When looking at historic dates it's easy to see each as another in a series of dates: September 1939 the war starts; May 1945 the war ends . . . But what about the nearly 6 years in between? And for Poland, 1945 was the beginning of more than four decades of national humiliation under Soviet communist dominance.
gun fire while gathering potatoes in a field, September 1939
But the future was unknown in the autumn of 1939 and in the summer of 1945. I try to imagine myself as a Pole at the end of 1939. What's it like when your country is invaded by a people who view your race as human trash? What's it like when your town mayor, chief of police, university professors, lawyers, journalists and others of the professional class are rounded up and taken away who-knows-where? Or, are shot in the street as an example? And the town's Jewish population is rounded up and rumors about their ultimate fate aren't pleasant? And later on many of the priests and other clergy are likewise rounded up and sent away?
Many individuals either acted honorably or shamefully during WWII. The human heart is a complicated landscape and despite boasts to the contrary, neuroscientists will never succeed in fully comprehending the human brain: its thoughts and emotions and desires.
Pre-war Poland was a mosaic of Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, Orthodox, nationalists, socialists, democrats, etc. Some Poles hid Jews at the risk of their own lives. Some Poles assisted the Germans in locating Jews in hiding. A few Poles even took the opportunity to slaughter their Jewish neighbors.
Polish civilians taken prisoner
There quickly formed an active Polish underground army. They carried out sabotage, espionage, assassinations, and attacks on the German military. The Germans typically retaliated by killing Polish civilians. In cities such as Warsaw and Cracow the Germans would suddenly close off a street, select 100 of the Poles they found there (or just take all of them), line them up against a wall and shoot them.
This happened frequently enough that if you left home to go to work or go shopping, you couldn't be sure you'd ever return home. If you were on a bus or walking down the street and the Germans suddenly blocked off the street, you knew what was in store. You probably thought of your family at home who would begin to grow nervous when you didn't return home, who would think the worst as the hours passed and you still hadn't come home. Eventually they'd make the grim journey to the place where the Germans collected the bodies (your body) for the next of kin to claim.
The symbol of the Armia Krajowa,
the Polish underground army
If you were with the underground army you knew what happened each time you struck a blow against the Germans. There had to be a whole lot of soul searching amongst the Polish fighters hiding in the forests.
That was the reality. Nobody knew how long the war and the national nightmare would last. In countries like France, a person could accommodate himself to the German occupation and live a relatively comfortable life. Many Frenchmen chose that option, to France's everlasting shame. But because of Hitler's racial views of the Slavic people (Poles, Slovaks, Russians, etc.) there really wasn't a long-lasting option of comfortable accommodation with the German regime. Poles were to be used as slave labor with the fate of eventual liquidation. As that understanding dawned on the Poles, I think resistance in some form or other was the only honorable option, even if it meant shocking violence to a fellow Pole walking home from work.
Seamus Heaney
The Irish poet and Nobel Prize for Literature winner Seamus Heaney died August 30th at the age of 74. The first poem I ever read of Heaney's was 'Mid-Term Break' in a Lit class at college and I was hooked. The poem deals with the death of his four-year-old brother Christopher, who was hit by a car, while Seamus was at school. The final four lines are especially arresting:
Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in a four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four foot box, a foot for every year.
My favorite Heaney poems are his early material. I think he tended to repeat himself later in his writing career. But all in all I really like his poetry. This is one of my favorites, from his first collection Death of a Naturalist.
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The course boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment