Meeting History

I always have had a love affair with history, but not just the generic history we were taught in school when I was younger; the real history that could only be found with loads of research. I am talking about old fashioned, go to the library, search through codexes and microfiche, reading dusty encyclopedias, and getting permission to look at even dustier newspapers. Real research! The only other real history that can be found is, if you are lucky enough to find someone who actually lived it and willing to share it with you!

Today I was fortunate enough to to meet someone who was a young girl in Poland when it was invaded by the Germans during WWII. I was amazed, not only from the stories she was willing to share about the war, but also from what she told me about how Poland was afterwards. Today, I had the best history teacher ever: an eyewitness!

War is hell for anyone, but it can be particularly hard on civilians and especially children. My teacher was a child, but old enough to realize what was happening and remember. From what she told, I managed some mental math and figure that she was approximately 10 years old when the Germans entered her village. The children were playing together as, children will do, not making distinctions between Jew or Gentile, Catholic or Protestant.

She remembers they were playing in the potato fields, because you could see the flowers of the potatoes blooming. As the Germans came into her village, they immediately started gathering up all of the Jewish children but no others. My teacher told me that she didn’t know how the Germans knew who was Jewish and who was not, she just saw the children being taken away and she wasn’t taken.

The Germans continued gathering all the Jews in the village and made the preparations necessary for their transfers to the various camps, making sure not to miss anyone. My teacher told me how the Jews were taken to the Railroad Station and placed into the cattle cars, then she said something that completely blew my mind.

It’s not in anything I have ever seen or read about WWII, but this is an eyewitness account, so for me, it is even more poignant. The Germans went to each house in the village and told each family one person from the family in that house had to go with them to the train. In my teachers eyes I could see the sadness as she remembered the soldiers coming to her house and then taking her Aunt with them as they left.

I had actually met history face to face as my teacher continued with her account of how the war had come to Poland. She was willing to share her knowledge with me, and I listened hungrily to all of the details. Remember, in the beginning, I told you I always had a long love affair with history? This was different than anything I had ever encountered and I was enamored!

Please don’t misunderstand my sudden zeal for her words: I was listening to a civilian survivor. I was a soldier once, and trained for warfare. During my time in service warfare was electronic with much bluster and testing of nerves, but no physical enemy to be seen. It was a different type of Warfare, and to most people, my generation was keeping the Peace. She had been a child of 10. She had no idea or training for any kind of warfare. It just came to her village, her house, and in a very big way.

The Germans came to her country and took everything they needed or wanted, it wasn’t just her village, but every village. My teacher could only tell me about what happened in her village, and her accounting wasn’t finished. Her Aunt had been taken away, not because they were Jewish, but for the purpose of being able to control her family, and all the other people in the village by taking their family members as well. These family members were never seen again.

We are all aware of the history during WWII, people disappeared. Eventually the world heard about the Concentration Camps, and those people who disappeared from my teacher’s village had seen their final solution as well. My teacher told me about two of her younger brothers who died because of starvation from the Germans taking away most of the available food. As she told me, I could see the sadness darting across her eyes again, but she hadn’t finished blowing my mind.

Eventually, the Germans packed up hurriedly and left her village. The next day they saw the Russians coming down the road. The Russians asked about the Germans being there and of course the villagers told them what happened. The Russians wanted to know when the Germans had left and in what direction. As the Russians left, they told the village not to worry, that as soon as they left to get the Germans they would be free!

My teacher then told me something that I had never heard before…, she told me that many people died in the camps; many more people than we knew from our history books. Through my own research, I had found out about the political dissidents, the homosexuals, the infirm elderly, the physical and mentally disabled that also had met up with the final solution. I learned of the experiments done on so many twins, and of course the numbers of so many Jews that all had eventually met their ancestors thanks to Hitler. We all know the numbers from school history and recent accounts at the Holocaust Museum, but here my teacher gave me a new number. A number I had never come across.

25,000,000. Not the number of people killed in the war, but the number of Russians killed in the same kinds of camps the Germans used to try to rid themselves of Jews. I was both appalled and shocked that this information wasn’t available for the world to know. My mind was racing with questions, but again my teacher hadn’t finished blowing my mind, with her next breath she told me that her favorite General was General Patton, because when he met up with the Russians in Berlin, he wanted to continue his push forward so that the Russians would not become the next threat. Our government leaders stopped him.

Remember, the United States had signed a “treaty” with England and Russia, the former U.S.S.R. (United Soviet States of Russia for the uninformed) only it was called a War Pact, making us all allies. So when Germany surrendered, General Patton was convinced that Russia would take advantage of the situation in order to expand its Socialist Democracy across the lands removed from Germany’s grasp. Of course he was right, and instead of Poland receiving the freedom they were promised, they had to live with the control of the Communist Party.

My teacher arrived in the United States when President Kennedy was in office and finally had the freedom she had been promised but never received so many years ago in Poland. She worried with the rest of us over the Bay of Pigs, and watched as President Kennedy forced the Russians to back down during the Cuban Missile crisis. With everything she has been through here and in Poland she worries about our future.

She worries about people who might be interested in this situation where we would accept the opportunity for free health care. It sounds like a great idea for some people, but she already lived with that type of situation. My teacher told me that free health care led to doctors being overworked because of lines of patients who needed help, and in most cases, if someone needed surgery, the schedule was so full patients would die before ever seeing the surgeons knife. She no longer understands how much our country can survive with the current changes she sees here and in the world.

Her final words to me today came as no surprise; they’re words I have heard before, and even used myself. I don’t remember who said it first, but I do remember the first time I came across these words they were in quotations. You, dear reader, have probably heard them yourself…, “Those who don’t remember history are only doomed to repeat it.”

I want to end this with a piece of my own wisdom. Never settle for one piece of information on any subject. Research is so much easier now with the advent of the internet, Google, and Siri. Yet, there are times where you might need a bit more information, so follow the crumbs until you are satisfied with a complete meal. Even if those crumbs take you back into old fashion types of research. Yet the one piece of wisdom that is most important I believe is, if you have a chance to speak to someone who has lived through whatever you are searching for, who is willing to share their experiences, you will never find a better source of information!