Translation: Zuzanna Czachowska
Our village was small and peaceful. Situated in a hollow, surrounded by forests. A dozen or so families lived here, far apart from each other. The rest – a piece of land – was later taken over by the Germans to create a hell on earth.
Everyone ran their own farm; we only met on Sundays for mass. Just a quiet village where life was bearable. Idyllic, away from noise and troubles, if only it weren’t for the war.
Suddenly, everything changed. Our once quiet and undisturbed life was no longer so. German cars and motorcycles passed back and forth along the road, even trucks filled with barbed wire and other materials. There was traffic and racket like hell. Then suddenly the railway started operating. When the Germans launched it, people said whole transports of people began arriving, but no one believed it.
I was curious about what was really going on there, but my father would hit me and tell me not to poke my nose where it didn’t belong.
For some time, we were consumed with anxiety. There was a smell in the air. People said you could smell it from afar. And that it came from there – they pointed their finger to a place 30 kilometers away where the Germans were brewing some kind of horrors. But no one knew exactly what was being done there, although some guessed.
‘It’s the stench of burning bodies,’ my father whispered to my mother, and she widened her eyes.
When I was a little boy, my grandmother used to burn off my warts. I remembered that smell well-it was exactly like this. Identical. When the wind blew or it got colder, the stench intensified. It invaded nostrils, throat, eyes. It was impossible to breathe, and tears streamed from one’s eyes.
I tried to hold my breath, even practiced inhaling and exhaling at night, but the biting smoke forced its way into my larynx and choked me.
At first, I felt like vomiting, so I ran behind the shed and threw up. Over time, however, my body got used to the smell.
Even the birds, in whole flocks, fled into the clouds. They hid from the stench, and when it reached them there, they flew higher and higher, rising above the clouds in search of shelter.
There was no longer the sound of the lark’s song at dawn, nor the blackbird or woodpecker later. All the birds fell silent as if someone had shot them or as if the stench had suddenly suffocated them all.
They say warts disappear forever when burned off. I disprove this theory; it is not true. They appeared again on my hands as soon as I smelled that stench in the air. I couldn’t bear to look at them.
Often, standing in the middle of the road, I looked toward the place where the extermination camp was set up. From my father, I heard they held Jews there, but also people of other nationalities. But Jews were the majority.
I kept speculating where that unidentified smell came from, so strong and incredibly sickly sweet that it made you vomit.
I was a 15-year-old boy, and that image haunted me for many years after the war, well, it still haunts me today. It always flashes before my eyes. Me and my father went to deliver some potatoes. Father ordered me not to speak, just to follow his instructions.
I saw people in striped clothes. They were thin and looked like skeletons. Their sight shook me so much that I was breathless and speechless. I looked and looked, unable to believe what I saw. I even thought it was some kind of premonition. Father nudged me to move and unload the cart. I hurried with a sack on my back, still not believing that what I saw was real. I wanted to leave that place as quickly as possible.
After a moment, a very stern German officer, standing straight with a whip in hand, pulled out some banknotes and handed them to my father, who quickly hid the money in his pocket so no one would see. He bowed low, thanking for the payment.
‘You won’t count it to check if it’s right, nein?’ the German asked boldly.
‘It’s definitely correct, sir,’ my father replied, slightly frightened.
‘Order must be kept, Josef, count jetzt,’ insisted the officer.
Father quickly counted, although I know he didn’t really count, just shuffled the bills. His hands trembled like jelly. He said:
‘Yes, yes, it’s correct. Thank you very much.’
‘Then now you can go. Raus,’ he made a hand gesture telling us to get out of there as soon as possible.
My mother was a simple woman, but she also suspected something bad was happening at the camp. When she asked if I had seen or heard anything, I answered as father told me, that I didn’t know anything because I didn’t look.
I knew one thing: there wasn’t a single bird around the camp. That struck me. There used to be thousands there. They sat on trees, flew over fields, danced in the sky. They enjoyed the beauty of our landscapes, freedom, and liberty. Where had the birds gone? Maybe that stench piercing the air caused them to fall like hail. Like charred bullets, heavy, they fell on the moss in the forest soaked with human suffering, human blood. I didn’t see any birds.