We woke up when the train stopped. Daylight shone through the battened hatches of the side walls. We stared at each other, confused; but our gray, bleary-eyed faces showed how memory returned, quickly or more slowly as the case might be for each of us. One man got up and peered through the crack of the door; we were standing in the train station of Thorn, he said, but at the outskirts. The chief of the guards in charge of us permitted the men to step outside to relieve themselves.

They had all climbed back in again when a short, all-but-bald man with a gaunt face, whom I had not met before, suddenly called for silence. I had noticed him several times before due to his calm, composed, self-assured manner. Now the rest of us also heard a droning noise in the air, approaching very quickly; and already, anti-aircraft and machine guns barked and rattled, angry shots rang out from all sides, even the policemen jumped out of the wagons and fired their guns, and we Germans were suddenly alone in the car. The heavy droning was right above us. "Keep calm," I cried. "Don't let them see how happy this makes you!"

There was a howling kind of whistle above our heads, over and over again, then a slamming sound and something bursting nearby, explosions crashed, shrapnel whizzed through the air, the boiling roar repeated and continued, we heard people shrieking horribly, machine guns rattled between it all, the Poles were firing from all sides, ack-ack guns spat and coughed, but already the bomber planes were leaving. The droning faded towards the north, then stopped.

Outside, the policemen stood and yelled over top of each other in confusion. The train began to move again. The guards climbed back in, talking excitedly, each of them telling how he had fired at the enemy and how many he had hit. Suddenly they fell silent. They crowded around the doorway and stared outside. None spoke a word. The train moved along slowly, commanding voices could be heard outside, and between them, moans and whimpers. Over the heads of the Poles I saw the profile of a single brick wall pass by; a shattered window frame hung from it askew; a cloud of brown dust roiled around the reddish-brown rubble.

The train soon stopped again. Twice more, German bomber planes attacked the Thorn train station that day, the Poles grew ever more agitated, but the train bearing our group of prisoners was not hit. We sat in the cattle cars and heard the fists of the German Army pounding into Poland. "Just last night, we were the ones being chased and beaten," was no doubt everyone's thought. "Today, today it's already different."

After a while, quiet returned to the cattle car. The Polish transport leader gathered up his men's dishes and then called Otto Naue and the comrade who had alerted us to the sound of the approaching planes. By now I had found out that he was the farmer Walter Lemke from Luisenfelde. Naue and Lemke spoke fluent and unaccented Polish, and the sergeant ordered them and an auxiliary policeman to fetch tea from the station canteen; but they should take care not to give away that they were Germans. He gave the accompanying guard special instructions to act as inconspicuous as possible, and to leave his rife in the wagon.

Half an hour later they returned with hot tea, cigarettes and a few boxes of biscuits. Naue saw to it that everything was distributed fairly, and we all got enough to drink.

Later, policemen we had not seen before forced their way into the wagon. They were immensely agitated by the air raids, and cursed fiercely at us. One short black-haired individual with a bushy beard and lively, darting eyes was especially hateful. He worked himself up more and more into a wild passion. Finally, he jumped up and tried to throw himself on Vollrath Eberlein who, being blond, stocky and broad in stature, aroused his particular hatred. "That's the right fellow," the policeman screamed, "look at him! He's stuffed himself with Polish sausage and Polish butter, that's how he got so big and strong, chowing down on Polish pork and bacon, and now this vermin wants to wage war on us, because we fed them and didn't let them starve like they have to starve over there with their Adolek, with their little Adolf! Don't look away, you fat Hitler pig, look at me, you'll get your full portion, now you can eat a Polish fist, not Polish sausage!" And he leaped at the man who, rather dumbfounded and a little pale, awaited the attack against which he knew he was not allowed to defend himself. But at that moment the transport leader spoke a few sharp words; the stranger was to mind his own business. If he hated the Germans so much, he should take his gun and go to the front, where he could fight as much as he liked. "But these here are my prisoners, and none of your concern."

The newcomer policemen fell silent, baffled, and the black-haired one was speechless. But then they all began to whisper excitedly to each other. They grew louder and louder, and clearly planned something; from what we could hear, we knew that they were debating whether to send for the station commandant. Clearly a policeman who actually protected his prisoners from maltreatment seemed suspicious to them.

The train's departure thwarted their plans.

Our sergeant, who had kept perfectly calm throughout these discussions, now told us – to the scowls of the strangers – that he was under orders to take us to Wloclawek, but that the direct road there was not clear and so we would have to go via Lipno and Kutno.

It was only the second day of the war, and already one of the country's main traffic arteries was no longer passable. It was clear to all of us that the phrase, the road was "not clear", was only a poor euphemism for the fact that it had been damaged or destroyed by German bomber planes. We gazed at each other in silence, and our confidence grew. But the strange policemen yelled at us that we had no cause for glee. While the German bomber planes had indeed destroyed the road – our sergeant had not even hinted at that! I was just looking at Walter Lemke when they said this, and saw how his clean-shaven, gaunt face came to life – yes, the road was destroyed, but that meant nothing at all, they said. The British navy had bombarded Königsberg, and the city was one big pile of smoking rubble. "Ahl of eet kapuht, house, people, roads kapuht," they added in German and grinned angrily. And in Danzig, they said, a joint British and French army had landed and Danzig was already captured. Polish planes had bombed Berlin. "Ahl of Berlin kapuht, ahl kapuht, ahl of eet!"

Lemke partly closed his left eye and carefully winked at us, but old man Stübner – knowing that none of the Poles would understand him – said in a perfectly calm voice, carrying over the angry chatter of the irate people:

"In your dreams, sweetie!"

It was elegant and sure like the thrust of a foil, timed perfectly to put the opponent out of action with a single move. Julius Mutschler, who sat far away in a distant corner (shrewd as he was, he had put as much distance as he could between himself and the line of fire, just as he always did later; he always made sure that the wagon wall was at his back), Julius Mutschler, who at first had almost fallen for the Poles' tall tales but then, when they became just a bit too tall, had restored his face to the sly little smirk that seemed to always play about his mouth and eyes – Julius Mutschler guffawed loudly, and then broke off in sudden shock.

What did he say?? the short black-haired man, whom the others called Antek, demanded of old man Stübner. But he looked nonchalantly at the little man, and then looked away again as though he didn't understand him at all. And in fact the Pole grew unsure of himself and seemed not to be certain who had actually spoken at all.

The strangers began to whisper and argue amongst themselves again.

I was sitting none too far from the transport leader, and so I bent forward and began a conversation with him. I had mentally mapped out the route that we were to take now that the direct road to Wloclawek was destroyed, and found the plan so nonsensical that I wanted to try to change it. The route via Kutno was an enormous detour, I told our sergeant.

As we had already seen, he was a man who strove to keep order. But still he felt it was better to be careful. In the course of a long conversation, which I had with him very slowly and with many breaks in between, I tried to bring him around to the idea that it would be better to disembark the train in Lipno and to take a bus or panje cart to drive the 25 kilometers directly to Wloclawek, rather than to take the 200 kilometer detour via Kutno. The sergeant did not say much, mostly just moved his head to indicate doubt, but once he called me "panie Direktorze", Mr. Director. So he must have known who I was; I had never met the man before.

We arrived in Lipno at dusk. The train stopped and the transport leader suddenly ordered that everyone belonging to his group was to get out. So my conversation with him had had some effect after all. We hurriedly gathered our luggage and climbed out of the wagon. It turned out that a total of fourteen of us were in this sergeant's group. Walter Lemke tried to convince him to let the farmer and his wife and son get out as well, but the sergeant refused. He said he had no papers for them. But he instructed an auxiliary policeman to walk with the three of them along the train until they had found the group they were supposed to be part of.

He ordered us to put our luggage down against the wall of the station house and to sit down on it, then posted the guards in a line in front of us. The train began to move again. From the doors, comrades waved to us, surprised to see the small group of us sitting alone on the platform.

The train had stopped only briefly in Lipno, but it had sufficed to draw a sizeable crowd to the station, and they soon began to yell those phrases that all the German prisoners got to hear in those days.

Two half-grown young fellows whom the strange transport had also attracted to the platform had run alongside the train for a short distance, then stopped and ambled back to the station building. They seemed very satisfied with their train-chasing achievement, and when they saw the fourteen of us sitting on our suitcases by the wall like so many chickens on a perch, the no doubt pathetic sight prompted their amusement. They were handsome youngsters, dark-haired and with lively, big dark eyes, slim and tall. Among the Polish leadership elite it is these slender, agile, passionate ones who are the most dangerous, because they see and recognize their people's inferiority on a daily basis, yet their political ambitions and the hot-headed immaturity of their high-flown dreams nonetheless make them wish to rouse their people to great deeds and passions. It is they who have rabble-roused, agitated and incited the fundamentally modest, even humble, hard-working Polish people to that level of megalomania that eventually led to their terrible defeat in this war.

Two young fellows of this sort, therefore, sauntered up to us sitting by the wall, saw the policemen stationed in front of us, and guessed right away who and what we were, and since they were still high on all the nasty, amusing and malicious curse words they had yelled at the "Hitlerowcys" in the train, they were in the mood for more fun. And so they came closer and asked, in German:

"Well, Adolf, are you already here?"

The question was so unexpected that the farmer Julius Mutschler, whose fun-loving nature was ever disposed to laughter, only half-stifled a guffaw and answered:

"Not yet, panie, not yet!"

The reply itself was enough to bring about a radical change in the faces of these youths, but it was Mutschler's laugh that aroused senseless rage in a big, broad-shouldered Pole who was just then coming up to us with the usual curses.

The Lipno train station was home to a local chapter of the Polish Red Cross, and the nurses on duty there, who had mistakenly assumed that the arriving transport was one of fleeing Polish refugees from West Prussia, had compounded their error by throwing boxes of cigarettes and biscuits into some of the cattle cars and handing hot tea into the same, for which our comrades, surprised by the unexpected charity, had thanked them gratefully, in Polish of course. When the misunderstanding was cleared up, the Polish nurses promptly forgot their compassion; they broke out into wild curses and insults and felt themselves betrayed, used and laughed at by the Germans; men and half-grown youths joined in, and only the train's departure prevented the first two compartments, which had received the most charitable gifts, from being stormed.

Now the crowd was returning, with a single, huge Pole in laborer's clothing far in advance of the rest. He had overheard Julius Mutschler's laugh; now we heard one of the two youths translate Mutschler's answer for him. He bellowed and charged our startled comrade like a bull, head ducked down and huge hands bunched into fists. "You pig want to laugh, you stinking cadaver, you laugh!" he raged, but two of the guards barred his way with their rifles and forced him back.

By now, news of the arrival of an entire train filled with the hated Germans had evidently spread through the city, and ever more crowds of Poles came rushing to the station. At first they seemed to want little more than to see what was happening. Between two and three hundred people gathered in the small station square within just a few minutes. The raging Pole turned to them. "They are protecting him! We're not supposed to touch them, the choleras, the Hitler swine, the traitors, spies, sons of whores!" His words tumbled over each other, and the big, heavy, hulking fellow spat, spewed, raged the curses out rapid-fire without ever being at a second's loss for more. The surrounding crowd was seized by a crazed fury, raging hatred, mass insanity – call it what you will, they were seized by the devil. Men roared and screamed, they ran around like rabid dogs, searching for a cudgel, a rock, an iron bar, women shrieked and howled, their faces contorted into horrendous grimaces that had nothing human left in them – with horror we even saw that many of these creatures were foaming at the mouth, that's how much their blind rage, their hatred born of fear, their blind passions had overcome them. We were unable to remain sitting on our luggage, we stood up and leaned against the wall – we did not look at each other for we could not look aside. Like a bird transfixed by the sight of the snake we had to keep staring into the raging, roaring mob before us, but I think we all felt that our faces were as white as chalk.

Our transport leader had left for a few minutes to try to arrange for a bus to drive us to Wloclawek. He returned at the very last second. He pushed through the crowd that parted for him very reluctantly; the policemen, who may have felt that they themselves were in danger as well, had taken up their rifles, and that alone had dammed the flood of insane hatred a little. The sergeant was pale right to his lips. In a piercing voice he shouted an order in Polish, and the guards snapped their rifles high and released the safeties.

There was sudden silence. The sergeant, so enraged that he stuttered a little, shouted that anyone harming his prisoners would be shot. Everyone was to leave the platform immediately.

It was strange to see baffled amazement spreading over the rage-contorted, teeth-gnashing faces. A few Jews who had raged and incited in the background were the first to depart. Some women, on hearing the word "shot", shrieked and ran away. Some comparatively docile individuals, who may have been ashamed of their loss of control, followed; others who had been more in the role of curious onlookers – yes, there had been some of these as well – protested and cursed but vanished as ordered, and suddenly our sergeant was left with a remainder of thirty, forty, fifty or so men who looked, embarrassed and uncertain, to the left and right and everywhere except at him, and who clearly, being faced with the police, suddenly remembered any number of things they might have done, to which they would not want to draw the attention of the authorities. They were not the kind of persons who care to have anything to do with a policeman. And when the sergeant, who had recovered his composure, now asked them sharply what they were doing here, and why they had not yet reported to the military, seeing as it was war?, they too trundled off, muttering and scolding softly to themselves.

We sat down on our luggage again; no wonder that our knees were trembling. We had just been preserved from unspeakable maltreatment – in fact, I believe we had just avoided death. We spent several more hours waiting in this train station, and were subjected to curses and insults several more times. "Hitler swine" was the least we were called, but things did not escalate to any real danger again.

Once darkness had fallen, the sergeant led us through the town to a large building, in front of which we again had to wait for a long time. Then some panje carts pulled up. Our transport leader had somehow managed to procure them. We got on them, the policemen followed suit, and the drive southward began.

The carts shook and rattled, their wheels grinding through the sand on the road, the horses snorted, every now and then one of the coachmen called out something in Polish, and the policemen, two of whom were on each cart, talked amongst themselves; we were silent. Outside, there was war. The wide, flat land lay calm and quiet, it replied with silence to all the unspoken questions roiling within us. From the east, the wind came softly across the fields as it had always done, and the stars twinkled above in a clear sky. The night grew bitterly cold. Later, the moon rose – a narrow red sickle. Every now and then, to one or the other side of the road, a village emerged from the uncertain darkness. The small straw-covered huts swam singly like boats at anchor in the fog covering the fields, under shivering poplar stands. Later we came through some woods where advancing troops crossed our path. The soldiers learned from our guards who we were; immediately, the same old curses and insults began here as well, we were threatened and treated to the usual descriptors. But since our carts kept moving and the troops were forbidden to stop, nothing more came of this, until suddenly a mounted officer rode up to our cart and roared at us from horseback, waving his revolver around as though he wanted to shoot. Old man Stübner, whose white hair shone in the darkness, said in his aged but still powerful voice: "I was a German officer. Shoot, why don't you! But don't think for a second that we are afraid of you." His clear, firm words baffled the Pole, who lowered his weapon and stopped his horse. Our cart drove on. Soon the Pole vanished in the darkness.

Hours later we saw the Vistula, broad and white. Our carts drove down from the higher ground into the valley, the countryside drowning in fog; the carts rumbled across the bridge, and anyone who had been asleep awoke. The carts shook and rattled us across the uneven city streets and stopped outside a big lowering building.

The transport leader got down and knocked on the iron gate of a huge, darkly lurking entranceway, he had to pound repeatedly against the resonating metal and finally resorted to the butt of his rifle. His powerful blows echoed dully from the walls. Finally there was a sound of approaching footsteps, a small square hatch at eye level was lifted, a pale ray of light fell onto the street, then the gate opened its maw.

Stiff and over-tired, we climbed down from the carts, carried our suitcases into the entrance and lined up in rows of two without anyone telling us to do so. It was better to do it ourselves than to have to obey the Poles' orders. The sergeant spoke with a prison official, handed him a sheaf of papers, a roll-call was taken, all of us were present and accounted for. Finally the transport leader turned to us again. We saw his pale, thin face in the glow of a dim electrical bulb dangling from the arch of the doorway, swinging slightly in the breeze. The Pole's face was solemn and reserved. He said, he had brought us to the prison of Wloclawek in accordance with his orders. His job was thus done. He paused; it seemed as though he wanted to add something, but then he turned away with a curt "Dobra noc!" – Good night! The heavy iron gate swung open, then closed behind him. Each of us would have liked to shake his hand. He had done his duty, properly as should have been a matter of course. But we knew this country, and we knew that in Poland it is not a matter of course to act as this man had acted.

Long Night's Journey Into Day.
The Death March of Lowicz.
Erhard Wittek