TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/082889/08288900.017

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 7KB | 156 lines

WORLD WAR II, Page 46

REMEMBRANCE


    Watching the Newsreels
    By LENI RIEFENSTAHL

    Riefenstahl, 87, who served the Nazi cause by filming such
propaganda masterpieces as Triumph of the Will, attended one of
Hitler's regular movie nights at his Berchtesgaden retreat in late
August 1939.

    Before the main feature, as usual, the weekly newsreel was
shown. The camera showed Moscow. A troop parade on Red Square.
Stalin appeared in close-up. I watched Hitler intently looking at
Stalin's face. Hitler interrupted, asking the projectionist to
repeat the sequence two or three times. Visibly excited, he
commented, "I rather like the way this man looks. I believe one
could come to terms with him." Then he rose and retired to his
room.


    "Little Boxes of Ashes"
     By SIMONE VEIL

    President of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982, Veil,
now 62, was shipped to Auschwitz in 1944, where most of her family
perished.

    I was scared all the time. I was always aware that, after all,
we could lose this war. As Jews, we felt more threatened. With the
Anschluss, girls at our school who were refugees told of
humiliation, of Jews being forced to scrub the sidewalks with
toothbrushes in Vienna. When some told of receiving little boxes
of ashes from Dachau, we had great difficulty believing that people
were actually being killed. Nobody imagined that there could be a
plan for extermination.


    "I Thought the Heavens Had Fallen"
     By WOJCIECH JARUZELSKI

    Poland's President, now 66, fled with his family to Lithuania
and then Siberia three weeks after the Nazi invasion.

    I still remember that sunny September day, the whizzing sound
of German planes strafing defenseless refugees, exploding bombs,
the stench of burning and dead horses at the roadside. I thought
the heavens had fallen in on me. Relations between Lithuania and
Poland were not very good, and we were held up at the border,
adding to our sense of alarm and fear. We were convinced that we
would return home soon, that a British-French offensive would
enable the Polish army to go on fighting against the overwhelming
forces of the enemy. Not for a moment did I think I would not
return to Poland for more than four years.


    "Waiting for Death"
     By RYSZARD KAPUSCINSKI

    The Polish journalist and author (The Emperor and Shah of
Shahs) was seven when he and his family fled the Nazis.

    I remember walking with my sister next to a horse-drawn cart.
High up on the hay my grandfather was lying on a linen sheet. He
was paralyzed. When the air raid started, the whole patiently
marching crowd was suddenly filled with panic. People sought safety
in ditches, in bushes, in the potato fields. On the now empty road
there was only the cart on which my grandfather was lying. He could
see the planes coming at him, how suddenly they dived down. When
the planes disappeared, we returned to the cart and my mother wiped
the sweat off Grandfather's face. After each raid sweat rolled down
Grandfather's tired, emaciated face.

    We encountered the corpses of horses everywhere. Poor horses,
big defenseless animals that don't know how to hide. They stand
motionless, waiting for death. It was always the corpses of horses
-- black, bay, pied, chestnut -- lying upside down with the legs
pointing into the air, their hooves admonishing the world. It was
as if it were a war not between people but between horses, as if
they were the only victims of the strife.


    "We Could Do Nothing"
     By RAFAEL LOC

    Now 79, Loc (pronounced lotz) was a Polish lieutenant when the
invasion began.

    The stillness was shattered by the howling and screeching and
booming of German bombers and artillery. The Messerschmitts came
at us in waves. We could do nothing. We had no antiaircraft guns.
We had nothing to return fire at their long-range artillery. Two
hours after it began we were panic stricken, and our entire
battalion jumped out of the trenches and ran toward our regimental
headquarters.

    Only half the battalion made it. We continued running and
walking, but wherever we turned we met German artillery and tank
fire. They were in back of us and in front of us. To the right was
automatic fire; to the left we were shot at by artillery. One shell
hit a mine 300 yards from us and set off a long line of Polish-laid
mines; they exploded in domino fashion. We ran, we lay on the
ground, we ran. We didn't know which way to go.

    Captured after four days, Loc later became Poland's first
Consul-General in Israel. Back in Warsaw, he was fired from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs during a wave of anti-Semitism in 1953
and immigrated to Israel in 1956.


    "There Was No Enthusiasm for War"
     By RICHARD VON WEIZSACKER

    Now President of West Germany, he was a 19-year-old private
with the Ninth Infantry Regiment in Potsdam when war came. In 1949,
Von Weizsacker's father was convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg
and sentenced to seven years in jail; his sentence was commuted in
1951.

    We knew nothing of the secret protocol between Hitler and
Stalin that contained provisions for the attack on Poland. German
newspapers were full of reports of Polish violence and provocations
against the German minority. Who knew whether the reports were
correct? Most were believed.

    Despite the influence of Hitler's propaganda on German public
opinion, there was no enthusiasm for war. Thus the mobilization of
the Wehrmacht was conducted as quietly as possible. About Aug. 25,
after being hospitalized with appendicitis, I received orders to
rejoin my unit at Potsdam immediately. I was told not to talk about
it.

    That very same day, I later discovered, my father -- a state
secretary in the Foreign Ministry -- had taken part in a last-ditch
attempt to dissuade Hitler from issuing the invasion order. In his
notes my father remarked, "This afternoon is the most depressing
of my life. Apart from the unforeseeable consequences for the
existence of Germany and of my family, it is appalling that my name
should be connected with this event."

    Two or three days before Sept. 1, our battalion departed --
but not, as in August 1914, with brass bands and in broad daylight.
We set off in pitch darkness, taking side streets to the
freightyards. Early on the morning of Sept. 1, we crossed into
Poland. We soon saw action. Just a few hundred yards from me, my
older brother Heinrich fell. We barely had time to bury him and the
other dead before we had to hurry on. The suffering had begun.

    We were no better and no worse than our fathers, who 25 years
earlier had been drawn into the First World War. And we were no
better or worse than our children, who today pass judgment upon
us. We, like the soldiers of other countries, were trained to
obedience. We had not been brought up free to demonstrate our
opposition under the protection of a liberal constitution. We had
the same sensitivities that all humans have, but during a time of
difficult decisions, we lacked political vision.