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One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz
by Jack Fairweather
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Witold passed his family without looking down, but as soon as the column rode by and the crowd started to disperse he came galloping back, his face flushed, and stopped before them. He was leaving Maria with only his sister and old Józefa, the chain-smoking housekeeper, for protection. The Germans had been notorious in the last war for carrying out atrocities against civilians. He hugged and kissed the children. Maria, her unruly brown hair done up and lipstick on, was trying not to cry.
"I will be back in two weeks," he told them. He could hardly say that in riding off on horseback to confront the most powerful military machine in Europe, he would be lucky to survive the next few days. Hitler commanded an army of 3.7 million men, almost twice the number of Poland's, with two thousand more tanks and almost ten times the number of fighter planes and bombers. Furthermore, no natural features separated the two countries along their shared border that ran for a thousand miles, from the Tatra Mountains in the south to the Baltic coast in the north. Poland's best hope lay in holding out long enough for its allies, the British and French, to attack from the west and expose Germany to a war on two fronts.
Witold next visited his parents' grave near the house. His father had died years earlier, but he had buried his mother only a few months before. Witold tied his horse to a tree, took off his saber, and struck a salute. Then he was off, wondering whether he would see those lime tree avenues again.
Witold caught up with his men as they reached the barracks in Lida. They formed up on the parade ground with the other units, and a priest walked the ranks sprinkling holy water. Witold could see the transport train waiting on the sidings through the crowds of people who'd gathered to see them off. His men were excited for the most part, carried away by the thought of riding to war. Even Witold, who had experienced real fighting, felt stirred. The commanding officer of the regiment gave a rousing speech and the regimental orchestra played, but by the time Witold's unit had loaded their horses and supplies and found spots on the straw in the freight cars, the musicians had long finished and the townsfolk had gone home.
Their train finally lurched forward in darkness. Progress was stop-and-go during the 240-mile journey to Warsaw. They arrived near midnight, August 30. From his carriage, Witold caught glimpses of the city: cafés and bars had blacked out windows in anticipation of German air raids; people with gas masks over their shoulders filled the streets, too hot and anxious to sleep. They waved at the troop transports as they passed.
The million-strong capital was one of the fastest-growing cities in Europe. The baroque palaces and pastel-colored Old Town overlooking the Vistula River evoked Warsaw's past; the cranes and scaffolding and half-finished streets ending in fields spoke to its half-imagined future. The city was also the richest center of Jewish life outside New York, home to a vibrant music and theater scene that had swollen with escapees from Nazi Germany, Yiddish and Hebrew presses, and a multitude of political and religious movements, from secular Zionists who dreamed of Israel to Hasids who spoke of miracles in Poland.
Warsaw's main station was packed with soldiers jostling to board trains or slumped against their packs across the floor, trying to sleep. The sheer logistics of moving over a million Polish soldiers to rallying points along the German border had overwhelmed the railway system. Witold and his men finally reached their disembarkation point in Sochaczew, another thirty miles west, three days after leaving Lida. They still had over a hundred miles more to march to reach their positions near the small city of Piotrków Trybunalski, guarding the main road to Warsaw. The long procession of several thousand was constantly held up by broken wagons. Witold's unit skipped across the fields on horseback, but the rest were forced to march all day and into the night without reaching their destination. "We look with envy at the cavalry—how they gallop as if in some parade, sit erect in their saddles, with perky faces," noted one of the soldiers forced to trudge.
Excerpted from The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather. Copyright © 2019 by Jack Fairweather. Excerpted by permission of Custom House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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