That night, as German troops were welcomed with fireworks and dancing in Łódź, hundreds of Jews were burnt to death in a Bedzin synagogue, just over 100 miles south of the city. Dozens of Polish towns were in flames, but despite German ‘cleansing measures’ against thousands of Poles and Jews, Britain and France ruled out coming to Poland’s immediate assistance, themselves under pressure to mobilize for war.
9 September 1939
In the morning an announcement was posted in Polish and German (German first!) calling for calm when the German troops enter the city. Signed: Citizens’ Committee of Łódź. Later, I went a bit further out to watch the troops arrive. Lots of cars, the soldiers look quite ordinary, their uniforms different from the Polish ones though—they are steel green. Their faces are self-confident, swashbuckling. The conquerors! A car full of high-ranking officers with severe faces passes by, quick as lightning. People are quiet, they look on impassively. Hush! We go back to our blocks and sit around on benches, talking and joking. What the heck!
13 September 1939
Rosh Hashanah holiday [the day before Jewish New Year] is sad, drab, same as any other day. The same dry bread with a small piece of herring (only the herring makes it different from any other day). The order came today that the shops are to be open tomorrow. For Jews, this is the worst blow for a long time—the shops open on Rosh Hashanah! And the synagogues are to stay closed. Nowhere to pray together for mercy, nothing. All our basic freedoms are being taken away from us. I’m not a traditionalist and I always thought it was liberating to duck out of prayers, but these orders are painful to Jewish people. Now I understand what faith gives to believers—they are at peace, serene. To take away a man’s only consolation, his faith, and to forbid a life-affirming religion, it’s an unforgivable crime. The Jewish people won’t let Hitler get away with it. Our revenge will be terrible.
15 September 1939
This is the first time mum went to buy bread and came back without. She gets up at five a.m. and stands in the queue until seven, when the bakery opens and gives out one-kilo loaves. That’s how it’s been for a week now. Today there was no more bread when it was her turn. Maybe one has to start queuing at one in the morning. In town, Hitler’s agents take Jewish people out of the food queues, so that poor Jews who have no [Polish] maid are condemned to death from starvation. Twentieth-century German humanitarianism! The Rabinowiczes and their neighbours came back today from their wanderings. They look terrible. Their two sons were on another cart and they haven’t come back. Nobody knows where they are. They talk of exchanges of fire, searching for places to sleep, going on foot for miles, dangers and so on. It makes my flesh creep. There are funny moments too. Humour can be found anywhere. Laughter in the midst of calamity.
With Warsaw itself under continuous artillery fire and merciless aerial bombing, after two weeks on the road Edward’s family decided to head home. Coming across a quiet village south of the capital, they stopped for a few days of rest.
15 September 1939
Last night the Germans occupied all the places we have abandoned. They sent their cars in first, which moved pretty fast along the pavements so as to avoid the sand we put on the roads to slow them down.
They’ve set up camp next to the forest, surrounded by machine guns and cars. Their uniforms are made out of a greyish-green material. Their helmets are very smooth. They wear swastikas and eagles and they are in black and white, the German national colours.
People in the local villages have changed sides quick as a flash; they’ve turned German overnight. They bow when they see a German officer in the street. The Germans look down on them with scorn, but they don’t seem to mind. German soldiers go round asking for cigarettes and tobacco, and the village girls flirt with them, dressed up in their Sunday best. I try to avoid seeing any of this, so I sleep in the stables.
17 September 1939
We went to bed in our clothes but couldn’t sleep because of the shooting. By the morning German planes had pushed our infantry back into the forest. They shot at our soldiers and civilians shot at them too. It’s all a complete mess. In the evening I decided I had to get some sleep. I was too tired to care about what might happen.
While Edward missed the events of that day, in Łódź, Dawid recorded what news he could, but admitted to being confused.
17 September 1939
It turned out today that our gymnasium has actually been disbanded. Gymnasium Number 1 is being merged with the girls’ school. The buildings have been occupied. I feel despair overtaking me. In the afternoon I was out walking with [my friend] Jadzia when Marek ran up to us with strange, terrifying news. Russia has broken the non-aggression pact with Poland and has occupied our eastern areas. We still don’t have the details. I couldn’t understand anything at first. Later on, German, Soviet, English and Polish radio gradually clarified the situation. The Soviet government has mobilized its troops as it felt threatened (so much for their non-aggression pact with the Germans). Since there is no Polish government in Warsaw any more, Russia feels obliged to defend Belarus and the Ukraine against Germany. The Polish High Command has declared that it will not fight with Russia (so this act of aggression is clearly convenient in spite of everything) but will concentrate all its forces against the Germans. And the English radio commented that evidently the Russian army will cooperate with the Polish army. So what’s going on? Could it be that Russia has remembered that Nazism is its worst enemy, after all?
Contrary to Dawid’s hopes, Soviet troops began to occupy eastern Poland in accordance with the secret addendum to the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact signed in August 1939. As Poland was split into two spheres of influence, all the Polish Army’s hopes of regrouping in the east for another offensive were dashed. In occupied Łódź, Dawid enjoyed the return of at least some signs of normality.
19 September 1939
I went to school by tram in a clean uniform (I had to walk back, and will have to walk tomorrow, no money for the tram). There are fifteen girls and eighteen boys—from both gymnasia. We had three lessons, same as yesterday. Revision, mostly. We didn’t get any reports. There were a few new teachers, not many. We don’t know if we are going to be taught with the girls or separately, because it’s a squeeze. If separately, we’ll probably be the afternoon shift.
At five in the afternoon, I listened to Hitler on the radio. He spoke from ‘die befreite Stadt Danzig’ [German, ‘the liberated city of Danzig’, or Gdańsk in Polish] after an ovation from the crowd. That speech showed he doesn’t deserve his reputation as a great statesman. He threw himself around, screamed, insulted, pleaded, buttered people up, but most of all he lied and lied. He lied that Poland had started the war, he lied about the persecution of Germans in Poland (‘Barbaren!’). He lied about his good peaceful intentions, etc. Then he came out with a string of insults directed at the Polish authorities, Churchill, Cooper (Duff) and Eden. He talked about his desire for a deal with England and France. He talked about the injustice of the Treaty of Versailles, saying that Poland will never exist in the borders decided by the Treaty. He said that the English effort to overthrow the ruling German government would never succeed—the best proof we’ve heard that the English are seriously attempting such a thing. At the end, he talked about his good relations with Russia (?…) and the impossibility of a German-Russian conflict. He ended his speech with a few phrases, full of pathos, about Gdańsk.
Three days later, Edward once again passed through Łódź, this time on his way home.
22 September 1939
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