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REMINISCENCES

REMINISCENCES
IMPRESSIONS



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KRÓL SZCZURÓW


Rat King

by Andrzej Olas


     On the first of August, 1944, I was eight years old. It was during the World War II, and I was in Warsaw, Poland, then under German occupation. It was a sunny afternoon. Crouching, I played in a puddle after a short rain. I heard a sound not unlike that of nails being hammered and got up. I saw an elegant man shooting off his rifle. The end of the barrel was odd looking, like a funnel, and from it, flames shoot out. He stood next to the neighboring house fence, slender and tall. He wore khaki knickers, and on his arm, his right I think, was a white and red armband. I didn’t have a chance to see anything more, for right there my mother ran up and took me into the cellar of the condominium in which we lived. In the basement stood primitive benches saved by the janitor from the siege of Warsaw at the beginning of the war in 1939, upon which our neighbors already sat. They were saying that the uprising was beginning, that Warsaw would be freed by the resistance fighters, that the Germans would flee, and that then the Bolsheviks would come, bringing the Red Army.

      About the Red Army I had heard half a year earlier, in the winter, while I was playing with my lead soldiers. Andy, who was two year older, told me then, that it was called that because all the soldiers wore red uniforms. I didn’t believe him: the lead soldiers I had wore green uniforms and brown boots. The SS men in nearby barracks wore black. Soldiers in red had to have red boots also, and no respective soldier would wear such boots. Therefore, Andy was trying to trick me. When I told him so, he pinched my nose painfully. But now, adults were talking of the Red Army. They said that when it came, “what’s yours will be mine.” What’s more, they reasoned that the Red Army marched without shoes. This solved my problem. In red uniforms, but barefoot - that was believable.

     My mother was very upset: she murmured to herself under her breath. At that time, this wasn’t common for her. I heard, “ It’s crazy, stupid; they’ll destroy the city, everyone will die...”

     I wasn’t sure just what was “stupid,” but I didn’t feel it safe to ask. I imprinted the vision of the tall man in my memory, and I was sure I’d never forget him. I knew that every shot from his rifle was purposeful, and I wanted to go see him triumphant, but with my mother I wasn’t going to have that chance. She was in a bad mood, and one could easily get it.

     I never saw that elegant man again. The next day, another man, also a resistance fighter, came to the basement, wearing the tell-tale white-red band on his arm. He was shorter, and not as stately. He brought two carrots per each child and told us that Warsaw was almost free, and that walking on the streets was unsafe, for the time being. He said that because of this, we should dig a passage from our basement to the basement of our neighbors. I thought this was a great idea.

     A day or two later, my mother decided that since she felt there was less shooting, we could move back into our house, but only into the kitchen, since it was hidden from view. Once, when we were sitting in the kitchen , an old friend, Romek Hartman, came by, and it turned out that he, too, was a resistance fighter. He wore a thick, wide belt, and pinned to that belt was a grenade. My mother was very puzzled by the fact that Romek was a resistance fighter, because he was barely three years older than my elder brother Maciek, and he was only twelve. I asked him if he had a revolver, because I wanted him to show it to me, but he told me that the only way to get a gun was off a dead enemy. He added that in a matter of days he was to get a second grenade, but that he couldn’t let me hold the one he had , because regulations forbid it. My mother got upset again. At that point, it was very easy to upset my mother, so it was worthwhile to watch out.



     Now I knew what the elegant man had been doing the first day of the uprising. Not more than 50 meters from our home there were SS barracks. The elegant man and other resistance fighters were trying to overthrow the barracks. The barracks were not captured, and many of the fighters were killed. I could not imagine that the man had died.

     Those barracks had interested me long before. I had seen the SS men, (we never called them soldiers), while they were practicing throwing grenades in front of the building. The entrance to the barracks was blocked off by a crossbar. A guard sat in a booth painted with black and white chevrons. I avoided walking on the sidewalk in front of the barracks; I was afraid of the SS men on the streets as well. However, shortly before the uprising, curiosity had became stronger than fear. In each corner of the barracks there had been bunkers being built. I had picked the corner farthest from the gate, and for hours I had watched the masons. The constructing of a bunker is easy, as long as the building has a basement. One moves the bricks in the corner of the building - one meter up and one meter over from each edge. A new, extended corner is built, under which there is room for the soldiers to stand while they shoot from the slits cut in the sides of the fortification. This was the type of bunkers built for the SS men. After the masons had finished, I no longer went near the barracks - I was afraid that SS men were watching me from the bunkers.

     At some time during the uprising, we moved permanently into the basement, or until the Germans fled, at any rate. It seemed to me that all the residents of our building had moved into the cellar - at least all of our acquaintance’s children were down there. My brother, mother and I had a place in the middle of the basement’s hallway. Sitting on our cot, I could see the large gas pipe coming out of a hole in the wall on my left, going along the basement’s ceiling, and entering the wall through another hole on my right. Almost every evening, a giant gray rat would come out of the hole on the left, slink along the entire length of pipe and disappear in the hole on the right. The way he moved was very stern and determined. The rat quiclky became a big attraction for us, one for which we waited every evening. Moreover, the rat was a challenge: we wanted to stop him. For this, Jacek Patycki thought to set soldiers in the rat’s way. We started with a lone infantryman in a green uniform and brown boots. The rat didn’t even notice. Without breaking stride, he knocked our soldier to the ground and marched onward.

     Every day in the evening a Mass was held. The manager’s office, which was on the first floor, only a few feet from the basement entrance, served as the chapel. We sang pious hymns, mostly sad ones. Evenings were therefore full: first the rat, and then the sermon. Occasionally, though, the rat would be late, and we’d have to go to mass without seeing him.

     One day the SS men herded us onto a neighboring courtyard, where, already, on the dead grass, the people from the building between us and the barracks sat. From a speaker hung on a pole boomed Hitler’s orders, in German, and after that some man spoke Polish with an odd accent. The edict stated that Warsaw was to be destroyed, so that not one stone remained on top of another. During the speech the neighboring apartment house, the one between us and the barracks, started to burn People started to cry and shout. My mother said that soon they would ignite our home. Mr. Grusza said no, because the Germans had forced us out without anything, while the neighbors had been allowed to gather up their things and take all that they could carry into the courtyard. He was sure they would not burn our house. He was right, and in a little while we were allowed to return to our home.

     The rat still won over our army. Even three officers could not overcome him. One became missing in action during a battle - he fell from the pipe into the hole in the wall. A few days later a second soldier was killed in a skirmish - his base stand broke off.

     The adults said that there would be starvation, and continuously spoke only of food and sustenance. One day Mr. Winter came upon the idea to gather the tomatoes in the main courtyard, which had been planted before the uprising. The problem with this was that the courtyard was within range of SS fire from the barracks. Mr. Grusza said that even Germans would not fire on children. I don’t know why it turned out to be me, but in any case Mr. Winter gave me a white flag and told me to go gather tomatoes on that little plot of land. I didn’t argue then, but as I readied to go out, I began to be afraid. Some said it was best that I crawl, others that I should go out waving the white flag. I don’t remember what was decided, but it didn’t really matter, because I got about three steps out the door and immediately escaped back inside. I told Mr. Winter that there were no tomatoes there anymore. Mr. Winter looked at me, and then at the land, and said,

     “You’re right, there really aren’t any.”

     To this Mrs. Niczman cried,

     “What are you talking about? It is completely red over there with tomatoes!”

     Mr. Winter repeated,

     “There are no tomatoes on that land,”

     louder this time. Mrs. Niczman backed off quickly, saying,

     “You’re right, there aren’t any.”

     I was surprised that the adults agreed with me so readily. The rat continued winning the war. Our flank of grenadiers was decimated. The commanding officer was crushed after falling from the pipe under the heel of one of the adults.

     The basement was lighted by carbide lamps. Before the uprising, the Germans had turned on the electricity for a few hours a day. Now the electric lighting had stopped completely, ever since the beginning of the uprising. Normally, for thrift, only one lamp was burning, flickering and hissing, and the height of the fire was dependent on the current production of gas. That night two lamps were burning, and, also, Mr. Winter had put in more carbide than normally, so they would light the basement longer. The reason for this was Mr. Zurman, who having recently sneaked over to our building from the downtown district of Warsaw, had tidings from that other part of city to tell, and everyone wanted to hear everything without interruption. The streets of that area were covered in barricades, so as to hinder the attacks of German tanks. The barricades consisted of overturned trams, cars, pieces of walls, street curbs, bricks, and even furniture. I couldn’t imagine knocking over a tram, but I was sure the resistance fighters knew how to.

     A barricade: exactly what we needed to beat the rat. If our army was behind a barricade, the rat would have no chance whatsoever. My attention got divided: with one ear hearing Jacek telling me that for the rat barricade he would give me his wooden toy tram, with the other ear listening to Mr. Zurman saying that German bombs went right the roofs and ceilings of buildings and exploded in the basement. At that very moment a carbide lamp on my left side exploded. In an enclosed space like that basement an actually small explosion gave the impression of a huge detonation. The top half of the lamp had leaped up into the air, turned upside-down and imbedded itself in the ceiling so that it looked like a duck’s bill pecking through to the basement. Then things started happening fast and semingly simultaneously. Mrs. Dobiecka, pointing with her right hand at the duck’s bill, shrieked,

     “A bomb, ahhhhhh!”

     At the same time her left hand tried to plug both her ears in preparation for the bomb’s explosion. Mr. Zurman straightened up and commanded,

     “Don’t panic, just everyone get down!”

     With his head held high and his mind concentrated, Mr. Zurman gave the impression that he could control every situation. Mrs. Smolinska didn’t notice this impression, because she had covered her head with a blanket that before now had always laid in her lap. From under the blanket a muffled, “Hail Mary, full of grace...” could be heard. The shadow of Mr. Zurman on the basement wall told me,

     “Trust and obey your leader.”

     I yelled,

     “Yes Sir!”

     and dropped to the floor, never taking my eyes of the bomb. Piotrek said,      “Sir! Sir! I’m not allowed to drop to the floor in these clothes!”

     Jacek, still holding the wooden tram in his hand, started to make his way toward the lamp saying,

     “I have to see the bomb!”

     By chance, Mr. Kowal, who had, on Mr. Zurman’s word dived beneath a bunk, was in his path. Jacek tripped over Mr. Kowal outstretched leg, and dropped the wooden tram. The tram arched through the air and landed in the small of Mrs. Smolinska’s back. Mrs. Smolinska threw the blanket back and stood up screamed,

     “I’m hurt! The shrapnel got me!”

     Mr. Zurman shouted,

     “Medics! The injured must go to the infirmary!”

     “Sir, we don’t have an infirmary,”

     I supplied. Mr. Kowal rose from under the bunk and, shaking off the dust, said coldly,

     “Mr. Zurman, not only is there no infirmary, there is also no bomb. Perhaps you’re hallucinating.”

     Mrs. Smolinska, rubbing her offended back, glared at Mr. Zurman and said,      “This place is crawling with subversives waiting for a chance to hit someone in the back.”

     After a moments thought, she added,

     “Some of them are easy to spot: they are always instigating panic.”

     From then on the kids thought carbide lamps were better than electricity any way.

     The next day we built an anti-rat barricade. The main body of Jacek’s tram construed the center of the barricade, while the undercarriage and the wheels blocked the rest of the pipe. The rat came up to the barricade, climbed up onto it, and found only the ceiling. Without hurrying, he turned around, climbed down, and returned to the hole from which he had appeared. We had won.

     The next morning we saw that the barricade was destroyed. The rat had returned during the night and chewed through the tram’s side by widening its windows.

* * *

     In Mokotow the uprising ended earlier than in the downtown district, which was still held at that time by the Polish fighters. The Germans came in the evening and said that they knew that there were resistance fighters hiding among us and that they were to immediately surrender. No one spoke up. The Germans forbid us to leave the basement, and throughout the entire night we were shut up in there. In the morning they led us out onto Madalinski Street. On the opposite side of the street stood commandeered horse carriages filled with items stolen by the Germans.

     They led us down Madalinski Street to Independence Alley. The street was burning, fire billowing from the windows of houses along the sides. For a second I thought that I heard someone playing the xylophone. It was window panes dropping from burning frames onto the cobbles below. At one moment my mother said that our house too was already burning. At the Polish Airplane factory in the Okecie district the Germans said through megaphones that nothing would happen to us. Later they told us we were to give up all valuables - watches, jewelry, and money - to help fund the war effort of the German Third Reich. Those who did not cooperate would be punished. That was how my mother lost her watch. We spent the night on the concrete floor of the factory. I was scared and hungry. This feeling stayed with me during the next long months of wandering in the midst of German-Russian battles.

* * *

     We returned to Warsaw in April 1945. The front half of our building was charred, but our apartment was spared. We, kids, had a lot of places to play because half of the surrounding buildings were either burned or in ruins. We had all the toys we needed: from the wrecked armor on Wisniowa Street to dud mortar shells to different types of explosive powders and cartridges.

     They were exhuming a body very near the fence where I had seen the slim, elegant man the first day of the uprising. Two men were digging up the corpse while a woman with a Polish Red Cross armband was checking over some papers. Nearby, a horse carriage was waiting to transport the body to the cemetery. The woman from the Red Cross was saying,

     “Listen, papers are most important. We have many people about which families are still asking. Please be careful.”

     I decided that the Red Cross woman wouldn’t be interested in the bomb shelter the Germans had built near our home. The shelter, which was dug into the earth so that from the outside looked only like a small mound, was a place where we children often played. It had two entrances and was so low-ceiling that one couldn’t stand up straight. When my mother had brought us back to Warsaw in April 1945, the entrances had been covered with dirt. The unearthing of the entrances took us about two months, mainly because in the beginning my brother and I were the only children in the house. Later Bulek returned, and also Jacek and Piotrek. The inside of the shelter stunk; it was mildewed and dirty. When we found a human skull, we stayed away for a week. But it turned out the shelter was an excellent hiding place for hide-and-seek, and we later moved the skull into a blind corner of the shelter so as it wouldn’t bother us. A little while later we found a second skull and moved it to the same place. It was against our rules to hide near the skulls. The skull with fewer teeth we named a German, and the other one we dubbed a Pole.

     I went to school on Narbutta Street. I had nightmares; the worst one was where I was being chased by SS men and I had to escape by roof hopping. Most of the time I fell, but occasionally I was caught. At school I was a favorite of our teacher, Mrs. Siwczynska. This helped me when I accidentally lit my bench on fire while playing with artillery powder during a Polish lesson. The janitor, Mr. Grzelak, put out the fire with a few of pails of water. It so happened that one bucket accidentally hit me. What was worse, the entire carry-with-me portion of my arsenal was confiscated. Most painful was the loss of two small rocket cartridges and a large buckshot cartridge. Wet and robbed, I was sent to the principal’s office, where, in the presence of Mrs. Siwczynska, he told me there was no room in his school for bandits like me and that I was expelled. Mrs. Siwczynska told me to go into the anteroom and wait. Through the slightly ajar door I heard the principle shout fearfully at my teacher when she mentioned that my father had been murdered at Katyn by the Communists.      “Madam, for such talk one can go to jail! I didn’t hear you say that!”

     “Mr. Principal, the child is underfed and neglected. Only God knows the trauma he underwent during the uprising. We must nurture him, not expel him!”

     I didn’t consider myself neglected. Starved I wasn’t either; a number of times during the war I had seen sausage, and at least twice I had actually tasted it. Besides this, I was rich: only a few days before I had found among some rumble a disassembled Parabellum handgun. It was worth at least a hundred cartridges or even two grenades.

     Jacek and Piotrek’s mother, Mrs. Patycka, was the head of the Syrena theater’s literary department, so she knew a lot of actors. Later on, thanks to her, I got to be backstage number of times. My first theatrical experience was also because of her. The play was The Nutcracker. I was awed. I had never before seen such rich and vivid colors, actions, and sounds. It was a special performance for children, and the actors involved the audience by asking questions and occasionally asking our advice. When the Rat King first came on stage, on of the actors asked us:

     “Do you like him?”  

     The answer was an unanimous

     “noooo!”

     Surprisingly, even to myself, I shouted

     “yes!”

     Even when all the rest of the audience had quieted, I was still shouting,      “Yes! I like the Rat King!”

     I didn’t know what the actor expected when he invited me up to the stage and asked me why I felt so. I answered, crying,

     “The rat was the bravest! He was braver than the fighters!”

     And then I remembered what had happened during the uprising. The SS men had come one afternoon. I was near the entrance when they stormed the basement. First there was the terrifying order,

     “Hände hoch!”

     Two black silhouettes with the blinding white opening of the door behind them, loaded with weapons. One was shouting,

     “Weg!”

     He set himself in the corner of the basement, pushing Mr. Grusza out of the way, and stood there, prodding the room with the barrel of his sub-machine gun. The other one was howling,

     “Schnell!”

and was herding Mr. Grusza and someone else, a short man, whom I didn’t know, up the stairs, kicking and pushing them. I knew that one of SS men would kill me at any moment. I didn’t try to escape, instead I started screaming with all my might. When Mr. Grusza and the short man were already at the exit from the basement, the SS man with the submachine gun came out of his corner and went towards the stairs. In the sudden silence Mrs. Pojawska said,

     “Mrs. Olas, will you calm your child, or they will shoot all of us.”

     The SS man, already at the bottom of the stairs, turned in her direction, the barrel of his gun scanning the room so that at one point it was pointing directly at me. My screams changed into howls; no one in the room moved. The SS man left. I heard two series of shots. In the basement there was silence. Then Mrs. Grusza started to scream,

     “ Please! Give me back my husband!”

     The corpses lay for several days in the courtyard, by the entrance to the basement. Then we learned that the Germans had finally allowed the interring of the dead, and a few men dug a grave in the courtyard’s lawn. Mr. Kowal, returning from the courtyard, said,

     “If this uprising doesn’t end soon, then they will have killed us all.”

* * *

     Luckily for the unfortunate actor, Mrs. Patycka was backstage. After I had started crying hard and stomping around repeating that the rat was brave, the actor didn’t know how to get me off the stage. Mrs. Patycka simply came out from behind the curtains and said “Come here,” and took me home. My mother told me o get something to eat and go to bed. I fell asleep quickly, but after a little while talking woke me up. My mother was just then scolding Mr. Kowal.      “Mr. Kowal, you are drunk, and I hate drunks. Why don’t you go home.”      “Mrs. Olas, I went home, but my wife wasn’t home. I immediately knew that she must be with you. And anyway, I only drank because I met Mr. Smolinski. Remember him? He was in the basement next door during the uprising. And you know what? This world is so stupid. Now those SOB communists are saying exactly what we’ve been saying all along, that the whole uprising was just one big blunder.“

     That night I dreamed of the uprising. The Rat King, wearing a royal purple cape, sat on a throne in the middle of our basement. On the left of the King sat Mr. Grusza, and on the right the short man whose name I didn’t know. The herald, also standing on the right side of the throne, was reading from a huge parchment:

     “Let it be known to all, that any past blunders shall be and is renounced.”

     In the crowd, I recognized my mother and Mr. Kowal with his wife. In the back, I saw groups of people, under red flag, all wearing red shirts. I moved toward Mr. Kowal and asked,

     “Sir, what about the SS men?”

     Mr. Kowal shouted, interrupting the herald,

     “Exactly! What about the SS men?”

     The Rat King answered seriously,

     “The SS men are bad people.”

     I asked,

     “Will there be another uprising? I’ve already been through one. I don’t want an another uprising.”

     “In Poland bad things are happening, but there will not be a second uprising,”

     replied the King. My mother asked then,

     “Rat King, is there somewhere a Great Order Among Everything? Is there somewhere Justice?”

     The Rat King hesitated,

     “It is difficult to talk about order in a place filled with graves and corpses. Every fourth person in this country is dead. We are led by barbarians.”

     Now the Rat King pointed at me. He continued,

     “ Maybe he will live to see the Great Order Among Everything of which you speak.”

     I fell into a deep sleep. That was my last dream about the uprising. The city changed. The burnt half of our apartment building was rebuilt, the air raid shelter torn down. I grew quickly. I became interested in books and sports. Jacek, Bulek, and I formed a soccer club, and I got to play the centre. Everything was going great. I didn’t realize yet that, more and more, I saw portraits of a Great Leader with a mustache, and more and more people mumbled the name Stalin.




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