Chapter Ten

Poland

Ebert Gausel: September 1939
We were at our start lines well before first light. The men were keen to begin our crusade, to regain German land and honor. Though, of course there were plenty of nerves. That would soon become routine before going into combat. Personally, I did not feel much anxiety, as I was too busy to think about myself.
In the quiet before first light, when all was ready, I had a few moments to think. Then, as all too often, my thoughts turned to Katharina. I wondered if the action we were about to start would precipitate war between Germany and England. Where would she stand? How could she possibly choose, between loyalty for home and her father's country? I hoped she was somewhere safe. Especially away from London, which would soon enough become a target in a more general war.
The Polish campaign was an exhilarating experience for me. I commanded a company of motorized infantry. We were in the vanguard of the advance, in direct support of the panzers. It was wonderful to see everything work so well, all the training of the months before paying off. The panzers would smash open position after position, and we would be there winkling out resistance, or more directly assaulting positions the tanks could not approach.
The regiment, we were attached to, advanced over twenty five kilometers in the first day alone. The Poles fought bravely, but they had no chance against our forces. My company alone took hundreds of prisoners and captured or destroyed dozens of artillery pieces. The men behaved in every way as the elite soldiers they were. As for myself, I believe I led them well. I was always near the front and I would never ask my men to do anything I was not prepared to do myself.
To my relief, the actual experience of combat did not frighten me at all. Partly, because I was always so busy with command, I did not have time to dwell on the possibility of the worst. Also, I was always too preoccupied with setting a good example to be afraid.
The only disquieting factor was the treatment of some prisoners; on several occasions some were shot out of hand. The usual excuse was they were an inconvenience. I stepped on this hard in my company. The Poles might not be Aryans, but they had fought well enough to be shown some respect. Also, they were so demoralized that one or two men were sufficient to escort even hundreds of them to the rear. So they were in reality little trouble.


Heinrich Lange: September 1939
I first meet Herr Gausel on the second day of the Polish campaign. I am posted to Sturmbannführer Gausel's company, as his driver. My initial impression of him is very favorable. Herr Gausel is, as are all SS, a tall man. He is very handsome, and obviously concerned for his appearance. But he is not a dandy, there is something more about him, I believe any man will follow him into hell if he leads them.
I am posted to him because his last driver is killed the day before. I soon find out how. Herr Gausel leads from the front. He and hence I, are in the thick of the fighting all day. It is always so with Herr Gausel. It is horrible and exhilarating at the same time. Most of the time we drive forwards, the Poles are giving way, with a fight, but giving.
During those first few days we pass burning buildings and bodies everywhere. More often than we would like, the advance is slowed by a strong point, or some rearguard action. The Poles are not cowards, they fight like tigers for their land. At one point, two of the Panzers are destroyed in less than a minute, by a gun hidden in some farm buildings. It is supported by machine guns and our squad that go in first are cut down. I watch with horror as our comrades are butchered.
Their bodies lie contorted in the open field. Herr Gausel personally leads the second squad that creeps up to deal with the Poles. There is a lot of open ground between us and the Poles, but we manage to follow a fold in the ground to within a few meters. Then Herr Gausel and another man throw grenades. We leap up and charge over the last bit of ground.
A machine gun nest is just in front of us, but the grenades see them off. Three Poles lie in impossible positions in a shallow pit. Another gun fires on us from the right, but we just go on. For the first time in my life I am sprayed with another's blood as the man beside me folds up as we run. I try to forget the metal flying through the air at us.
The canon is hidden in a barn. Herr Gausel charges in, firing his machine pistol from the hip. Two men go down. The rest of the Poles, not so brave now, try to surrender. But our blood is hot and we cut them down with a couple of bursts.
Then it is quiet. I look around. The twisted bodies disturb me more than I expect. One man in particular, is nearly cut in two, his entrails spill across the floor. I remember I want to be sick, but I do not reveal my weakness to my comrades.
That night, we rest for a few hours while the Panzers are maintained. I am pleased to say I am brave enough on my first day in combat. I think it is easier with the example of Herr Gausel to follow. With him in front any man can be courageous. Whatever else he may be, he is a true hero. I would follow him again tomorrow through anything. I just wish I could forget or even ignore the dead, as the others seem to.


Jena Schiller: September 1939
Shock, that is what it was; a shock. We did not really expect it would happen. It was little Benjamin who woke me that first morning. ‘Wake up, Jena.’
I rolled over, ‘Go away Benjamin, it's hardly light.’
‘Wake up Jena, Mama and Papa are sad.’
This pierced the fog in my mind. ‘What?’
‘Mama is crying. She says you should make me some breakfast.’
I sat up bewildered, ‘Mama is crying?’
‘So is Aunt Anya.’
This was strange enough to get me out of bed. Little Benjamin stood watching me solemnly, with his big blue eyes, as I pulled on my dressing gown.
Mama, Papa and the Kalinowskis, were all in our sitting room. The National Anthem was playing on the radio. Papa looked sick with worry, and Mama, and Anya had indeed been crying. ‘Papa, what is wrong?’
‘The Germans have invaded.’
Mama cut him off, ‘Hans, now is not the time! Jena, take Benjamin into the kitchen and get him breakfast. Then he might like to feed the ducks at the river.’
Mama always looked for ways to protect my innocence. Even then it seemed futile to me. This world is no place for the naïve.

I was fourteen years old when the Germans invaded Poland. I lived in Drosdow, an Eastern Polish village, with my parents; my Papa Hans Schiller, my Mama Gilda; and my two brothers, David who was three years older than I, and Benjamin who was ten years younger.
My Papa was born in Austria in 1892. He studied medicine in Vienna before World War I and served as a surgeon throughout the war. Perhaps because of this experience, he was a very thoughtful and gentle man. It was as if he had seen enough aggression to last a lifetime.
As a small child I always thought my Papa a very handsome and distinguished man. This was in spite of my Mama continually saying he had the largest nose in the world. As I grew up I came to agree with my Mama's assessment of my Papa's nose. However I still thought of him as one of the wisest, kindest, people in the world.
My Mama was nearly ten years younger than Papa. Mama had been considered a beauty in her day. Mama like Papa, came from a middle-class family, although she insisted until her dying day that she was a distant relative of the Rothschilds. While I believe she genuinely loved my Papa, I think she was also always disappointed that she had married a mere doctor.
As a newly married couple after the end of the war, my parents scraped a living in the chaos that was post-war Austria. Finally, in 1923, with their baby, my elder brother David, they moved to Poland. My father joined a practice with a friend of his from medical school days, Paul Kalinowski. In spite of the move to Poland, my Mama continued to regard us as an Austrian family. She insisted all of us were Austrian, even though I was born in Poland, as was Benjamin. Due to my Mama's insistence of our nationality, we spoke German in the home. In that, as with other things, we were very different from our neighbors.
Drosdow, as did many places, had a mixed population of Christian and Jewish Poles. Hence, in public we spoke either Polish, or Yiddish, depending on who we were talking to. My older brother David and I were truly trilingual, speaking each language fluently. My Papa was fluent in Yiddish, which is very similar to his native German and had a functional grasp of Polish. My little brother, Benjamin, was at this stage promising to be multilingual as well. In contrast my poor Mama, after sixteen years in Poland, could barely make herself understood in Polish.
This was a real problem for my Mama as she could converse with the Yiddish speaking members of the community. But they, as Jewish in rural Poland, were virtually all from the poorer segments of society. This did not suit my Mama at all. It was all right for my father to look after their health as a doctor, but to meet them as social equals was out of the question.
The Christian community was of little use to her either. She could barely communicate with them, due to her inability to learn Polish. But more than that, once it became known that we were Jewish in origin, their innate prejudice erected a social barrier in any case. Hence my Mama was almost entirely socially isolated.
My Mama's only real friend was Anya Kalinowski, the wife of my father's partner, Dr Paul Kalinowski. Paul, like my Papa, had served as a doctor during the war. Like my Papa he had wanted nothing but the peace of a rural practice following the war. Anya, unlike my Mama, was on the whole very content with her lot. The Kalinowskis both spoke very good German. So as we were neighbors Mama and Anya spent a lot of time together. The Kalinowskis never had children, so my brothers and I became surrogate children for them as well. We would happily wander between the two houses as if both were our home.

It is about a kilometer walk from our house down to the river's bank. The river there is very sedate, snaking back and forth in a sandy bed, overhung by cool shady willows. It should have been very peaceful by the river. For Benjamin it still was. He stood on the bank and called. ‘Duck, duck!’
The village's flock of ducks were used to being fed, and quickly assembled, gently quacking. Benjamin laughed as the ducks chased each other back and forth for the scraps we had brought with us. He had soon fed them the few morsels, and they lost interest and drifted off. Benjamin then busied himself looking for pebbles to throw in the water. Normally I would have enjoyed helping with his search, but on this morning I was too preoccupied about the future to relax. So I sat on the sand and broke a series of small twigs into ever-smaller pieces out of sheer frustration. I wanted to go home, to find out what was happening, but I knew better than to arrive home too early. If Mama had told me to take Benjamin out, she did not want us back until much later.
After some time, I heard the rattle of a bicycle coming down the path towards the river. I stood up to see who was coming. It was David. He dropped his bike with a clatter, on the path, and strode over to me. Even though he was my brother, I had to admit that at seventeen, David was a good looking boy. He had been afflicted by a slightly smaller version of my papa's nose, otherwise he would properly have been truly handsome. Benjamin too, looked as if he would grow a version of the Schiller nose. Every time I looked in a mirror, I breathed a sigh of relief that I had inherited my Mama's petite nose.
David frowned at me, not out of ill will, but out of frustration. He was a clever young man, always thinking deep thoughts. His favorite pastime was to engage Papa and Paul Kalinowski in long conversations as they played chess or cards. ‘So little sister, you've been sent out for your own good.’
Papa, despite my being his daughter, treated me as if I had a growing mind that would one day be his equal. As a result of his example David did as well. He showed none of the arrogance many boys show to their sisters. Mama, in contrast, was more traditional. She was always criticizing Papa for encouraging my mind, arguing all I would ever do was marry. In addition, she always attempted to shield us, and me in particular, from knowledge of the world's evils. I sighed, ‘It seems so.’
‘She'll never stop treating us as children.’
‘David, what is going to happen?’
‘It will be very bad. They will defeat us sooner or later.’
‘What about the British? Won't the British help us?’
‘They let the Czechs go. But even if they elect to help what can they really do? Germany is between us and them.’
‘What will they do to us?’
‘It will be appalling. If they only do what they have done in Germany and Austria, they will stop Papa being a doctor, and take our house away, make us move into the village.’
‘Because we have Jewish ancestors? We don't even believe!’
Papa had brought home a strong belief in the absurdity of religion from the carnage of war. It was a result of his loss of faith that saw us raised as atheists. ‘It makes no difference to them. For them it is race that matters.’
‘Race? Look at us, we are fair, we all have blue eyes, I am blonde, we probably have more Germanic ancestors than Hitler.’
‘To them it doesn't matter, our parents and grandparents worshiped in a synagogue not a church. That is enough to poison us forever.’
‘Oh, David, if they stop Papa practicing, they'll stop you going to medical school.’
He looked miserable. All my life David had said he would be a doctor, like Papa. He sighed, ‘If that is all we loose in the coming years, we will be fortunate.’
He looked at our little brother foraging for stones in the sand. ‘At least it should all be over in time for Benjamin, no matter what happens. The world will come back to its senses eventually.’