THE OUTCASTS
 

It was a period of nomadic wandering, the life of beggars or worse, because there were no penalties for helping a beggar; for helping us one could go to jail or be deported to  Siberia. ⁷⁹  Poorly dressed, often cold and hungry,  my  brother and I walked the back roads bypassing the settlements to ask shelter for the night in the barns of friendly peasants on  isolated farms. Often it happened that they insisted we sleep in the house, and it took some diplomacy to avoid hurting their feelings without explaining that we were infested by lice and scabies.  Curiously the majority of people who shared their bread with us those days were mostly subsistence farmers sitting on a few acres of sand, farm laborers or woodcutters,  likely candidates to embrace the new order of the state of "workers and peasants". There was even a Communist Party member in long standing among them. Somehow they did not have much appetite for this Soviet version of liberation.

Once  a friend sent us for a night to people living some distance from the village, warning us not to expect too much for they were destitute and not above petty stealing on occasion..  The man, his wife and  two sons, living in a dilapidated house, agreed to shelter us. In their poverty they shared with us whatever they had: a piece of dark bread, a sliver of smoked pork fat, a glass of moonshine. They did not invite us to sleep inside; we went to the barn where we found some old hay. Our host, a fellow in his sixties, dug out a rifle from its hiding place and decided to keep us company overnight.  “In case of trouble" he commented "there will be three of us".

Once, not long after Christmas while people still had  Christmas trees in their homes, having spent most of the night  walking we came to a large farm standing by itself close to a large forest. The farmer was a good friend and associated with the Underground. This was not the first time that we had visited him. We were just about to enjoy the meal prepared by our host's wife, when suddenly we glimpsed khaki uniforms of Bezpieka passing the  kitchen window. In a flash we were on our feet; our host lead us to an adjoining room, shoved aside a large clothes chest and pointed to a hole in the floor leading under the house. I shook my head; it was too late, we could already hear them entering the hall...  I pushed the chest back in the corner,  and we both stepped into a small bedroom where a large Christmas tree stood. I left the door partly  open, so the tree was visible from the large room, and we both flattened ourselves against the  wall behind the partially opened door which  gave us a modicum of cover. Our host did not lose his nerve. Knowing  that if he appeared to show them around freely they would be less likely to look around by themselves, he did not try to keep them in the kitchen, but invited them to the large room where his wife brought  some vodka, cold cuts and pastry left over from Christmas. Our farmer played the perfect host asking them to eat and drink, pointing out that it must be a hard life to be on duty on such a cold day so early in the morning. The man in charge told him that indeed their life was not easy but they were looking for "reactionary bandits" who had been seen in the vicinity. The food and drink kept them occupied and stopped them from prowling around the house.  From a strictly practical viewpoint, we were saved by the open door to the room with the Christmas tree. One of our pursuers  even stuck his head in to better see the tree, but did not enter or look behind the door. It was not easy to stand there motionless barely breathing for nearly half an hour while they were in the room, and it was perhaps even harder for our hosts. There were more than a dozen of them and when they finally left, we made sure that they were well out of sight before we dared to sneak into the nearby forest. Deep inside we could rest a bit on some pine branches and eat what the lady of the house had hastily packed for us.

It was a little too close for comfort as well as too dangerous for the good people who wanted to help us. This became even more painfully clear after another incident closer to home.  That evening we were in Wegrow for an organizational meeting, and when it was over one of our friends talked us into stopping  at the home of a young lady named Krystyna where a few friends waited to see us. Her home was located at the end of Gdanska street where  Piwna street joined it and together with the creek marked the boundary of the town proper. On the other side of the bridge,  only about a hundred meters further, was our house, fronted by a large garden. On the other side of the road were rows of barns and other farm buildings belonging  to local farmers living in town.

We should not have gone there, especially as Krystyna's older sister Stefa (Funia) was still in jail, but the temptation to be among friends, even for a short while, was too strong. It did not seem too risky as the colleague who had arranged the visit, Marian Wangrat, quite a competent fellow, assured me that the house was not under surveillance by UB. We barely had time to greet a few young people  when there was a loud banging on the door... "Here it comes again" flashed through my mind. Krystyna ran to the door, but I shoved her back into the room and yanked the door open, this time with a revolver in my right hand..."Ruki w wierch !" ⁸⁰  in Russian so there would be no misunderstanding. It worked; there were three of them:  two UB men and one from the local Milicja who served to guide the two to their assigned quarters. It was obviously a misunderstanding,  somebody had had the sick idea of sending two armed goons to the single room apartment of a young girl whose sister was already suffering in jail from "people's justice". However what had happened could not be undone, and I had no wish to make a bad situation worse mostly because of Krystyna and the Milicja man whom I knew was a good person. I ordered my brother and Marian to evacuate everybody from the house, and without disclosing my acquaintance with the Milicjant I escorted the three of them some distance along Gdanska street towards the center of town.  I did not even bother to relieve them of their submachine guns, but merely promised  that the first one trying to turn around would get a bullet between his shoulder blades. No one doubted my determination to keep my word.  I returned to the place near the creek under a huge poplar to meet my brother, Marian, and Krystyna - the others were to disperse to their homes.  Krystyna was not there.  They told me, she had  suddenly run back to her house.  I was about to go and get her but it was already too late. We could hear the shots and noise of a hastily organized chase. Marian took the back lanes to his parents' house, and we both retreated to take cover among the barns on the other side of the creek. The whole noisy band of  "Heroes of the revolution" descended on our house shooting in the air for courage, plundering, pushing  and threatening our Mother in their impotent rage. After all this time  Mother was used to that. By the extent of their fury she knew that we had escaped and that would reward her for all the indignities; that was the kind of Mother she was. She had already been pushed, held  hostage, and threatened with the firing squad  by Germans. From a distance of a few hundred feet, protected by darkness, we observed  the goings on and agonized for Mother. Late at night when everything had quieted down and we were reasonably sure that Mother had survived the raid we melted into the frosty night.

Before daylight Bezpieka arrested many of our friends - over twenty people - and kept them in a coal cellar-turned-jail for about a week. Krystyna was given a terrible beating. She survived it without a permanent injury thanks in part to help from other prisoners.
 
 
 
 

⁸⁰  "Hands up". One could be sure that the internal security functionaries understood Russian, although some of them may have had difficulties with Polish.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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