The Invasion of Poland

The Germans bomb our camp.

Men are dying.

I retreat.

I crawl back to the station.

[airplane sounds] [bullet sounds] I don't even know who is firing, who is on our side.

Total devastation.

Chaos.

The Blitzkrieg.

I see the destruction of everything I have believed in.

Poland is strong.

Poland is an empire.

Poland is the whole world to me, and that whole world is destroyed.

Everything I have believed in up until now no longer applies.

Poland loses the war in 20 minutes.

I walk, a refugee.

It is summer and the heat is terrible.

We don't know where we are going.

Thousands with no place to go.

Who will take us?

I try to walk on the softer sides of my feet.

They are so blistered.

15 days, I walk.

I see tanks, the hammer and sickle.

Soviets have entered Poland.

Polish captain waves a white handkerchief.

They take us to labor camp.

We sleep in a warehouse beneath the Red Star and a portrait of Stalin.

We shiver in the raw tunnel wind and barbed wire in circles.

Cold?

Are you Poles cold?

That's because your bones are hollow, and your blood runs weak.

Exploiters, blood suckers.

You will learn how to work in Russia.

Your backs will ache, your hands will bleed, your fingernails will break open, but you will learn how to work."