Second World War

Chapter 3.

I remember September 1, 1939 very vividly, as it remained etched in my memory from that day on. It was a sunny Friday, a clear end of summer day, when all people would talk about was: "Will they give him the Corridor?" "They" were the Poles; "He" was Hitler.

Hitler had tendered the Polish government an ultimatum to cede to Germany the city of Danzig, to-day Gdansk, and the Corridor, a strip of land, of Polish territory, which separated East Prussia from Germany. The Germans wanted to unite East Prussia, with its capital Konigsberg, with the Reich. That annexation entailed also a strip of the Baltic coast. It would have cut off Poland from access to the Baltic Sea and robbed them of their great port city Danzig.

For a few days, all of Europe was breathlessly awaiting the answer to the ultimatum. On Friday, that fateful day in September, Poland answered "No" and Germany declared war on Poland. The unthinkable has actually happened. The Polish reply did not come as a surprise. The appetite of the Germans seemed unappeasable; there was no limit to their demands. Hitler had avowed that agreements are only pieces of paper to be torn. When he was given the green light to annex the Sudetenland, a region of Western Czechoslovakia, with a predominantly "Volksdeutsche" (of German descent) population, the German troops marched in and occupied every inch of Czech territory. It became clear that he would demand the Corridor and would swallow all of Poland.

The Poles are proud people and would take a stand. Their tragedy through the centuries lay in a fact of geography, that they lived between the Russians, in the East, and the Germans and Austrians, in the West. They have been buffeted by both before and it was to clearly follow after 1939.

France and England had a pact to protect the territorial integrity of Poland, if attacked. On Sunday, the third of that fateful September of 1939, France and England declared war against Germany.

Here we were, at the border of Poland and we saw that a great tragedy was about to unfold. What can one do? Sit at the radio and listen to martial music from Germany, call-ups of regiments from Poland and unmitigated fear from one’s insides. I looked at my parents and expected them to know what to anticipate, what would follow. After all, for me it was my first war.

In 1935, Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, attacked Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and occupied that helpless African country. Their emperor, Negus Hailie Selassie, was the first throneless, homeless head of state at the time. (He appealed in vain to the League of Nations in Geneva, whose powerlessness as an international organization came clearly to the fore. At the end of World War II and the defeat of the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan), the Abyssinian emperor was reinstated. Today Ethiopia is a communist country, under Soviet influence and in deplorable financial straits). At the time, in 1935, we only read about that attack in the newspapers and heard about it on the radio, but it was in a far away continent and thus of less immediacy.

Now, in September 1939, Poland was just a stone’s throw from Czernovitz and the implications were bone chilling. Hitler had so far occupied Czechoslovakia and Austria without any open warfare, yet Poland wouldn’t submit, wouldn’t voluntarily say "Yes" to its extinction and thus, action in grand style might follow. The situation looked ominous and we felt it, and we knew it and we were completely defenseless.

Hitler became obsessed with the plan of isolating England and France from a possible alliance with the Soviet Union and made the daring offer of a friendship pact with the Reds. His scenario was written in the following sequence: swallow Poland, defeat Western Europe, including England, then turn against the Red enemy in the East.

In pursuit of his plan, he dispatched Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German minister of foreign affairs to Moscow to confer with his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav M. Molotov. The Germans were insistent in an almost non-diplomatic fashion, as they feared to lose precious time before the onset of fall, with possibly unfavorable weather conditions. On August 23, 1939 Moscow signed a non-aggression pact with Germany. This historic treaty sealed the fate of Poland; it also meant a turning point in my life, in the fate of the province, where I lived, it was the beginning of the unfolding of events never anticipated to happen, it gave Hitler a green light to invade Poland. The date September 1 had been decided by Hitler as the latest date for the attack in the East, before the onset of rains, before the roads became impassable in some of the marshy areas of Poland. He wanted his victories lightning fast - Blitzkrieg.

The Soviet Union had achieved an unusual boon through the pact. The Eastern part of Europe, from the Baltic to the Black Sea was declared as their sphere of influence. They spelled out by name the three Baltic republics: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - all three formerly, under the tsars, Russian territory. The two signatories included as part of the Soviet sphere of influence Bessarabia. Northern Bukovina had not been included in that sinister deal, yet Russia made its own decision to annex it, together with Bessarabia. They made it a kind of connecting bridge to Southern Poland.

Germany attacked and cut into Poland like a knife into butter. It was an uneven match and none of Poland’s efforts had any chance of success. While the Western part was buffeted by the Luftwaffe and by armored German divisions, the Russians didn’t need to waste a single shot. The Eastern part of Poland was taken over without resistance. It was clear, it went according to the deal that had been worked out together in Moscow, the previous month to the accomplishment of clanking of glasses of vodka.

That pact was signed with the understanding that Germany could concentrate fully on fighting the Western powers, without interference from the USSR. Both sides bought time for themselves.

In the late 30s, the Soviet Union was going through a period of internal bloodletting, as Stalin was fully consolidating his absolute power. Officially, the world found out about the 1937 show trials when Sinoviev, Kamenev and Radek, well-known political leaders, fallen into disfavor with Stalin, were tried and put to death. Among the victims of those trials were also top military men; some generals were sentenced to long prison stays in Siberia, in the Gulag. In fact, one of the difficulties at the beginning of the war against Germany (1941) was the fact that the higher echelon of the military had been disgraced, dismissed or incarcerated; some had been put to death. Marshal Konstantin Rokossovski was brought back from Siberia during the war. He brought great victories, distinguished himself as commander in the battle of Stalingrad.

Throughout the world, the non-aggression pact between Berlin and Moscow produced a gasp of horror. Since fascism was considered the deadly enemy of communism - here both united as expansionists, as occupiers of foreign lands and people - they signed a nonaggression agreement. France and England realized that what they had hoped for, wouldn’t happen. They hoped that Germany would fight the USSR.

All over the world, liberal people, socialists, communists and all those, who sympathized with these ideologies, were stunned, shocked, hit over the head, disappointed with the Soviet Union to the n-th degree. At that time, writers like Ignazio Silone, Arthur Koestler, George Orwell and thinking people all over the world got their shock, the first of many to follow, about the reality of the Soviet regime.

In my own sphere, events precipitated so fast, one could not spend much time on political speculations. The events happened at such speed that every day brought new realities. The map of Europe changed daily.

Coming back to September 1939. The war brought about heavy bombardment in Poland. The German Luftwaffe was efficient, accurate, deadly. By occupying Czechoslovakia, the Germans had increased their air force through the acquisition of the Skoda works, that produced airplanes of quality comparable to their own Stukas. The Germans advanced at breakneck speed into Poland, with their heavy panzers, tanks and artillery. They bombed fiercely and disrupted trains, destroyed roads and bridges. The Poles had no chance against the German war machine. On September 8, the attackers had reached Warsaw. The world learned what Blitzkrieg meant. (lightning-war) Poland was defeated in 18 days. The Soviets streamed in from the East in order to occupy the Eastern half of that trampled country; that occupation started on September 17. The Germans mopped up the remaining army outfits; the Pole’s didn’t even try to defend themselves against the Russians. It became a fait accompli, Poland was dismembered for the fourth time in its tragic history. It was a full-fledged, independent country for 20 years, between the two World Wars. (1919-1939) On September 18, 1939 there was no more Poland.

As soon as the Russians invaded, the Polish regiments, in retreat from the West eastward, realized that they would fall into Russian hands. Tens of thousands of refugees from all over Poland, civilians, military and diplomats, masses of people spilled over the border into Romania. Suddenly our town was overrun by thousands of refugees from that defeated country to the North of us. There were some people, who had fled in such a hurry, some wore coats over their nightgowns. Women with babies on their arms; military people in uniform, completely armed. I saw for the first time in my life Orientals, probably members of the diplomatic corps. Masses of homeless people brought the ominous reality of war into my consciousness.

At this point, Hitler proposed to talk peace with the Western powers, but it had become clear that Hitler could not be trusted any more and the West would not be fooled again. The prime minister of England, Neville Chamberlain, after his return from Munich in 1938 declared that he had secured "peace in our time" after that assurance from Hitler. The pact with Russia and the ensuing war and partition of Poland among the two showed that Hitler could not be trusted and that the Soviet Union was in the same category as fascist Germany.

In Czernovitz, our townspeople reacted in a humanitarian way by offering the refugees shelter for the night, a meal, a place to sleep. However, some Poles were such antisemites that when they realized that they were offered shelter by a Jewish family, refused to accept that humane gesture. However, within a few weeks, through the good offices of the Red Cross, the refugees were sorted out, some how. After reaching the capital, Bucharest, the diplomats returned to their respective countries. The military were gathered in several small towns and proceeded to Persia (Iran) eventually. There was organized the core of the Polish Army in exile, commanded by General Anders. The Poles formed a government in exile, in London. Some of their units fought later on in North Africa, on the allied side. Some Jewish refugees from Poland remained in Czernovitz and shared the fate of our community during the war.

Winter set in. The first few months of the war were called: the phony war or Sitzkrieg (sitting war). Not much happened on the Western front. Germany and the Soviet Union consolidated their respective occupation of Poland.

We knew that much more was going to develop, that it was the calm before the storm. The spring of 1940 set in with new events. Life in our family, by this time just the parents and myself, went ahead on a more or less even keel. I studied at the university, studied English intensively. My Father, having liquidated the store, had some merchandise left, stuff which he could not dispose of in such a short span of time. We had a "servant’s room" and there Father stashed cartons of scissors, combs, needles, all imported merchandise from Germany. Knives, scissors, needles, razor blades- all these goods were manufactured in the factories in Solingen and started to get scarcer since the war broke out. We actually lived on the proceeds of this liquidation for some time. However, it was going to run out and no new way of making a living was in sight.

In the meantime, I started to teach English privately as there were many people, anxious to learn the language. Thus we got by, but times were uncertain and the future was troubling.

During the winter of 1939-40, the Soviet Union attacked Finland and met with stiff resistance. Yet Finland was no match for the massive attacking troops of the enemy. They eventually ceded some territory - the second largest city Vyborg and a few islands in the Gulf of Finland. The war ended in March 1940.

Soon after, the Germans attacked and conquered Denmark and Norway and by May 1940 Hitler’s troops crushed Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg and invaded France. The English fled at Dunkirk, France was defeated. Paris was formally declared an "open city" and surrendered on June 16, 1940. Paul Reynaud, the premier of France, fled to Bordeaux and requested an armistice on the following day.

While the Germans kept busy occupying the Western Europe countries Russia took advantage of the turbulence. They occupied the three Baltic republics between June 15-18, 1940. The free Western countries, England and the United States were alarmed at the fast pace of events in the East, but the world was in such a disarray that nobody could stop it, especially since Hitler and Stalin had agreed that the Baltic republics and Bessarabia were in the Soviet sphere of influence.