by Richard Messer
Reconstructed from conversations with 
Stefania Engelhardt Frank

                                 

What is happening in Ukraine today is very reminiscent of the story told to me by my friend Stephania. What follows is her story of WWII.

Over half of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust lived in Poland before they perished. Warsaw had the largest Jewish population in Poland, including thousands of young activists.
Two heroes of the Jewish Resistance:
After spending a precarious night in the town, Havka and Frumka returned to the station for a premature return to Warsaw. A long freight train was departing. In its wake were heaps of items: pillows, baby carriages, pots, books, and clothing left on the platform. The train’s destination was Belzec. The two teenage couriers had witnessed the liquidation and deportation of Chrobieszow’s entire Jewish community to a death camp.

                                                             Trains

My name is Stefania. I turned seventeen on the second day of the Second World War, Sept. 2, 1939. Germany had invaded Poland and already her village of Wapno had received its evacuation orders. Our household was in turmoil with packing and preparations to leave. We would go to Warsaw, my mother, my two sisters and Helinka, the maid, and our little spaniel, Pirate, and I. My father, a doctor in the Polish Army, had been mobilized a couple of weeks earlier and was already at the front.

            Still, it was my birthday. My mother was not going to let it pass without at least a token celebration. In the kitchen, over a last meal of soup, grzybowa, it’s called, and bread, cheese and cold meats, topped off with a piece of the cake my mother made. But what I remember most is hearing a plane overhead and running out into the garden to look up and see a large bomber with German insignia flying low overhead. It didn’t drop bombs on us, but certainly somewhere farther along people would look up to see bombs falling, people would die. A neighboring town had been bombed and already I had seen many people on the road, mostly on foot or in horse-drawn carts, fleeing east, away from the war front. All through August there had been talk of war on the radio, Hitler’s ranting speeches and rumors of German troops, massing near their border, which was only fifty miles away. Soon the tanks would be roaring past the public swimming pool and through the lovely public park. Soldiers would be ransacking our houses. 

            Now the rest of the family, my mother told us, must join the flood of refugees, and head east, first to Warsaw to see our grandparents, then travel on toward Romania, where there was some chance of safety. 

            But how? We didn’t have a car and in any case the roads were all jammed with refugees. You see this is where my mother’s bravery and cleverness came through for us. She decided we would board a freight train. Leaving the house, the next morning, saying goodbye to it forever, we joined the other desperate refugees on the main road. But near the train station we fell behind and made our way to the railyards where we managed to board a freight car, one normally used for transporting salt. My mother and I and Kara, my older sister, and Isolda, only eight years old, and Helinka, hoisted ourselves up into the empty boxcar (which was quite clean, actually), carrying what valuables we could, including, Pirate, of course, and headed east. 
      The first train station we came to had been bombed. There were deep craters along the platform, but the rails were still intact so we went rumbling on past, eastward. My mother, seeing the damage at the station, became more and more anxious. She said later, that she was remembering what she had experienced in the First World War—what if these planes were dropping Ypres bombs, as they had been called, bombs that spread poison gas when they exploded? And obviously the rails and trains were high priority targets; therefore, to stay on the train would be fatal. She decided to get us off as soon as she could.

            When next we stopped, I looked out and saw no station and no town–we were stalled at a siding out in the country. Quickly, my mother ushered us out of the freight car with our belongings and into the nearby field of newly harvested grain. We crossed the field and as we scrambled over a low rock wall we heard several planes approaching. “Get down,” my mother said, and she made us all crouch close together, then covered us and herself with a carefully chosen brown blanket. I knew right away what she was doing, though she laughed and treated it like a game we were playing. Her idea was that from the air we would look like nothing more than a small dung pile, hardly worth bombing. And, evidently, she was right. The last plane disappeared and we continued across the fields until we came to a road that led to a village. 
      It was just before we entered this village that I saw a man lying by the roadside. I don’t remember seeing blood or wounds, but I knew from the distorted position of his limbs that he was dead. There was no time to react or feel anything. My mother pushed us on, and soon we met other people on the road, refugees like ourselves, hurrying on past us. We saw craters and rubble and more people lying dead, and now dead animals, too. No one stopped; no one took heed. In the village, my mother found the local burgomeister, the mayor, and asked him if there was some sort of refugee center. He kindly directed us to a place where we spent the night. 
      The next morning, we ate a communal breakfast with people of all ages, some well-dressed, some in shabby homespun. Many had bandaged limbs or visible wounds, and I felt guilty taking a little extra food for Pirate, but after all he had to eat too. We all felt better after our meal, but the problem of how we were going to get on with our journey to Warsaw still remained. We couldn’t walk such a distance. Isolda especially was too young for such an ordeal and in any case, she was our “Fairy Child”, a real wunderkind, artistic and given to daydreaming. She took in what was happening around us, but it was not real to her in the way it was to us. So– it seemed we were stuck here. But then we had a piece of luck. 

            As we walked into the little town square, the market area, a man got out of a parked car and shouted my mother’s name. He was short and stout and greeted us like we were long-lost relatives. It turned out he was a family acquaintance, a dentist. Once this was established my mother asked if he could give us a ride to Warsaw. He said he would be delighted to, but he had run out of gas. He gestured forlornly toward his car. “No one can buy gas now,” he said, “It is being reserved for the military”. My mother told him that although she had no money to speak of, she did have an identity card with which we could purchase gasoline because of my father’s position in the army. She assured him that the fuel for the journey would be her contribution. “You have saved my life,” he said, stepping close to embrace her, but she waved him off, saying that, it was a little too soon to make such declarations. 
      The car was a small sort of coup that had a rumble seat and we all piled in. I was in the front with Pirate between the driver and my mother who held Isolda on her lap. Kara was in the back with Helinka. Finally, we were all off, heading for Warsaw, to my grandparent’s house, and then to the Romanian border.
            But, of course, hostilities were in full effect and getting anywhere was next to impossible. The road was clogged with every manner of vehicle and people on foot and there were checkpoints to negotiate. At the very first checkpoint, we were stopped and when the guard found out our destination, he told us no one was allowed to go into Warsaw, no one—unless they had official or military business there, which, of course, we did not have.

            What could we do? My mother was determined not to turn back and, after some discussion, she convinced the dentist to drive south to Poznan, where my other grandmother, my mother’s mother, lived. We were about to leave when two soldiers who had been standing nearby came up to the car. Did we want to go to Warsaw? Yes, of course. And would we be willing to give them a ride there? If so, they would make sure we got through the checkpoints. Immediately, my mother agreed, though it meant we would packed into the little car like sardines, And from that moment on, whenever we were stopped, one of the soldiers would show his papers and tell the crossing guards that he had important information to deliver to the military headquarters in Warsaw. I held my breath each time this happened, but always we were let through with no trouble.
            In Warsaw we dropped the soldiers off near the city center and drove from there, skirting the rubble and occasional fires, to my grandfather’s house. He and my grandmother lived in a large apartment building and many of the people from the apartments on the upper floors had come down to their flat, evidently because it was safer from the bombs that fell with some regularity. All sorts of people were sitting around the dining room, some on the floor, others on chairs and a small settee my grandfather had brought in from the parlor. It was a strange homecoming for us, but my grandmother did her best to make us feel welcome, offering us first of all, some hot tea and something to eat.         

            Everything seemed to be going smoothly enough when suddenly I heard a woman’s voice raised in anger. This woman had taken it upon herself, despite the continuing shrill of air raid sirens and thump of distant bombs, to tell everyone in a nasty way that they should take their feet off the rug. It was quite a nice oriental rug, but nothing special. Her husband, sitting near me, tried to calm her, but she kept on carping. He grew silent finally and just stared at her. Then he took something small and silver from his coat pocket, a little pistol, and shot himself in the temple. He slumped over and fell to the floor. His wife went into hysterics.
            Everyone jumped up. Four or five men crowded around the body and the women hurried into the next room. I sat there, not moving, staring at the scene. The man was very obviously dead. It is hard to describe what I felt. My father was a doctor and talk around our family dinner table included grisly details of surgeries and diseased organs and death. I was used to hearing of the more macabre and gruesome facts of life and I even planned to be a doctor myself someday. So, I was shocked, but not horrified. Instead, I found myself feeling a sense of outrage. Weren’t things bad enough? Wasn’t there sufficient death and destruction all around us without this couple behaving so stupidly? I knew I couldn’t really blame them and should feel pity for them, but what I felt was irritation that my grandmother now had the added burden of cleaning blood from her rug. Then the thought came to me that a little blood meant nothing, the rug meant nothing, not anymore. My mother came in from the kitchen and without taking any notice of the dead man, put her arms around me, and led me to my grandmother’s bedroom. I remember Kara sitting on the bed with Isolda, who held Pirate in her lap. Pirate, jumping to the floor, ran to me. I remember that holding him I cried for the first time. 

TBCont