In the Fire of the Eastern Front: The Experiences of a Dutch Waffen-SS Volunteer, 1941-45

CHAPTER 19 Illegally in Poland

Now the war for me was definitely at an end. The last act of the Silesian drama was simply a matter of enforcing the resolutions of the Potsdam Treaty which took place on 2 August 1945. From then on, Breslau was no longer German territory, but Polish. Already in the middle of May, a Polish flag could be seen fluttering in the breeze over the City Hall. Breslau was no longer Breslau. Breslau was given the new Polish name of Wroclaw. A seven hundred year old culture sank in a flood of Poles and Polish government. The ‘blooming’ capital city of this part of Germany had been given away.

The fate of the German eastern provinces had already been decided between the Western Allies, by February 1945, in Yalta. This ‘bounty’ of war was divided. Although Poland lost territory to the Soviet Union, Poland’s borders were enlarged by 250 kilometres, stretching into Germany like soldiers ‘falling-out’ to the side. It had been a subject of discussion however, as early as 1943, at the Teheran Conference, when Winston Churchill’s dry comment was that “No one can do anything about it, when this treads on German toes.”

This ‘falling-out’ action brought compulsory seizure of property, following the forceful expulsion of15 million German inhabitants. As a result, three million people lost their lives. “A land of death, from the Oder to the Neisse, for the outlawed”, was the description from the journalist Robert Jungk, on 26 November 1945, in the Zürcher newspaper Die Weltwoche.

I was a free man on 20 September 1945. I was given my discharge papers and a ‘pound-loaf of bread. As a stranger, I was all owed to stay in Breslau, just 24 hours. I was still there 12 months later. “Du domoy!” The Russian doctor had said to go home, but where was that? I could not and did not want to return to my ‘home’ in Holland. I knew that the ‘old’ régime was allied to the Communists during the war, and allied now to the ‘new’. I could only expect reprisals against the ‘volunteers’ from my homeland. That was confirmed at a later date. No! I must find myself a new home.

I cannot describe the utter joy that overwhelmed me with the first steps I took into freedom. I was free at last. Free! There were no more Russian guards and no locked doors. The military discipline, and the ever-present fear of death over the last years, was no longer there. I was totally alone. There were neither accompanying guards of escort, nor any of my reliable comrades to give me their company. I felt the isolation. The realisation came that I must fight my way through a strange survival strategy that I knew existed, but that I had to discover for myself what it was.

My uniform was tattered, making me feel like a vagabond. But because of it I blended into the tattered city. It was a city of debris and ruins. I made my way to the home of a young nurse from Breslau. She had been discharged some time before me, and now lived with her mother on the outskirts of Carlowitz. Upon her discharge, it was possible for her to retrieve my personal effects, under difficult circumstances, and smuggle them out of the hospital. She buried them, like a dog burying a bone. They were waiting for me. My diary and old photos were all the possessions that I had.

After dressing in a borrowed suit of her brother, who at that time was missing, I could go out into the streets. It was dangerous, because the terror of the Poles raged. Everyone in my age-group immediately aroused suspicion as having been a soldier. If you gave them the opportunity, they would tear your discharge papers to pieces.

At the end of the war, the Polish state police, or to give them their official title ‘Organ for Public Safety’, were installed as supervisory officials by the Communists. But they possessed a high percentage of criminal elements. They made a business from plundering. They dressed in leather jackets, or had the gall to dress in German uniforms and carry German weapons. They elbowed their way through the population, stealing from them by day and by night. Under the protection of the Communists, they had never even had a whiff of gunpowder. But they were the ‘victors’ and now behaved just like the ‘Ivans’, although they had never been friends. It may be somewhat strange to understand, but the Communist leadership which now reigned, was very often the saving grace for many of the German nationals to be found in Breslau, simply because of their relationship with the Poles.

The Breslauers knew how to help themselves in this situation. A ‘jungle-drum’ system, using saucepan-lids, became the communication system in calling for help when the Poles forced their way in to where the Breslauers lived. The signal warned the neighbours, every one of whom joined in with a clash of cymbals, the din of which reached a crescendo, stretching from house to house. The commander then sent jeeps and soldiers. He simply enjoyed getting to grips with the Poles, between whom there was no love lost. The ‘Ivans’ showed no mercy, and very often shots were to be heard.

The Russian/Polish relationship had never been good, but at that time, when the Russians had ‘freed’ Poland from the yoke of Fascism it was, of course, worse than ever. Both sides were contemptuous of the other. Murder and manslaughter between the two occurred daily. This ‘peace’ after the war produced even more of a psychological crisis in many people. Suicides were at an even higher rate than during the siege of the city. The total result, including the high death-rate among both young and old, in appalling conditions including epidemics, was catastrophic.

Normal hygienic conditions were non-existent causing the high death-rate. It was not to be wondered at. The civilian population died off like flies, from typhus, typhus fever, dysentery and diphtheria. Babies were the first ‘sacrifices’. The deaths of very many infants caused by malnutrition was also not surprising.

It did not take long for the Poles to fill the central prison in Kletschkauerstrasse with people who were arrested under false charges and delivered there. For most that meant a gruesome death. A German railway-worker was taken there, on trumped-up charges that he was the Chief of the Breslau Gestapo. It appeared that his railway identification card, picturing him in his railway official’s uniform, proved this! His protest produced a forceful kick in the abdomen or genitals, and blows from truncheons. That lasted until the un fortunate candidate signed a (false) statement confessing to the charges.

The patrols from prison guards during the nights disturbed not only the sleep of the prisoners, but they had to report, standing to attention, that ‘our cell is occupied with German swine’. The nights were not only used for control, they were used for the most brutal of interrogations, accompanied by very loud music from the radio, to try to cover the screams of the tortured.

After the Poles took over the control of Silesia, they organised concentration camps where Germans were starved, beaten to death, or died from other methods. One of those camps was in Lamsdorf. The ‘Attrition’ called for by Stalin, was now replaced with that from the Poles. In this camp alone, 6,488 Germans were shot, hanged, burned, or died from the consequences of being forced into barrels and rolled ‘for as long as it took for them to die’.

In Breslau, as in the whole of Silesia, to be German was to be worthless. As such you could be driven from your home and used as forced labour. More and more soldiers, who were discharged by the Russians for any reason, were immediately re-arrested by the Poles and transported away. For me, that was a very big worry.

One could not fail to notice that international flags flew from various houses. Those ensured the safety of their occupants, being respected by both the Russians and the Poles. There were French, Italian, and flags from other nations, which gave me an idea. Even as a foreign worker, this would not give me 100% safety. There was a danger that I was classified as a DP, i.e. a displaced person, admittedly coming under the auspices of UNRA to be repatriated. That was not what I wanted, but it was worth the risk. I simply had to have false papers. Until I had them, I made myself an armband in the colours of the Dutch national flag and attached it to my lapel. My false papers, with a stamp, stated that during the war, I had been forced to work for public transport, the BVB. This vital piece of paper was procured for me by one of its former employees. For that life-saving gesture I was able, some years later, to return the favour. I testified at the ‘denazification’ of the said man, in the western zone. I confirmed that during the war he had always treated his foreign workers as human beings, and without any harassment.

The unconditional willingness to help each other, apart from those termed as ‘flexible shoe-cleaners’ was among the Germans second to none. People could trust their past, and also their origin to anyone German, without re percussions. The terrible experiences springing from the siege soldered them together into a brotherhood of conspirators. They formed a piece of German homeland, a colony in the middle of a very hostile world.

At all costs, those Germans wanting to return to their homes that they had left were not welcome and had to be outlawed. The Poles had set up control points and guards very early on. Even by the spring of 1945, a post was set up on the river-crossing at Görlitz, on the river Neisse. Some escaped at that crossing, increasing the housing problem in the city, which by now was acute. The Poles were organising ‘ghettos’ for the Germans, in anethnic-cleansing programme. The Germans could be controlled better in that way. Perhaps it would be better to say that it would be easier to steal what possessions they had left, to say nothing of an uncomfortable level of harassment.

They started this ethnic-cleansing programme in the autumn of 1945, in Carlowitz, where I lived. I had been there since my discharge. The inhabitants had been given 90 minutes to pack 20 kilos together, and had to leave their keys in the locks upon leaving. They had just one and a half hours to decide what would make up the 20 kilos, what they wanted to take from among their possessions, and what had to be left behind.

Before this happened, I made my way into the city, to my friend Markwart. He was the assistant doctor who had been discharged at the same time as I. The relationship was a good one, for we were of the same age. We had the same ambitions of surviving and always having a full stomach. He lived with a nursing-sister, in a bomb-damaged house, under the eaves in attic rooms. It was a house of flats into which the Russians and the Poles did not like to enter. Most of the remaining bomb-damaged houses were close to falling down, but that did not worry us old warriors. That was the least of our worries. We were left alone to try to live, or simply to vegetate would be a better description. Our daily bread was bought on the ‘black market’, paid for in Polish z³oty. Meanwhile the German mark had disappeared. My doctor friend made some money from the treatment of ill Russians or Poles, and from army medical reserves.

There were many Germans who made themselves voluntary prisoners in their homes, not daring to go out on the streets. I became a middle-man between them and the occupiers of Silesia, making good business and exchanges, using articles for sale or exchange. My ‘foreign status’ made this possible. There were usually a few z³oty left over for me, and therefore food could be bought. It was swings and roundabouts, for sometimes business was not so good. Then, of course, we went to bed hungry and could not sleep. There were other times when we lived like ‘kings in France’, and were full of Polish sausage and cream torte.

There was a very strange incident during this time, but one that is representative of the political relationship between the Western Allies and the Communists. Markwart was approached and asked to act as a spy. He came home one day and told me that two strangers had approached him. They were two Americans who offered him a large sum of money to inform them of the political situation in Breslau, under the Poles. To spy? To spy, and for the Americans who were our enemy? To spy against the Communists who were also our enemy? The Americans were already spying on their Communist brothers-in-arms? That was a double-edged sword, even a double-edged political sword, and Markwart said ‘no’. There was no question of him getting involved, al though the thought of the money was very attractive.

Markwart left Breslau, his place of birth. I left in the November of 1945. He saw no prospects for his future medical career, in staying in a city reigned over by Slavs. Shortly before he departed, he wrote down his thoughts about his birthplace, in a poem.

Markwart was never ever to see his old home-city again. We met some years later in West Germany and I met not only a family man with children, but also a Professor of Medicine.

I did not have to be alone for long, for there were many Breslauers who would have taken me in, a young man on his own, and useful as a protector. So I lived for a long time in Klosterstrasse, in the house of an old lady. In order to prevent the plundering raids of the Poles at night, I barricaded the doors with stout wooden planks. They tried many times, but they were unlucky. When this lady, married to a Belgian, finally received permission to join her husband, she made me heir to her house, which didn’t please the Poles very much. I had it in writing that I now owned her house. They found the loop-hole they needed and told me that this ‘Will and Testament’ was not legally signed and sealed by a solicitor, so it was not legal. It was therefore not mine. I could however let it, or rent it to students, which I did.

One could not be too fussy at that time. Half of the house at the back had been shot away by artillery fire, and that included the toilet on the second floor. Those using it had a lovely view of the mountains of debris and rubble. Such conditions were ideal for insects, not one or two, but a whole plague of them, which robbed us of our sleep.

A family called Laska lived not far from my house, at number twelve in Lutzowstrasse. Their house had been spared any drastic bomb-damage. The daughter of the family with her infant, the daughter-in-law, and two aunts lived there, complete with their possessions. The daughter’s husband returned from POW camp and together with him, we combined our talents for survival, for ourselves and the family. At that time it was not known if Mr Laska and the two sons were still living. So in close association with the family, I became a provisional son and brother, not only because I found and chopped firewood for them, but also because of my business talents on the ‘black’ market. With a chosen article from their possessions, I could and did barter for something necessary or useful.

The centre of this ‘black’ market was the Scheitniger Star, between the Kaiser and Fürsten bridges. The area, having been utilised as a provisional airstrip for the airport, was large, with lots of open space and surrounded on all side with ruined houses. It could perhaps be compared to an oriental marketplace for it buzzed with Polish handlers, and farmers’ wives in their white headscarves, offering their wares from stands or from the back of pony-drawn Panje carts.

Everything precious to the German national that had made up their former standard of living was to be had there. But to buy it, one either had to be a millionaire, or be prepared to give one’s last shirt for it. Butter, eggs, chocolate, bacon, and coffee-beans were offered, but one could not pay the required prices. One could recognise the poor Germans amongst the throng, for amongst the handlers and the Polish civilians, they stood out as thin and anxious. In expecting their exile at any time, many German women sold or exchanged everything from their household, even the suits from their fallen husbands or missing sons. Most accepted the most miserable of prices, not being brave enough to barter with those who had no scruples.

I was more resolute in my dealings with the handlers, as a male, and a foreigner as well. I let them know that business was business and that their stated price was not for me. I bartered in Polish, for as long as it took, until the price was what I had intended, i.e. reasonable for the wares offered. I soon became a ‘king’ of this market. When I appeared, I usually offered articles from the Laska family from before the war. Such items had become costly, but were of good quality and could no longer be obtained. I had leather shoes, wool coats, suits, bedding materials, inlets, women’s brassieres. All were sought after goods and brought the highest of prices.

When business for the day closed, I allowed myself a visit to the Piwo and Wino stand, where I downed a vodka and ate a sausage in a roll. I was usually not there long before being joined by one of the many prostitutes. It was the custom when meeting members of the opposite sex on the street, to greet them with a kiss of their hand. This included them, even when they had black fingernails!

After successful sales, we were able to add pancakes and potato fritters to our daily nourishment, but both had to be fried without fat. Sometimes we even had smoked meats. At Christmas 1945 for instance, we managed to have typical Silesian dumplings, with roast pork and pickled cabbage.

Someone had the idea of visiting the now wild and overgrown nursery gardens in Gandau, to harvest some apples. It was a long way on foot. So one day we decided to take a short cut through the churchyard, which lay between aerodrome and Pilsnitzerstrasse to. The first time that we took this route, we could only stand and stare in disbelief and utter disgust at the sacrilege that we found. Graves had been plundered. Mausoleums had been broken into. Slabs of stone and marble had been smashed, in order to plunder from the dead. Wedding rings, other jewellery and gold teeth had been stolen from the open graves, in greed that stemmed from non-capitalists? We could only stand on this ‘acre of God’s land’ in utter disgust at the sacrilege, presumably from Russian soldiers.

I did not hurry to register myself as a DP, for I was not so keen about being repatriated back to Holland. My BVB papers satisfied me for the time being. So that with luck, nerve, and more than enough deceit, I hoped that I could survive that rather unstable time. There had been more than enough dangerous situations, any of which could have been my undoing.

One of those was a surprise house-search from the Poles, particularly dangerous for us when I was found at the Laska’s house. Once, the Polish security officers, including an arrogant chap, in an ultra-chic uniform and typical square cap, searched the whole flat in a show of self-importance. Luckily for me, they did not think to test for hollow walls, for I was hidden one time in a very well concealed wall cupboard, used for bed linen. The Laska family could think themselves lucky that they were not sacrificed by Polish businessmen. Such men were those behind the militia, who were sent by them on plundering missions.

Despite it being a time when there were days when one did not how to survive, to live through the next day, I also had comfortable times. One such was a rendezvous on the river Oder, which developed into much more. The weather was lovely early in 1946 and it was bathing weather. The Breslauerw did not succumb to this, for fear of the Russians and the Poles hiding in solitary stretches of the Oder. I just could not ignore this pleasure and made use of the privilege that I had, as a non-German, to bathe in the river. That I did, alone, for several days, until one sunny morning, when I was joined in this idyll, by a ‘mermaid’, who could not possibly be German.

She was 18 years of age, blonde, and spoke in broken German, and to my surprise, this was laced with Dutch words. A Dutch worker in Lemberg, the city of her birth, had taught her. The joy of bathing soon became a liaison, which was balm for my loneliness and boredom. She was, according to the song we had always sung das allerschdnste Kind. Was a man in Poland to find the loveliest child one could find in Poland? Whether the weather was good or bad, we met regularly and we met now on the Ole, a lonely tributary of the Oder. Not long after, Elzbieta invited me for a meal with her parents, who lived in Mollwitzerstrasse. My fears were quickly allayed over the meal of maize and piroggen, a form of ravioli. The friendly, open-heartedness of this Polish family called Markowitz, who came from the Carpathians, was welcoming. It was only the grandmother who was not enamoured of me, sitting there in her white headscarf and eyeing me with suspicion. She told her granddaughter that I was a spy.

Mr and Mrs Markowitz were Congress Poles, or national Poles, who were forcibly moved from Lemberg to Breslau. They did not like the lifestyle of the city, where they certainly did not feel at home. They had nothing against the Germans and actually heavily criticised the shameful behaviour of their own people. The militia in Wroclaw were not regulars, but were family members from criminal backgrounds that had now jumped on the bandwagon. The Markowitz family had had no bad personal experiences with the Germans, in contrast to the Russians, with whom they wanted no contact. This attitude had angered the Russians, in particular soldiers who had made certain advances towards Elzbieta and been given a rebuff. They had then tried to rape her. She had managed to escape them at the last minute.

The sight of Breslau troubled one’s soul and it became nauseous for me. I wanted to leave, and visit the countryside, which was a dangerous under-taking. Elzbieta told me that she would accompany me, to protect me, which was a brave decision for her to take. Our visits took us to Deutsch-Lissa, to Leuthen and Saara. The new Polish names I have now forgotten, but not the former fields of slaughter, where I lost many of my comrades. I could not talk about it then to Elzbieta, for I was to her a foreign worker from Holland, and it had to stay that way.

On our way we met the new Polish settlers, who on the whole were not happy with their new circumstances. Some from the town had been moved to the country, and those from the country had been moved to the town. Elzbieta spoke to the sinister-looking Poles who moved around us in suspicious interest. They soon determined that we were Polish, whilst I remained dumb and smiling, i.e. a Polish pair! We still had to be very careful. There were criminals who were roaming the streets having been released from prisons, but who were not political prisoners. When we heard Russian voices we disappeared as quickly as we could, finding roads over the fields to the woods. We bumped into Russian troops one day, with cars, mounted riders and Panje carts, all having flags flying from them in the wind. There were no nasty words, just grins as if they knew that we wanted just to be alone, as they saw us sitting on the edge of the woods.

I felt really free there in the lap of ‘Mother Nature’ and I lived the hours intensely. Those hours under blue skies, listening to the bird-song, were cleansing. I realised that I saw the countryside reverting to the way it had been. The fields were no longer tilled or cared for. Nature’s wild flowers were taking possession of the fields, not the wheat and corn, which struggled to ripen in that wilderness. The lovely wild flowers, the weeds, however, stood triumphant over man’s daily bread and hid a deathtrap. Whoever wanted to harvest the corn from those acres, would tread the fields of death and mines. I knew that the roots of this corn nestled side by side with the remains of German and Russian soldiers. Their bones had been washed by the rain, dried by the sun and were now turning ‘earth to earth and dust to dust’.

After those country visits, I had to ask, “does peace re ally reign here?” No, something was missing. The country idyll was not complete, for it was totally still. When one listened, did one hear the moo of a cow, or the crowing and clucking of chickens in the farmyard? The stillness was the stillness that one found in the churchyard. The war had taken the cows and the pigs from the villages. There were no strutting chickens, no warning bark of the farm house dog. There was no straw in the cow-stalls, which the farmhand had cut for the welfare of the animals, for there were none.

Once, a German soldier approached us coming from the other direction. Had he been discharged? Had he managed to escape? He walked with the aid of a walking-stick, which one could see had been a broom-handle. His bread-bag hung from his uniform, which was in tatters. He did not want to draw attention to himself. He passed by not giving us, the Poles, a glance. ‘Oh comrade, if only you knew’, was what I thought. He blended perfectly into the countryside, the changing countryside, which had once been as proud as he, a grenadier. We were both sacrifices of a changing world.

We always re turned to Breslau as the evening came, re turning to the suffocation of the city, tired from the day’s outing, leaving the wide open spaces of the country, to return to a city of ruined facades. Sleep often evaded me, after those trips, for I was always reminded of those former battlefields of Deutsch-Lissa, Leuthen and Saara and my comrades who I had left behind. I had up to a point success fully veiled my military past from the Russians and the Poles. I knew that even when my German friends and acquaintances were told, that my past was safe with them. They would never give me away. Elzbieta also believed my version about my past, at least she behaved as if she did.

There was however, someone who began to doubt my story, probably because he was a young member of the militia. He knew that I should have registered myself as a DP long before. Another reason that he had a ‘pique’ of me, was because of a woman, an acquaintance in whom I did not have the slightest interest, but he thought otherwise. He wanted me out of the way. He saw a rival in me, he was jealous, and that was a dangerous situation. He was convinced that she liked me more than him. But when the truth was known, she was not interested in his advances. He accused me of being one of the Waffen SS. I had no choice but to treat him to some aggression and tell him to accompany me to the local commander, to clear the matter. At that point the said German lady in tervened, and threw out the lovesick gallant. I disappeared too, never to be seen again.

The hopes that a peace treaty would ensure that German nationals could stay in the now Polish-controlled eastern territories, gradually disappeared. It did not materialise for those Germans still in Breslau. It never came. The ethnic-cleansing programme carried on as usual and even my friends in Lutzowstrasse, the Laskas, had to admit this reality, with a heavy heart even demanding their expatriation. Naturally enough I wanted to go with them when our district appeared on the list, for there was nothing to keep me now in Breslau, i.e. in Polish Wroclaw.

I had of course to tell Elzbieta of my decision. I did this as carefully as I could one day as we bathed in the Ole. She had expected and dreaded it happening. She begged me to stay or at least delay my departure. My brief explanation was not enough to convince her of the danger I was in. So I decided that I had to tell her the whole truth. Perhaps then she would under -stand. She did not. I showed her the buckle on my leather belt, a part of my uniform. But she had already guessed that I was not just the foreign worker that I made out to be. She made it difficult, she made me feel guilty. I believed that her clinging affection was just a part of a temporary affair between two young people. She could not accept the position that I was in. Not even when I showed her that the eagle insignia on my jacket was not on the left-hand breast but worn on the left arm, as worn by the SS. It made no impression on her. She wanted me to stay. Having done this, I had to beg of her, as a Polish citizen, for my protection. In tears, she swore she would give me protection. Her love and her bravery really touched me, but I thought it could not be real. The situation was decided for me, for us, when she and her family were moved once more. They were forced to return to Lemberg and that ended our liaison.

My worst fears after being discharged as a prisoner became reality on the morning of a warm and sunny day when my freedom ended. I was in Feldstrasse when three uniformed and armed members of the militia stopped me and asked me for my identity papers. One of them held a passport photo in his hands and looked at my face intently and then I was forced to go with them to their commander. The passers-by stopped and looked at us as we made our way through Klosterstrasse. One of the Poles had a rifle over his shoulder and another of them a cocked Russian machine-pistol. Other people just stole a cursory anxious glance at us. Upon being recognised by the Germans, the word soon went around that ‘the Dutchman’ has been arrested.

We stopped at number 120 in Klosterstrasse, at a large house ‘Bethanian House’, which was the Polish command post. I was thrown into a dark cellar room, without a word of explanation or questions. The concrete floor was flooded with water, several inches deep. I tripped into it, soaking my shoes and socks. Perhaps it was the first softening-up process for the arrested. It must have been about an hour later that I was collected and taken to the second floor. There I stood in my wet socks and protested, in front of a Pole, who had a cap of Russian origin sitting sloppily on the back of his head. He was sitting behind a large kitchen table, with files on top of it, a newspaper and what else? A bottle of vodka and water glass. His jargon was for me ‘double-Dutch’ and I didn’t understand a single word that he uttered. I only saw that he glanced continually at the passport photo and then at me. It was a man of about my age, but who wore glasses, which I didn’t need to wear. I was then suddenly ordered into the next room. It was an ante-room, with people coming and going, all in uniform, all in a hurry, and who took not the slightest bit of notice of me.

I was uptight with worry for days. On that day I had a double identity on me, which could have been my undoing. I had my Russian discharge paper on me, as well as my foreign worker’s paper, which had not been discovered. The state security police from the UB had not searched me up to that point. It had to disappear! I decided that I must eat it. Before I could however, a German cleaning lady crossed my path, and I asked her if she would take this corpus delicti to the Laskas for me. It was a risk, but the dear lady did what I asked of her and delivered it to the Laskas some little time later.

With that done, I now had to see to it that I left the house. After waiting a while I seized my chance, by walking out casually behind a militiaman, leaving the room as close on his heels as possible. No one noticed. He went downstairs, so did I. He left the house and so did I, with the guard on the door standing to attention, thinking just what I wanted him to think and that was that we were together. For the next week I was in another ‘cell’ at the cloisters, and was given the best of service from the Father Prior. The Poles seldom enquired after refugees at the cloisters, and when a prisoner escaped, then they arrested someone else. It was as simple as that.

That short spell of arbitrary justice, even only for a few hours, together with the very uncertain future in Breslau that I saw, strengthened my will to leave. My existence there became more dangerous and risky by the day. Far too many people knew that I had been a soldier. One false slip from someone could have given me away, and produced a catastrophe, which neither I nor they wanted. I had, after all, fought against a system which then reigned. I was delivered, but without any protection. In between times not even Jews were exempt from Polish arbitrary justice, and were fair game for the Polish authorities. “Under the Nazi régime in Poland during the war, anti-semitic comments about the liquidation of the Jews grew, with thoughtless approval, at a fast rate. It was not the opinion of individuals, but of the majority of the Polish people”. (Der Vertriebenen, 1957)

It was about 11 o’clock on 12 June, on the corners of Lützow and Klosterstrasse, that it happened. Everything in my life, at that point, which was dull and cloudy, blew away. I actually thanked my lucky stars, on that warm and sunny day, that ‘lady luck’ had guided my footsteps to Breslau. In talking to a Polish ‘handler’, I noticed dark brown locks of hair bobbing on the shoulders of their owner. She was a young attractive girl, dressed in a light blue anorak. In that moment I was spellbound. I was fascinated in seconds, by this slim and lovely being who appeared to be from another world. So much so, that I simply had to get to know her. My bartering came to a very abrupt end and I followed her.

To my immediate dismay, my introductory routine with girls was to prove useless this time. Well, perhaps I should not have been surprised. Convinced that she was German, I should also have known that she could not possibly think that this foreign-speaking nobody was very pro-German. I could not hide my accent, nor the colourful cockade on my lapel. Nor could she know my problems in that precarious time of terror and harassment against the Germans. She had every right to be suspicious and more than a little irritated at my advances. When I had a chance, then I would have to prove to her that my intentions were pure. So why not with my identity? I bared my soul, my past, and my army career in fighting on the side of the Germans, to this lovely maiden. Her mistrust and irritation disappeared. She appeared regal to me, untouchable. I realised that relaxed flirting with her was out of place. I did not even think of it, for this was so different, so very different. I had never been struck so heavily by ‘cupid’s dart’, as now. I was so happy that I could have stormed the heavens. Friedrich Schiller’s words came to me, spoke to me, from his verse, “the first love, a golden time, when eyes look into open heavens”.

All my experiences in the past, both good and bad, were now null and void, since the starry hours that began since my meeting with Brigitte. That was the name of this twenty-year old. I was underway to fulfilling the intimations of the Laska family, that I should take a ‘momento’ home with me. It was a ‘momento’ from Breslau, from the war, from Germany. It was a ‘bounty-packet’ in the shape and form of a bride.

We met every day thereafter, when Brigitte’s work allowed. For like all other Germans, she had to work for the Poles. Her employees were just like Elzbieta’s parents. Mr and Mrs Markowitz, Congress Poles, were a very friendly pair, owners of a colonial-ware shop and waiting to go to America. They wanted to take Brigitte with them as an adopted daughter.

I always picked her up from the shop in Feldstrasse, and with every day I knew that I had found my partner for life, beyond any doubt. We sauntered for hours on end, from one corner of her birthplace to another, and in all the surrounding areas.

Those warm June days spent with Brigitte, were the most wonderful of my life, spiced only with a kiss or two, although we became so close that after only a short time, we knew what the other was thinking. There was no need for our love for one another to be put into words. It appeared to me that our souls were totally bound together. Soon, I started to talk about marrying. Later, although under different circumstances, that was to be utopia.

Brigitte’s skin was as brown as her eyes, but this did not come from a beauty spa. It came from forced labour in the fields around Liegnitz, under the Russians. It was some 50 kilometres west of Breslau, where she had been evacuated with her mother, in January 1945. She too had experienced the exodus in the snow, ice and 20° below freezing. She had seen uncountable people die, including her mother who died from dysentery shortly after their arrival. Now as a total orphan, Brigitte stood there totally alone and under the ‘victors’ wrath. The drunken Russian soldiers, frustrated at the long and tough defence of Breslau, often vented their spleen on those defenceless German citizens. Those whom they did not transport away, were put to work in the fields under the old Russian motto “no work, no food”.

Brigitte could not forget the plight of the horses when following the plough, for all had wounds, from bullets or shrapnel and their wounds had never been attended to. When horses failed then the Germans were saddled with their work and they had to pull the ploughs and farrows, like Volga boat-people, pulling their barges. She was one of the lucky ones, for she could in the first few weeks of the occupation avoid the raping that was customary, together with other young girls. They could hide themselves, quite successfully, in a hole in a mountain of coke that they made, in the grounds of a nursery. Not only at nights, but also by day they fled to this haven of safety, where they stayed, freezing and still as mice, and were fed at nights by the older women. Only those who had experienced Bolshevism, such as I, with the motivation of leaving my home to fight against it, can understand its system.

In July of 1945, Brigitte returned to Breslau to find her parents’ home in ruins. In October she was ill with typhus, which she survived in spite of the fact that medical attention for Germans was a catastrophe. Many died of typhus. One could say that we were both orphaned, for I did not know if my family had survived or not. My last communication from them was at the end of 1944. This ethnic-cleansing programme of the Poles was now to rob her of her homeland.

Far quicker than we wanted, she and all the Germans had to leave their district on 22 June. It broke our hearts and made us happy at the same time, that one of us could turn our backs on that Polish commercial and economic management. Our happiness was however tinged with worry, for the expelled could decide nothing for themselves, including where they wanted to go. They were forced to go where they were sent, be it to the West, or to the Communist Eastern zones of Germany. It had been a journey that decided life or death in many cases. Thousands had already died, in the middle of December, in conditions that could be compared to cattle transport. It was important that the Silesians were sent on their way. 1,600 had been given a loaf of bread and a herring as provision for the journey, which had taken a week. In temperatures of 20—25° below, they were herded into cattle-wagons, which were unheated and with no toilet facilities. They arrived in Potsdam, in Bruckenburg, in the Western zones with 35 dead. After being delivered into hospital, a further 141 died from the results of pneumonia, heart attacks or the results of freezing.

My hopes for her well-being were realised when receiving a letter from Brigitte from Detmold, which was in the British zone. The journey in goods and cattle-wagons had taken eight days, but she had survived the stress. In Görlitz and on German soil, but under Communist direction, the wagons were directed on to other tracks, so that the expelled could be plundered once more, of the last that they possessed. My medals, which Brigitte had hidden in balls of wool, had not been found.

In Breslau, things were moving on for the Laskas and myself, for we had registered with the German charitable Organisation ‘Caritas’. At the same time, I presented my Russian discharge papers and was accepted as any other German soldier, although I was Dutch. My BVB paper was not shown because of the danger of a DP classification, and deportation to Holland.

For some inexplicable reason, our deportation was delayed and I was already thinking about deporting myself out of Breslau and undertaking a one-man journey to the Western zones. My friends talked me out of the idea, telling me that it was a very dangerous mission and could cost me my life. So I waited. We waited throughout July, August and September, and it was on the 30th that we were ordered to leave. We could take 25 kilos of possessions with us.

With stamps and cardboard stickers on our chests, we left to form a queue under Polish control, and marched to the Freiburger railway station. Before we left, Mrs Laska had run her soft hands over every piece of her furniture in her home. In tears she caressed each piece that had given years of service to her and her family. I, in my happiness at leaving, did not at that time understand her deep feelings at the loss of her treasures. Only later, after slowly collecting my own possessions laboriously together, did I understand. The keys were then taken from the inside of the locks, placed on the outside, and we left.

The Poles did not have enough intelligence to realise that they were expelling the best of their ‘milk-cows’ and ‘cutting their noses off to spite their faces!’ They did not comprehend that the industrious hands of the Germans and their knowledge of the economy of their land was something that they did not possess, and perhaps never would.

The militia, armed with German rifles, screamed their orders at the throngs of people, with gestures that drove the column through the streets to the station. They showed no sympathy. The pram of Mrs Laska’s daughter was snatched away from her, shortly before she climbed into the train. Most were in tears having sunk to the depths of depression, because of that act, the worst act of man against his fellow man. The Poles drove the people into the wagons laid with straw, but which were now overflowing, then into the goods and cattle wagons. Toil et arrangements were left for them to arrange from inside.

One’s wits were a valuable asset in those moments, for we were by now well acquainted with the greed of those non-capitalists. The Laska family and I had the joy of outwitting them, at the last minute, with my plan, ‘Operation Janka’. My own baggage consisted of a rucksack and a cardboard box which I gave to the Laska family just before reaching the station. Surreptitiously I removed myself from the throng, unnoticed by the militia. I made my way to one of the exit points at Lutzowstrasse, to where another fully laden cart was parked, which I took. I rejoined the last third of the column and reached the first control point, which I passed through without any problem. I rejoined my waiting friends with the additional freight. They were overjoyed at the ‘trick of war’ against the Poles. It was a grotesque comedy. It was the joy of the ‘little’ man, that he could rob a kilo or two from the robbers themselves.

Just before the wagons started to move, a young blonde girl ran along the platform, calling someone’s name. To my great surprise it was Elzbieta Markowitz, who was looking for me. Being Polish, she had been allowed to enter the station briefly and she looked so happy at finding me. She had found out somehow that I was among the deportees on that day. “Till we meet again, Hendrik”, she said, giving me packets in which I found pork-dripping sandwiches and cigarettes. It was all so hurried. Rather choked by her gesture, all I could say was “farewell little Elzbieta”, as the over-long train gave a jerk and started to steam out of the station.

The train puffed its way through the suburbs, spraying sparks into the air as evening started to fall. We chugged past masses of green-covered ruins, in the direction of the West. We had fought so bitterly, not so long ago, in those streets. We passed churches in whose graveyards the past generations of my fellow passengers slept under centuries-old stone crosses.

Our wagon was full to overflowing. There was very little room to sit. In the past I was accustomed to the usual military phrase ‘the wagons must roll to victory’ when we used them as our military transport. But we had it far better then, for we could and did open the door, dangle our legs over the side, and move around freely. We could not do it on that journey, which could take perhaps a week, because the Poles had sealed the wagons from the outside.