happened to be right at the back with his father when the execution of threesomes began, little Heinz courageously approaches the door once more, and asks the soldiers to at least spare him and his brother, as they had promised him before... Now the reply is a stab from a bayonet that pierces his tender shoulder - and at that, even this brave young boy loses his courage and he throws himself sobbing into his father's arms.
Another three, and another three. Suddenly they hear the Corporal saying cynically: "We're almost out of bullets - the last are too good for these dog-bloods stab them with the bayonets from now on..."
And another three, and another three. But since they know about their new fate, they no longer go out so calmly - not even a bullet will release them quickly they can no longer even hope for that! And now there are also no more shots to be heard, instead they hear choking cries through the wooden wall - "My God... Oh heavens... Oh Jesus!" - and then, usually, a few more muffled sounds of blows, and that bursting sound they already know so well...
Now it's Mathes' and his sons' turn. Together they are three, isn't that a great comfort in this terrible hour? Only five more stand behind them, clutching the wall like madmen. They won't be going on their own... Mathes takes his sons by their hands, walks out the door between them - the thought pounds in his head: if only I had gone right at the start, then at least my boys would have been shot, not killed in such a horrible way...
But as they step outside, no bayonets are lifted against them. The two Corporals who repeatedly interrogated Heinz rush towards them and push them a few steps away from the pile of corpses. "Now give us what the little one promised!" one of the Corporals says greedily. And so the three of them awkwardly empty their pockets, give one of their captors this and the other one that valuable piece. But they just can't please the two, each of them glances suspiciously at what the other is being given - and finally they erupt in a sudden quarrel, both reach for the golden watch being handed over, tug at it like a pair of dogs at a bone.
The old soldier Mathes seizes the moment, briefly looks each of his sons in the eyes, and with the very next breath they are running with long strides into the woods. For all their greed, the two Corporals can't even shoot at the three - by the time they have found their rifles, the refugees have already vanished among the trees...
For four days they wander through the woods without even a bite to eat or any water at all. They pick berries in the forest, lick the dew off the grass, and on the third day they catch and eat frogs so as not to collapse from hunger. But their tongues grow thicker and thicker, their lips are swollen, and on top of everything else it's bitterly cold at night and they are in shirt-sleeves. At night they sleep in thickets, making nests for themselves like deer, but in time their feet also split, since their shoes were already lost on the first march. Little Heinz holds out most valiantly here as well, even though his pierced shoulder hurts and a strip of his father's shirt is his only bandage. During the night from Wednesday to Thursday no dew forms, and despite everything they now feel their end is near. Also, they have gradually drifted into the war zone, scattered soldiers roam the woods everywhere and the fear of being captured again drains their strength. When brother Horst collapses for what is evidently the last time, little Heinz pulls a piece of bread from his pocket and holds it out to him mischievously: "I've been saving this until now - see, we're going to live at least another few hours!" he says triumphantly. Isn't he a real hero, this young German boy - secretly saving an iron ration, not touching it for four full days! And despite being only thirteen years old, he was right - this piece of bread brings even Horst back to his feet once more, and with renewed strength they walk on, farther westward...
At two o'clock in the afternoon, after a four-day march, almost without anything at all to eat, and no water except dew, they reach the German troops - the only three survivors of that death march that numbered two hundred people as it left Bromberg but which is known as the Death March of Piecky, for the place where it ended.
to be continued....
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