Always at their head rode Wiktor Bukowski, his superb horsemanship allowing him to move here and there wherever the informal fighting was thickest. He seemed immortal; Janko Buk, riding on his left flank, was shot through the head and tumbled from his horse, dead before he struck the ground, but Bukowski galloped on, picking up new companions, two of whom were also killed by Russian fire. He was indifferent to death, either his own or that of others, and as the battle raged, it was he who held the volunteers in whatever frail order they managed. He was a fearful force to have been let loose in such a situation, and he harried Budenny’s men most savagely.
In any great battle or any war there comes a moment when the forces are evenly matched, when victory is a reasonable possibility for either side; then knowing men watch for the isolated incident which reveals that the tide has turned and is irreversible. Budenny now faced such a moment.
What information did he have to guide him? He knew that Tukhachevsky was in retreat at Warsaw. More important, perhaps, he was painfully aware that his last three requests for additional matériel had been unanswered because of a breakdown in the supply train. On the hopeful side, couriers assured him that the morning’s northern diversion had been successful, but other messengers informed him that the middle contingent, driving directly at Zamosc, had accomplished nothing. Also, the damned Polish regulars, with an insight he could not credit, had anticipated his battle plan and had massed their major strength on the south, precisely where he did not want it, and they were holding their own or even pushing his men back.
Now, to cap it all, inside his own formation galloped this crazy Polish civilian followed by a gang of inflamed farmers who seemingly could not be stopped.
Upon his black horse, Budenny hesitated, and at this moment Wiktor Bukowski by sheerest accident headed straight for him. ‘Gun him down!’ an aide shouted, and withering fire swept the irregulars, killing many but missing their wild-eyed leader. ‘Capture him! Shoot him!’ But with great skill Bukowski evaded his assailants, dipping and weaving like a headstrong boy on his first bicycle.
At that moment Semyon Budenny realized that his rush toward the channel ports had ended. Disconsolate, he turned his black horse toward Russia, indicating to his subordinates that the battle was over. This crazy collection of tired Polish cavalry, peasants and gentry who seemed not to know what fear was, had saved Zamosc, but they had also saved Berlin and Stuttgart and Paris.
* * *
A titled Englishman who had monitored the two-pronged Communist offensive from a hotel inside Warsaw, a learned man who had led a battalion against Ludendorff during the Great War, reported to the French and British governments what he would later state in a book, which would be largely ignored in the west:
The defense of Warsaw and the repulse of Budenny’s cavalry at Zamosc constituted one of the decisive battles of the world. It not only saved Poland as a free entity perched between disorganized Germany and Communist Russia, but it prevented the latter from sweeping on to Paris and converting the entire continent into a Communist prison camp.
I assure you that when General Tukhachevsky stood at the gates of Warsaw, with his shells landing in the city, I assumed that all was lost. And when he was supported in the south by the brilliance of Budenny’s cavalry, I could see no hope for the reborn Germany or war-weary France. The fate of millions was determined by these almost unknown battles, and we shall all be permanently indebted to the heroic Poles who once again held back the pagan invaders.
At Brzesc Litewski, Count Lubonski refrained from making any such observations; his task was still to convince the Lithuanians and Ukrainians that their only hope for permanent survival was to unite with the Poles, but in the euphoria of victory he was again unable to gain an attentive hearing.
Witold Jurgela was ecstatic: ‘Now we’re assured of a free Lithuania,’ and he would not listen when Lubonski, with his long knowledge of the minorities of the Austrian Empire, warned that Lithuania by itself was not a viable entity.
‘We have the will,’ Jurgela exulted. ‘A thousand years of history reborn, a nation of ancient honor.’
Lubonski was terse: ‘You have the will, and certainly you have the honor. But you do not have the industrial base. Or the army.’
‘Switzerland exists. Norway exists.’
‘They are not pinched in between Russia and Germany.’
‘Germany is defeated,’ Jurgela cried, at which Lubonski grew impatient: ‘Do you deny that German troops still occupy most of your land? Even after Versailles? And that before long they will occupy it again, in terrible force?’
‘The nations of the world would not allow that.’
‘The nations of the world allow whatever happens, dear friend. And I know without question what’s going to happen to your Lithuania. You’ll have your freedom. Can’t be denied. And your own postage stamps. And your paper money bearing the famous faces of your heroes. And you’ll have editorials in your newspapers, condemning this or praising that. All that you’ll have. And you know in your heart what else you’ll have.’
‘What?’ Jurgela demanded contentiously.
‘Within two decades you’ll have either Russia or Germany knocking on your door with a message. And it will read: “The foolishness is over. Now you’re a part of us.” ’
‘That would never be allowed,’ the Lithuanian insisted, and he dropped out of the conversation, for he had to make plans as to where he and his family might fit into the governance of the new republic.
Vondrachuk was brutally brief: ‘We’ve had too many wars between us, Lubonski. Magnates like you oppressing our people, now trying to worm their way back to recover their estates so they can continue the oppression. Your church leaders trying to subvert our churches. No, it’s all finished, Lubonski.’
‘Tell me, with your collection of villages, with your twenty million people without a central leadership, with no great universities or intellectual traditions, do you really believe you can exist on the borders of a Communist Russia, with men like Trotsky and Lenin at your throat?’
Vondrachuk used almost precisely the words of Jurgela: ‘We have the will to exist,’ and Lubonski said with real sorrow: ‘I hope you can convince Russia of that.’
Unwilling to see the discussions end so mournfully, he made one last desperate plea: ‘Vondrachuk, you know that in 1658 one of the wisest men you Cossacks ever produced suggested exactly the kind of union I propose now. It would have saved you then. It will save you now.’
‘That was a long time ago, Lubonski.’
‘But if we offered every item that you and Lithuania proposed then, wouldn’t it be possible?’
‘We were different nations then. We had not tasted freedom. And now there can be no going back.’
So the maps were folded, the commission disbanded, and the hopes surrendered. The union which should have crowned the miracle at Warsaw and Zamosc proved unattainable, and the fault was no one’s.
Lithuania would have its nationhood, briefly, tragically. Then seven hundred thousand of its people would be deported to various remote corners of Russia and in its death struggles it would vainly seek to ally itself with a losing Germany, and thus lose trebly.
Ukraine would become one of the world’s great tragedies, a land in which the oppressors would allow ten million citizens to starve to death, where the native language would be outlawed, and where all kinds of depredations would be visited upon a distrusted and despised subject people. In despair, in 1939 the Ukrainians would try to side with Hitler in hopes that he might rescue them from Russian domination, and when this proved a fatal miscalculation, the revenge of the Communist victors would be harsher than ever.
Poland would be only a little better off. Unable to form an alliance with anyone, it would revert to what it had been a thousand years before, the imperiled land bridge between the Russians and the Germans. Its life would actually be even briefer than Lithuania’s, for in 1939 it would be partitioned yet again, this time half to Ger
many, half to Russia.
Shattered dreams! Each of the negotiators had evidence which demonstrated beyond cavil that union was the only practical solution, but only old Lubonski, seventy and wearied with struggle, accepted the evidence, and he was powerless to persuade others. Even among his own Poles he was dismissed as a visionary; they still wanted to grab half of Lithuania, half of Ukraine, bits and pieces here and there along their borders, as if territory and not universal stability were the safeguard of nations.
Shattered dreams! On his mournful way home from Brzesc Litewski, Andrzej Lubonski experienced a general heaviness in all parts of his body, as if his musculature had decided to quit its business of holding the members together. He left the train at Lublin to consult with a doctor, but before the meeting could be arranged he collapsed, and it was obvious even to him that death was near. He thought of the gracious daughter of the Zamoyskis who had honored him by being his wife and he wished that he could talk with her about the dubious future, for she had been sagacious.
And then he thought of Castle Gorka, which he had defended about as well as any of his ancestors, and of his son Walerian in London: ‘I hope he will be capable …’ And with that benediction, which could have been directed equally to the country he had served so honorably, he died.
IX
The Terror
How cruel are the repetitions of history. Toward the close of the eighteenth century autocratic Russia, Prussia and Austria could not tolerate liberal Poland on their borders and united to obliterate her. In the middle of the twentieth century Nazi Germany and Communist Russia looked askance at the surprising progress of a free Poland and maneuvered to complete a new dismemberment.
In the years 1921–1939, after Poland had repulsed the Russian invasion of 1920, she accomplished a miracle. Her three provinces had been ruled for more than a century by three radically different foreign occupiers, yet the Polish people were able to unite these provinces in one reasonable system. Three disparate judicial, educational and administrative patterns had been reconciled. Land reform was initiated, social security established, health care organized, industry encouraged. A bold new seaport was built on the Baltic at Gdynia; aristocratic titles were abolished lest the old nobles regain an upper hand; liberated artists were encouraged to paint Polish canvases and produce Polish plays; and even the railroad system which used to have three kinds of trains—Russian, German, Austrian—was disciplined into one that conformed to European standards.
There was reason to hope that if this rate of progress could continue for another two decades, Poland might become one of the principal illuminations of Europe, but on 1 September 1939, Adolf Hitler’s Nazis crashed over the border with such overwhelming superiority in manpower, tanks and dive bombers that the nation was quickly devastated and occupied. Poland’s defense might have been more effective had not France and England, all that summer, pleaded with her not to mobilize, fearing that Hitler might be antagonized.
A brief ten days after their thunderous start, the Nazis, having met brave but futile resistance, stormed across the Vistula and occupied all territory around Bukowo, into which a contingent of their forward troops rushed, led by a civilian who announced himself to the villagers as Hans Yunger. When everyone was assembled in the village square he produced a carefully prepared document, from which he read the names of seven people to be arrested. Because the selection of these seven was so indicative of what was being repeated throughout Poland, their names will be recited here, with explanations of why they were on the list:
Ryszard Aksentowicz 57 Schoolmaster
Pawel Barski 54 Catholic priest
Miroslawa Bukowska 49 Notorious liberal
Szymon Bukowski 15 Son of the above
Barbara Ostrowska 19 University student
Roman Ostrowski 59 Leading farmer
Jakub Pisecki 33 Reported to have Jewish blood
Nazi soldiers were able, with help from some villagers, to locate six of the seven; Szymon Bukowski had disappeared into the forest, but no one reported this.
The six were told that they could take with them one small parcel which had to contain everything they would need for an indefinite stay in jail. They were then lined up in the village square to await the truck that would carry them off to imprisonment: Pani Bukowska was tall, thin, quietly aggressive, as if she had known all along that something like this would happen one day. Barbara Ostrowska was a soft, gentle girl studying to be a teacher, not pretty but gloriously youthful and bright of eye. There had never been any Jews in this village, and had Jakub Pisecki possessed the slightest degree of Jewish blood, it would have been known to his neighbors. Father Barski, now a secure, stable priest, looked the role; his parishioners believed the rumor that he was soon to be a bishop. The schoolmaster looked like one; the wealthy farmer was robust, stocky, square-faced.
They held their small packages before them as the truck wheeled up, but as it stopped, three young Nazis in gray-green uniform leaped out, knelt on the ground not six feet from the Poles, leveled their machine guns, and sprayed them with a terrible fusillade of bullets.
When the bodies lay slumped on the cobblestones, Hans Yunger said only three words, using Polish, which had been taught him in a special school for those officials who would govern Poland. Turning to a group of horrified men who had watched the execution, he snarled ‘Bury them,’ and to the general population, whom he surveyed coldly as he climbed into his staff car, he said ‘Obey.’
The very next day Hans Yunger was back in Bukowo, this time to arrest six citizens at random, and as they stood waiting for the truck, he announced in his broken Polish: ‘Last night someone threw rocks at our trucks, an act of sabotage. This will not be permitted, now or ever.’
The six were nondescript, just ordinary villagers, three men, three women. As the truck rounded the corner they saw that the windshield had been shattered, and they were rather pleased. And they were not surprised when the three young men in gray-green uniform leaped out and knelt before them, aiming the deadly machine guns. One farmer shouted ‘Poland will live’ and a woman cried ‘You will suffer for—’
The bullets ripped through the bodies, making dents in the wall, after which Hans Yunger repeated his two-part order: ‘Bury them’ and ‘Obey.’
On the third day he performed the act which engraved his name and his countenance on the village mind forever: he appeared in his staff car, still in civilian dress, and posted on the door of the little church a list of one hundred and sixty-nine names, typed neatly but in no special order, men and women mixed together, each with proper age. No one under the age of sixteen was listed, and the proportion seemed to be older people, seventy percent; younger, thirty percent; men, sixty percent; women, forty percent.
This time Yunger had with him a proficient interpreter, who lined out the rules under which this region would now operate:
‘This is a list of hostages to be shot if any Pole in this region commits any act of aggression or sabotage. Destruction of German property, no matter how small, whether actual or attempted: six to be shot. Any physical act against a German soldier, no matter how small, whether actual or attempted: eight to be shot. The death of any German soldier or civilian, no matter the cause: twelve or more to be shot. Last night there was further destruction of military property, so the first six hostages will now be shot.’
Again six ordinary villagers were stood against the wall; again the three young soldiers took their half-kneeling stance; and again the order was given to bury the bodies.
Bukowo never saw Hans Yunger after that third day. He had been sent there to strike terror into the hearts of the villagers, and he had succeeded. He would now move on to his next assignment, where he would perform just as efficiently.
His place was taken by a Nazi of much different character, SS Major Konrad Krumpf, a low-level functionary of the Gestapo whose job it would be to govern a set of seventeen villages for the duration of the war. He was a tense man of thirty-three whe
n he drove his own small car into town, not at all the imperious commander that Hans Yunger had been. When the villagers first saw him they wondered how he had ever been accepted into the Gestapo or risen to the position he now held, but after he had been at work for a while they recognized his shrewd capacity to guess at what might be going on and his determination to stamp it out if it threatened the security of the Third Reich.
He was not tall, not heavy. He had thin sandy hair, weak eyes that required glasses and a weak voice that required him to scream when he wished to emphasize points. Villagers said ‘He soars like a lark,’ but he made himself understood. He had acquired a sober education at schools through his sixteenth year and through wide reading thereafter. As a boy he had supposed that he would enter his father’s textile shop, but an offer of membership in the Gestapo at a time when they were eager to enroll anyone opened dreamlike horizons, and for some time now he had imagined that through diligent service to Hitler, Goering and especially Himmler, he might, in his fifties, attain a position of some importance. To prepare himself for competition with others who had attended university, he continued to read serious books and had acquired a vocabulary much larger than a man who had left school at sixteen might be expected to possess.
However, he was a realist, and knew that he was not as intellectually brilliant as some of his competitors in the Gestapo, or as gifted in political maneuvering, or even as masculine-looking as the stiff Prussians in the SS or the handsome Bavarians. But he knew he possessed two traits which many of them lacked: he had an innate sense of where his enemies, Polish or German, might be hiding and a cunning skill in frustrating them; and he had an almost rodentlike capacity for accumulating facts about everyone with whom he came in contact, assembling huge stacks of cards, in five different colors, on which were summarized the bits of information he had collected about them. These files were supervised by two gloomy, nervous clerks whose names were not even known to the villagers but whose laborious work dominated their lives.