Page 85 - November 2020

November 2020 85
Litterateur

AND LIFE MOVED ON

The warning has been passed on and everyone managed to flee the city. Only the
school principal stayed - he thought someone needed to. The news about the
planned arrests turned out to be true. The principal was arrested.

Irene and her parents left the city and hid at their family, a dozen or so kilometers
further. Many of the other teachers were not that lucky - they had been detained in
a makeshift prison, in a factory. When the whole population of her hometown was
displaced, in order to turn the area into a firing ground, the family moved to a
nearby village. Mother has been giving underground tuition. She would go to
pupils’ houses or pupils’ would come over - even though the mother knew she
could be sent to the concentration camp if she got exposed.

The war had left a mark on Irene as much as on everyone else. Her father died
from tuberculosis in 1943. After father’s death, they have been helped by a doctor.
He was a father of two and asked the mother to teach his children. He would allow
children like Irene to access his library, help other orphans. It is then when the
little girl read the most important works of Sienkiewicz, Kraszewski and many
others. One could say that she educated herself. Long into the curfew, she stayed
up and read, with the window blinds shut tight. She didn’t even dream of the fancy
snacks from the time before the war. Rationed food had to suffice - black bread,
swede and beetroot marmalade, watered-down

soups. Schools were only for Germans, no-one was allowed to have radio; even
the benches in the park had a sign „Nur fὕr Deutsche”. Poles have been treated as
if they had not been human beings. And so, after the defeat at Stalingrad, when
groups of wounded and worn-down German marauders passed the village, the girl
would whisper:

- I’m not even sorry for them, momma.

- Let’s rejoice, dear child, the nightmare is almost over.

And the life went on.