10 - Warsaw Uprising and the Aftermath

Summary

Isolated outside Warsaw and unable to tell what was happening to the family, my mother was again prey to acute anxiety, and I was little better. We had no way of knowing whether the Russians, now just the other side of the Vistula river, would keep their promise and come to the rescue of the courageous inhabitants of Warsaw. How otherwise could they stand up to more than a few days of hand-to-hand fighting against the well-armed Germans?

Whatever the difficulties of deserting my poor mother, I was frantic to return somehow to fight a last stand against the Nazis alongside my countrymen. But the problem of getting back into Warsaw turned out to be insuperable. German patrols were energetically hunting out wounded insurgents. Anyone with a Kennkarte showing that he came from Warsaw was a dead man. Anyone without a Kennkarte was also instantly shot. False papers were unobtainable. Without knowledge of the Underground safe houses along the way, there was no hope of arriving alive in the city.

It was hard enough to stay alive where I was. The Germans conducted almost daily searches. Our good, ancient hosts set up an early-warning system to save me; indeed, they themselves were at deadly risk of being shot for harbouring me. Constant watch was kept. Whenever a patrol came near, I leapt out of a back window and clambered into the disused garden well, pulling a wooden lid over my head. Waiting for the patrol to move on, I had to balance across the deep shaft, my hands and feet struggling to keep their grip on the narrow, slimy ridges. I performed this operation dozens of times; just one slip and I would have drowned in the brackish black water deep below. I could not have shouted for help, for fear of betraying not only myself but my hosts.

Unpleasant as these episodes were, they were nothing compared with the apprehension and distress we felt as we watched huge clouds of smoke gathering every day over central Warsaw and the bright glow of burning houses at night, our ears constantly assailed by the crash and splutter of heavy artillery, the sharp counterpoint of machine guns, and the thunder of the aerial bombardment.