There's an Egg in My Soup (13 page)

Russian POWs were always going to be treated badly, since their side hadn't signed the Geneva Convention and refused to grant prisoner-of-war status to captured soldiers. Their food rations in Auschwitz, for example, consisted of a half-litre of soup made from rotten turnips, 300 grams of bread with a small spread of margarine, or fifty grams of sausage. Their condition was like that of zombies, and Hoss mentions cannibalism among other atrocities in the Russian group.

But until early in 1942, the largest group of prisoners was Poles.

The Poles, as they did tirelessly on the outside, were able to organise a camp resistance movement which continued throughout the war. They were largely kept as hostages.

As hostages, they could be shot or hanged in
retaliation for attacks against the SS in occupied Poland. In April 1942, for example, over two days, a group of 198 painters, intellectuals, lawyers and other artists were arrested in an artists' café in Krakow in retaliation for the attempted assassination of an SS officer at the airport. 169 were shot at ‘death wall' on 27 May.

The Nazis didn't really need hostages behind the wire though. The whole country had been taken hostage, and any resistance was severely punished. In September 1942, a German detachment was ambushed in a place called Talcyn, where they were attempting to trap two resistance fighters. A German sergeant was killed. In a report, the ambush was referred to as a ‘cowardly act' and retribution was demanded. The 300 inhabitants of the village were rounded up and the Germans shot seventy-eight of them at the graveyard.

Poles were executed for having read resistance leaflets, or shot randomly in retaliation for any anti-Nazi operation. In 1940, the German governor of Poland set out the Nazi vision. Poland was to become ‘a gigantic work camp, where everything that means power and independence is in the hands of the Germans'. No Pole would ‘rise to a rank higher than foreman', or ever receive a higher education. The Polish State would never be restored.

The Polish underground movement, as early as 1942, was working round the clock to communicate the horrors of the Nazi regime – at great risk to themselves,
their families and Polish prisoners who could be shot in retaliation.

In the summer of 1942, Jan Karski, a twenty-eight-year-old courier for the resistance movement in Poland, was sent by the Government-in-exile to report on the activities of the Nazis. He went to Warsaw and visited the infamous ghetto. He witnessed also the rounding up of Jews into cattle carts for transport to camps. He met two Jewish leaders of underground organisations, who pleaded with him to tell authorities about the fate of the Jews.

He met the foreign secretary in London, along with other officials. He was told by Lord Selbourne, then in charge of operations to help anti-Nazi movements, ‘During the First World War, rumours spread all over Europe that German soldiers in Belgium liked to catch Belgian babies and crush their skulls against the wall. We knew those rumours weren't true, but we didn't do anything to stop them. They were good for the morale of the people.'

Karski had also visited President Roosevelt. ‘I am convinced, Mr President,' he said, ‘that there is no exaggeration in the accounts of the plight of the Jews. Our Underground authorities are absolutely sure that the Germans are out to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe.'

In 1998, the decision was made to remove the smaller crosses from Auschwitz, but to leave the large one that
had been blessed by the Pope. The Stars of David remain. As for the Gypsies, Russian Orthodox, Jehovah's Witnesses, atheists and everyone else, they get nothing.

It was roughly halfway through my third year when I managed to get a slot on the English-language newspaper for Poland and Central Europe, the
Warsaw Voice.
I happened to meet the English editor, an American guy called Nathan, in a pub one night. After yapping for a while, we arranged a meeting to discuss some of the scribbling that I had been up to as a cure for boredom.

The
Warsaw Voice
was started in 1988, at a time when a lot of underground literature and press was being produced, but had since become a more general paper. It was the only English-language paper until general listings magazines began to appear in the late 1990s, once Poland had opened up enough sufficiently to warrant their appearance.

The editor of the
Warsaw Voice,
Magda, a really decent lady who was so supportive as an editor, was persuaded by Nathan to include a reporter living outside Warsaw, describing the snow, meat that wasn't chopped, the doctor's surgery and other matters that must have seemed a howl. I was happy to do it for them. I needed something to augment my income and
also to alleviate the day-to-day tedium of small-town life. I also had a need to write stuff that was light and humorous, to balance what I was reading. Every week I compiled a column on daily issues, also writing a few other articles when the need arose. One of these was on the Holy Mountain in Grabarka.

Mostly my pieces were well-received, although at times there were those who took a dim view of a foreigner criticising their country. I didn't aim to be negative. Some of my writing was cathartic, but most of it was just about life in the country at the time, reflecting the changes, the problems in transition and some of the peculiarities that I happened to find interesting or amusing. As to why a foreigner should have been doing this, well, it was after all an English-language paper and much of its readership was made up of expats.

The following year, I was given an opportunity to work part-time on the national radio station, Polski Radio. It had a section called Radio Polonia, which broadcasted worldwide in seven languages on Polish developments, foreign policy, news and so on. The station began its life in 1936. It went off air during the war, naturally, before resuming in 1945. It was popular all over Eastern Europe and Russia, and its English-language services had a large listenership in Canada, oddly enough, where a lot of Polish emigrants lived. The station seemed keen to have a moaner like myself reporting for the nation on rural development.

I also secured a few classes in a language school in Warsaw, which helped to line the pocket a bit. Even though this was the late 1990s, I was still only receiving about a hundred and fifty pounds a month as a teacher in a State school. The Polish currency had now been stabilised and new denominations introduced, so you didn't even feel like a millionaire anymore. Inflation, while not going through the roof, was also forcing those on the minimum wage to find ways of earning extra money.

Most teachers took up extra lessons, either in their own homes or in the private schools that were springing up all over the place, even in Minsk. People were more aware of the benefits of learning a foreign language apart from Russian, and parents were prepared to spend a bit of extra cash on private lessons. I was plagued to do likewise, and at times gave in. But I dreaded teaching privately in my own home. I also hated taking money from local people and finally decided that I would not do private lessons at home at all. I took classes in Warsaw instead. In one week, I could earn more than I earned in a month in Minsk, doing half the hours.

Fridays now became a day of work rather than leisure. Now, instead of a lie-in, I was up early and into Warsaw with the rest of the commuters on those dreadful trains. Around that time, they began renovating the lines out from Warsaw and the trains became
subject to all sorts of delays. An hour's journey could turn into two or three. But it was a good sign all the same, a sign that things were finally being done out here. The towns outside the main cities were being looked at and gradually improved, at least when it came to infrastructure. Small companies also began operating private bus services, a Godsend. They used the old buses, so it was hardly comfort travel, but on intercity routes the standard was remarkably good.

My first stop on a Friday, at ten o'clock, was at the studios of Radio Polonia. I worked there until lunchtime or on into the afternoon, before going out to the offices of the
Warsaw Voice
to file weekly copy. Then it was off to an English language school to teach a three-hour advanced English class. After that I'd be into Ollie Morgan's Irish bar for a feed of beer.

When I began working in the radio station, besides having a ‘roving report' from rural and suburban Poland, one of my tasks was to cover a news story for the lunchtime bulletin. To be honest, I didn't enjoy working in radio very much. There was too much pressure there for my liking, particularly on those news stories. You would arrive in the studios on a Friday morning, have a meeting with a few other journalists and the English-language producer, run through the papers and leads, choose a story, and then go after it.

In a couple of hours you had to translate articles, interview a few people on whatever subject you had
chosen, write a news story, edit the interviews for the bulletin, and then record your own voiceovers. There were no computers for editing – everything was done using quarter-inch tape and a razor blade. If you cut out an important quote by mistake and threw it on the floor amongst a spiralling mass of other cuttings, as I often did, you were buggered. More often than not, with three or four minutes to go before airing, I would still be sitting at the editing machine with a razor blade and a mass of tape like knotted hair.

At that stage, Rafal, the producer, a friendly but serious man, would come in and grab everything. ‘Tom, there's a lot more pressure working in radio than writing that cozy little column you have in the
Warsaw Voice
,' he would say, while putting everything together with the nimble fingers of a puppeteer. ‘Now run, like the wind, down to the studio. You have about forty seconds.'

The stories varied in complexity, but they were all, in my opinion, complex. The first story I had to cover was on Viagra. I remember it well. It was day one and I arrived distinctly nervous. I had also been stopped on the Metro in Warsaw for not having a ticket. The Metro, although its single line was completed in 1995, wasn't much use to commuters, as there was no link to the centre. It finally got that link in 1998 and became the talk of the town.

Radio Polonia was on the line and my first day at
work was also my first trip on the Metro. Descending into the station at the centre, however, I discovered there were no ticket machines and, being late, I wasn't bothered to go and look for a kiosk. Sure enough, halfway through the journey, the plain-clothes inspectors got on and nabbed me. These guys love nabbing a foreigner. On the bus that serves the airport they nab you if you don't have two tickets – one for yourself and one for your baggage, believe it or not. On this Friday, they hauled me off the train and show me the fine card, 100zl to be paid within a certain number of days. As I was a foreigner I had to pay up right away.

I didn't have it, and showed my ID to prove that I was actually a resident. They put away the card and said I could pay half – to them, of course. I said I didn't have it, and they said they'd have to take me to the police station. I agreed and began walking out. They stopped me and brought the fine down to 40zl. I said I didn't have it. By the time I reached the steps of the station it was down to 20zl, so I gave it to them, whereupon they swore at me and got on a train going back to the centre. Corruption starts at the very bottom in Poland.

I had only been introduced to the producer of Radio Polonia a week or so previously, through a pal of mine, Barry, who had come over with the second APSO group and lived in a village not far from Minsk. Barry had
been a guest on one of the shows for several months, doing a ‘Poet's Corner' among other things. As he was now in the middle of his PhD, he had decided to call it a day, citing work pressures as the reason. I think he just got a pain in his arse.

The producer, after a brief meeting, seemed happy to take me on board to fill in. I had no real radio training, aside from a short, part-time course I hadn't even completed some years before. I resigned from that course after about six months because I didn't like the medium of radio. Why I had decided to do something I didn't like in another country was a contradiction I never really tried to resolve.

At the meeting on that first morning, the stories for the day were being discussed and I was asked if I knew anything about Viagra. Very little, was my answer, which was true. It was a new drug at the time and all anybody knew was that it helped you go like the clappers when you popped it. The thing was, people were dying from it in Poland. Heart attacks apparently. Whether this was down to the diet here or the fact that most people got their Viagra on the black market wasn't clear. Either way, they were croaking. I was handed a few Polish newspapers and told to go at it. I could ring a few people from the medical board and get an interview to supplement the story. I could also ring the cops and get some information on the black market.

There is nothing like starting at the deep end. And
for the first few weeks I was a drowning man. With the other hacks embedded in their own news stories, I would sit at the tape recorder with a phone book and a scowl, pretending to be sifting through numbers and scribbling furiously on a pad. But as soon as I got a chance, I'd run into the corridor to look for Peter, an English guy who worked there, and beg him for help. Some of the time he bailed me out, but mostly he was too busy himself.

When things were desperate and no interviews could be found, I would grab the portable tape recorder and head off down the corridor to visit a Polish girl who worked for the music department and spoke good English. I would describe the story I was working on, tell her what to say and record it. I think the producer grew suspicious after a while, when this one mysterious girl whose voice boomed out on the airwaves every week happened to be an expert on just about everything.

‘Roving reports' were another duty, and once outside the confines of the studio I began to enjoy the radio business more. I would often interview members of the ex-pat community on various issues and put together a short bulletin for one of the magazine programmes. There were also rural reports I did from Minsk, hunting down interviewees in the town. These actually interested the staff in the station, who seemed to regard the town I lived in as another world entirely. Ultimately,
they were right, and the people of Minsk were keen to get their voices heard. Whenever I was stuck I would go to the private English school to chat to the students, or at times the teacher. The subjects varied, but the kids always had an opinion that fitted in perfectly with the angle I wanted to cover. Especially when it came to discussing that God-awful Disco Polo.

My time to start winding down came about a year later, after one of the ‘Letters from Poland' was pulled by the assistant producer. The ‘Letter' was a simple story from Poland, a duty I shared with Peter, and was generally a lighthearted and very doable affair. A very friendly but stressed man, the assistant producer was a sort of intellectual Frank Spencer, always a bit on edge. He was great help if you were stuck, however, and for that I was always grateful.

One morning I was on my way to record one of these ‘Letters', this particular one being about the Pope, who had put forward the name of a notorious fascist for Beatification. It was an outrage, and a grave insult to those who had suffered as a consequence of this man's actions during the War. I found it just plain odd that nobody was saying anything about it. It was also, in my view, lucid confirmation that the Pope – who still had many intelligent things to say – was perhaps no longer playing with a full team.

Also, around that time, the Pope was visiting the country for the first time since his visit in 1979. For
reasons that nobody could explain, alcohol was banned for the duration of his tour. Even top hotels in Warsaw were forced to remove drinks from their mini-bars, while shops and bars had to cover up whatever stock they had on the shelves.

Lord knows what kind of penalties were to be enforced if anyone was caught serving – a ‘fine' most likely – but the ban was upheld by shopkeepers and pub owners who covered the bottles with brown paper and the beer taps with a sock or something similar. I did manage to persuade one poor woman in Minsk to sell me a few cans on the Friday evening of the Pope's visit, telling her I knew her son well. As she did so a police car pulled up outside and I have yet to see blood drain from a face with such velocity. It was a sight to behold. But it was also worrying. The ban was also unconstitutional, and in the country that was first to draw up a constitution in Europe it was quite ironic.

Excuses like ‘respect for the Holy Father' were bandied about. This made no sense to me. Were they worried that people would turn up drunk at the masses? More worryingly, the ban was a result of pressure from the Church. It had never gone through proper democratic channels, but nobody questioned that either.

Before I went down to the studio to record my piece, Peter asked me what it was about. ‘The Pope,' I answered, and he gave me a stern warning, which I failed to hear properly as I ran out the door. The
assistant producer heard him, however, and out he came, running like the hammers of hell, catching up with me just before I got to the studio. He took my paper and went to his office, coming out ten minutes later with a face the colour of chalk.

The following week, Rafal, the producer – a decent fellow who I suspect felt the same way as I did about the whole affair – calmly explained that I must have been insane to attempt to criticise the Pope on the national radio station. He was right. I was stupid. But the
Warsaw Voice
decided to print it. And the main man behind that operation was reportedly Jewish.