Free The Testimony by Halina Wagowska Page A

pleased. He said, ‘They don’t want you, but we do; so you can stay with us!’ But I knew they would soon go on to Berlin, and I was thinking of ways to start looking for my father. Nina pointed out that Berlin would be defended both on the ground and from the air. There would be a big battle. What if I were wounded or killed there? It was mad to rescue a youngster and then take her into a battlefield. Sasha nodded in agreement.
    They took me to their army commandant and explained my situation. I wrote my name, date and place of birth on a piece of paper. The four of us went back to the Polish office where the piece of paper with my details was slammed forcefully in front of the old chap in charge. He was ordered to issue identity papers for me.
    He typed up a brief certificate of my identity, which stated that I had returned from the concentration camp in Stutthof. He was also instructed to have the Russian translation of this written on the back of the document. We waited while this was done by someone in the next room.
    I still have this document, now yellowed and disintegrating, a reminder of how the Russians found me, restored my body and then my identity. But I now know that they also kept my heart warm at a crucial time.
    My Russian friends were leaving and there were tearful goodbyes. Sasha hugged me and said that he would like to have a granddaughter like me. Sasha knew I had lost my mother and hoped to find my father, but I knew nothing about Sasha, other than that he loved Leningrad, his city. His past and family, if any, were his well-guarded secret. To want a granddaughter one needs to have children, yet none were ever mentioned.
    We both knew that this goodbye was for good. I was in limbo, and he too did not seem to have a forwarding address. Was he perhaps one of the prisoners released to augment the army? If so, he was a villain with a big heart, and I missed him.
    * * *
    A few days after this, I was placed with a Polish family that had recently arrived in Gdansk.
    We watched the fireworks, on 9 May, denoting the end of the war. I think it was then that the father said, ‘At least Hitler rid Poland of Jews.’ So I left and asked the Polish authorities, which had taken over the administration of Gdansk, to be sent to Lodz where I might find people I knew, and to where my father would return.

LODZ
    In mid 1945 the city of Lodz, in central Poland, was re-establishing itself. Lodz suffered less structural damage during the German retreat than other cities, yet many buildings still stood damaged by shellfire and beyond repair. Some were just a heap of bricks spilling onto the street.
    Renamed Litzmannstadt during the German occupation, the city, its streets and alleys were resuming Polish names. Food supply was uneven but adequate, and most shops sold second-hand items. There were sudden shortages of some materials, which slowed the process of recovery. Paper was one such item, the daily newspaper shrinking to one small page of announcements.
    There was a large influx of people returning from other parts of Poland or from abroad—survivors of labour, concentration or POW camps. Each day an updated list of these people was posted outside the Registration Office, where there was always a crowd of people looking for missing relatives. Often there were surprise reunions, which were always very emotional. Often someone would yell, ‘Is there anyone here from … [giving the name of one of the many camps]?’ ‘Have you seen my [brother/sister/father] by the name of …?’ In the streets, too, people sometimes found their missing loved ones, whom they had feared dead.
    Accommodation had to be rationed, and large apartments were allotted to several families, who set up rosters for the use of the kitchen and bathroom. The Housing Office was just one of many mechanisms created to deal with the postwar chaos. Hospitals were also overcrowded with the typical aftermath of war: wounds, tuberculosis and