Reminiscences: The Adventures of a Modern Gil Blas during the Last War 9783111396620, 9783111034072

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SLAVISTIC PRINTINGS AND REPRINTINGS edited by C. H. V A N SCHOONEVELD Indiana University

REMINISCENCES THE ADVENTURES OF A MODERN GIL BLAS DURING THE LAST WAR

by WACLAW L E D N I C K I t with a prefatory

note by C. H. van

1971

MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

Schooneveld

© Copyright 1971 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 68-23199

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague.

To Helen Dixon In Gratitude

PREFATORY NOTE

A few years before his sudden death, multis bonis flebilis, in Berkeley, California, on October 29, 1967, Waciaw Lednicki had conceived the idea of having the memoirs which he had originally started publishing in Polish in London in 1963 see the light in English in an abbreviated form. Thus he wished to share with the many friends he had made in the Western world during his lifetime, and especially in the years after his professorship at the Vniwersytet Jagiellonski in Krakow had come to a tragic end, the experiences of andvfip rcoMxpojioç who had finally regained firm land, both as a scholar and a person, in America. His manuscript reached me in the fall of 1962. Although Slavistic Printings and Reprintings, in which they appear hors série, is not the natural outlet for personal chronicles - even if relating to a man of Lednicki's learning - this volume presents reminiscences which are akin to the other essays in this series in that they are the recordings of a scholar. As such, they present a fascinating picture, drawn by an academic hand of the conculsive period of transition to the world of today from the Europe that essentially has already been left on the horizon of history. They describe one of the Europes that perished in the conflagration terminating the thirties. Lednicki the scholar, however, does not figure in the foreground of the present text. The further we read, the more we perceive Lednicki in another capacity. In fact, he resembles the writers, especially of the nineteenth century, whom he loved and admired and the study of whom constituted the purpose of his life. Lednicki in these notes adopts the pre-eminently personal attitude towards the daily ration of life experience that was so characteristic of many of his literary guiding lights. As his beloved L. N. Tolstoj was capable of equanimity and serenity as an observing artist but given to unshakable prejudice as an essayist and polemicist on zlobodnevnye voprosy, Lednicki is given to personal views, not to say militant partisanship, in these

8

PREFATORY NOTE

personal notes. But again, didn't even in their spells of relative dispassionateness Lednicki's models remain true to the social and ideological vantage point assigned them by history? Just as they remained part of the world on which they reflected, Lednicki describes his very own world. But he goes beyond: he presents explicitly his own role in it. He becomes his own subject matter. At the same time, those two worlds are remarkably similar. The universe of Lednicki's existence, while first and foremost profoundly set in the national culture, also harks back, in one direction, to the cultural tradition of prerevolutionary Russia, and in another direction, even further, stretches its roots as distantly as Western Classicism and the Renaissance. And then, suddenly, while deeply entrenched in his tradition, due to a caprice of geographical and historical circumstance, the literary specialist becomes not only a direct participant. He also bears witness to the end of a period in his country's history. Thus, the publication of the present reflections constitutes not just one of the last homages to Lednicki the scholar. Their appearance also moves to the fore - to my knowledge for the first time — Lednicki the literary craftsman; in both capacities a devout son of his country, and a Slavist devoted to his profession. Vozerier-Amancy (Haute Savoie) Summer 1970

C. H. van Schooneveld

PREFACE

Often after periods filled with great crucial events, people who witnessed them like to share their experiences and observations, particularly with those who did not have the opportunity, or the frequently sorrowful privilege, of participating in and seeing them. It happens also in the history of mankind that there are periods in which some established orders of life and ideas are radically changed. Such was the case of the new era which started in Europe in 1914. It seemed to us, people who were born early enough before 1914 to remember the life of European society before the First World War, that after Versailles Europe found itself in the frame of a completely different political, economic, social, and cultural existence. Twenty years passed and the Second World War started and again entirely changed life, this time not only in Europe, but in almost the whole world. I have no ambition and no desire to involve myself in any historical, sociological, or political speculations on the theme of the great metamorphosis of our world. I would certainly be the last to question the value of scholarly investigation, commentaries, theories and conceptions, deductions and conclusions, the more so that during my whole life I have worked as a scholar dedicated to the history of various literatures, and I have not confined myself, in those studies, to aesthetic interpretations and valuations alone. I have always considered literature a field particularly attractive to me because literature, poetry as well as prose, often reflects great ideological combats, and in it one may frequently find the most salient formulation of the spiritual content of a given historical period. As important and irreplaceable as scholarly insights and explorations of human life are, it seems to me that unpretentious memoirs also have their historical significance. Historians know that very well. They are constantly using them. However, while writing this book, I was not explicitly guided by the ambition of preparing a source of information

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PREFACE

for scholars. The last war supplied the world with innumerable memoirs and reminiscences. This book will not provide any secret information about the events and the activities of the men who held responsible and decisive political positions during and after the last war. It will not provide any important details about military activities. I wrote this book not as a scholar, as I have already said, and not as a political actor, which I have never been. I tried to write it from the point of view of a common man who saw and observed only some fragments of the great tragedy which shook the world. I tried to reproduce with the greatest accuracy and, at the same time, with the consciousness of my limited perspective, every fact and every event which I witnessed. In a way, my feelings and my knowledge of events might be compared to those of Fabrice del Dongo in the Battle of Waterloo. I am, in these Memoirs, a servant of reality; I have reproduced every fact and every event in conformity with my subjective observation. I have told the truth independently of my attachment to my Fatherland, feeling of gratitude towards Belgium, admiration for France, and the responsibilities toward the country which has given me the last asylum in my life. Truthfulness is a conditio sine qua non for memoirs. Perhaps my observations - the reactions of a European to these great events - may awaken the curiosity of the Anglo-Saxon reader.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prefatory Note

7

Preface

9

Note to Introduction I.

13

Introduction

15

Europe on the Eve of the Last War

22

III.

The Week of Alarm in Poland

48

IV.

Cracow Under German Bombs

54

The Agony of the Human Soul

60

The Great Surprise: "Russian Saviours"

85

Arrest by the G.P.U

94

II.

V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI.

Wilno and Lwow Under Soviet "Protection" . . . .

108

Return to the Invaded Domicile

122

"We Will Read, and You Shall Work!"

. . . .

130

The Spectrum of German Occupation

140

A Touching Talk with the Foe

164

XIII.

Diplomacy and Fate

173

XIV.

My Brussels Alma Mater

179

The Poles in France

186

Belgian Illusions

198

Paris Before the Fall of France

210

XII.

XV. XVI. XVII.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

XVIII. XIX.

"Las Dichas y las Desdichas"

225

Lisbon and the "Ugly Americans"

245

XX. My Mayflower XXI. New Life XXII.

Postscript: My Sister

260 265 273

NOTE TO INTRODUCTION

In the introduction to my Polish Memoirs, the first volume of which was published in the spring of 1963 and the second late in 1967,1 wrote about my need to recapture the past as a refuge from the brutish facts of my daily reality - the early days of World War II. The misty, tranquil beauty of the days long gone instilled an overwhelming longing in me, which was all the more intense because of the repugnant present. My two volumes in Polish describe my childhood and early manhood and give a broad picture of the cultural, political and economic life of Russian and Polish societies at the end of the nineteenth century to 1918. They also contain the story of the birth of the Russo-Polish reconciliation achieved by the Russian and Polish liberals under the leadership of my father, Aleksander Lednicki. The introduction speaks of the mental and moral conditions under which I began to write those reminiscences. As such, it is out of place in the beginning of this volume, which describes the collapse of my country, my escape to the West, the vicissitudes of my wanderings across the face of Europe, and my departure for the United States. However, at the suggestion of friends who felt that this introduction would be of interest to American and English readers, I have decided to present it in an abridged and slightly modified form as a personal introduction of a refugee from the old continent, who represents the Europe of a bygone era.

I INTRODUCTION

I remember how once, many years ago, my father, after a dinner I had had with him in his house in Warsaw, took me into his study and said: "This will surprise you." He opened his desk drawer and pulled out several photographs he had received from our embassy in Moscow, where they had accidentally been saved and rediscovered after the nationalization of our property. Among them were various family portraits, pictures of friends and relatives and also pictures taken in the country on our estate near Smolensk. My father was showing me these photographs and suddenly I came upon a picture which particularly attracted me. I immediately remembered that this picture had been taken by our French governess, Mile. Jaubert, in 1907 or 1908. The picture showed one of the entrances to our estate from the SmolenskWitebsk highway. Several people were standing on the road. On each side one could see two rows of birch trees lining the long avenue, and two large white stone pillars guarding the entrance. I recognized the people without any difficulty: my grandmother with her open umbrella, my sister and a cousin of ours leaning against a tree, myself and the sister of the cousin on the other side of the road. It was obvious that Mile. Jaubert took her picture from the highway at noon, so the shadows proved. I understood that we were going, as was usual in summer, to take a swim in the Dnieper before lunch. I don't know why this photograph particularly struck me. I didn't say a word to my father, and continued to look at the other pictures he was showing me. But when I left, I still had this picture in my mind and I kept thinking to myself: "Yes, it was at noon, the shadows are so short, the sun is glaring. We stopped to let Mile. Jaubert take her photograph. In a moment we would go down to the river and take a swim. I see the little stones in the sand at our feet on the road and the tracks of the wheels. All this is so concrete, so real, so alive. I see my cousin's sister's elbow pressed against the tree, my grandmother's umbrella, my cousin's belt. We stand there, all of us,

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INTRODUCTION

alive; we talk. All this is a fact, it exists. The camera caught it and preserved it. Nevertheless, nothing remains of it. When and how did it perish? What is the abyss into which it disappeared? Is it the abyss of time? It could not vanish into space." This is the way I thought and felt then. And Kant didn't help me with his categories of thought - the law of time, the law of space and the law of causality. Suddenly a metaphysical horror seized me and I realized that behind and besides those laws which determine and make possible the existence of the human personality, rolls the mysterious and terrifying ocean of chaos in which everything perishes. Hence we are weaker than even a camera which at least immortalizes shadows of a concrete reality. This sun, this umbrella, this elbow, this belt, all this existed, all this must continue to exist since it in fact took place - how and where did it perish? And then I understood once more that only our reminiscences are truly real. Only our memory guarantees imperishability; everything else is a phantom, an illusion, a mirage, without content and without substance. The more I thought about the metaphysical significance which this simple and very casual experience of mine gained, the more I felt obsessed by Proust. I realized that the delicate web of Proust's vacillating memory was firmer and more stable than the dear trivialities of life which this web caught. For some of us life becomes a continual procession of losses and creates an imaginative world in which the concrete existence of the vanished reality is still preserved. And in the great fight against the adversities of life it is only memory which no one can deprive us of - which is our only unquestionable property. This conviction is neither decadent nor pessimistic. It is natural to love the past, which we know better than the present, or than the future, which we do not know at all. Besides, death is a great judge and this judge always selects the best people, at least so those who remain understand and feel. The touch of death is a touch of beauty. Everything in the past, as in the light of a sunset, acquires a distinctive harmony and perfection. I started to write these Memoirs in Cracow at the end of 1939 under German occupation. The terrible events of the German and Russian invasion of Poland, the burning cities, the terrifying German air raids, the machine-gunning of the people in the streets of the towns and in the fields of the country, were still fresh in my memory since it happened that I had witnessed these events in different parts of the country. Having traveled through fires and battles trying to escape the German army, I found myself unexpectedly in the zone occupied by the silent

INTRODUCTION

17

and treacherous advance of Russian armies, which came with white flags pretending to defend and liberate the country that had already been partitioned by a previous secret agreement between Stalin and Hitler. After an arrest by the Russian GPU from which I managed to escape, after desperate travels between Wilno and Lwow the aim of which was to reach either Lithuania or Roumania, I finally returned to Cracow. I was even asked by a secret message from the University, sent to some twenty Cracow university professors who found themselves at that time in Lwow, to come back and resume my position at the University. But when on the 13th of November I arrived in Cracow, the first thing I heard from the doorman of the apartment house where I lived was that the whole university staff had been arrested and put in prison. This took place, as I was later told, on the 6th of November, when a regime of terror started in Poland. Soon my arrested colleagues were sent to a penitentiary in Breslau and from there to the concentration camp near Oranienburg where many of them died very quickly. Those of us who escaped the arrest, not having attended the meeting at which it took place, were constantly waiting for arrest. But it did not occur. The Germans considered the university liquidated de facto and they didn't bother about some ten or fifteen remaining professors. The city didn't suffer from the war. It remained intact; its life, however, was changing with a speed that amazed and horrified us. The rapidly increasing German civilian and military population began to occupy our houses and apartments. In a few weeks the rich stores and shops as well as museums, libraries and private collections were empty. Caravans of gigantic trucks were transporting our wealth and goods to Germany. Restaurants and coffee shops were closed to Poles and Jews, they were filled with Germans, men and women. In the streets one could hear only German speech since the Polish language had been silenced. German inscriptions and German names were given to streets and squares, and about eight o'clock in the evening the city, covered with an enormous snowfall which came that winter, was plunged into complete darkness and silence. And only from time to time we heard salvos of German guns or songs of German soldiers marching through the streets, songs which were beautiful but which stabbed our hearts. Every one of us sat in his room, or apartment if he had one, waiting for the sudden night visits of the Gestapo. These were the conditions in which I started to write my book, which was to be devoted to the past, first of all to my parents. By a kind of

18

INTRODUCTION

incomprehensible miracle (I shall later in this book describe in detail all these events), I was still alone in my apartment although Germans occupied the major part of the house. I still had all my books, and family documents, several portraits of my mother and father, my pictures and photographs, and my furniture which consisted mostly of things that had belonged to my parents. From every corner of my apartment, which was a kind of museum, the former days were looking at me. At any moment of the day or night, all that could have been taken away. How many times did the Germans in crowds visit my place and discuss in my presence every detail of it in connection with their plans for it! Nothing happened, however. The miracle was protecting me against the always imminent danger of expulsion. It would be difficult for me to explain why I started to write this book under such circumstances. Was it the desire to escape from the horrible reality into a peaceful dream, or was it a desperate desire to preserve from annihilation that past which continued to live around me but which was now so gravely threatened? The state of my emotional being was even more complicated at that time. The horrors of the war and the sufferings inflicted on the whole nation completely changed my own attitude towards pre-war Poland. I shall have the occasion, in other volumes, to explain all the vicissitudes which marked my Polish patriotism during my entire life. The more one loves his country the more one demands from her, the less one is indulgent of her vices and mistakes. The Polish "colonels' regime" 1 for which I had nothing but aversion disappeared from the stage so quickly that reflections about its defects lost any importance for the time being. I had before my eyes the tortured, exhausted faces of the whole Polish nation. And then one day a memory came to my mind. Several years before the war I was alone in Warsaw during the summer vacation. I liked Warsaw at that time of year. The city was quieter than in winter, and its population was different. The permanent residents were away; theatres, restaurants and streets were populated by visitors, by people from the country, from provincial towns. One could see country gentlemen with their families or modest officials, teachers, farmers, bringing their children to show them the capital. It was pleasant to walk along the streets of the city which were still the same but whose 1

"Colonels' regime" was the popular name given to the administration which consisted of Marshal Pilsudski's followers, most prominent among whom were military officers in the rank of colonel. The policy of this regime was guided by the conception of Poland as a great power and was characterized by authoritarian, even totalitarian, trends.

INTRODUCTION

19

appearance seemed different. They seemed to acquire an entirely new significance, and I liked to wander after work in some secret, beautiful section of Old Warsaw under the golden sky of the Warsaw summer evenings. Very often those newcomers whom it was easy to recognize seemed to bring with them the fragance of the country. Their sunburned faces told about meadows and fields, rye and wheat, and looking at them one could hear through the noise of city traffic the song of the lark and the murmur of bees and maybugs. In those quiet days I liked to take my meals sometimes in a modest coffee shop called the Sejmowa (Parliament) Coffee Shop. It was located on the Three Crosses Square not far from the Parliament and one of the most beautiful avenues, the Warsaw Champs Elysees - the Aleje Ujazdowskie. The small dining room of the shop was humble, it sold no liquor, the meals were simple, healthy, country-style: Polish cold soup, cucumber salad in cream, buttermilk, cottage cheese, pork chops, braised beef with boiled potatoes and braised beets in a cream sauce. The people who ate there were small officials, high school teachers, librarians, dispossessed landowners, university professors and among them from time to time appeared the face of a newcomer. One evening I saw in front of me an old, bald man. His dress was typical - it was a provincial Sunday suit. He had a small boy with him; both of them were typically Polish. Obviously they were country people. They didn't talk much, but every now and than the boy asked his father, or grandfather, some question probably connected with their visit to the city. He was pleasant, polite and quiet. As I watched that calm unassuming pair I was struck by their eyes - they were blue and deepset. There was an expression of defenseless, natural kindness in them, together with a questioning melancholy which the raised eyebrows of the old man indicated. I do not know why, but those blue eyes touched me deeply and I felt that they truly represented the character of the Polish nation. This encounter revealed to me some deeper truths about our life and when several years later the German planes were roaring in the perfectly blue sky of September, 1939, I saw in almost every Polish face the same expression of melancholy and puzzled resignation. Events did not, however, allow me to continue to write my Memoirs which I started in Cracow. I left Cracow at the end of March, 1940, and found myself in Brussels. After a month in Belgium I went to France to see the Polish government which at that time was in Angers. I returned to Brussels in the early morning of the 10th of May - several hours later Hitler invaded Belgium. The four days I spent in Belgian territory

20

INTRODUCTION

were days of distress and agony. On the 15th day of May I was in Paris and some five weeks later the defeat of France compelled me to flee once more. Then came Spain, Portugal and finally, in the middle of August, 1940, the United States. My life in the United States, my university work, but especially the hopeless fight for my country against contemporary American public opinion, imprisoned by an almost pathological infatuation with Russia, took me away from my book. During the war I still had the hope that I would be able to write in my own language and for my own people. When the iron curtain fell, I realized that I should write my Memoirs in English. My consolation was that I would perhaps be able to contribute to a better understanding by the Anglo-Saxon of Poland and her culture. I did not get on with this work, however. I was too occupied with my teaching and scholarly projects, and there was also the torment of imprisonment in a foreign language which I did not know at that time well enough. But the desire to write of my life remained, though dormant. Then, one psychological experience strengthened in me my decision to continue the memoirs I started in Cracow. It occurred in Berkeley, in my own house. One morning in summer, when I was still asleep, the barking of a dog somewhere in the neighborhood woke me, but not completely. I was still half-asleep. The barking of the dog transported me in my dream to our estate near Wilno. It was a winter's morning around Christmas time. I heard in the quiet silence of the snow-covered countryside a distant barking of dogs. The frost was heavy, the sun was shining through frost-covered window panes. My father entered my room and greeted me with a kind "Good morning!" We had a hunting party arranged that day and he had come to wake me up. I jumped out of bed - and I found myself in my Berkeley house. The dog was still barking, far away. My dream vanished. I felt a sudden irresistible desire to write, to bring back my dreams, and it seemed to me that I heard indeed a call from the past, that my father was telling me that the time had come. But current duties and occupations were awaiting as always, and on my desk were books, French books, which I was studying for a lecture I had to deliver at the University. These were texts of French moralists of the seventeenth century, and among them Pascal. I started to read and I came upon the following sentence: " "This dog is mine', said these poor children, 'this is my place under the sun'. This is the beginning and the picture of usurpation on the whole earth." This was a blow! Then even my dog, and my sunny window, my dream, all this is usurpation?

INTRODUCTION

21

I really felt desperate. For almost a whole year I hadn't touched my book. Life was against it. I had lost my sister, a distinguished artist and a brilliant woman, who was the single relative I had in this country. She was much more than that to me - she was my most faithful friend, a friend entirely devoted, and to whom I owed very much - much more than she owed me. With her death the last living link with the past had been broken. Now I saw that the time had come to have recourse to the magic power of the wavering mirror of memory.

Il EUROPE ON THE EVE OF THE LAST WAR

The political situation of Europe in the years preceding the last war, and the situation of Poland in particular, as well as the general atmosphere of the world, distressed me. And, of course, I was not alone in that feeling. The internal political and economic complications which characterized the life of Poland did not make this life easy for anyone in the country. Furthermore, I had been deeply affected by my father's death in 1934, which occurred under tragic circumstances. And, in connection with this painful event, I was considering whether or not I should leave Poland, for I had lost everything to which I was attached - even my father's beautiful estate near Wilno where I used to spend my summer vacations while he was alive. There remained nothing besides my work and my friendships with some people to tie me to my country. But even my work at the University of Cracow was not giving me full satisfaction. In a way, it was a pioneering work. All pioneering work is hard, but mine was particularly so: I held a chair, established in 1928, of the History of Russian literature. It was the only chair in Russian literature in Poland. During my stay in Cracow, I published many articles and pamphlets in which I strongly suggested the necessity of establishing several centers and university chairs in Poland dedicated to the study of Russia, but I never had any response. Besides, the circumstances under which this one chair had been established in Cracow were precarious, although it was a proof of the wide scholarly horizons which characterized this oldest Polish university. Before the war, Cracow had been politically and culturally an anti-Russian bastion. The majority of people in Cracow did not know Russian and had never been attracted by her culture and literature. The library of the University had never had any rich Russian collection, so that when I was appointed to the chair, I was obliged to undertake the very difficult task

EUROPE ON THE EVE OF THE LAST WAR

23

of building, at least for my seminar, a more or less decent library. This took many years of effort and a great deal of money. And still my work and my courses remained unpopular; my classes were never crowded. Although I published a lot and tried to present in the most objective way the richness of Russian literature (the literature of the nineteenth century in particular), my books did not penetrate deeply and were not widely read. This situation was not justified, but in a way it was understandable. After almost one hundred and fifty years of suffering under Russian rule, an independent Poland was happy to forget that yoke. But this was not a wise attitude for the future. In my opinion, assuming that for a long period Poland would have only one chair dedicated to Russian studies, that chair should have been set up in Warsaw for several reasons. First, because at that time it was a "political" chair; hence, it should have been in the capital. Second, the University of Warsaw had inherited the library formed by Russians, and this library was the richest in Europe, along with the one in Helsinki, as far as Russian material was concerned. Finally, because Warsaw and its population had a good knowledge of Russia and Russian language, courses in Russian literature there would have had a greater appeal than in Cracow where no one had any interest in Russia and her literature. There was a brief time, a few years before the war, when the possibility of a transfer of my chair to the University of Warsaw arose; unfortunately, due to a grotesque red-tape attitude taken by my former friend, who at that time was the Dean of Humanities in Warsaw, this project, which had been suggested by the Ministry of Education, had to be abandoned. For some time, then, I had been hoping to change Cracow for Warsaw, which also attracted me for non-academic reasons. I had liked Cracow before the First World War when it was one of the most distinguished and charming Polish cities, but as soon as Warsaw became the capital of the restored state, it drained all the provincial centers such as Cracow, Lwow, and Poznan of almost all prominent and ambitious people in every field, who left those cities for Warsaw. In this Poland imitated France with her Paris as a dominant center of the country. Cracow became monotonous, tedious, a sort of museum and an asylum for retired people. I was constantly bored and annoyed there, and I dreamt about going somewhere away from Cracow - if not abroad, at least to Warsaw. Hence, this unreasonable strangulation of the project of my transfer to Warsaw was a great blow to me. Only dreams about going abroad remained. But my father's death had affected me financially also, and because

24

EUROPE ON THE EVE OF THE LAST WAR

of this, such dreams were not very realistic. There existed between the University of Brussels (where I formerly taught for several years), the Polish Government, and the University of Cracow an agreement on the basis of which I used to go to Brussels every year after 1933 and give intensive courses in Russian and Polish literatures around the Christmas and Easter vacations, which were longer in Poland than in Brussels. A special additional leave of absence, six weeks every year, was granted to me by the University of Cracow for this purpose. This made it possible to spent two or three months every year in Brussels. My trips and sojourns in Brussels were paid by the Polish Foreign Office and this rather substantial sum, added to the very modest salary of the Polish full professor, made my life rather comfortable. (The Brussels Chair of Slavic Languages and Literature had been established in 1926 on the basis of an endowment by the Polish Government, so the University of Brussels did not pay any of the salary.) Having nothing of my own (after the Bolshevik coup d'état in 1918 my parents lost everything they possessed in Russia, and my father's properties in Poland were lost after his death), I was entirely dependent financially on the University of Cracow and my functions in Brussels; this compelled me to remain in Poland. Furthermore, I had some responsibilities connected with my father's death, and I considered it my duty to attend to them. All of this postponed the realization of my desire to settle somewhere in Western Europe. Needless to say, the trips to Brussels were of great help to me, not only financially, but psychologically. Those stays abroad (always in Brussels, and frequently in Paris and Italy on my way back to Poland) were a great comfort to me. I will not tarry with the analysis of the political trends which marked the life of Europe at that time. It will suffice to say that in connection with the existing threat of Russian communism, the rising dictatorial regimes in Spain, Italy, and Germany (which partly originated from anti-communist conceptions), became popular in certain circles of European society. There is no need to emphasize the uncomfortable, to say the least, geopolitical situation of Poland between two powerful empires, between Bolshevism and Nazism, between Stalin and Hitler, troubled by complex national minority problems and economic difficulties which the recently restored state had no time to resolve. The nation, like most of Europe, was in a state of fatigue and political apathy. Because of this the semi-dictatorial government which existed then in Poland was able to organize and direct the life of the nation in its own way without any great obstacles or opposition.

EUROPE ON THE EVE OF THE LAST WAR

25

The very heavy income taxes which the people paid at that time were supposedly used mainly for national defense. The crowds of military men on the streets of every city and town, the swarms of officers in restaurants, theaters, and night clubs, and the spectacular cavalry parades created an atmosphere of confidence. Many of us felt irritated by the overwhelming presence of military men in every corner of our life, but the majority of people felt, in a way, secure, and they were not overly frightened by what was going on in Germany and Russia. They believed in the efficiency of the Polish Government, at least in the sphere of national defense. The alliance with France, and later with Great Britain, supported this feeling of confidence, the more so because Mussolini continued to maintain the old tradition of Italy's friendship with Poland. One must not forget either that Hitler, before the crucial year of 1939, often manifested a special benevolence toward Poland. The Polish Government was not inclined to tie itself to Hitler's policy and to participate in his anti-Russian plans, but nevertheless, in various maneuvers it tried to take advantage of Mussolini's and Hitler's friendly attitudes. Besides, Hitler's definitely anti-communist stand, as well as his success in the restoration of German economy, and his creation of an enthusiastic body of German youths who were deeply patriotic and entirely free from any communist inclinations, impressed some circles of Polish society. Hence, when, in connection with its political game, the Government invited Germans or Mussolini's ministers to Poland for hunting parties and brilliant social receptions, some circles of Polish society participated in these activities, and they accepted invitations from Goering and others to similar hunting parties and receptions in Germany. There were also some Polish professors who, because of their ideological abhorrence of the Russian Communists, of Lenin, and of Stalin, were ready to believe in the political health of the new Germany. They visited Germany and lectured in various German universities. And the theme of the choice which one should make between Stalin and Hitler was often discussed at social meetings in various Polish milieux. It is true that frequently these receptions for the Germans and Italians were followed by humorous and sarcastic remarks which were made even by those people who could have been considered in sympathy with the idea of an understanding with Italy, and even Germany. Goering's visits to Poland or his receptions in Germany gave rise to many mocking comments. The same was true with the Italians. I, myself, remember having heard at a soirée in a Cracow home which Ciano and his wife,

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the famous daughter of Mussolini, visited after their stay in Warsaw, that General Wieniawa-Dhigoszowski, the Polish ambassador in Rome at that time, said at a ball in the capital that a whole regiment of cavalry would be needed to satisfy Countess Ciano's waltzing . . . and other appetites. As far as I was concerned, I never felt any attraction to those totalitarian, dictatorial regimes, either abroad or in Poland. In Poland my attitude was that of determined ideological opposition to the "Colonels' regime". For Hitler and Stalin I had only a feeling of disgust. I remember, a year or so before the war, a discussion at a luncheon given in an aristocratic home in Cracow, the home of close friends of mine, at which several distinguished Cracow professors of literature, theology, and philosophy were present. The luncheon was arranged on the occasion of a lecture on Soviet Russia delivered by a Polish journalist who had been recently expelled from Russia. The guests assembled at the lunch, started a long discussion on Stalin and Hitler, and the majority came to the conclusion that, after all, Hitler was better than Stalin. I kept silent for some time, but suddenly burst out, "There is no choice between Stalin and Hitler; both of them are equally abominable, but I must say that if such a choice were to be imposed upon me, no one would see me with Hitler!" I explained my opinion by adding, "When it stinks outdoors, it is still less unpleasant than when it stinks indoors. Hitler has appropriated almost all of the methods of the Russian totalitarian dictatorial state. I would hate to see such indecent political mores penetrate my European home." To this a very honorable priest, a well-known professor in theology, a philosopher-Thomist, remarked, "Yes, I understand you, but there is one thing you don't take into consideration; namely, that at least Hitler is not fighting against God." It happened that a few weeks later I went to Brussels and I read there a papal encyclic condemning Hitler for his anti-Christian policy. I had the satisfaction of being able to send a postcard to the Cracow theologian on which I referred to the Pope's letter; I did not stress, however, that in this case I, though a layman, knew better than the priest. A little later the honorable theologian experienced the touch of Hitler's "Christian" paw; after the occupation of Poland, he, with the whole of the Cracow faculty, was arrested by the Gestapo and put in a concentration camp. This acceptance of Hitler, particularly of his speeches, which I simply could not listen to, as they sounded so vulgar to me, existed not only

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in Poland, but also in other countries. (As a matter of fact, there were actually very few groups in Poland who admired him.) In Belgium, for instance, they had at that time their own "little Hitler", Degrelle, who tried to play Hitler's rôle and captivated the Belgian youth and bourgeoisie. I remember a violent discussion with a Russian émigré, Y. P. Basilevsky, of a distinguished Russian noble family, and a very close friend of mine, who interrupted my criticism of Degrelle and Hitler with the following outburst: "The one who is not with Hitler - the future savior of the world from Stalin - is either an idiot or a scoundrel!" This was said by a man whose brother-in-law, a professor at the University of Vienna, died from a heart attack after the Anschluss of Austria and two disturbing visits of the German Gestapo to his apartment. The situation in America was not very much different. In 1940, when I arrived in the United States and came to know many distinguished and delightful people from the North Shore near Boston, I became acquainted with two wealthy New England couples. I learned from them that a few months before the war they visited Hitler; the two men represented American banks which gave Hitler an important loan for the acquisition of gasoline in South America. A short time later he used it in the war. I can also illustrate the political atmosphere in Europe to which I have just referred with another experience. In connection with my Brussels activities I became Vice-Chairman of the Polish Sub-Commission (the Minister of Education was officially its chairman) for the Polish-Belgian Intellectual Exchange. There was a corresponding Belgian Sub-Commission of which the Vice-Chairman was a Director of the Department of Superior Education in the Belgian Ministry of Education. Every year two Polish professors were to lecture in Belgian universities and two Belgian professors in Polish universities. The Belgian Vice-Chairman and I were in charge of selecting those visitors. When the Belgians came to Poland, I made all arrangements for their lectures in the universities and entertained them in Cracow and often in Warsaw. I should like to tell the story of one such visit in Poland. It happened that a Belgian medievalist, F. L. Ganshof, from the University of Ghent, arrived in Cracow the day after the Anschluss. I was deeply troubled by Hitler's action, and when I delivered a short speech to introduce our Belgian guest to the university audience, I made strong allusions to this frightening event and said something like this: "We in Cracow feel the shock of this earthquake more sharply than any one else."

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After the lecture, the rector of the university and I invited our guest and several Cracow professors for a dinner at the Grand Hotel, where the dinner was served in two separate dining rooms. In one of these hors d'oeuvres were on the table, with Polish wodka. When we started to fill our plates and glasses, my Belgian friend at once approached me with the following words, "You seemed so worried in what you said in your address of welcome. Frankly, I don't understand. Why are you so upset? Hitler simply joined Germans to Germans, and that is all." I answered, "Austrians are not Nazis. I do not share your optimistic indifference; I am very much afraid of what will happen to Czechoslovakia after this, and then it will be our turn." In my opinion there was no more to be said. The next day an outstanding Polish medievalist, a former dean, gave a luncheon for the Belgian professor to which he invited some ten or twelve colleagues. Naturally, everyone was talking about the new political situation created by Hitler's seizure of Austria. For some time I did not participate in the discussion, but towards its end I advanced the following opinion, "Now, as far as I am concerned, I have a great fear that Hitler and Stalin will unite." This was a bombshell. Questions fell upon every side. "What? You? You with your knowledge of Russia? You say such a thing?" "I'm not a prophet; nor a politician. But I simply read things which you unfortunately do not read. In Miliukov's newspaper, Last News, which he publishes in Paris and regularly sends to me, appear from time to time the memoirs of the Russian Bolshevik General Krivitsky, who had fled from Russia (he was killed in New York during the last war by Soviet agents). And Krivitsky ends each installment of his memoirs by quoting the words of admonition with which Stalin used to close every meeting of the Politburo in Moscow for the last few years: "And still we must come to an agreement with the Germans!" This quotation did not convince my friends, and such a conclusion of the existing political relations between Hitler and Stalin seemed paradoxical to them. My pessimism was not contradicted by later events. Soon after the Anschluss, the world was shaken by the absorption of Czechoslovakia. Everyone remembers the painful impression of Poland's participation in its dismemberment. This participation soiled Poland's international reputation for a long time. It is true that the lands of the Cieszyn region which Poland annexed were ethnographically Polish - her action was a correction of the St. Germain Treaty - and that when Poland was fighting desperately against Soviet Russia in

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1920, the behavior of the Czechs was not at all edifying. Furthermore the Czechs did not fight against Hitler's invasion despite the firmly established conviction in Europe that with the help of France they had built powerful fortifications and possessed enormous stores of modern armaments. Under the pressure of the great powers (after Munich) and the internal demands of the Sudeten Germans, they surrendered to Germany without any resistance, and the only skirmishes which occurred during those tragic days were fights between Poles and Germans over which Hitler did not make a big fuss, probably because he was sure that soon he would get the territories at issue, augmented by Poland herself. Under the influence of governmental propaganda, many people in various Polish towns and milieux were possessed by a sort of patriotic enthusiasm, so that one could see at that time, even before Munich, as I did in Cracow, lines of men volunteering for a special new legion organized for the restoration of the Cieszyn-region lands to the motherland. But these crowds did not produce a positive impression. The people standing in the lines did not inspire any confidence. This could have been my impression because I was judging them simply by their appearance and because I did not share the exultation of some of my Cracow colleagues and some men of letters whom I had considered typical cabotins who, after having visited those restored lands "brought back to the breast of their mother", spoke to me about them with tears in their eyes. But I don't think that the majority of the Polish population was at all enthusiastic about Beck's policy. And the fall of Czechoslovakia frightened many of us. I, along with many others, felt dismayed by Beck's ultimatums sent to Benes during those tragic days of Czechslovak history. And I, personally, felt simply enraged when Beck's "magnificent" deed was rewarded by the President of the Republic with the highest Polish decoration, the Order of the White Eagle, generally given only to monarchs. No smaller was my irritation when the universities of Warsaw and Lwow bestowed honorary degrees of Doctor of Laws upon that man who had not even had a whiff of academic life and who had a very flexible conception of law. I remember that I ran to our Rector, T. Lehr-Splawinski, a former schoolmate of mine, to tell him that I would quit the University if Cracow followed the example of Warsaw and of Lwow. He calmed me and assured me that Cracow had no such intention. For several years I had been watching apprehensively the deterio-

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ration of Polish-Czech relations. Beck was not hiding at all his destructive intentions. To my knowledge he was doing everything to disrupt normal cultural contacts between the two countries. I experienced this personally when in 1937 a great honor fell upon me in the form of an invitation from several combined Russian learned societies and cultural organizations in Prague to give a lecture on Pushkin (and this was the only one to be given) in commemoration of the centennial of the poet's death, on the "Day of Russian Culture". Beck had by then established a policy prohibiting Polish scholars from lecturing in Czechoslovakia or from inviting Czech lecturers to Polish universities. Needless to say how anxious I was to accept this exceptional recognition of my work on Pushkin. It was only due to Count M. tubienski, a former secretary to my father, who at that time was the Chief of Beck's cabinet, that I was able to obtain permission to go to Prague, tubienski, a graduate of the University of St. Petersburg, was himself a great admirer of Pushkin. He succeeded in convincing Beck that the Prague invitation of a Polish scholar to lecture on Pushkin was too great an honor to be refused. (That tubienski's plea was based on considerations of national pride was probably due to the fact that he felt that Beck would have been impervious to an appeal based on broader humanistic considerations.) As a consequence of tubienski's intervention, I received a telegram from the foreign office which gave me permission to go to Prague on condition that I give my Russian lecture only to the audience of those Russian émigré organisations from whom I had received the invitation (it was explicitly stipulated that I was not to accept any Czech invitations) and that I was not to accept any compensation from the Czechs - the foreign office would finance my trip. But to return to my earlier theme. I have never been a Czechophile and there were objective reasons for this attitude. Czechoslovakia's position towards Russia was not above criticism, and Benes' pre-war policy was lacking in dignity. His post-war maneuvers confirmed the negative opinion I had had of him. The fault, then, in the Polish-Czech situation was not only that of Poland. Still the tragedy of Czechoslovakia moved many of us deeply, and, as I have said, I did not share the childish excitement of this patriotic moment which prevailed in some Polish circles. And how soon the terrible fate of Poland, herself, confirmed my reservations, and made a mockery of Beck's White Eagle and honorary degrees! My political education made me very skeptical with regard to Poland's political situation, and particularly with respect to the efforts which the "Colo-

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nels' Government" (a kind of military junta) was obstinately making in order to elevate the prestige of Poland into that of a great power. I did not believe in this at all. I constantly had in mind the facts with which I had become acquainted while I was in the Polish Diplomatic Service from 1919 to 1921.1 remember the definitions of a great power which I found in various diplomatic manuals and works on international law. A great power in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, was, according to classic characteristics, a state of a large territorial size possessing a great economic and military power, cultural prestige, a heterogeneous population, and colonies. In those times the great powers of Europe - Great Britain, Russia, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary - were endowed with all these features. In the period which immediately preceded the last war, Germany lost her colonies and became a homogeneous state; but her cultural, economic, and military status, and her population were constantly growing. If one were to consider Poland a great power, one would come to the conclusion that the only characteristic of a great power which was to be found in Poland was the existence of many minority groups. Unfortunately, Poland did not succeed in integrating these groups, and they represented centrifugal forces instead of being a wall of defense against Russia and Germany. Many times did I write on this subject and analyze it in my books. I deplored the fact that the only element of greatness inherited from the former Polish Commonwealth, which was once one of the largest empires in Europe, had been so mistreated in this small modern Poland. And this is why I repeat it again: I was not at all moved by the patriotic emotions of my colleagues who visited Poland's annexed provinces in Czechoslovakia and our "Western brothers". The situation became very rapidly alarming, and I had the greatest apprehensions for not only the fate of Poland, but of the whole of Europe as well. It happened that in 1939 my usual trip to the University of Brussels took place around the Easter vacation so that I was there in April and May. I was supposed to give two lectures at the University of Montpellier on the occasion of an honorary Ph.D., which was to be given to a colleague of mine, Professor Z. L. Zaleski, who lived permanently in Paris, taught in some French schools and was a delegate in France of the Polish Ministry of Education. The Polish Ambassador in Paris, J. Lukasiewicz, a former secretary to my father in Russia, was supposed to attend this ceremony. I was offered 5,000 francs for those two lectures. For some reasons, which I do not want to discuss here, I declined

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this invitation at the very last moment and, instead of going to Montpellier, I went to Venice just for relaxation, taking advantage of a couple of free days between my teaching in Brussels and Cracow. I allowed myself the luxury of staying at the marvelous Hotel Danieli, and I saw once more that, indeed, Italians should be considered the real masters of hotel and restaurant management. I arrived in Warsaw on the twenty-eighth of May. One should remember that several weeks before, Great Britain had declared its intention to defend Poland's independence, thus supporting the agreement Poland had with France, and that on the fifth of May Beck delivered his famous speech in which he emphasized that Poland would never betray honor, alluding by this to the words "Honor and Fatherland", which often appear on Polish standards and decorations. This speech was an answer to Hitler's speech given in the Reichstag on the twenty-eighth of April, in which he denounced both the Anglo-German naval agreement of June eighteenth, 1935 and the Polish-German declaration of the twenty-sixth of January, 1934, voicing at the same time German claims to Danzig and the Corridor. Hitler was, of course, speaking with reference to President Roosevelt's proposal of a long term moratorium on the armed settlement of disputes. When I arrived in Warsaw, where I spent two days, I learned in the Foreign Office that my intimate friend, W. Grzybowski, our ambassador in Moscow, was in Warsaw. (He died in Paris in October of 1959 in complete poverty and after a very long illness.) I was happy to hear of his return, but also astonished, for at that very time France and Britain were attempting to come to some understanding with Stalin, and the French and British delegations were then in Moscow. It was difficult for me to understand how a Polish ambassador in Moscow could have left his post under these circumstances. But, as the reader will see, this apparent unconcern of the Polish ambassador was, in a way, typical. Diplomats and statesmen often at the time of grave circumstances take such attitudes of detachment. Macmillan was hunting grouse during the outburst of the recent Berlin crisis, Kennedy driving children from a candy shop in a small station wagon in Hyannis Port; have I to mention Eisenhower's golf? The intentions of these dignitaries are probably very edifying - they seem to believe that in this way they give their nations a feeling of security. As soon as I learned about Grzybowski's presence in Warsaw, I called him, and he immediately invited me for a luncheon at a small, but famous Warsaw restaurant, Krzemiñski, which, unfortunately, does

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not exist any longer. It was ruined in the last war with the rest of Warsaw. This restaurant had only a couple of small rooms around a liquor and wine shop; the furniture was that of an ordinary bar, with plain chairs and marble-topped tables on which the waiters would simply put a piece of paper under the plates. But the food, the cellar, the Polish wodka-starka (old Polish hard liquor), were all excellent - also very expensive, and represented a tradition of several decades. Grzybowski told me that he would also invite a common friend of ours from the time when we were both studying in Cracow in 19101911, who was in charge of Italian affairs in the Political-Diplomatic Department of the Polish Foreign Office. As soon as I arrived in the restaurant, I was told by the manager that the ambassador was already there in a separate room. I entered and was struck by the table laden with the finest appetizers and with a bottle, the shape, dust, and mold of which eloquently confirmed my great expectations. Polish ambassadors were well paid, and they became easily accustomed to the luxuries granted by the diplomatic service abroad. Here I may allow myself a small digression. I observed the life of the diplomats, not only while I was serving in the Polish Foreign Office from 1919-1921 (at that time the conditions of the Polish diplomat were very modest, but all that changed after 1926 when the conception of Poland as a great power was implanted by Piisudski's regime), but also later in Brussels where my functions obliged me to participate intimately in the life of our legation. My frequent lectures in various European countries brought me also in contact not only with our own, but with other embassies and legations, and I was often invited for luncheons, dinners, and various receptions given by members of the diplomatic corps. Finally, the Polish Society of Studies of Eastern Europe and the Near East, which I founded in Cracow (since 1935 I had been its president), necessitated a permanent cooperation with the Foreign Office. I might also add that my father's home in Warsaw was a meeting place for many people in the diplomatic circles; he used to give large dinners which were frequently attended by members of the diplomatic corps in Warsaw, and many of them often went on hunting parties at my father's estate near Wilno. Besides, I had many close personal friends among Polish diplomats abroad and in Warsaw. At that time I came to the conclusion that in the modern world the diplomatic corps was the only privileged social group. They were generally well paid; they lived in beautiful mansions where they had numerous servants, chauf-

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feurs, chefs, butlers; they were able to buy the best wines and liquors and Havana cigars tax free, and all this made their lives much easier than that of any private individual, even a wealthy one. Besides, in my opinion, in connection with the development of press information, radios, telegraph, the custom which was established after the First World War of meetings of ministers of foreign affairs, and the rôle of the League of Nations, the political duties and tasks of diplomatic envoys became very reduced. In former days an ambassador was a personal representative of his monarch to a foreign monarch, and he was the only existing channel for negotiations. In modern times all this has changed completely. Not only ministers of foreign affairs, but prime ministers and even chiefs of state travel and talk over the heads of ambassadors and ministers. Besides, the nations themselves get into direct international contact through various delegations of professionals, through international congresses, through exchange of scholars, etc. Therefore, the rôle of an envoy or an ambassador practically became that of a sort of doorman, of a guide, of someone whose task should be to facilitate the relations between his compatriots and the people of the countries in which he is stationed, to represent the culture and certainly also some economic and other interests of his country. But very few diplomats understood that. The same is true nowadays; it is almost impossible for a university professor to reach an American ambassador unless he knows him personally or has some very "significant" social recommendation. He will immediately be sent to the cultural attaché, who generally will be replaced by some dry female, one of the secretaries of the office. Artists, and movie actors, perhaps, have a better chance of being well received and even entertained. As the political rôle of diplomacy changed, it became, from a certain point of view, more modest, and because of that, diplomats had much more free time. I could observe that their main occupation was to entertain or to be entertained, and in consequence the life of the diplomatic corps in every capital city became the center of high life. To be invited to a legation or to an embassy was considered a privilege. This privilege existed, of course, in former times as well, but then there were many other centers which were able to compete with the diplomats in this respect; whereas, in our days, wherever you go, not only in the poor countries behind the iron curtain where the contrast is particularly drastic, you find that diplomats are those who are the best dressed, who have the best cooking in their houses, the best servants, and the best cars. Dancing parties, golf, all kinds of other performances of a purely

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social character, very often lacking in any political interest, fill the lives of this modern privileged class. My friend Grzybowski knew how to entertain, not only in embassies and legations but in restaurants in Warsaw or in any European capital; I know this because I have often enjoyed his hospitality myself. When I appeared in the door, he stopped me and said, "Before you take a seat, please answer a question. Will there be a war or not?" "I have a very, very slight hope that perhaps it may be avoided." "Well, unfortunately you are right; the war probably will not occur yet." I sat down and said, "I know your 'unfortunately.' A l l of you probably believe that the alliance with England which you now have will assure a victory but also that this alliance may not last." "No, I have in mind something else - the fact that now we are better prepared for war than Germany is, and that time will be working for Germany and not for us." "What sort of preparation do you mean?" Then he started to tell me about the Polish plane factories, about the bazookas, about our armored divisions; he even told me that the Germans at some recent Polish military parade had been very impressed by them. Then I asked him how it happened that he was in Warsaw while in Moscow extremely important negotiations were going on between Molotov and Britain and France. "My dear man, I shall do more than that", he answered. "I am going for a vacation on the Adriatic. Y o u know the Bolsheviks - they will bargain, as usual, and finally they will sign an agreement with the British and the French." He also told me some funny stories about how awkwardly, from a diplomatic point of view, Molotov, who had just replaced Litvinov, behaved in his new role of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia. When, much later in Paris after the end of the war, I reminded my friend of this talk, he laughed and told me that he simply was making fun of me and not only of me. It is true, he was known for his wit and mockeries, and it was frequently difficult to tell whether he was serious or joking. This often annoyed me, but I easily pardoned these characteristics because of his great charm and brilliant intelligence. However, as far as our talk in the Krzeminski restaurant was concerned, I believe though he exaggerated some details, his main belief was that time really worked for Hitler better than for Poland, and therefore, a postponement of the war would be more dangerous.

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In the evening, just before taking a night train to Cracow, I had supper with two other friends, also very close to me, belonging to completely different spheres of life. I had known one of them, S. Saski, since my student days in Cracow. He was a man whose life had been destroyed by a very unhappy marriage with a silly woman; because of this, in spite of his brilliant mind and great knowledge in the field of linguistics and philology, he was working at that time as a teacher in high schools. Only after the war did he become a professor at the University of Poznan. I always considered him one of the wisest of my friends, and he was a man whom I always enormously cherished. The other person had become a friend of mine much later, but our relationship was also extremely warm. His name was K. Zawodzinski. I used to see him often in Warsaw and he often came to my father's estate in the summer; and so did the other friend. Zawodzinski was of a very special nature. He certainly was one of our most brilliant critics in the field of Polish, Russian, French literature, an outstanding scholar in the field of theory of literature and prosody. He graduated from the University of Petersburg, but during the First World War he enrolled in Pilsudski's legions and remained on in the military service until the last war. In peace time his military functions were those of chief of an officers' squadron in a cavalry school in Warsaw. He always brought to my mind the Polish officers and men of letters in the early 1830's or the Russian Decembrists, among whom there were so many poets and writers in military uniforms. He had married a few years before 1939 and at the time the war began, he had two children, a son and a daughter. He used to write, not only on literary subjects, but also on various political and social matters - on Malthusianism, on the role of the intelligentsia - and his idea was that every man has a natural and social task, which is that of endowing and continuing a cultural tradition. From this point of view, his feelings about the responsibilities of a father were very serious. There were many other traits in his personality, some of them very odd. I wrote an article dedicated to his memory after his death; hence, I shall not expand here on this subject. We talked at our supper about the political situation, and my cavalrycaptain-scholar (after the war he became a professor at the University of Torun) abruptly said: "The war is inevitable, and we will be entirely destroyed. Warsaw will be bombed by the Germans, and we have no adequate means of defense. This is why I have already moved my family from Warsaw to a small provincial town (and he named it) where they will be, perhaps, more secure." When I told him what I had heard at

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lunch from a high Polish official, he laughed and said that he, as a man in the army, knew better how desperate our situation really was. This was also my own feeling. During these days, as everyone knows, the atmosphere in Europe was becoming more and more tense. In June and the beginning of July one could feel an increasing nervousness in the whole country. But life was still going on, and everyone continued to fulfill his obligations and work at his tasks, not only in Poland but everywhere else. One could say that this was a sort of ostrich philosophy; people did not want to look in the face of the growing threat and danger arising from the centers of aggression in Europe. My own position was no different. It happened that I was supposed to go to Brussels again, around the twentieth of July for the agrégation (a qualifying examination for a professorship) of my pupil, Claude Backvis; of course I was on his committee. Backvis is now my successor in Brussels, where he holds the chair of Slavic Languages and Literatures very brilliantly. He first approached me in 1927 when he graduated from the lycée and enrolled at once in classical philology. He came to see me in connection with his interest in Russian literature, which was a result of his reading of Dostoevsky. He wanted to take courses in Russian literature. I explained to him our system, that students interested in studying under me were obliged to take both Polish and Russian languages and literatures. He agreed and started his studies with me. But our work in Brussels did not last very long, because at the end of the spring semester of 1928 I was called by the University of Cracow regarding a position. I accepted their offer and was obliged to find a suitable successor for Brussels. Several of my friends in Warsaw suggested Dr. Manfred Kridl to me. He was a man, almost ten years older than I, who had taught in high schools, and had published several works on Polish literature, which were of a primarily biographical character, and, because of his rather unsuccessful habilitation in Warsaw he had no hopes of a chair in Poland. I used to meet him in a literary circle which had been organized by an outstanding man of letters, W. Borowy; Borowy had taught for some time at the School of Slavonic Studies in London, later occupied the post of chief librarian at the University of Warsaw, and after that became a professor of Polish literature at the same university. He had great prestige in Poland and was at the same time a close friend of mine, as were S. Saski, Zawodzinski, and the literary critic L. Piwinski. All of these men strongly recommended Kridl to me. I knew him fairly well, too, and at that time I liked him and his wife, who was a very pleasant

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woman. It was not easy to convince the Foreign Office in Warsaw and the Polish Legation in Brussels in favor of the project, because, for various reasons, they did not consider Kridl the right man for the post, which demanded not only scholastic preparation but also social savoirfaire. As far as scholarly qualifications were concerned, our candidate was not too well equipped either, as his knowledge of Russian literature was only that of an amateur. Finally, I succeeded in wearing down the opposition of the Legation, and since the Foreign Office did not take any further interest in the whole thing, Kridl was put on the payroll of the Ministry of Education. In order to prepare himself for courses in Russian literature, he asked me to remain in Brussels, if possible, for the first semester of the academic year, 1928-1929. Frankly, I was not eager to leave Brussels, which I liked for itself and because of its proximity to Paris, so I asked the university in Cracow to postpone my inauguration to the beginning of January, 1929. As I learned later, this did not please Cracow; however, they agreed. So Backvis continued under Kridl, but his contacts with me were not interrupted at all; rather to the contrary. We corresponded frequently, and I succeeded in obtaining a fellowship in Warsaw for him so that he could spend several months in Poland for his studies in Polish history and literature, and during that time he came for a whole month to see me and my family at my father's estate near Wilno. Backvis, who, as I said, approached me in 1927 because of his interest in Russian literature, very soon became deeply interested in Polish culture and now, although he is also giving courses in Russian language and literature and has written several works on Russia, is rightly considered one of the leading scholars in the field of Polish literature and culture. Kridl's story in its own way was also unique. As I mentioned, Kridl was a partisan of biographical and psychological studies in literature, but after his stay in Brussels he became a sort of fanatic on formalism, very unpleasant in his polemics and not brilliant at all in his writings. This change started in Brussels in connection with his course in Russian literature. When he asked me if he should begin with a course on Turgenev, the only Russian writer whom he knew well enough to teach, I told him that if he did, he should present and interpret the new trends in Russia in the field of literary theory, along with the course on Turgenev; by that I meant the school of the formalists. In this way I became the godfather of his subsequent studies in formalism. Later my personal relations with him deteriorated drastically, as he appeared to be a rude man and an unfaithful friend.

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I have some reminiscences, characteristic of Backvis, associated with his stay at our country place. After some time he confessed to me several strong impressions the country made on him. Several times I took him driving with me in a small one-horse carriage in order to hunt in the marshes of our woods. It appeared that the odor of the lathered horse was very disagreeable to Backvis and he suffered from it. He also told me that all these country experiences were quite fascinating for him, as he had lived all his life with his parents in the more modest sections of Brussels without ever having walked in the countryside; so, never in his life had he seen a real pig or a cow before. Another event impressed him also; once Prince Konstanty Lubomirski, accompanied by some relative of his, visited us. Backvis was quite excited: "Imagine my reaction! Now I have suddenly seen a real Prince Lubomirski, after having read so much about this family in various old Polish texts!" So, a real pig, a real horse, and a real Lubomirski were fascinating phenomena for the young Belgian enthusiast of Slavistics. Backvis got his Ph.D. in classical philology, and his knowledge in this field was outstanding and certainly very useful for his studies in Polish culture and literature, as Poles until the middle of the sixteenth century used to write only in Latin, and the classical world continued for a long time to be a source of inspiration for Polish writers and poets. After his Ph.D. in classics, Backvis definitely decided to make his academic career in the field of Slavic studies. His first large work on Polish literature (published along with several minor articles on Polish and Russian literature) was on the famous poet of the eighteenth century, Trembecki. This publication immediately established Backvis' reputation. His work for the agrégation was a large monograph on the Polish poet and playwright, S. Wyspianski, who belonged to "Young Poland", a group which represented a trend in modern Polish literature parallel to Western European modernism and symbolism. This work, in which Backvis showed again an extraordinary and penetrating knowledge of Polish language and literature, and its cultural traditions, was published only after the war. His thesis was supposed to be discussed by the members of Backvis' committee ad hoc in July of 1939. I was obliged to go to Brussels not only in my capacity as the professor who held the chair of Slavic philology in Brussels and as Backvis' teacher, but I discovered my presence was indispensable for some other reasons as well. To the committee belonged Professor H. Grégoire, the famous Belgian scholar in classical philology, Byzantinism, and known also as an expert in Slavic literatures; Professor G. Charlier, an outstanding Belgian

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romanist; Professor P. L. Thomas, also a romanist; and Mr. A. Eck, a Russian whose academic antecedents were of a doubtful nature, but who, because of his friendship with the great Belgian historian H. Pirenne, had been able to write and publish a monograph on the Russian middle ages. Eck very soon became my personal antagonist. This affected his attitude with respect to Backvis very much, and all of us were prepared to have a battle in the committee. Eck used to teach in Russian high schools in Warsaw, so he knew Polish and had some knowledge of Polish literature. The only two men who could encounter him on this battlefield were Grégoire, to a certain degree, and myself. The battle with Eck was sharp, but my Belgian colleagues and friends supported me strongly, and we won our case. Feeling the approach of world catastrophe, I decided to take this opportunity for an excursion into France immediately after Backvis' agrégation so that I would be able to visit those places in France where I used to go as a child with my parents, and also some unfamiliar regions, in order to make a sort of pilgrimage before the war which, in my opinion, would lead to the end of European civilization. I inquired in the Foreign Office of Count M. Lubienski, whether the international situation would allow me to make the trip. The answer was that I would probably be able to travel safely for at least a few weeks. For some reason which I do not remember, instead of taking the train bleu, on which I traveled usually, I took a common express. When this train stopped at the last Polish railway station, Zb^szyn, I could see several trains on the sidings filled with, as I learned, Jews expelled from Germany. I also learned that there were many Jews from Germany staying in the town and waiting for the trains. At that time quite a few distinguished and wealthy Poles, such as Prince Sanguszko and several other landowners, sent large supplies of food to Zb^szyn for those Jews who had been driven out of Germany. As far as I know, some settled in Poland and some in neighboring countries. I knew about these deportations and the Polish help before my trip from the newspapers. People at the station were talking about all of this; as far as I remember, these peregrinations of the Jews lasted for some time. When we reached Germany, the common express had some German cars, among them a German dining car. On that train one could meet local passengers who where traveling between Warsaw and the German frontier or between one German frontier point and another. At luncheon in the dining car I had a small table which I shared with a German, a man who was probably in his forties. While eating we talked, and he

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showed me (this was after we had passed Berlin) some German factories producing the Volkswagen, telling me that the Führer was providing every German with a car. He displayed his enthusiasm for Hitler's achievements and his admiration for the growing economic welfare of Germany. I asked him what he thought about the international situation. His answer was short and determined: "There won't be any war, because the Führer said so." To this I answered that I was happy to hear this statement, but at the same time, I was inquisitive about German territorial claims. His next statement was no less sharp and determined: "We shall get Danzig and the Corridor because the Führer said so." I replied, "I am not the Führer, I am not a diplomat or a politician, but an ordinary Polish citizen; as such, I do not have any special information, but I can assure you that if the Führer tries to get Danzig and the Corridor, he will precipitate a war. Poland will not give up a single piece of her territory without fighting for it. I cannot predict the outcome of the war, but if the Führer will not abandon his demands, war will be inevitable." My German once more repeated his sacramental phrase, and he did it without any irritation or aggressiveness, quite calmly, "There won't be any war, but we shall get Danzig and the Corridor because the Führer said so." I must confess that I was stupefied. This German was probably some industrialist or a businessman who gave the impression of being intelligent, and he was quite entertaining when he described all the economic and social achievements of Hitler's regime, and of what was, in general, going on in Germany. But in the matter of the dreadful international relations, he was stubbornly and absolutely immune to any rational arguments. I arrived in Brussels, feeling very uncomfortable because of this discussion. Here I would like to mention a friend of mine, Mrs. B., a charming, very beautiful young woman, a widow of a high Polish official who was much older than she, and who, after a stroke, fearing paralysis, committed suicide several years before the time I am describing here to save his wife from a painful existence. She was a very wealthy person in her own right and inherited a large amount of money from her husband. Her husband's tragic end affected her deeply, and unfortunately she indulged in drinking, and this became a sort of nightmare in her existence. As often happens in such cases, she was a perfectly balanced and normal person when sober, but the smallest amount of alcohol would upset her

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immediately and bring her to a state of moral irresponsibility. It happened that she traveled a great deal and knew various European countries, with the exception of France. She spoke perfect German, excellent English; her French was rather weak. As an enthusiast of France, I persuaded her to make that trip with me, so that at least at the end of the civilized life we had known, she would see France. I communicated my apocalyptic attitude to her. She was supposed to arrive in Paris at the time when I would be free after my commitments in Brussels. When I reached Paris, I showed Mrs. B. the most beautiful and historic sections of the city and its theaters and museums - we only had a few days to devote to Paris. Then, we made a trip through the famous region of the castles of the Loire, and on this occasion I was finally able to visit Alfred de Vigny's birthplace, Loches. (When I was studying French literature in Moscow before the First World War, I wrote my thesis on Alfred de Vigny, and my first book, published later in Poland, dealt with the poet's religious pessimism. A. de Vigny continued to interest me, and I wrote about him later; one of my recent studies in America also deals with this great poet.) From Loches we went to Bordeaux, to Arcachon, to Pontaillac, a charming beach situated in a ravishing cove surrounded by beautiful rocks, where I had spent several holidays in the twenties. Then we went on to Biarritz, which disillusioned me, for I had preserved a vision of it from 1906 when as a youth I spent a summer there with my parents, and it was the most luxurious and elegant beach in the world. At that time my mother, a fervent Catholic, took my sister and me to Lourdes. Now, also, we went to Lourdes and from there back to Paris. On the whole, I had the feeling of quite a successful trip. There were, however, some uncomfortable phases in our journey, such as my struggle to help my companion maintain a balanced condition, and of course the general political atmosphere of the world, which was becoming more and more tense every day, gave me a sense of foreboding. We traveled through beautiful landscapes, saw the limpid sky of Touraine and the marvelous blue-green of the "emerald shore": the Pyrénées were as if shadowed by an approaching black cloud. Ever since the First World War, August had never been a pleasant month for the tourist in France because of the so-called congés payés, when all the French workers and bourgeois were traveling with their families, crowding the beaches, towns, and resorts; but August of 1939 was especially unpleasant as all these people swarming around, eating, drinking, and covering the beaches were - as it seemed to us - particularly noisy

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and vulgar. Against the background of the troubled political climate of Europe, their indifferent attitude was irritating to me to the last degree. The weather for our trip was perfect. I saw charming, golden, and green Touraine for the first time in my life, with its really beautiful châteaux, excellent food, and incredibly good wines, which are never so good when you drink them elsewhere; the dark green Pays Basque with the imposing Pyrénées, which are particularly beautiful when viewed from La Promenade des Pyrénées in Pau (which I first saw in 1906, and which now reminds me a little of some parts of California); Lourdes with my reminiscences associated with my mother, who died in 1923. All this was moving, and superb. However, my uncomfortable feelings were strengthened by the striking contrast between those people on the beaches, preoccupied with their vulgar enjoyments, and the atmosphere of the world which was emanating from the radio and the newspapers. If my German from the train shocked me with his blind stubbornness, these French crowds shocked me with their absolute indifference and unconsciousness of what was going on in the world and of what was threatening not only Poland, but France as well. I had a talk on the train between Biarritz and Pau with a young Frenchman who was a salesman in an insurance company. When I asked him what the reaction of France would be if Hitler attacked Poland (this was in connection with the Franco-Polish alliance), his answer was that, in his opinion, France would not fight. "Look around and see; look at all those people. Do you think that they are ready for war? They don't even think about it; they haven't the slightest interest in the international situation." One remembers the insolent slogan of that time: "Will you fight for Danzig?" which blinded the French people and masked reality. I was watching the newspapers with great care and fear, buying them constantly wherever it was possible to get them, and counting in my mind the days which fate was allowing us to spend abroad. On the fourteenth of August we arrived from Lourdes in Pau, which I had liked ever since the trip I made there which my parents in 1906. (At that time Pau was one of the most exclusive places, generally visited by the British in autumn, who used to go there to hunt, and in those years the presence of the British was always a sign of luxury and distinction. All this started to change after the First World War, and it has definitely changed now, when the English tourist is no more a dictator of good taste and no more a lord who must have the best things offered to his lordship. This was a most offensive manner for all those who were not British.) In August, 1939,

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Pau was not at all the Pau of 1906; it had become a solitary, quiet, dormant town, almost without tourists. On the fifteenth of August, from the morning on, I was running from our hotel down to the railway station almost every hour in order to get as quickly as possible Parisian newspapers brought to Pau by arriving trains. Just after lunch I got a paper which reviewed the encounter of Ribbentrop and Ciano. I ran back to the hotel where my friend was resting; Lourdes and the trip from Lourdes to Pau had tired her. I told her that we must leave for Paris that very night. I had no military obligations; I served twice as volunteer, 1918-1919 and in 1920, in a Polish regiment of lancers and, fortunately, I received only decorations (I was under fire several times), but was never commissioned; I escaped that, having been claimed by the Foreign Office in the nick of time. Had I been a commissioned officer, I would have been drafted in 1939, but as a simple soldier of my age (I was forty-eight), I was no longer subject to mobilization. However, I felt that, in case of war, in spite of my troubles in Poland, I should join my country, share her fate; besides, I had also in mind my duties at the University and my personal property. My friend was even more anxious to return to Poland as fast as possible. Immediately after our arrival in Paris, as soon as we were settled in an hotel, we went to the Polish Embassy; this was the morning of August sixteenth, on a Monday. For several years the Polish Embassy had been located in one of the most beautiful old Parisian palaces, Hôtel Sagan; it was one of the most impressive embassies in Paris. For years I had known the embassy very well; I was acquainted with all our ministers and later, the ambassadors, counselors, secretaries, and even doormen. My friend remained on a bench of the neighboring square, and I went in to see the ambassador, whom I knew very well. As soon as the doorman opened the door, he told me that the ambassador was not in Paris; he was still on his weekend in some country place! He added that the chargé d'affaires, Minister Frankowski (whom I also knew very well) was talking to the ambassador on the phone and would receive me as soon as he had finished. I could not conceal my astonishment that, at such a moment, our ambassador was still on his weekend! Frankowski, who in general liked to talk in French, answered my questions by saying, "Je pense que les canons ne vont pas encore gronder pendant quelques jours; donc vous avez, cher ami, un peu de temps devant vous." From his office I went to see Lechon, our great poet, who for years had held the position of a cultural counselor at the Polish Embassy in Paris. When he saw me, he said that he had just arrived from Warsaw, and

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added, "I might die in Warsaw, and I might live in Paris, but I do not want to be seized by the Germans on my trip from Warsaw to Paris and put in a camp. So, in my opinion, if you wish to return to Poland for the war, you should not tarry here too long." As I had some things to do in Paris and also in Brussels, I decided to remain for a few days abroad, but my friend took the train bleu on the same day at five o'clock in the afternoon. When I returned from the Gare du Nord from where her train left, I saw Paschalski, a Polish lawyer and politician, in front of the Opera House; he was a senator belonging to the ruling group in the Polish Government. At another time and under different conditions, I probably would not have cared to have run after him in Paris; but, under the circumstances, being in a state of great apprehension, I caught up with him in order to ask him his views on the situation. He said to me, "I arrived from Warsaw today. I was present at the military parade on the sixth of August in Cracow. I saw there the whole government and our military general staff and, as I mentioned, the revue on the Bionie (a large field in the suburbs between Cracow and Jordan Park which customarily was used for military parades). It was such a display of our military power that if this doesn't stop Hitler, I don't know what will." I left him very quickly, being discouraged with his naivete. I knew what those parades were - regiments of cavalry, one with black horses, another with white, a third with chestnut, galloping one after the other - some tanks, some guns, some other weapons - simply a brilliant, but anachronistic spectacle for people more interested in horses and good riding than in the problems of efficient military defense. Towards the end of the week, on Friday, I arrived in Brussels in the evening. I first called a dear Russian friend, Madame E. I. Basilevsky, a famous beauty, the wife of the son of the last marshal of nobility of the Moscow Province and the Master of the Stables of the Imperial Court. As usual, she greeted me on the telephone with great friendliness and asked me what I was doing in Brussels and when I had arrived. I answered, "I am going to a slaughter." "What do you mean?" I said, "The war is inevitable and I have no illusions as far as what will happen to us." We agreed that I would see her that night, but before that I was going to call the Polish Legation; the Polish Minister at that time was M. Moscicki, a good friend of mine, the son of the President of the Polish

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Republic. He answered my call and said that he was going the next morning to Bioul, a marvelous château which belonged to G. Vaxelaire the Belgian millionaire, who was the owner of the largest department store in Brussels, "Au Bon Marché", and also an honorary consul of Poland in the city. Moécicki insisted that I should come also. I protested, but he finally forced me to accept, saying, "You may stay until Monday for lunch. We shall have with us a Belgian correspondent who is now in London, and he will bring news from there, and in the meantime you shall come to Bioul, and we can discuss the whole situation." We agreed that I would not come on Saturday, but that he would send his car from Bioul to pick me up on Sunday after lunch, and that on Monday we would all return to Brussels. When I arrived in Bioul, a really magnificent place with an enormous beautiful park, I learned from the servants that the consul-general and "his excellency" were playing golf and would return soon for dinner. Of course, we had to change for the evening, so I got out my dinner jacket, and we had a sumptuous dinner with lobster, pheasant, and only champagnes from the beginning to the end, but for each of the several courses there was served a different vintage year. To be frank, I spent that evening impatiently and anxiously waiting for the moment when we would return to Brussels. The Belgian correspondent did not bring any particular information and certainly no comforting news from London. Moécicki gave me a courier's briefcase and certificate to supplement my so-called "service passport" for governmental officials, with which I then traveled. When I arrived at the station, I immediately realized that the train bleu was completely empty. There were three people in the car: an Englishman whom I did not know; a Mr. Frericks, who at that time was a well-known Belgian industrialist, a board member of a large factory of engines (Cegielski) in Poznan - after the war he became President of the University of Brussels; and myself. Mr. Frericks told me that in connection with the political events he had been called by the board of that factory in Poznan, and he was going there only for one or two days. I felt happy at meeting him, as it gave me some comfort; I knew that Belgium was and would remain neutral. In case of an outburst of war while I was on the train, it would be good to have with me an important Belgian who could perhaps help me in the event of some complications with the Germans. In the morning the train stopped for a while in Berlin at the SchlesischerBahnhof.lv/as shaving in the bathroom close to my compartment,

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and from time to time I had to take some things which were on my bed. As the curtains of the window in my compartment were up, I suddenly saw on the platform Ryszard Ordynski, a Polish stage manager and movie man whom I knew well. I opened the window and greeted him. "Do you know what has happened?' he asked me. I said, "What?" "A pact!" "With Hungary?" I asked, as this was expected. "No - with Russia!" "Then it is war. Where are you on the train? Will you take your breakfast in the dining car so that we may talk?" This was on the twenty-second of August, and Ribbentrop had just left for Moscow.

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THE WEEK OF ALARM IN POLAND

In Poznan the Princess Casimir Lubomirska appeared in our car. (In the daytime the sleeping cars were open for other passengers.) The Princess, née Countess Therese Wodzicka, was the widow of the former Polish minister in Washington. She was accompanied by her son, Sebastian, and had a great deal of luggage. I had known her since 1913 when I used to frequent their beautiful mansion in Cracow. She was a very distinguished woman, kind and friendly, but known for her thriftiness and practicality. Thus, it was rather unusual for her to take that train from Poznan to Warsaw, for there were several daytime expresses between these cities. To take the train bleu, one was obliged to pay, in addition to the railway ticket, a fare for the sleeping car, which was naturally useless for a trip of a few daylight hours. I asked her why she was taking this train. Her answer was short: "The war is coming. Poznania will be invaded by the Germans, so I left my estate and am going to Cracow where one may be safer." As soon as the train arrived in Warsaw, I went directly, even before going to my hotel, to the Foreign Office in order to deliver the courier's bag and to see my old friend M. Lubienski. Since Beck's time, a guard-house with a barred gate guarded the entrance to the Foreign Office, and every visitor had to report to the policeman on duty, who would call the official the visitor desired to see. Lubienski immediately gave orders to admit me and I entered the large courtyard in front of Brühl Palace, the interior of which had been magnificently appointed under Beck for the use of the Foreign Office. On the large entrance stairs I saw the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, the former Polish Ambassador, M. Arciszewski, a man whom I also did know well and liked; also, there was a former colleague of mine from the Foreign Office, Gwiazdowski, who was in charge of the League of Nations in the Foreign Ministry. After my having shaken hands with them, Arciszewski

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(by the way, before my trip to Western Europe I also consulted him) said, "You know it is a mad house here. Can you imagine, they learned about the pact at midnight from the radio, and they called me to come and save the situation!" Gwiazdowski, a man of Jewish origin, was extremely excited and burst out with all kinds of critical exclamations. At this moment, Zazuliñski, a reporter from the Department of Eastern Affairs in the Foreign Office, approached and indignantly remarked, "Damned people! Spoil your vacation! I had to come straight back to Warsaw immediately." Then we saw a large car with a diplomatic sign on it drive into the yard; the large gates had been opened for it. My three friends greeted the man who emerged from the car, and Arciszewski ironically told me, "You see, this is the Rumanian Ambassador, here to say goodbye to Beck." I found tubienski in a very bad state. He looked exhausted, pale, and terribly depressed. "Let me first see what is in your courier's bag", he said. He rapidly read Moscicki's letter and remarked, "There is nothing new or comforting in it; the situation is dreadful." I left him and stopped on my way to the hotel at the shop of an excellent Jewish tailor who used to make suits for the people at the Foreign Office, and who had a suit for me, unfinished before I left on my trip. I took the suit and paid part of my bill, and then went to the hotel. I do not remember whom I saw in the evening, but the next day I was supposed to take the evening express for Cracow, and I had luncheon at the Europejski Hotel, which had one of the best restaurants and was generally frequented by people of society, the Government, and the diplomatic corps. My companions for lunch were W. Kamieniecki, a senator, an historian by profession, and a very intimate friend of mine, and also M. Zyndram-Koscialkowski, a former prime minister, at that time Minister of Public Health. Kamieniecki was already there when I arrived, and he told me that Kosciaikowski was now at the War Office and would certainly bring some interesting news. Although I do not know why, on the evening of the previous day I had formed the impression that the situation was perhaps not completely lost and suddenly it came into my mind that this Hitler-Stalin pact was perhaps a kind of blackmail and not a step leading towards war. So in the morning, remembering how depressed Lubieñski was, I called him on the telephone just to comfort him, as I felt a great sympathy for him, having seen him in such a state of anxiety, and he reacted to my call with a bit of light optimism. When I joined Kamieniecki and looked around in the

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restaurant, I saw a large table occupied by tubienski, his wife, Count Artur Potocki, and some other people. I went to greet them and to learn something about possible new developments, tubienski looked much more cheerful. He was leaning back in his chair, talking and smiling. When I approached the table, he told me, "Yes, you are right; indeed it seems that we may have some hope." After that Potocki turned to me and said, "Do you want to make a bet with me for 1,000 zlotys that there won't be any war!" "No, thank you", I answered. "First, I am not so confirmed in my pessimism as you are in your optimism; second, I don't feel that I have the right to make such a bet, because 1,000 zlotys is too much for my pocketbook." We laughed, and I returned to my table, where Koscialkowski was already sitting. He told us that the whole War Office and the General Staff were in full mobilisation. We separated in a gloomy frame of mind. On the platform of the station I met Count W. Zamoyski, a still marvelously handsome man in his sixties, a member of a distinguished Polish aristocratic family, and a man who had always been very attached to my father and included me in his warm feelings. Once he very generously helped me in some painful and heartbreaking circumstances which followed my father's death. I was always very happy to see him. He greeted me with his usual charming friendliness and said, "Are you going to Cracow? Then we shall have dinner together. I brought from Wilno some sielawki (a famous Lithuanian fresh-water fish). They will broil them for us in the dining car." I, of course eagerly accepted his invitation and told him that I would reciprocate because I had a bottle of Armagnac which I had brought from Brussels. The traiu was leaving at six o'clock so that the sun had already begun to set, but it was still possible to see the countryside, and Zamoyski showed me the new race track of which he was extremely proud, having played an important part in its establishment as a member of the racing board in Warsaw. "Do you know that General Ironside, who just visited Poland, marveled when he saw our track and said that it was certainly one of the best in Europe, but he was much less enthusiastic as far as our military preparations were concerned." (Very soon, however, events showed what the British preparations were like!) We spent the evening in rather depressed conversation. The atmosphere of Warsaw, as I circulated on the streets, had been obviously apprehensive. One sensed in the crowds, and even in the traffic, something of the kind of thing one sees in nature when a big storm is

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approaching. I felt the same in Cracow the next day. There were constant orders published by the Government and plastered on the walls, instructing the people to dig bomb shelters in the streets, gardens, and parks, and obliging everyone to insulate the windows and doors of his house. This, by the way, turned out to be very expensive. I spent a lot for the windows in my apartment, which was on the fifth and top floor of a modern apartment house, belonging to a colleague of mine from the University, a famous surgeon in Cracow. Having had so many upsetting experiences before, ever since the Russian troubles of 1917 upheavals, revolts, strikes, bombardments - I knew that the most important things one must have was a supply of water and food which one could keep indefinitely, such as flour, cereals, smoked meats, etc. I gave money to my maid and asked her to buy these indispensable items. As for myself, I was out the whole time. All the coffee shops and restaurants were filled with people nervously talking and discussing the situation. On the thirtieth of August the population of Cracow was warned that air raid drills would be held and that, at the sound of the sirens, everyone must dress and be ready to go to a shelter. The police would inspect houses and appartments, and all disobedient people would be penalized. Those were indeed terrible days. Between the twenty-fifth of August and the first of September, N. Henderson, the British ambassador in Berlin, was making every effort to cope with the threats voiced by Hitler, who now openly demanded Danzig and the Corridor and who, in effect, declined the British suggestion of a settlement based on direct German-Polish negotiations. A British-Polish agreement of mutual military assistance was signed on the twenty-fifth of August in order to strengthen the Polish position and in the hope that Hitler would be brought back to his senses by this new show of solidarity. Kennard, the British ambassador in Warsaw, transmitted to the Polish government on the evening of the thirtieth of August a German ultimatum demanding that Poland dispatch immediately an envoy extraordinary empowered to accept the German territorial demands. And on the thirty-first, when the Polish ambassador in Berlin, J. Lipski, had after great efforts obtained an appointment with Ribbentrop and told him that he was ready to negotiate, Ribbentrop remarked that he was awaiting a special emissary for such negotiations and added that he would transmit Lipski's declaration to Hitler. This was the last German-Polish diplomatic encounter before the war, which began the next day. Beck did not reveal all these details to the public, but rumors were circulating, and the people felt the approach of the fatal hour. How

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similar to Benes' position was now Beck's! Of course, his state of mind was the least of our concerns in those days when the situation of the whole of Poland paralleled that of Czechoslovakia. Among the many friends whom I was seeing at lunch, or dinner, or on the streets - everyone was constantly out of doors - I met J. Przyborowski, one of those good friends who had been very kind to me after my father's death. I used to meet him often at the home of my old friends the Count and Countess E. Tyszkiewicz. Przyborowski was a professor of agriculture at the University of Cracow. He was a bachelor who had a very nice apartment, some wealth of his own, and liked to entertain. In former days he was a constant visitor of the Tyszkiewiczes. Everyone knew that the main reason was the attraction of their youngest daughter, who was very beautiful. Later she married a cousin, the Count T. Plater-Zyberk. (They escaped from Poland after the war and settled in Brussels where their daughter married a Belgian, Count Liedekerke.) Przyborowski was a very gentle and nice person, but for some reason he often irritated women, perhaps because of a certain defect in his speech - he lisped a little - and, also, because of his essential timidity, which he sometimes tried to overcome by being unnaturally aggressive. There was some Jewish blood in him, and this, in addition to his very noble and humane ideology, colored his anti-Nazi feelings with strong emotion. When I met him on the street, he told me he was thinking about enlisting in the army. To this I answered, "I doubt very much whether you will succeed, as I myself inquired at the recruitment office to see if I could do anything like that, and they answered that men of our age and without officer's rank were not supposed to be accepted in the army." The impression Przyborowski gave me was that of being extremely nervous and depressed. In the evening I spent a few hours with an old friend of mine, Mrs. M. Gorska, whose husband was a young professor of botany. Her brother, Count Ludwik Morstin, is a well-known Polish poet and playwright and she herself is also a distinguished writer. I had known her since the days of my first carnivals in Cracow. She was well acquainted with Przyborowski and liked him. It happened that we talked about him, and she had also noticed in him that sort of pathetic attitude. We both agreed that probably his Jewish origin, which, in general, he tried to conceal, affected him more particularly in these crucial hours, and that he probably was simply seized by a kind of panic. We separated around ten when the city was completely dark, probably because of those announced air-raid drills. In the afternoon I had seen another friend of mine, Mme. E. Mie-

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roszewska, who at that time was the wife of a young journalist who has now become a brilliant writer in London in Polish émigré circles. She told me, so as to console me and to give me some encouragement, that at about five o'clock in the afternoon she had seen from her balcony magnificent planes flying over Cracow. She said that they were probably either English or French planes.

IV CRACOW UNDER GERMAN BOMBS

Once at home, I filled the bath with water and went to bed. At six o'clock in the morning, I was awakened by the sound of sirens, and I heard explosions and gunfire very soon afterwards. I thought that this time the Polish army had decided to practice an air raid on a great scale. I went to the bathroom and, remembering the order to be dressed immediately after the alarm, I took a bath in cold water (at those times I liked to do so, even under normal conditions) and started to shave. In a few minutes my maid knocked at the bathroom door and called me: "Professor, come and see what beautiful planes are flying over the city." I took my bathrobe and went out on the balcony, but I did not see anything as the air raid obviously was over. At this very moment, the telephone rang. I took the receiver; it was Count Franciszek Potocki, who was married to a Princess Radziwili. He had lost enormous estates and wealth in the Ukraine after the Russian revolution, but he still possessed his beautiful palace in Cracow, and several years before the war he inherited a large estate near Bialystok after the death of his mother; this property had magnificent woods and forests. When I lost my father's estate in Wilno after his death, I often spent long weeks in the summer riding in those woods, great and beautiful, almost like those of Oregon or Washington, with his charming daughter, Pela, a lovely and very intelligent girl. She had been through a terrible airplane catastrophe two years before the war, from which she had recovered miraculously. Because of her interests, she was working in fine arts in the Czartoryski Museum in Cracow, and at the same time she belonged to the Polish Red Cross as an emergency nurse. Potocki and his wife used to be very good friends of my father, and at the same time, my own good friends as well. Being older than I was, he once suggested a Briiderschaft. "Do you know what is going on?" he asked. I said, "No."

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"The war." "Impossible! Really? Then Hitler has attacked?" "Yes." "How do you know that?" "Well, that's a different thing." (I understood that probably his daughter, who was with him at that time in Cracow, had been called by the Red Cross.) "What are you doing now?" I said, "I just took my bath and shall have my breakfast and dress." "Well, then, as soon as you are ready, please come to see me." When I set out and had taken only a few steps on my street, a second air raid started, and policemen immediately began to push everyone through the gates of houses, forbidding any circulation on the streets. When the second air raid was over, I continued on my way, and as the distance from my house to Potocki's palace which was on the old market place, was long, I was obliged to stop several times. I must confess that this walk was not at all comfortable. When I reached Potocki's home, I found him in one of his beautiful living rooms, sitting at an escritoire, and when he saw me, he said, "How happy I am that you are here. Please move here and remain with us." This was of course very nice of him, and it touched me. I realized that he and his daughter had thought about my fifth-floor apartment, directly under the roof. I thanked him and said, "I must go and collect some things for the night and leave some money for my maid and tell her what to do in case of a raid." I was also very worried about my friend, Mrs. B., who had traveled with me to France; so, after having taken my things to the Potockis' I went to the Grand Hotel Café where I expected to find her. The manager of the Grand Hotel, K. Gruzliñski, was an old acquaintance of mine; he had known me when I was a child, as he was then living on an estate in White Ruthenia near the estates of my relatives. He was also a neighbor of the Zamoyskis and the Grand Hotel belonged to them and to Count A. Skrzyñski, a former prime minister and minister of foreign affairs in Poland. Zamoyski got him that job when he, as all of us, lost everything in Russia. I found Mrs. B. in the hall of the Grand Hotel, talking with Gruzliñski. She was in a state of terrible nervousness and at the very moment of my arrival, a new air raid started and several terrific explosions shook the whole building. She started to tremble like a leaf and weep; it was not easy to comfort her. It was clear to almost everyone who was more or less well informed that Cracow would not be defended and, in case of necessity, would be

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abandoned to the Germans for two main reasons: firstly, in order to protect this beautiful city, a Polish Florence, from destruction; secondly, for strategic considerations. The first two or three days of the war there in Cracow were for me days of great discomfort, particularly because of my perplexity. I was more and more absorbed by the thought that it had been indeed terribly stupid to have returned from Brussels a week before the war in order to be seized a few days later by the Germans and find myself under the Nazi occupation. I have not mentioned that several of my colleagues whom I saw there tried to persuade me to remain in Brussels where I had my chair, instead of going back to Poland. I wrote several letters and sent telegrams to my friends at the Foreign Office in Warsaw, putting myself at their disposal for any kind of war work, either in propaganda, radio, or in the Red Cross. None of these letters was answered, and probably none of them even arrived at their destination, as I realized a few days later. Potocki was, from the very beginning, absolutely against my plans. He considered that our duty was to remain in Cracow. Potocki was one of the greatest Polish lords. He was married, as I have already mentioned, to a Princess RadziwiH, the daughter of the famous Prince Ferdinand RadziwiH, a member of the Berlin Parliament, a man who during his whole long life had acquired, in addition to his family prestige, great personal acclaim. He was married to Princess Sanguszko. Both of them were old people when I knew them, and I remember that once after 1928, when they were visiting the Potockis in Cracow and found there my French book, Pouchkine et la Pologne, the old Princess told me that she had read it with great interest and was very pleased to find names of people whom she knew personally! Potocki's brother-in-law, Janusz RadziwiH, married to Princess A. Lubomirska, became the head of that main branch of the Radziwiils after the death of his father and inherited the estate Nieborow, with its beautiful palace, in central Poland, and from his uncle the large property and manor, Olyka, in Volhynia. During the First World War RadziwiH was on very good terms with my father and cooperated with him politically. He had an imposing mansion in Warsaw in which he used to give magnificent receptions, as he did in the period between the two wars, when he continued to play something of a political role and a prominent social role. Potocki was a man of a different kind; whereas Janusz RadziwiH was at that time an "haughty" and distant person, extremely handsome, and in his relations rather cold and reserved, Potocki, from the very days when I became acquainted with him and his wife in 1913, when he was still the proprietor of the vast

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and rich Pieczara estate in the Ukraine, struck me by the originality of his mind, by his spontaneous reactions, by his interests in literature and fine arts, and by his great sociability. He and his wife entertained frequently in their Cracow palace. I will never forget their splendid dinners, which brought together the older and younger generations. The reception began in the beautiful living room, which, like the whole palace, was adorned with French panelings of the eighteenth century and famous pictures of French and Polish painters. In that large living room hung pictures by Greuze, and a very unusual, large, exotic, seashore landscape by the famous Polish painter who lived in Petersburg, Aleksander Orfowski, who was known as a genre painter, a brilliant and witty portrayer of many aspects of Polish and Russian country life. Naturally, at these dinners, all the ladies were in evening gowns and the men in white ties. Everyone knew, from a plan of the table in the vestibule, who would be his neighbor, and the men knew whom they would lead into the dining room, following Count Potocki, who gave his arm to the lady of honor, and the Countess Potocka would be with the man who was to take the men's first place at the table. At those times, it was not the food which we particularly admired at the Potockis', but the chandeliers, the family silver, the crystal, and the vieux saxe china on which the dinner was served to some thirty people. The receptions in the same palace after the First World War were less splendid, because the Potockis lost their enormous estate in the Ukraine and their income had become much smaller than the one they previously enjoyed. Besides, they were growing older and paid less attention to such a parade, spending most of their time in Warsaw, coming to Cracow only for a couple of months every year. But the Potockis later came to consider it their duty to revive sleepy Cracow, which, as I have already said, suffered so much from the restoration of Poland. Potocki was a man who was not merely interested in literature, but who also used to write and publish quite good and interesting short stories in the best Cracow newspaper, The Time, which later was tranferred to Warsaw. He liked the academic and artistic world. Most of his receptions were known for the very gracious combination of various social milieux. In this house one always saw not only representatives of the great Polish aristocracy, as well as the Hapsburgs or other foreign nobility, but also university professors, physicians, writers, painters, and actors. From this point of view, both Potocki and his wife were different from her brother. I remember that Potocki once told me when we were making some comments on Prince Janusz Radzi-

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will, that "For him, neither you nor I mean very much; man begins and ends with a Radziwiii." In order to be just, I must stress that when I saw Prince Janusz Radziwiii in Warsaw recently he invited me twice to his apartment once for tea and another time for luncheon with his daughterin-law, Balala, born a Radziwiii. He was delightfully hospitable, kind, and full of genuine simplicity, and when I sent him my booklet on Krasinski after my return from Poland, I received a charming letter from him. He went through many tragic experiences and suffered not only material losses, but also great human ones. He became much softer and warmer without having lost anything of his great personal dignity. Prince Radziwiii now occupies two rooms in a Warsaw apartment house which suffered from all the turmoils of the war and of the fights and uprisings in the Polish capital. His palace in Warsaw has been restored by the government, like many other historical monuments of the city. Its present appellation is "the museum of Lenin". Prince Radziwill's sister, the Countess F. Potocka, lived in her Cracow palace until her death in 1962. She had one room there on the third floor, which formerly was the floor for servants. This one room, which she shared with her daughter, was her living room, dining room, and bedroom. When I was there in 1959, at a very modest dinner with several other friends, I felt that nothing had changed of her kindness, spiritual energy, or the friendly atmosphere of her home after twenty years of separation. The rest of the palace with all its magnificent salons and furniture is occupied by the Society of Polish-Soviet Friendship. These facts acquired for me an eloquence of La Rochefoucauld's maxims - they do not need any comment, any explanation: they invincibly tell the truth. On that memorable first day of the war on my way from Potocki's home to the Grand Hotel, I met Przyborowski, who was wearing climbing boots and a sport suit (he liked Zakopane, the Polish Davos, very much and used to spend much time there in summer and winter); when I asked him where he was going with his knapsack, he told me that since there was no possibility for him to do anything in the army, he was leaving Cracow, but he did not tell me exactly where he was going. The situation in Cracow, as in other cities, was becoming gloomier and gloomier. I think it the second day of the war I met Józef Czapski, whose father was the old Count Jerzy Czapski - a charming man and a friend of my father who was married to an Austrian, the Countess Josephine von Thun-Hohenstein. A painter, and now well known also for his very penetrating books about Russian concentration camps where he, as a Polish officer, was a war prisoner, Jósef Czapski

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arrived from Warsaw on a train which had been bombed somewhere near Czgstochowa by German tanks. This clearly demonstrated how deep the German offensive was. In Cracow we had the feeling of an almost desperate situation, the more so because there were no newspapers published, and the news from the radio was entirely chaotic. Potocki was indignant; he told me that the administration, the military units, and even the fire department had already left Cracow. We saw a military detachment passing through Cracow only from time to time. By chance, with one of them I met a good acquaintance of mine, Mr. Wierusz-Kowalski, director of the alcohol monopoly in Cracow, who was now wearing the uniform of a gunner. He confidentially told me that Cracow certainly would not be defended, and this confirmed the rumors which we had heard before. On hearing this, Potocki said, "Do you see that? They have left the city without any protection. Anything might happen now; there are no police, no officials, and at any moment all kinds of things might occur, even before Cracow is occupied by the Germans. We must organize ourselves in order to protect our homes and families; I will establish a guard in the house for the night for our own security." On that very night he assigned me three hours of guard duty from, I believe, three to six in the morning. Whilst I was walking under the beautiful Italian arcades of the inside yard of the palace in the silence of the dark and dead city, I heard only the noise of heavy cars and wagons - obviously military transports - either leaving Cracow or just passing through. These were the hours during which I suddenly determined to leave. I realized that there was no sense in my accepting the German occupation, after having returned from Europe only a week before.

V THE AGONY OF THE HUMAN SOUL

At six o'clock in the morning, wearing my riding boots and breeches and a hunting jacket, I went to my friend, Mrs. B. I woke her up and told her that it seemed to me the time had come when we should leave Cracow for Warsaw, if we were going to leave at all. She told me that she would be able to borrow a car with the help of the head porter of the Grand Hotel. Indeed, in an hour or so he did find a chauffeur with a car, who, for a rather large sum, was ready to take us to Warsaw. I took all the money I had in my possession, some three thousand zlotys, and two hundred dollars in gold, a gold watch, and a small bag in which I had two shirts, some underwear, socks and my razors, soap, and aftershave lotion. I announced my decision to Potocki, who was extremely sorry and who tried to persuade me not to go. I am really amazed now at how easily and even carelessly I abandoned all my property. I left an apartment in which I had a large collection of pictures, engravings, family portraits; all kinds of photographs accumulated during my father's life and his political career; a library of some seven thousand volumes in which I really had everything I needed for my literary and historical studies; all the notes for my courses; manuscripts of books which I was preparing for publication; proofs of books which were being published; an enormous amount of family silver, china, crystal, carpets which had belonged to my parents; some beautiful furniture from our estate near Wilno and from my father's home in Warsaw, which was particularly precious to me. In addition there were things of my own to which I was also attached, which I had been constantly accumulating, as after every trip to Europe I came back with some new engravings, some new china, some new vases, clocks, etc. Now, in the face of the terrible general catastrophe, all this suddenly lost any value and importance in my mind, and I was ready to walk into an absolutely unknown, confused future with just the suit which I was wearing and the small bag in which I had only a few changes of underwear.

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I left some money with my maid, who was an old, unmarried peasant woman - illiterate and quite simple, but fanatically devoted to the apartment. Every day she almost literally spit-polished every floor and doorknob, the furniture, and so on. I left my father's and my own archives in the Polish Academy of Letters and Sciences, under their custody and protection. When the car arrived, we learned that we were supposed to pick up some other people, an official from the military secret police and his wife and daughter, with a lot of luggage. Mrs. B. had a small bag and was wearing a sport suit with slacks, which at that time was a very unusual dress for a woman in Poland. She also brought two friends of hers, two women, who were supposed to leave us in a small town close to the estate of Count Leon Lubienski. The Count was married to the sister of Jozef Czapski, a very attractive woman whom I liked very much and whom I visited often on that estate, Kazimierza-Wielka. Leopoldyna Lubienska, known to her friends as Poldzia, was unhappily married, and her much older husband came to the estate from Warsaw only occasionally. Their eldest son, Jerzy, who was quite a nice and decent young man while he was studying at the University of Cracow, became strangely affected by the wealth he had inherited from one of his uncles, and was notorious in Warsaw for all sorts of often unpleasant extravagances and questionable tastes and inclinations. The second son, Franciszek, a very handsome fellow, was supposed to inherit the estate, KazimierzaWielka, and when the war began was already living there with his mother. He also had a young German girl with him there whom he brought to Cracow from time to time so that we knew her slightly; her name was Greta. As soon as the war started, I learned a little later, he was drafted and was soon killed. The youngest son, Ludwik, was a secretary in Beck's cabinet in the Foreign Office in Warsaw. As Mrs. B. wanted to leave her friends near the Lubienskis' estate, I suggested that we should drop in there and pick up Poldzia Lubienska, as she was probably alone and also might prefer to go to Warsaw and join her youngest son. During the trip, almost immediately after passing through the suburbs of Cracow, we saw multitudes of people in cars, in wagons, on horseback, or walking on all the highways and roads, and, almost from the very beginning of our trip, we saw and heard the German planes which now and then dived and machine-gunned the crowds on the roads. The people crowding along dispersed frantically and lay in potato fields or in the bushes so as to hide from the Germans.

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When we arrived at the tubienski's estate, we were dismayed by a sort of emptiness about the whole place; it would be difficult to explain precisely what impressed us; perhaps it was an intuition. Here and there some people were walking around, yet we felt that the whole mansion was abandoned. Suddenly, on the lawn of the garden in front of the house we saw Przyborowski. As usual he smiled, greeted us with a kind of exaggerated emotion, and he told us that he was there with Greta, the German girl. (Who knows, she could have been a German spy, about which Franciszek tubienski knew nothing.) We learned from Przyborowski that the youngest tubienski, Beck's secretary, had sent a car from Warsaw the day before to take Poldzia to Warsaw. Greta appeared in a while and Przyborowski danced attendance upon her. "What are you doing here?" I asked him. "You obviously can't stay." Then I inquired of Mrs. B. whether she would agree to take him with us. She naturally said yes, and I suggested this to Przyborowski, telling him that we were going to Warsaw. It would be difficult to describe his eagerness and gratitude. "You told me once that I helped you so much (he alluded to the fact that when I was trying to save our estate after my father's death he loaned me some money, which, when I definitely lost this cause, I returned to him) and now you see how magnificently you, yourself, are helping me." "Is there any possible comparison?" I answered. "Because, what does a seat in a car mean? Come with us." When we left, we suddenly heard that the secret military policeman had told the chauffeur that he was supposed to take him and his family to Brzesc, a city with a fortress on the very eastern boundary of Poland, some six hundred kilometres from where we were. The chauffeur started to complain and said that he could not go so far; he had his family, his wife and children in Cracow, and he could not risk such a long trip, leaving all of them alone for such a long time. The chauffeur was driving a private car, and he had been paid by Mrs. B. for a round trip from Cracow to Warsaw. The policeman did not offer a penny toward expenses, and the whole idea of going to Brzesc appeared to all of us to be absolutely fantastic. But the officer continued to insist, so I said to the chauffeur, "As soon as we arrive in Warsaw, we shall go immediately to the Foreign Office, and I will report how this man has behaved." This evidently impressed the police officer. Very soon after leaving the tubienskis' place, we were struck by a

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strange phenomenon. Until this time all of the crowds of people had been going in our direction, from Cracow towards Warsaw, and now suddenly we saw people coming from the opposite direction, in no smaller numbers, obviously going towards Cracow. The weather was beautiful; the sun was shining; planes were constantly flying overhead and they glistened and gleamed in the sunlight; the metallic buzz of the German planes had a sort of musical quality. We arrived in the town of Morawica, situated on a high hill, and as soon as we reached the center of the city, we saw the church and the market place on the top of the hill. The market place was crowded with people and horses and all sorts of peasant carts, and from there we could suddenly see the northern horizon, which had been hidden from our view by the hills. We saw flames and smoke almost everywhere, and in one particular place the fire was that of a burning city. We asked what this was, and the people said Kielce, the capital of the province, which was on our way to Warsaw; the highway from Cracow to Warsaw, which I often used to take in my car, passed Kielce, and I often had either my lunch or dinner there. Mournfully and in a state of great depression, we continued our drive, now going down the hill; I was not quite sure what to do, but I did not say anything. Suddenly, the chauffeur shouted, "Get out of the car!" and he pointed to a plane diving in our direction. We jumped into the potato fields and experienced one of the "nice" salutes which German pilots were giving to the civilian population, to the cattle and horses, to the villages and towns. When the rain of bullets was over and none of us had been wounded or killed, we stood up and decided that there was no sense in going to Kielce. The city was in flames, it could have already been seized by the Germans, the chauffeur would not be able to get any gasoline there anyway, so we decided to abandon the car, and each of us gave from three to five hundred zlotys to the poor chauffeur, telling him not to go any further, but to return to Cracow and his family, no matter what that damned secret policeman should demand of him. We left them in discussion and walked on foot towards a village which we saw on our right, surrounded by woods, bushes and trees. Looking around, one could see some few places which were not in flames or smoke, and there everything was wonderfully beautiful in the light of the radiant sunset, with the long shadows from the trees and from the buildings on the fields and meadows. As soon as we reached the village, something again seemed odd to us. The villages in that region of Poland are usually very long, and

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the peasant huts with their stables and gardens are strung along a very wide road. Sometimes the lines of houses extend for several kilometers. In general they are not overly attractive. This village was different; it was small and not on a main road, but away from a highway, and the houses were grouped around woods, trees, and on small hills over a ravine, surrounded by meadows. There was a sort of main street in the village, and we were struck by the fact that we did not see a single man; there were only women, old women, girls, and children. They all regarded us in an unfriendly manner. I asked some of the women whether we would be able to find horses in the village, and they answered abruptly, "The men are not here, and we don't know anything about horses." When I asked, "And where are the men?" they said, "That's none of your business." Only later did I realize what their unfriendly attitude meant and that the men were being mobilized, but for the moment I was astonished and felt uneasy. Suddenly I saw a man coming from the forest toward the village. I asked, "Who is that man?" The women answered, "Oh, that is the brother of the caretaker of the state forest. Perhaps he might help you." I immediately approached him (Przyborowski was in general in very bad shape) and introduced myself, telling him who I was, who Mr. Przyborowski was, and Mrs. B. He politely gave me his name. I asked him to explain to the women who we were, told him about their unfriendly attitude, and asked if it would be possible to borrow some horses so we might ride around Kielce to the east in order to reach Warsaw. He said, "Well, go and see my brother. His house is half a kilometer from here, and he knows all the villages around. He certainly will be willing to help you." We walked in the direction we were told and found a pretty house, the doors of which were opened by the caretaker himself. He was obviously excited and, after a few words of introduction, he immediately began to complain that he had to interrupt his liver treatment in one watering place and his wife the treatment of her gall bladder in another, and that both had just returned home. He talked so much about these ills that I finally remarked, "Well, your liver is a very important thing, of course, but we are in a hurry and we would like to find horses as soon as possible; night is already falling and the peasants will go to bed, so I would appreciate it very much if you could help us." We left the house, accompanied by him, and he told us that he would take us to the bailiff of the nearest village. We walked fast in the darkness, but the moon had already risen, and I remember that the road

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and the peasants' huts were very nice; each of the houses was surrounded by trees. He stopped in front of a yard and said, "The bailiff lives here; you may talk to him", and he hurriedly left us, saying that he must go home as quickly as possible. When we entered the yard, we immediately saw several horses quietly eating hay or oats in the moonlight, and soldiers sitting on the strawcovered ground. As soon as the soldiers saw us, they all stood up and looked at us inquisitively. I asked, "Where are the officers? We would like to talk to them." They took a few steps toward us and, staring at us, they asked doubtfully in low voices, "Sir, are you Catholics?" (By using this term, the common people in Poland mean, "Are you Poles?") I answered, "Certainly." I told them who we were and again inquired about the officers. They approached more closely, and still in low voices, said, "We belong to a regiment of cavalry. We have been beaten by German tanks near Jgdrzejow, and the officers told us to disperse in- an unknown direction." This statement shocked us in its crude reality. That "in an unknown direction" was terrible. I looked at those men with genuine compassion, and at the same time I was deeply alarmed - Przyborowski's reaction was much more intense. As a man who liked the mountains and also made excursions on foot in other regions of the country, and as a professor in the department of agriculture, he knew Polish geography to perfection. The name Jgdrzejow, which did not mean much to me, horrified him. He exclaimed softly, but with an expression of anguish on his face, "Jgdrzejow! But that is only thirty kilometers to the west of here!" Naturally, if the German tanks had beaten that poor Polish cavalry during that day, then they would be where we were in a few hours, or at least by the next morning. Przyborowski continued, "We must run from here as quickly as possible!" "Unfortunately," I said to the soldiers, "we can't help you, for we are going to the east to Opatow, and I think that you should do the same. Try to go towards the Vistula and cross the river somewhere. God bless you, and goodbye!" Our farewell with them was very moving, and I walked on with a heavy heart. Przyborowski, who knew not only the country and geography, but also astronomy, immediately became our guide, for he was able to read in the sky the road which we had to take in order to escape

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the approaching German troops. After a while, still walking among tall trees on a wide road in the forest in the bright moonlight, we met a man, probably a peasant, who was walking in our direction, and for some time he walked along with us. However, when we came out of the forest, he tooK another road to his right, telling us that some village on it was his destination, while we continued to walk along the same road on which we had been before, as we saw after a while that it was leading to a large village. This was one of those villages which I described before, a very long one, built on both sides of a very wide road. It was so clear that one could see everything as distinctly as in daylight. The whole village was obviously asleep. After passing several huts, we saw a peasant woman sitting on a bench in front of her hut. Since the time we left the Lubienskis' estate, where we had had some sandwiches, we had eaten nothing, and we were all very hungry. I approached the woman and asked whether she had any eggs, and the answer was no. When I asked about milk, I got the same abrupt reply. Finally, I asked for a piece of bread, and she said, "I don't have any bread either." Then she added, "Go over there to the Germans. They will feed you." I asked, "What Germans?" "Oh, there is an estate on the other side of the village which belongs to a German. He left, but there are some people still there, and they will give you something to eat." "Why should we have to go to a German estate?" I asked. "Perhaps you might know where we can find some horses?" Again the same negative answer followed my question. Then she said, "Yes, 'he' is still flying and flying and burning our homes, but 'he' hasn't touched the German estate", obviously alluding to the German planes. In addition to her reserve towards us, there was a deep melancholy and a sort of fatalistic resignation in her brief remarks about the flying Germans. Not having obtained anything from this woman, we continued to walk. After a while we suddenly heard shouts behind us, "Hey! Hey!" I turned my head and saw about eight men, peasants, walking in a row behind us. When we looked at them, they shouted, "Stop!" They approached us very quickly and immediately surrounded us. At that time, as we did not have any access to a radio, we did not know that the Polish radio was constantly warning the population against German parachuters, provocateurs, and spies, dressed as civilians and speaking Polish, whose task was to create panic among the people and undertake

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all sorts of subversive activities. When we left Cracow, we did not realize that our dress could have appeared strange and foreign to peasants, especially to those in some of the remote areas. My breeches and good riding boots and custom-made Parisian sport jacket, Przyborowski's leggings and heavy climbing shoes were not common to the peasants, but Mrs. B.'s slacks probably scandalized them particularly. Very likely, they had never seen any woman dressed like this. I did not think about all this at the moment when the men surrounded us, and I did not think that they could be taking us for German spies, the more so because very often our peasants would not even think about the fact that a foreigner would not speak the Polish language as correctly as a native. But I felt that these peasants were certainly not friendly and their intentions not good, and, as if led by instinct, I immediately thought their pursuit was the result of my talk with the woman who had suggested that we go to the German estate. She had probably alerted these men in the village. "Where are you from?" "Cracow", I answered. "And where are you going?" "To Warsaw." "Why? Why did you leave Cracow?" "Because of the evacuation", I answered, thinking that this explanation would be the simplest and that it would be too difficult to explain the real motives of our departure. "When there is an evacuation, people have to remain", our interrogator said; obviously, he did not understand the term "evacuation". While I was conversing with this man, Przyborowski, who was in a terrible state of panic and who under normal conditions always lisped, now mumbled; this created the worst of impressions, that of fear. At the same moment, Mrs. B. tried to add an explanation, but one of the peasants turned on her and said, "You bitch! Be quiet! We'll take care of you later." I immediately realized that the situation was critical, and I instinctively took a strong attitude. Later, this incident reminded me of another episode in my life, slightly similar to this, and also of Nicholas Rostov in War and Peace when he saved the Princess Bolkonsky from imprisonment by the peasants. Once in 1917 after the Revolution, I was alone on our estate, Borek, near Smolensk, where I was always very interested in the work in the fields and meadows. This was at a time when peasants, feeling their growing power against the background of the generally

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shaken order in the country, were sometimes trying to take advantage of their situation. One day, when riding through the meadows where some fifty peasants were reaping hay with their scythes, I was stopped by them and they said, "The hay is dry. It should be watered", which meant they were asking for vodka. My answer was short, "You will get it when you are through with the work." I continued my ride. When I returned, the men suddenly stopped their work, and holding their scythes like banners, said, "If there is no vodka, we will not work." I became angry and shouted, "Out! If this is so, you will never get a single glass of it. Be off!" All of them took their caps off from their heads and humbly said, "Oh sir, don't be angry. We are just joking!" At that time I was twenty-six years old, and certainly my position was different from the one in which I now found myself in this tense situation with the Polish peasants. However, realizing the danger, as soon as I heard what the man said to Mrs. B., I shouted, "Shut your mouth, you son of a bitch!" (I used the pronoun "thou", which one employs in Polish either with good friends or inferiors.) "Why do you address me like this?" "I shall do more than just speak to you like this if you dare insult this lady! Lead us immediately to the bailiff, you scoundrel! How dare you talk like this? Do you know who we are? Do you know who this lady is? March! To the bailiff!" The peasants recognized a familiar tone of voice, and my resolute attitude evidently impressed them. They no longer thought that we were German spies, and politely said, "Certainly, sir. Please don't be angry." I sighed with relief. I realized that I had saved us; perhaps we might even have been lynched. Later on we heard many stories of a similar character, which ended tragically. After all, the peasants were within their rights; they knew the instructions which the Government had given over the radio. The bailiff was asleep; he got out of bed in his underwear, and I said to him, "Now, please verify our documents and tell your people who we are." He brought a small candle and put some glasses on his nose and started to read, syllable by syllable, my university document, Przyborowski's document, and Mrs. B.'s identification card. He ascertained that we were university professors and she the widow of a Polish high official,

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and said, "Everything is in order." All of us became calm, and then before leaving I told the peasants, "You were right to investigate us; in war time people must be cautious and prudent, but you should not have used those insulting words, especially since you did not know who we were." We continued our desperate walk. Finally, in another village we procured a horse with a small cart. A man, standing by, who listened to our negotiations with the peasants, asked us to give him a ride. He was a man about fifty or more, wearing trousers and a sort of Hungarian-Austrian blue jacket, with appliqued pockets, popular in the country among men who were not peasants, but generally supervisors of the workers in estates. He also wore a typical Polish cap, a maciejowka. and had a dark mustache, a la Hitler. He took a seat in the cart, which we had rented in order to go towards Sandomierz, where we hoped to cross the Vistula. We could not rent the cart for that far, so we took it for perhaps fifteen kilometers in the direction of our destination. We were all very tired, particularly Mrs. B., who often had a temperature due to a lung condition; she was frail and naturally exhausted by the long walk we had made in the night. We were dirty, for we had unable to wash or shave for twenty-four hours, and this particularly depresses one in trying circumstances. After my experiences during the Russian revolution, I came to the conclusion that it is essential to be clean, shaven, and well dressed for any encounter with the enemy; any feelings of inferiority are dangerous in such circumstances. The man with the black mustache told us that he was directing peasants with their horses to some town he mentioned to us, for horse mobilization. I thought with sorrow about those poor peasants and their horses, which were being mobilized against German tanks, but at the same time I was astonished at not seeing any of them. Our companion explained that they traveled through the forests and fields and over the hills, and did not take the roads, in order to hide from the Germans. When we arrived in the village in which we had to abandon our horses, we found a large crowd of people. I asked for the bailiff at once; he was there. We approached him, and I said, "We are looking for horses, but first of all please verify our documents so that you know who we are", and I gave him my university card. He read my name aloud, and the small man with the black mustache suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, Mr. Bailiff, this is a great family, and these are great merits." I looked at him with astonishment, and I said, "How do you know my name?"

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His answer was no less astonishing. "I used to work on the estate of Mr. Jaronski, who, as you probably know, was our deputy to the First Duma, and he often told us many things about your father - I assume you are the son of Aleksander Lednicki - and about his great deeds." There was no time to savor the touching reverence with which this man spoke to me; I could only thank him most briefly. We asked for some bowls of water to wash in and a small mirror for shaving. We had scarcely any time to make use of these, either, because suddenly news came which agitated all the people: German troops were approaching the village! A large crowd was there, because a young boy had just been drafted; he was supposed to go to Sandomierz, and his sobbing fiancée was embracing him before his departure. We immediately took advantage of the fact that this boy was going in our direction; the peasants explained to us that it would be safer to walk with him than to drive in a cart, so we decided to follow him. At this very moment all the women who were there surrounded Mrs. B. and started to beg her to remain in the village so that she would be able to protect them against the Germans. It was hard to explain to those poor people that this was impossible, and that she would not be able to do anything, that the situation might have been different if she and all of us had been from this area. We started to walk and left behind us in tears not only the poor girl, but almost all the women who were so anxious to have Mrs. B. remain with them. The weather was still perfect; it was the famous "Hitler's weather", although September in general is always the nicest month in Poland. The boy was leading us through fields, meadows, and over rolling countryside. All at once we saw, far away, a long column of marching infantry, which was going somewhat across our line of travel and somewhat in the same direction. The boy then started to zigzag, as neither he nor we could tell from a distance whether they were Polish or German. Then I told him, "No, stop this business; let us go directly towards them. Whether Poles or Germans, they will see our group zigzagging like this, and they may start to shoot." The boy obeyed, and we went ahead. I explained to my friends that there was no other way. "Let us hope that these are Poles. If they are Germans, then we won't be able to escape from them anyway." Przyborowski was completely upset. He was walking rapidly, even ahead of the boy, and suddenly he shouted, "Germans!" Angrily I said, "Oh, be quiet. From this distance you can't recognize whether they are Germans or Poles."

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We continued, and after some time, when we were close to that marching infantry, we saw that they were Polish soldiers. Strangely enough, they had no arms at all, and most of them were walking barefoot, some of them carrying their boots. Later I heard rumors that German secret agents succeeded in poisoning the boots in the military warehouses and that the Polish soldiers suffered terribly from the boots and were unable to wear them, as they irritated their feet. I asked for an officer. A young lieutenant appeared; he was in a very good mood and started to tell us fantastic stories about how he himself had shot several German planes. Obviously, these stories were intended to raise the morale of the soldiers. The terrible thing in this whole story was that it was only the sixth or the seventh day of the war! No one had foreseen such a terrifically rapid disaster. The young lieutenant stopped his detachment, and we sat down under a tree. As we were in a village, the women immediately brought us milk, hard-boiled eggs, bread, and bacon. I observed with astonishment how avidly Przyborowski ate one egg after another, a piece of sausage after a piece of bread, all rapidly. Evidently, this was a manifestation of his physical reaction to the terrible nervous tension from which he was suffering. With the help of the officers, we got a sort of wagon with two horses and a coachman for which, of course, we promised to pay. We departed for Sandomierz. Towards evening we found ourselves on a small estate close to a village where we could wash, eat something, rest for a while, and also feed and rest the horses. Incidentally, the man with the mustache was still with us. We started our journey again in the late evening when it was getting dark. The little man began to tell all sorts of stories about Germans being here and there, around us. He was sitting in front of me in the cab, and for some strange reason, in the darkness, his mustache seemed to me that of Hitler's. I interrupted all his alarming tales, and then, forgetting how nice he had been to me in the morning, I suddenly shouted, "I don't like your stories, and also, I do not like that Hitler's mustache you are wearing." He did not react, and after a while I became ashamed of my outburst. During the night we found ourselves driving along with an enormous caravan of all kinds of cars and carriages, cabs, wagons - sometimes with beautiful horses attached to the backs of the vehicles - military wagons, and private landowners' carriages. In time the road became a little narrower, and we had to entrust ourselves to the caravan, which was moving in three columns. After driving like this for a while and not

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knowing at all what the whole procession was., we were stopped, as all the lines stopped. On our left, a little to the rear, there was a cart with horses attached to it on the back; some women were in that cart. On the same side .and closer to us a long military wagon, covered with straw, was stopped, and some soldiers were standing around it, talking and petting the horses. We did not know, of course, what caused that sudden stop, and as it lasted quite a while, I began to worry. Then, to add to this, I heard one of the soldiers telling another, "Well, if it is true that there are German tanks in front of us, what shall we do? You know that this wagon is full of ammunition." This was a rather unpleasant revelation, and I decided to leave our wagon and go ahead to get some information from someone, since I thought there probably were commanders at the head of the caravan. After, a few steps in the, darkness, I distinguished a chaplain; I approached him, introduced myself as a professor of the Jagiellonian University of Cracow and asked him whether he knew the cause of the long stop, as we were anxious to reach Sandomierz before midnight. "I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Professor", he replied. "Apparently there are columns of German tanks ahead of us on both sides, which are aimed at our road. But don't worry, we have a Polish detachment @f armored cars in front of us, and they will quickly liquidate the German tanks." I was not so certain that such would be the result of a battle between the Polish and German tanks; however, the chaplain added that the German detachments were small. The news made me feel particularly uneasy because of the presence of the neighboring wagon on our left with its ammunition. This was certainly not a safe place to wait for the results of the skirmish. I was thinking about moving our wagon somewhere else. But I did not have time to do so, because I scarcely had sat down in the wagon with Mrs. B., the small man, and Przyborowski (who constantly tortured our feet with the nails in his heavy shoes) when terrific explosions and shooting began, We jumped out of the wagon, and Mrs. B. lay down in a ditch which was on the side of the road under a big oak tree. I followed her, and then a strange thing occurred; we not only heard constant explosions and shots, but the entire air around us and over our heads looked as though it were being pierced by shining arrows. I never could find out what it was; machine guns shells probably caused those effects. Mrs. B. was in a state of complete prostration. She was again, as in Cracow, shivering like a leaf, weeping, and constantly crying out the name of her dead husband as if praying to him for support and protection. The

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cannonade did not last long; as soon as it stopped, the caravan began to move, and everyone drove so fast that after a while, with our tired, small peasant horses, we were alone on the road. The trip to Sandomierz was indeed dreadful. Everywhere along the road, on both sides, we saw villages destroyed by fire in which the coals were still glowing, and one could see the brick chimneys standing there like horrifying pillars surrounded by the ruins, of the houses to which they had belonged. Mrs. B. seemed in a critical condition with a high temperature, and her lips were cracked. Przyborowski appeared to be resigned to his fate, showed no initiative and made no comments about what was going on. When we arrived in Sandomierz we paid the coachman, who was supposed to return the next morning to his village, without being sure whether he would find the place intact or would find only cinders and ashes. We learned from some military people whom we met on the streets (it was already one o'clock in the morning) that, in order to be allowed to cross the bridge over the Vistula river, one had to obtain authorization from the commandant of the town; in addition, we were told that the bridge would probably be blown up at any moment. It was not easy to find the commandant's place at one in the morning; fortunately, he was on duty and gave us permits. We crossed the bridge, which was a rather long one, fearful of being caught by the explosion as the commandant had warned me that, indeed, there was very little time. We went to the railroad station, in front of which there were innumerable freight and passenger cars of the oldest type. A train was being formed, which was supposed to leave in the direction of Lublin, through Rozwadow, our destination; we still hoped that from this comparatively deep eastern circuit we would be able to reach Warsaw. The buffet of the station was almost empty. Finally, around five-thirty or six o'clock the train began to move. We found ourselves in one of the old-fashioned cars inherited from Austria and Germany after the rebirth of Poland, and which were used only for short distances, generally in remote, provincial areas. These cars had compartments with doors which opened on the outside of the train; some of the cars, however, had an interior communication between the compartments so that one was able to reach the toilet. Mrs. B. collapsed on a couch in the compartment; I also stretched my weary legs. Przyborowski was in the neighboring compartment connected with ours. Almost every hour the train was machine-gunned by German planes, and as soon .as the conductor saw German planes .approaching, the train was

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stopped and people got out of it and ran into the countryside. I especially remember one stop, for it was a delightful orchard of an estate situated close to the railway. We went there for the time of the bombardment, and I enjoyed the fruit trees under which we were standing; some of them had good apples and pears which I savored. After our stay in the orchard, we returned to the compartment. Suddenly Przyborowski opened the door on the other side and relieved himself. He did it in front of Mrs. B., which was a sign of a complete demoralisation - of a complete loss of control. We did not say a word, but painfully meditated on the condition of the poor man. As soon as we arrived in Rozwadow, which has a large station where several railroads come together, we left the train, as I was considering going to my friends, Count and Countess Stefan Tarnowski, whose estate was not very far from the town, on the eastern side of the San river between Rozwadow and Sandomierz. The Tarnowskis were very dear friends of mine. I used to visit them frequently during the summers, and I always enjoyed excellent riding and warm hospitality on their estate. I had know Marytka when she was a girl, staying in Moscow with her father and brother as refugees during the First World War. She was known for her great beauty. While we were standing on the platform of the station, I ran into an old friend of my youth in Moscow, a Polish writer, W. Evert, who was wearing a military uniform. We greated each other, and he told me he was taking a train for Lublin. When I asked him where it would be possible to eat, he said there was a good place just across the street from the station. We found the restaurant, which was in a small brick house. There was an enormous crowd, but plenty of food. I ordered wodka, beer, excellent hot sausages with sauerkraut and a perfect ham - one could find such good ham only in Poland. Some people were eating standing up, some sitting in chairs; it happened that Mrs. B. and I got chairs. Close to me a young Jewish woman was standing eating from a plate she held in her hand. Suddenly a terrific explosion occurred, and I saw, as if in a wavy mirror, the whole house lean down to its right and then come back to its natural position. It was as if it were a house of rubber. It is needless to tell what happened in the restaurant; the Jewish girl who was close to me started to vomit. We were able, however, to continue our lunch and left in order to find transportation to Zaklikow, the Tarnowskis' estate. We found a cab in which Mrs. B. and I sat in the back and Przyborowski in the coachman's seat, with his back to us. As soon as we

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reached the bridge, Przyborowski became extremely nervous because the Germans were expected to bomb all bridges. In addition to his lunch, he had taken sandwiches and chocolate from the restaurant, and he was still eating on the way. When we crossed the bridge, he turned to Mrs. B., who was smoking a cigarette, and asked her to give him her cigarette in order to light his. When I saw him nervously seize her cigarette with his dirty fingers close to the end which she had had in her mouth, I felt uneasy and in a low voice I told her in French, "Cette promiscuité devient vraiment irritante." Unfortunately, in spite of the noise which the car and the horse were making on the pavement, he heard what I said, and he replied, also in French, "You have hurt me deeply", along with some other words of complaint. I said, "My dear friend, don't feel offended. The problem is that in the terrible circumstances in which we are now living and under these horrible conditions, the main, and practically the only thing which we can do is to control ourselves. One must be quiet and disciplined in the midst of all these dangers, and you lost your control. I shall not mention facts, but you must take yourself in hand." When we arrived at the estate, I asked my friends to remain in the car, as I knew that Marytka Tarnowska did not like Przyborowski or Mrs. B. very much, and I told them that I would go into the house first to find out what was going on there. It might have been that they had left, and in that case we would have to return to Rozwadów and take a train. As soon as I appeared on the lawn in front of the large home, I saw several people standing on the porch and both Stefan and Marytka Tarnowski shouted, "Wacek! What are you doing here?" With them was Mary Sobañska, the sister of Aleksander Skrzyñski, the former Prime Minister, who was killed in a horrible and stupid automobile accident several years before the war, and of the Countess J. Szembek, the wife of the vice-minister of foreign affairs at that time. Stefan told me immediately, "Of course you are welcome, and your friends too, but frankly speaking, I don't know what you will do here. Mary Sobañska is leaving now with her son (a boy of sixteen) for Janów, and then later for Klemensów." This was the extensive property of the late Count Maurycy Zamoyski, the first Polish minister to France after Polish independence. "We allowed everyone here on the estate to leave", he continued, "and Marytka and I shall remain as long as possible, but the army decided to defend Sandomierz, and the artillery is near us. Already today we have had eighteen German bombs drop near us. But come in,

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at least to eat something. We have had innumerable people pass through here already, therefore we can't promise you anything lavish, but an omelette and some ham can always be found." Mme. Sobanska left with her son and with, as I saw, innumerable suitcases. I brought my friends to the house. Mrs. B. was so weak that she was in a state of complete apathy and had a high fever; she lay down on a couch in one of the living rooms. We ate rapidly, and Przyborowski went upstairs to the bathroom, probably to shave and change his shirt. Just at this time a large, dark limousine arrived from which a major descended; he asked Tarnowski whether he could get some fuel from him. He said that he was looking for his squadron which he had lost; he did not know where the men had gone after several battles with German tanks. He said that he was going to Janow, where he hoped to find some information about his regiment. I immediately approached him and asked whether he would be kind enough to take us with him, and he consented. Tarnowski gave him some gasoline; however, not very much because he needed it for his own car. The major was in a hurry, so I woke Mrs. B., who was still in a state of stupor and sent the servants to call Przyborowski. He descended the stairway from the second floor at a run, with one of his leggings unbound, and the long bindings were flapping on the stairs. He jumped into the car and took a seat on the right side of the chauffeur. The major, Mrs. B., and I were in the back. During the trip, which lasted about two hours, the major told us the terrible story of his battles: "Imagine, every day the same thing occurred. Our regiment is stationed in a place; the German tanks arrive; we shoot for some time; then we have to run away and the tanks follow us. By riding through the woods we are able to go faster, and we spend the night resting. In the morning the German tanks are there again, and so it has continued for several days. Now our horses and our men are in a state of complete exhaustion." Przyborowski was listening to all of this with obviously growing concern and despair. He suddenly asked me about my children. I told him that I did not know where they were now and that I was very upset by what could have happened to them; in the winters they generally were in Lwow, with their mother, but they had been spending the summers since my father's death (as they could not go to my father's place any more) on the estate of the Barons Heydel, which belonged to their mother's family and which was in Radom province on the western side of the Vistula. I added also that my son had spent the last winter in the

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Stanislas Lyceum in Nancy, that I had seen him last just at the end of the school year, and that he was probably at the Radom estate. Upon our arrival in Janow, we went to the office of the sheriff as the major thought that he might know something about his lost regiment, and I hoped to get some rooms for us to spend the night. It was then already past midnight. When we found ourselves in the office, knowing the awful condition Mrs. B. was in, I asked Przyborowski to go to find a pharmacy and buy there some aspirin and some vaseline for her lips, and I told him I would arrange for our rooms. Przyborowski, after a short moment of indecision, agreed. It was night, and the sheriff's office was not near the center of the town where a pharmacy could be found, but he went. The major and the sheriff were busy consulting maps. When I asked for rooms, the sheriff called a secretary of the country office and told him to assign us to some quarters. After a half hour or so, Przyborowski returned with the vaseline and aspirin, and we followed the secretary. He said, "Unfortunately, I have just one room in a house and then a place in a barn, with hay, where one or both of you gentlemen may spend the night." Przyborowski smiled at that and gaily said, "Oh, that makes me think about the former balls in the country when youths like Mickiewicz's Tadeusz used to be put up in barns." I said, "Well, indeed, I remember that myself, and when one was young it was quite gay and nice to sleep in soft and fragrant hay." But I added, "Since Mrs. B. is in such a bad condition, I don't want to leave her alone, so I will remain with her and you go to the barn." He said, "Of course." In the house there was only one bed and some chairs, one of which was an armchair, and a round table. A small vestibule led into the room. There was a maid, and we asked her to give us some bowls of water so that we could wash, and we decided that one after the other in turn would use the water in the vestibule. Mrs. B. promptly lay down on the bed, as she was very tired. While she, and later I, were in the vestibule, Przyborowski continued to eat his sandwiches and left a lot of crumbs on the table which we had to clean up. When his turn came to go to the vestibule, he remained there for a long while. We heard him ask the maid to wash his shirt and underwear so that they would be dry by morning. Then he entered the room in order to say goodnight, and said, "Oh, I should like to make my excuses to you and ask you to forgive me. I feel that I have upset and perhaps even annoyed you."

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I answered, "My dear friend, don't talk about those things. We have gone through such horrible hardships that naturally everyone became jumpy and we have acted just as exhausted people act. Please forgive my outburst, too. I hope that tomorrow everything will be much better. We shall find Mme. Sobanska (we knew where she was staying in Janow as she told us before leaving the Tarnowskis), we shall rent or buy horses and have a much more comfortable ride; everyone will have more space and we will not be so cramped." He left. Mrs. B. lay down on the bed, and I settled in the armchair for the night. At six o'clock in the morning someone knocked at the door of the vestibule. I opened it and saw the horrified face of the maid. I asked what was the matter. Her answer was in a low, frightened voice, "This gentleman . . .", and she did not finish the sentence. "What?" I asked. "He killed himself." I immediately went out, as I had slept in my clothes, and followed her. In front of the opened doors of the barn Przyborowski was lying on the ground. One of his eyes protruded from its socket. The other was also open, and a stream of blood was running from his mouth onto the ground. A small pistol, almost the size of a toy, was lying near his hand. I was crushed with horror and pain. Suddenly a wave of pity arose in my heart and filled my whole being. Trying to control my tears, I asked the girl whether she knew when this had happened. She said that very soon after he left the house, perhaps an hour or two, she had heard the shot, but as it was war and shots were very common, she did not bother to go and find out what had happened; besides, she was also afraid. In the morning, when she went to get something from the barn, she found him. After all the small, sometimes trivial, but still very painful details of our short trip with this man, I suddenly realized what terrible agonies he had been suffering. During that trip I had judged him, one would say, from a purely external point of view, and in those dangerous events which followed one after the other I had seen only the surface of the man and was disturbed by his weakness in circumstances in which our small group had to be strong, disciplined, and ready to meet the pressure of the war's terrible reality. When one is constantly threatened or attacked by external elements and powers, one has to meet them also, so to speak, externally, and create a sort of impenetrable wall of defense against them. But when the spiritual essence of the human being is with-

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drawn the animal instincts of self-preservation take command. I have mentioned some of Przyborowski's physical characteristics, but now from that lifeless body arose before me the image of the very sensitive and subtle man he had been. In the tumult of the war, in all the horrible surroundings, I had dismissed from my memory and mind all the spiritual elements which distinguished him, his humility, his mildness and softness, his gentility and kindness. This professor of agriculture was a refined intellectual, who read a great deal, was attracted by the humanities and by the social milieu in which he lived, toward which he gravitated, and with which he identified himself. There was nothing in him of what was characteristic of the scholars of his generation, of the sharp, radical, uncompromising approach to the problems of human life. Men like him were always able to harmonize new trends with the old, and they would never sacrifice the past for the achievements of the present day or for future possibilities. They would not cut down the tree in order to explore and analyze the leaves of a branch. In addition to this, Przyborowski was not only a hospitable man, who used to entertain his friends graciously in his very nicely furnished apartment, but he was also a generous man ready to overcome and forget any possible resentments which could have been caused in personal contacts, as happens to everyone. I also remembered that Mrs. Gorska with whom I had dined just a week before - and that week seemed to be so terribly long - told me, when we discussed his reactions to the Nazi threat, that Przyborowski was actually afraid of the dark. Now I felt remorse for having asked him to go to the pharmacy; I realized how great an effort he had had to make in order to leave the sheriff's office and walk in the complete darkness of the town. This could have precipitated his moral breakdown, the beginnings of which had been apparent in his behavior ever since our encounter with the poor cavalry soldiers whom we met after we had left our car. I was also tormented by the memory of my outburst and I again realized how terrible it was that the turmoil of events did not allow any time for tolerance and compassion for another's weaknesses and failings; one could not be a spiritual Red Cross nurse in the face of such disasters. Then I found myself meditating about the philosophical significance of my friend's suicide. Against the background of his whole personality, this act of his revealed to me not only a physical inability to cope with danger, but something else: the final decision not to enter into the horrible new world which Hitler's victories would create. The next feeling was that of fear for Mrs. B. I simply did not know

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how to tell her what had happened, for I was afraid that in her weakened condition this might again evoke the horror of the suicide of her husband, after which she had had to pick up fragments of his brain from the living room floor. A final problem also arose: what to do now. I told the maid that I would go to the police myself, but first I went to see Mrs. B. With anxiety, after several attempts to prepare her for the shock, I told her what had happened. Her reaction was something which contradicted all my apprehensions completely. She simply said, "How could he have done this here, with us! He has no consideration for other people. He could have chosen another moment and another place." I did not try to defend him or to explain to her the terrible agony which the poor man was unable to control. But at least my worries about her were eliminated, and I could try to find out what we should do and how to arrange for the burial. This is what war does; the human being is forced to fight for himself. We could no longer wait in Janow because the German offensive was probably moving toward us, and Przyborowski's burial created complications. When I went to the police, I met on the street another colleague from the University of Cracow, Mr. Myslakowski, who told me that he was in Janow with his father, who lived there. I informed him of Przyborowski's suicide, and he offered to help me, saying that he had decided to remain there with his father, that he was well acquainted with the town and all its officers, and that it would be easier for him than for me to make all the arrangements for the burial. We both went to the police and fetched a policeman who came with us to the barn and searched the body in our presence. He took everything which was of any value in order to deposit it in the police office and wrote a report on what had happened and how. We found, as far as I remember, five or six thousand zlotys, three hundred dollars in gold, and a gold watch. I witnessed all of this action not only with great pain, but also with some scepticism; we did what the law required, but considering the chaos of the war which was spreading through all Poland, I did not believe that the property of the deceased would ever reach his heirs. Anticipating events, I may say that later, during the time when Poland was occupied by both Germany and Russia, perhaps in December, 1939, or January, 1940, when I was again in Cracow after long travels and no less tragic experiences, one day the same policeman from Janow appeared in my apartment and deposited with me all of Przyborowski's money and his watch and pistol; after some time I was able to transfer all of this to his sister who was

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living in Warsaw. I thanked my Cracow colleague for his help, washed, shaved, and then went to find Mme. Sobanska. She was just leaving in a hired cart, and she told me that Mrs. B. and I should join her in Klemensow, the main estate of the Zamoyskis' enormous lands. The tradition of the family required every generation of heirs to acquire new lands, so that in our times the Zamoyskis' property amounted to over three hundred thousand hectares. (One hectare equals 2.47 acres.) This did not mean that the branch of the family which owned this entailed land always had large sums of money at their disposal. This enormous estate was also known for the very liberal and generous treatment of the employees and of the workers by the owners. The mansion of Klemensow was magnificent; however, on this evening when we drove in our peasant cart over the wide graveled roads and avenues of the park, approaching the palace, I was seized by somber feelings. It seemed to me that the trees and trimmed hedges which guarded the palace, so resplendent and imposing to the sight, suddenly became, in all their splendor, a mournful and austere symbol of vanishing glories; they lost their centuries-old prestige and appeared perishable and transitory. History seemed to disappear and everything became phantasmagorical and senseless. The widow of Count Maurycy Zamoyski, née Princess Marie Sapieha, was a very charming and kind woman. The mansion was filled with many people in addition to the married children and daughters of the Zamoyskis, but the Countess, who knew my father, immediately assigned rooms to us and invited us for supper which was just being served. A little while before Mr. Skarzynski, the husband of one of the Zamoyskis' daughters, whom I knew very well, had just arrived from Warsaw, and he was relating the details of the disasters that were happening there, of the exodus of the population from the city which was constantly being bombed, as well as the fact that the Government, with the President of the Republic, Moscicki, had left for Ofyka, the estate of Prince Janusz RadziwiH. Mr. Skarzynski had a flask of starka with him; he did not share it with everyone because there were too many people there, but he kindly gave me a few glasses of it, and this comforted me considerably. Among the people who were there was young Count Wladyslaw Tarnowski, the husband of a delightful young woman, née Countess Wielopolska; she was not with him and he did not know where the war could have caught her. I knew him very slightly; I knew his brother Juliusz much better; he was one of the most perfect gentle-

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men I have ever met. Juliusz was married to the Countess Roza Zamoyska; they are both now in Paris with their children, and I have always been very fond of both of them. Wladyslaw was also nice, perhaps even less formal than his older brother, but he gave me the impression of being a young man who was certainly not at all prepared to meet with and fight against the terrible circumstances of the war, which were horrible enough for anyone, but in his case I felt he was particularly unfit to be able to live and exist outside of the frame of life which his privileged position had created for him. At the supper and afterwards he talked a great deal with me and with Mme. Sobanska, and immediately very friendly relations were established among us. As the events of the war were becoming more and more threatening, and as there was no more hope of reaching Warsaw and even no great sense in trying to do so since the Government had evacuated, I agreed with Mme. Sobanska that the best course would be to go as far as possible to the east and wait there in some town or estate for further developments. Mme. Sobanska also had another idea; she was thinking about joining her sister Isabelle Szembek, somewhere in the east of Poland; this sister, as the wife of the vice-minister of foreign affairs, was probably with the Government. She thought that she would be able to get some help and protection in this way. This, of course, to a certain degree, interested me as well. I decided to follow her plan. She thought to go first to Poryck, the estate of Count Feliks Czacki (married to Marie Plater-Zyberk), which was further to the east, and from there to Smordwa, the estate of Count Lech Ledochowski. The charming Dorota Ledochowska, called Dolly, was born Countess Orlowska. (Later in 1939, Ledochowski was captured by the Russians and sent to Siberia, where he probably perished, as his wife never heard from him again.) Mrs. B. and I decided to travel with Mme. Sobanska and we left Klemensow the next morning. As I had no warm overcoat, and the nights were becoming cold, Countess Zamoyska gave me one of her husband's heavy burki, a kind of burberry. The next day we left - Mme. Sobanska, her sixteen-year-old son, Mrs. B., myself, and the innumerable heavy suitcases which Mme. Sobanska was carrying with her. On our way to the Czackis' we had to spend the night in a little town in a small Jewish inn. With a sort of disgust I got into bed, as there were thick quilts on the bed which I had always disliked, and I had a fear of finding bugs in such a place. Fortunately there were no insects. When we reached the Czackis' we remained there only a few hours, as the house was filled with people, and everyone was trying to go further to

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the east. The Ledochowskis' Smordwa became our refuge for several days. There, again, the mansion was filled with people: Arch-duke Charles-Albert Hapsburg was there, wearing the uniform of a Polish officer; his sister and his brother-in-law, the Princess and Prince Olgierd Czartoryski with their daugther and two sons (the daughter was in despair; she had just become engaged to a Count Plater who had been drafted and she had no idea where he was). Also there, alone with a small child and nurse, was Princess Jolanta Radziwill, née Princess Czartoryska, whose parents owned the Hôtel Lambert in Paris. She did not know where her husband was. She impressed me by her young beauty and very low voice, which, in combination with her features, created an especially attractive charm. There was no room for all of us in the palace, so Mrs. B. and I got rooms in the building which normally was assigned to people working in the alcohol factory on the estate, but this was close enough to the mansion and sufficiently comfortable, particularly under the circumstances in which we all were. Each evening an enormous table was set for supper in the dining room where those people and some others whom I have not mentioned dined and discussed the events and problems of the war. One day Prince Olgierd Czartoryski (formerly a marvelous waltzer and nowadays the ambassador of the Knights of Malta in Rio de Janeiro) went with his two sons to the town of Rowno to get some news and to buy boots, shoes, and fur jackets for himself and his family. When they returned, they told us that the German offensive was progressing and that the situation was becoming definitely disastrous, although the Polish radio was still informing the people of the terrible and very bloody battles which were still going on in the northwestern part of Poland. Mme. Sobanska, who, as I said before, had become a sort of guide for our whole group, came to the conclusion that the safest place for all of us would be Malynsk, a large estate which had belonged to Mr. Malynski, who had died some years before and had given it to the Ursuline nuns from Lwôw. The manager of the estate was a landowner from the Ukraine who had lost everything after the Russian Revolution, Count Wladyslaw Brzozowski. Malynsk was far away in Volhynia, behind the so-called Polish Eastern Maginot Line. We suggested to Count Ledochowski that he sell us four horses and two carts so that we would be able to travel more comfortably. First he seemed embarrassed to sell us the horses; he protested and said that he would give or rent them to us, but we answered that under the present conditions we did

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not see how or when we would be able to return them, and therefore it would be better to settle the whole thing in a commercial manner. He gave us a very conservative price, but we insisted that he should take into consideration that everything was going up, as we noticed in the restaurants and in the villages where we had to buy our food.

VI T H E G R E A T SURPRISE: "RUSSIAN S A V I O U R S "

Early in the morning we loaded the carts with Mme. Sobanska's suitcases and we were ready to leave. All of the Ledochowskis' guests were on the porch of the great house to say goodbye. When we were already seated in the cart, a convertible automobile arrived, from which descended W. Tarnowski. He saw us and said, "Just by some chance, I found this car. I have no more fuel, and I came to join you and to continue traveling with you." To this we said, "Well, we are just leaving." Then he greeted the people in Smordwa and took a seat in the cart. We traveled for the whole day, and in the evening we arrived in a place which, obviously, had been the garden and park of some large estate in former days. The mansion had been torn down, and on one section of what was formerly a park with gardens and orchards, was a small cottage, and here and there were some farm buildings. Obviously, it was one of those estates which had been parceled out to peasants in connection with the agrarian reform, and a Ukrainian peasant farmer, as we discovered later, was living there with his family. They greeted us in a quite friendly manner and gave us something to eat. The next day we heard a new sound of planes flying overhead from time to time, and their shape was different from that of the German ones which we had seen before. We did not know what kind of planes they were; we thought they might be Polish planes. Another thing which we noticed was that the proprietor who in the beginning seemed to be in a rather good mood, suddenly became somber and silent. We did not know what it meant. We left and later arrived in a town where we spent the night in the office of the bailiff. There were several officials there, and their wives. They had a radio, but we had no access to it, and we did not hear anything about the news. One of the women, it seems to me she was the wife of the bailiff, was saying things that appeared to me a little

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bit strange, although she put them in a very cautious form, using only vague allusions. During the whole evening she kept returning to the same theme, that "One was working and doing one's best to serve the country, and now, what will happen? It appears now that what we were doing here was wrong . . . One is abandoned to a fate which is so uncertain..." And so on. She did not specify exactly what she meant; it was possible to understand her complaints as the fear of the wife of an official, who was aware that the war was about to be lost and that the Germans might appear there. But, on the other hand, we felt that there was something hidden behind her words, and when we demanded to know what was being announced over the radio, she evaded our questions. We spent the night in a rather unpleasant and troubled atmosphere and left the next morning with an uncomfortable aftertaste from our conversations with those officials. Alexandria, an estate belonging to Prince Hubert Lubomirski, was on our way to Matynsk, near Rowno. Mme. Sobanska suggested that it would be a good plan to interrupt our long journey. I knew the prince slightly because I had met him at the Cracow carnivals in my youth, and I had known the Princess Lubomirska (Thérèse Radziwiil) before her marriage, and just before the war I had been with her and her two sons in a group of people who had hired a bus to go from Cracow to Balice, the estate of the Jerome Radziwifls. I remember that all of us in the bus were ashamed of its shabbiness, so we left it before the gates of the estate and walked to the porch and the vestibule of the palace, where we were met by valets to take care of our coats. As I now recall this episode, the bus acquires a symbolic significance in my mind. For in that shabby vehicle I was surrounded by seven or eight ladies and gentlemen of high Polish aristocracy. Their means of transportation revealed their recent past and expressed their future fate. All of them, with perhaps one exception, were people who had lost their wealth after the Russian revolution and they were destined, as a result of World War II, to become émigrés, traveling, conscious of their penury, in shabby buses all over the face of the world: in Western Europe, America, Australia and even Africa. But to return to Balice. It was a magnificent estate on which a beautiful palace had been built by Prince Dominik Radziwiil, who had married a very wealthy Cuban of the D'Agramonte family. We went there for the wedding of the granddaughter of Prince Dominik, the daughter of Jerome Radziwiil (he had married the Archduchess Renata Hapsburg), to a Tyszkiewicz. A t this wedding the engagement of young

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Radziwifl to the daughter of Marie Bonaparte, the princess of Greece, was announced. This was, by the way, the last reunion on such a grand scale of the Polish aristocracy before the war. I had a long talk with Princess Marie Bonaparte, who was known to be an intellectual, and who was on friendly terms with Freud and with the renowned Polish anthropologist Professor B. Malinowski of London. (He died during the last war while a professor at Yale.) Our discussion was about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky; Prince Dominik Radziwill had introduced me to the Princess just for the purpose of giving her the opportunity to talk about literary topics. But when I arrived in Alexandria another occurrence connected with Princess Lubomirska arose in my memory. This happened sometime in 1908, or perhaps even earlier, either in the early fall or the beginning of the summer in Moscow; Princess Brchette Radziwifl, from Nieswiez, wrote to my parents at this time, telling them that her daughter Thérèse, with her cousin, Mimi Pecci (the niece of Pope Leo XIII), accompanied by a French governess, would be visiting Moscow, and she asked my parents to guide them in the Russian capital. My mother was in Paris at the time, so my father delegated me and two other young men, older than I, to take care of the young girls. One day he told us to take them to one of the best restaurants in Moscow, the Ermitage, for lunch, having promised that he would come later, after lunch. When we got there, we suggested, as it was the custom in Moscow, that we have some caviar for an appetizer. The waiters, as usual, brought a large bowl of it on ice, and they served each person by putting a large tablespoon of caviar on every plate. This was the habitual portion, which, particularly in a restaurant like Ermitage, was very expensive even in those times. Miss Pecci, refused saying that she could not eat it, but Thérèse Radziwill and all of us started to insist. Finally, she cautiously took a bit of it from Thérèse's plate, and then she liked it so much that she ate almost the whole bowl! I was worried that we would not be able to pay the bill, but fortunately enough, my father arrived, paid the bill and took us in cabs to Sokolniki, a large park on the outskirts of Moscow. There, after having walked in the park, we went to a very large café where we took tea, and my father ordered pastries. The waiter brought an enormous tray on which there were no less than a hundred pastries. Each of us took one; my father asked for the bill, and the waiter presented one for five rubles, which was exorbitant for seven glasses of tea (in Russia tea was always served in glasses) and for seven pastries; all of it should have cost not more than a ruble. Of course, it was not

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the sum of five rubles which disturbed my father who had just paid at the Ermitage certainly much more than that, but simply the fact that the price for the pastry was so out of proportion. The waiter explained that this was a new hygienic rule - no food served on the tables of clients was supposed to be brought back to the buffet. Thus, that whole tray of pastries belonged to us! The girls, who did not speak Russian and did not understand my father's conversation with the waiter, became indignant as soon as they learned of the matter, and they took their forks and destroyed all the pastries on the tray. These memories were incongruously out of place in humble Alexandria. The Lubomirskis spent most of their time in France, somewhere near Bordeaux, where they had an estate and vineyards. They had moved to Alexandria a few years before the war. They were not, I think, very wealthy; the farm buildings were quite modest, and the house struck me as much the same, judging by its exterior appearance and by what I saw inside. It was a very simple wooden structure, not very large, and without a foundation; the wooden boards of the walls came directly out of the ground. When we entered a dim hall and then proceeded into the living room, I observed that the furniture was rather poor, and there was only one object which impressed me, a very large bookshelf, covering one whole wall facing the windows, on which I saw beautiful seventeenth and eighteenth century French bindings of old red leather, tooled in gold. Later I learned that these were French classics and the Great Encyclopedia of the eighteenth century, I believe a first edition. When we asked whether we could wash out hands and faces after the journey, which had left us covered with dust, a maid brought a very simple basin, with soap on a small plate and towels over her arms. She put them on a stool in the prince's study. There I saw many guns hanging on the wall. The prince, as a Polish aristocrat, was a hunter and had good and probably expensive guns. The supper was also very modest, but the Lubomirskis greeted us with extreme friendliness and kindness. One thing also struck me; whenever we heard a plane in the skies - these planes were the same as those we had noticed at the Ukrainian farm the prince, with his two sons, tore into the study, seized guns and ran to the porch, where they shot at the planes. It was a touching manifestation of patriotism and fighting spirit, but of course even good hunting rifles could not hit a plane. We left the next morning. It appeared that there were some defects in the axles and wheels of our carts, and the prince, with his two sons, worked with the estate blacksmiths to mend them. The whole atmos-

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phere of Alexandria, its hospitality, its patriachial modesty, friendliness, and simplicity somehow reminded me of Sienkiewicz's By Fire and Sword. There was something of the Polish mansions and wars of the seventeenth century in this pleasant, but remote estate where men shot at airplanes with hunting rifles. Although the prince was a brother of Princess Janusz Radziwiil and Ofyka was, after all, not so far from Alexandria, he had no idea of what was going on there. On our way to Malynsk we were passed by a cyclist. In a few hours the same cyclist passed us again, going back, and when he saw us, he told us, "Do you know what has happened? Russia moved." I said, "What? You have no right to say such things! Such rumors will create a panic!" He replied, "Well, you will see for yourself." After a time we were close to the Polish eastern "Maginot Line". It gave us a very strange impression. We noticed many new hangars and barracks, but not a single soldier. All was completely empty; no one was there. Two peasants were talking on the corner of the road, and that was all. We approached Maiynsk. The estate with its park and gardens surrounding the house created a sort of large island on the rolling hills. A little farther to the northeast a town was standing. We saw under a tree on one of the corners of the estate a cavalry man on horseback, as if on guard, looking toward the east. We entered the park. It immediately gave one the impression of decline; the ponds were covered with golden, fallen leaves, and the roads and paths were not maintained. But I remember that while we were driving slowly, for our horses were tired, I was struck by the decayed beauty of the place, a beauty which impressed me just by its melancholy. After a kilometer or so of driving through the vast park we arrived at the mansion of the estate. It was a large, but ugly building, which reminded me of some of the Russian dachas (summerhouses) or of some of the old villas which existed before the First World War in the suburbs of Austrian resorts like Karlsbad or Marienbad. In front of the house there was a small lawn, surrounded by the park, and the road continued, probably to the farm buildings which, as I discovered later, lay behind the park hidden by trees. The door of the house opened, and Brzozowski, the estate's manager, appeared on the porch. He recognized some of us and said in French, "I am happy to see you, but do you know that in half an hour 'they' will be here?" \Ve asked, "Who?"

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"The Reds . . . " Our ladies exclaimed, "Let us go back immediately!" To this I said at once, "Nonsense, it is impossible! Our horses are exhausted. We can't drive any longer, and besides, where would we go? Back towards the Germans from whom we were trying to escape? I don't mean that the Reds are better, but obviously, this is our fate. We have to accept it." Brzozowski broke in, "If you want, I will give you one of the automobiles which we have here. They belong to the estate." I repeated what I had said before, "There is nowhere for us to go." The horses were taken to the stables. We went into the house where we found two of Brzozowski's daughters, one of whom was married (her husband was in the army) and another woman, the wife of a cavalry captain. Brzozowski assigned two rooms on the second floor to Mme. Sobanska and Mrs. B., and a large room downstairs to Tarnowski, the young Sobanski, and myself; this was close to a very large bathroom. We learned then that there were some seventeen nuns living in a wing of the house, where they even had a small chapel. This was certainly not the best framework, as shabby as the whole estate was, for a meeting with the Bolsheviks: an estate willed to a Catholic convent, and the manager of the estate a Polish count from the Ukraine where he had lost his own properties. Almost immediately we felt that there was a sort of deterioration apparent in the household; the valet, the maids and the servants in general showed a lack of discipline. The supper was very poor, not because of the lack of products, but because of its preparation. The nights had become very cold, and the house was not heated, although there was plenty of wood; this also showed the carelessness of the servants and the fact that Brzozowski was no longer able to control them. We learned from Brzozowski that Olyka had been seized by the Reds, and there were rumors that the Government had left for the Rumanian border. Hence, Mme. Sobanski's hopes of being able to reach her sister vanished. The Bolsheviks did not arrive in half an hour, and they did not come for several days; we waited for them. An old Jew a small merchant from the neighboring town, used to come every night to see Brzozowski and always brought him either some cigarettes or tobacco. As our wardrobes were very limited, the valet gave me a beautiful, warm hunting vest, custom made in London, which belonged to Mr. Mafynski, and which I still have. It served me faithfully during our entire further

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pilgrimage. Tarnowski bought from the captain's wife an overcoat which belonged to her husband and his cavalry boots, which fortunately fitted him. The overcoat had no military emblems, but its cut was obviously a military one. The ladies probably also found some things, such as stockings and underwear. One morning, while Tarnowski and Sobanski were still asleep, I went to take my bath, as usual, in the neighboring bathroom, although the valet never heated the bath stove and I was obliged to use cold water. My pyjamas were hanging on a hook and I was in the tub, washing. Suddenly, somebody knocked at the door. As the door was close to the tub, I leaned over and opened it a little. There I saw Brzozowski and behind him a much shorter man, wearing a Russian helmet on his head. Brzozowski said to me, "lis sont la, et ils vous demandent." Before I could say anything, the Russian soldier advanced and said to me in Russian, "Please give me your arms." I answered, also in Russian, "Let me first dress, and I will give you my pistol." I put on my pajamas and entered our room, where Tarnowski and young Sobanski were standing, also in their pajamas. My pistol, a small Browning, was lying on a night table close to my watch and wallet. As soon as I took the pistol, the soldier grabbed it from my hand and immediately started to manipulate it. I took the pistol away from him and said, "Wait. It is loaded and there is a cartridge in the chamber, so I must unload it; otherwise an accident might happen." "I know how to handle it", he declared. I repeated, "Let me do what I want." He stared at me. There was another Russian there who watched me as I took out the magazine, ejected the cartridge, and surrendered the gun. The second man said to me, "I hear that you are a professor?" I said, "Yes." "All right", he answered, and left the room with Brzozowski, who had not had time to shave before the arrival of these visitors. He had to dress in a hurry and conduct the Bolsheviks to the farm. I shaved, dressed, put on breeches, boots, and my sport jacket. After a light breakfast, I went out and met the accountant of the estate in front of the house. Smoking cigarettes, we took a short walk in the park, and he told me that only two Russians were on the estate; they had arrived in a peasant cart.

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They went with Mr. Brzozowski to inspect the whole farm in order to find out whether there were any Polish soldiers there, and they wanted the cars to be given to them. They ordered everyone on the estate to give up their arms - pistols as well as hunting rifles. The accountant and I returned to the house and stood close to the porch, still talking and smoking. Brzozowski appeared, alone. He said, "Finally, at last I can go and shave and have my breakfast. They are taking the cars. They went through all the buildings, but it would seem that, besides losing the cars, nothing particularly bad is going to happen for the moment." He walked on to the second floor of the house where he lived and where there was a room in which we had our breakfast, instead of eating in the large dining room downstairs. In a while, we heard a car approaching. "It's our car," said the accountant when he saw it. It was coming slowly, and behind it there were several horse carts, loaded with guns. A crowd of peasants followed them. I also saw the old Jew there, but the first thing which struck me was that the two Bolsheviks, sitting in the car which was driven by the estate chauffeur, had pistols in their hands. When they stopped, they said to the valet who appeared and to some other servants, "Call the Count!" Somebody went to fetch him, and he came out onto the porch. "Now, dress, take an overcoat, and come with us." "Why and where?" he asked. "That's none of your business." "I am asking where, because I would like to know how long this trip will be and what sort of overcoat to take." "Take something warm, as the trip will be rather long, and you'll find out when and if you will return, when we get where we are going." At this very moment the old Jew stepped out of the crowd of peasants and said to the Bolsheviks, "Be careful, because the count is highly respected in the whole community and by all the people here. If something bad happens to him it will do you no good." I admired the courage of this Jewish man and his loyalty. I followed Brzozowski upstairs. There I witnessed his separation from his daughters. They kissed his hands, and he blessed them with the sign of the cross. He took an overcoat and a hat and went downstairs. The ladies came to the windows in order to watch his departure. I told them, "Keep away from the windows. They may see you, and God knows what they will have in their minds. Better not attract their attention. Get away

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from the windows." As soon as I said this, Brzozowski reappeared, and turning towards me, said, "They are asking for you." I would not say that I was enchanted by this invitation. Probably pale, I went down. "Who are you?" they asked. "You know me. You took my pistol." They saw me first naked, then in my pyjamas, and now seeing me in my boots and my sport jacket, they did not recognize me. "Ah, yes! You are the professor. Well, we need professors, so now you will be teaching our children somewhere for the Soviet Union, here, or in some other place." And with that, they left. Late in the evening Brzozowski returned. He said that he had been investigated by the G.P.U. in some town, which I do not now remember, and then set free.

VII ARREST BY THE G.P.U.

After a few days, when we learned that the Bolsheviks had put some trains on the Lwow-Wilno railway, I suggested to Mme. Sobanska and Mrs. B. a new plan, which was to go to Wilno. My idea was to try to go abroad, now that it appeared that Poland was being dismembered by Germany and Russia. I hoped that I would be able to reach Kowno by going through my father's estate which was on the Polish-Lithuanian frontier, and from there I could get in touch with Brussels and escape through Stockholm to Belgium. (The estate no longer belonged to me, but I hoped that the people there would still help me.) I told Mme. Sobanska that she could go with me and that once in Stockholm she would find some way to communicate with the Polish government, which was probably somewhere in Europe. Mrs. B. would also go with me. Now, as far as Tarnowski was concerned, who also expressed the desire to go along, I told him that in my opinion there was no reason for him to do so. I explained to him that since his wife was still under the German occupation, he should try to return to that zone. I asked him whether he had any money abroad; it appeared that he had none. (Just before the war the government obliged all Polish citizens to transfer their deposits from foreign banks to Poland.) I added that Mme. Sobanska had some money with her, and besides she counted on her sister; Mrs. B. also had a large sum with her. I myself counted on the University of Brussels which I was certain would not let me down. Tarnowski was not very willing to accept my advice. I went several times to the neighboring town in order to find out details about the trains. I learned that there were already Communist workers' committees, headed mostly by Jews who had taken over some administrative functions; I also discovered that there were two couples there from Cracow, a judge and his wife, and a prosecutor with his wife, accompanied by two janitors from the Cracow court. All of them had been evacuated from Cracow and had decided to go to Wilno.

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I immediately realized how advantageous it would be to join them and to have in our company two mature men, and in addition two janitors who would help us in transporting all of Mme. Sobanska's suitcases. We agreed on early morning for our departure at the closest railway station. In order to be as early as possible at the station, since I had learned that the trains, which consisted only of freight cars, were extremely crowded because peasants had begun to travel here and there, I decided to spend the night on the eve of our departure in the town. I found some quarters, and late one afternoon we separated from Brzozowski and his daughters, the captain's wife, and from some nuns whom we accidentally met - usually they kept to their wing of the house. During the night, when we were about to go to bed, Tarnowski unexpectedly appeared and said, "I became so attached to all of you that I decided to follow you. The atmosphere in Malynsk is so gloomy, and I don't see how I can reach the German occupation zone by myself." Before going to the station we had to go to see the "citizens' committee" in the town to obtain travel permits. There, it appeared that the Jew who was the president of that committee paid particular respect to me since I was a Cracow professor. I suppose that if I had not been there, my companions would not have received permits. I was given my permit without any objections, and I convinced him that the same should be done for my friends. When we arrived at the railway station the next morning, I had the opportunity to introduce my companions to the judge, the prosecutor, and to their wives. There were many tables along the railway station platform, with Jews standing or sitting on them. Those tables were piled with bank notes. The Jews were busy with all kinds of trade with the peasants and passengers. We also had our own purpose, which was to sell our horses and carts. I started to bargain. Naturally, prices had gone up under the circumstances but the Jews were trying to pay as little as possible, taking advantage of the fact that I was in a hurry, fearing that the train might leave. Indeed, I was very much afraid of just this. But I was helped once more by the past; one could hardly imagine such a coincidence. While I was bargaining, a group of three men in civilian clothes approached me, and one of them asked me, "Are you Mr. Lednicki?" I said yes. "I recognized you. I knew you when you were in Borek, near Smolensk. You often came to Smolensk when I was working at the railway station, and I remember you from then." I was stupefied. This was before the First World War!

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Then he said, "I am still a railway man, and I am working at this station now. The Bolsheviks are keeping us for the time being, so don't worry and don't hurry. I will not let the train leave before you have finished." I thanked him, and I got what I thought was a reasonable amount of money in these circumstances for our four horses and two carts, some 7,000 zlotys, twice as much as we had paid for them. We found some space in a freight car. The janitors loaded the luggage, which we sat on since the car was crowded with many peasants. The weather was still "Hitlerian". The large doors of the car were open, so that we had fresh air and could enjoy the scenery while the train was moving. At a large station in a town, probably Sarny, there was a passenger train going in the opposite direction towards Lwow; it was on the other side of the freight train. Tarnowski came over to me and said, "I think there is a possibility that I could take that train." I said, "Do so, certainly. I shall be very sorry to lose your company, but this is what I think you should do." A few seconds of indecision passed, and the other train moved on. The ladies of our party, and this irritated me very much, were not very happy with the company of the two Cracow wives, who did not belong to their social class, and they started to complain about the mass of peasants in the car, about the fact that they were tired, and they suggested an interruption of our journey. In addition, Mme. Sobanska brought up an absolutely ridiculous idea, which was to stop in Stolin, reach Horyn and to go from there to Mankiewicze, which was an estate of Prince Charles Radziwill and Isabella Radziwill both of whom I knew very well from my carnival times in Cracow. Princess Isabella was a daughter of Dominik Radziwill, the proprietor of Balice, and she had been fantastically beautiful. In Mankiewicze lived the famous British general and hero of the First World War, Carton de Wiart. During that war he lost an eye, an arm, and a leg, but he still was known as a lady's man and sportsman. Being deeply attached to Princess Radziwill, he acquired some land in Mankiewicze, where he had a nice cottage and where he was able to hunt; this was a region of marshes, ponds, and lakes, famous for their game. Mme. Sobanska insisted that the presence of Carton de Wiart there offered some security and some possibilities of escape, as he had his own plane; he had been an aviator in the First World War. I was bitterly opposed to the whole plan, telling her that we had already met the Bolsheviks in a very bad place, and there could not be a worse place than the Radziwills' estate; there was no sense in

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adding some new leaves to the aristocratic artichoke. Furthermore, Carton the Wiart had probably left long ago, and if he were to take anybody in his plane, it would be Isabella and not Mme. Sobanska! But, ce que femme veut Dieu le veut. I had to yield, and with the greatest displeasure I agreed to leave the train in Stolin and abandon the freight car in which we had had the pleasant company of the judge and the prosecutor, who were very kind men, their wives, and that crowd of peasants which was the best possible screen for us. We arrived in Stolin very late. At the station we saw a young peasant who was there with a tiny cart, who told us that there was a small inn in the neighborhood. We went there, and Mme. Sobanska ordered the boy to come and pick her up the next morning because she had decided to go to Horyn, a town nine or ten kilometers from the station, where she knew a lawyer from whom she expected to get some news about the Radziwills. Once in the inn, I assigned (I had become a sort of dictator, but with power still limited by the women's parliament) a room to the two men, another room to the two ladies, and as there was no third room, I said that I would sleep on the table in the living-dining room of that establishment. The proprietor was there, and we started to ask him about what was going on. He said that Prince Radziwiit had joined the army, the princess had left several days before, and General Carton de Wiart flew away almost immediately after the beginning of the war; another landowner in the neighborhood, Count Plater, had been arrested by the Bolsheviks. The office of the G.P.U. was in Horyn. I said to Mme. Sobanska, "Well, you see the situation. Why did we interrupt our journey?" "I shall go anyhow and inquire at a lawyer's I know there. I shall get some news. Besides, we needed a rest", she replied. She had requested the boy to come back at ten o'clock, and he was there at exactly that time. She was still asleep. I knocked at the door of her room and said, "We are no longer in pre-war times. You cannot make the lad wait so long for you." She started to dress. Then Tarnowski asked me, "Do you think I should go with her?" I answered, "I wouldn't. As you know, I am entirely opposed to this whole excursion. I consider it dangerous not only for her, but for all of us. We were secure in that freight car, the G.P.U. is in Horyn, we know vrhat happened in Mankiewicze, and the whole thing is purposeless and stupid. But if you consider it your duty to go in order to protect her, that is a different thing." "No", he answered, "I hope I may learn something about the demar-

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cation line between the Soviet and the German zones, and perhaps find something to eat." Food was indeed a problem. We started to negotiate with the local peasant women about a possible meal. In the beginning they asked 100 zlotys, plus two pair of shoes for a chicken; later on it was 80 zlotys and three pair of shoes, and finally we got a promise only for potato soup. Mme. Sobanska and Tarnowski left. They were supposed to return at one o'clock for the soup; eventually, we would all take the train in the afternoon for Wilno. We waited, and I continued to comment bitterly about the whole expedition. Mrs. B. reprimanded me, saying, "You are always a pessimist", and so on. At one o'clock the three of us were sitting at the table in the living room, and I was smoking a cigarette. I said, "You see? One o'clock and they are not here." I had hardly finished my sentence when we saw through the window a papakha (a fur cap) which was on the head of a Russian soldier. He was followed by three or four peasants carrying guns with bayonets. Then I said to Mrs. B., "Well, here we are! Now we shall have the 'charming' results of this excursion." A moment later I heard the soldier asking in Russian, "Where are the travelers?" He appeared in our living-dining room, escorted by the peasants, and demanded, "Your arms!" I answered, "They were taken away long ago. We have none." "You are under arrest." "What for?" "Oh, you will be told later. Now, quickly, gather all of your things and come." I asked, "Do we have to bring our companions' belongings also?" "Yes, everything." Then Mrs. B. started to complain, speaking in Polish, for she did not know Russian at all. She said, "Well, at least they should allow us to eat this." The soup had just been brought to the table. Then the peasants said, "Yes, a man has a right to eat and should be fed, so let them eat their soup." I do not think that ever in my life anything tasted so good as that poor potato soup; we were so hungry. Then, with young Sobanski, I went to pack all his mother's bras and corsets and underwear into her suitcases. We loaded all the luggage on the tiny peasant cart, and we

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walked behind the cart by the side of the vehicle's owner. At some distance behind us the soldier and the other peasants followed with their guns. Suddenly, the small horse started to run. I told the owner, "Your horse is running away." To this he replied, "Don't worry. It will not go far." Then he told us what had happened. As the morning was cold, Mme. Sobanska wore an enormous fur. She was a very tall woman, and this fur made her even more imposing. Upon arrival in Horyn, they found out that the lawyer's house was in front of the courthouse, on the side of the street opposite. The G.P.U. always occupied the courthouse in every Polish city. When Mme. Sobanska went into the lawyer's house, a soldier on guard on the porch of the courthouse noticed her and immediately reported them to the authorities. The G.P.U. men entered the house at a moment when Tarnowski, following the lawyer's information, was drawing on a piece of paper a sort of map on which he was tracing the line of demarcation between the Soviet and German zones, and was writing on it the names of some rivers and towns. They were immediately arrested. From them, or from the peasant lad, the G.P.U. learned of our existence. Mme. Sobanska told me these details later. The boy knew only about the arrest and about the order dispatching the soldier to the inn for us. While walking the nine kilometers to Horyn, I warned Mrs. B. and young Sobanski that we should tell only the truth not only about ourselves, but about each other because if we started to invent some details, we would be confronted with each other's stories, and the false information would be used against us. I added that we should explain that we were going to Wilno with the idea of returning to our homes in Cracow. Mrs. B. told me again that I was always expecting the worst, that there had probably been some sort of misunderstanding, and that nothing serious would happen. She had never had anything to do with the Bolsheviks, and was very naive in her presumptions. I must confess that, besides my fear, I also experienced a very uncomfortable feeling when we reached the suburbs of the town. It is not pleasant to march like that in public, with people standing in front of their houses looking at you, the arrested, escorted by soldiers and peasants. We were first taken to a small house; one large room in it was filled with horrible Soviet military figures. Pushkin's description of the Pugachov environment in The Captain's Daughter could have been marvelously illustrated by the crowd I saw there. Quickly one of these low creatures said to the soldier, " You have to take them to the G.P.U."

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When we entered the courthouse, we immediately saw Mme. Sobanska and Tarnowski standing there, surrounded by some soldiers in the large hall. She came to me at once and cried, "Save us!" I replied, "What can I do? How can I?" "Do something!" "I'll do what I can." I succeeded in whispering to her, "We are all going to Wilno, then Cracow." Tarnowski was silent; he did not say a word. We gave them both some cigarettes. We were all conducted to the second floor to a corridor where there were some seats; a soldier was on guard. We sat down, and in a few minutes a door opened and a tall, dark, G.P.U. officer, wearing a green uniform, rather handsome, with a very pronounced nose but not Jewish, appeared, and behind him was a short, blond man, with a typical Russian face, wearing khaki, with a belt over his shirt. The dark one addressed me, "Please come and follow us." He opened the door of a room, which was probably the office of the judge. On one side of the room, was the portrait of the President of the Polish Republic and on the other a large portrait of Marshall Pilsudski, hanging over a fireplace, in which some logs were burning. The tall officer told me to take a seat. Instinctively I went directly to the chair which was against the window, probably feeling that this was a better position for me than to have the light on my face. The short man stood near the fireplace, and the tall, dark one took a seat behind a desk, which was diagonally placed in the room. They were talking to each other without paying any attention to me, as if I were not there at all. "You see", the tall one was saying, "they are traveling and even have permits, which were given to them by some committee. Do you see that?" I tried to interrupt by saying that we got those permits from a committee which apparently was authorized to issue them. They took no notice of me, and continued to talk. Suddenly, the tall one abruptly turned to me, and said, "Your name?" I gave it to him. "The date of your birth?" I told him that also, and then I knew that the fatal question was coming. "The place?" I knew that I could not hide it because I had my personal documents with me, and in case of search, my lie would be found out. I do not

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know what happened to me at that time; a strange quietness and full control of myself took hold of my whole being. Slowly, after a pause, looking the tall man in the eye, I said distinctly, "I was born in Moscow." "When did you become an émigré?" The place of my birth and my perfect Russian made them sure that I was a White Russian émigré. I answered, "I have not become a Russian émigré because I am not Russian, but Polish." Then they asked me when I had left Russia. I said in 1918. "How could you have left?" "As a Polish citizen", I said. "There was no distinction at that time between Russian and Polish citizens." "You are wrong", I answered. "There was already a Polish diplomatic legation in Moscow." "In which month did you leave?" "In August." At this moment I wondered whether I should mention that my father had been the first Polish diplomatic representative in Moscow, but I again instinctively came to the conclusion that it would be better for me not to touch upon my father's history. He had been a member of the first Duma, a constitutional democrat, chairman of various Polish war relief organizations during the First World War, and finally was the chairman of the Commission of Liquidation of Polish Affairs in Russia, and as such a member of the Russian Provisional Government which was overthrown during the October revolution. So I did not say a word about any of this. "What are you doing in Poland?" was the next question. "I am a university professor." "Where?" "In Cracow." "What do you teach?" And here, with a certain pleasure, I prepared myself for an answer which I thought would probably impress them. Again, slowly, and after a pause, I said, "History of Russian literature." They looked at each other, and then both exclaimed, "What! Russian literature!?" "Yes, Russian literature." "To whom do you teach it?"

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"What do you mean, 'to whom?' " I realized that they probably thought that I was lecturing to White Russians. "To the students, of course." "To the students? What for?" "Well", I replied, "is Russian literature so insignificant? Is Pushkin a minor poet? Are Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy mediocre writers? Just as French, German, English, and other literatures are being taught, so Russian literature is also taught. This is why I know Russian so well." "Well, well, well", they said, looking at one another. "Did you hear that? They have Russian literature in their university!" They seemed astounded for a moment, and then continued their questioning. "Why did you leave Cracow?" I told them because of the evacuation of the city. "How did you leave it?" asked the short one. The tall one interrupted him. "How do you think? They had sleeping cars? Probably everyone left in any way he could." Then he went on. "How long have you been in this region?" "For only a few days", I answered. "What brought you here?" "I was trying to reach Warsaw, but I was pressed by the German offensive and finally found myself here." "Have you ever been here before?" "No. Never." I felt that I had convinced them that I was not Russian and that my knowledge of the Russian language, which at first had created some suspicion in their minds, subconsciously pleased and flattered them and created a more friendly atmosphere for me. Later, I noticed that the Bolsheviks in general, since they did not usually know any other language, were not at all astonished when other people knew Russian, and indeed, took it for granted that they should know it. They continued their questioning and began to reveal their interest and curiosity about our way of life. They asked me if I were married. I replied that I had been. "What do you mean? Are you a widower?" "No. I am separated from my wife." "What does that mean?" "Well, my wife and I no longer live together, and the marriage has been annulled. It is something like divorce, but the Catholic Church

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does not recognize divorce. Instead, there is a separation or an annulment of the marriage." "Why did you do that? You are not a boy." "True; you know my age. But sometimes such things happen. People do not agree with each other any more. There are circumstances when people come to the conclusion that it would be better for both of them to live apart." "Do you have children?" "Yes." "How many?" "Two. A son and a daughter." "Where are they now?" "In general, they remain with their mother. Where they are now I do not know." "Do you ever see them?" "Yes, in normal times they visited me." "Do you support them financially?" "Yes." "And your wife?" "No, she is on her own." "Is she married?" "Yes. She married again when our marriage was annulled." Obviously, they were curious about those details of a way of life that was unfamiliar to them. "Now, tell me, who is that big, tall woman we first met? Is she a fascist?" "No, she is not a fascist." "Then what is she?" I thought for a few seconds, as I did not want to use the term "landowner". Then I said, "She is a widow and a farmer busy with her farm." "A landowner and a fascist!" "Well, you say 'landowner'; I say 'farmer', but she is no fascist." "Has she an estate?" "She has some land." "Very much?" "I have not counted her hectares. I only know that the land is heavily indebted." "Her husband was killed and she wasted her money in drinking?" "No. Her husband died of an illness in his bed, and she did not waste

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her wealth in drinking. She does not drink." "Where did you meet her?" I said, "In society", and then I was struck by the semantic shrinkage in the language or vocabulary which the Bolsheviks used. They immediately jumped at me with the question "In which society?" For them "society" obviously meant some secret political organization or conspiracy. The term "society" as we use it had become completely foreign to them. "How can I explain to you what society means?" I answered. "It is just the gathering of friends or acquaintances in private homes or in cafés and restaurants . . ." "Do you know her well?" "Yes, I have known her for many years." "What is she to you?" " A n acquaintance; it so happened that I met her again at the beginning of our journey." "And what about that other woman? Who is she?" Again, I used modest terms, for I did not want to reveal that Mrs. B.'s husband had been the Polish Commissar in Danzig and that she herself was a very wealthy woman. "She is a pensioner", I said, "and the widow of an official." "Do you know her well?" "Yes." "And who is that guy wearing the trenchcoat?" "Also a farmer." " A landowner!" "All right, if you wish, a landowner." "Does he have a large estate?" "I really don't know." "Is he also a fascist?" "No, not at all. As I am trying to tell you, just a farmer, busy with his farming." "Have you known him for a long time?" "No. I had met him once or twice, and I have become better acquainted with him only during our trip. We met him on our way." They did not ask any details about Mme. Sobañska's son, but seemed satisfied simply with my statement that the boy was her son. They asked where we were going, and I told them to Wilno in order to return home to Cracow. "So you will go back to your home, to Germany, and continue to

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teach." I felt offended by this statement that I would be going home to "Germany", and my first reaction was to answer, "Yes, I am going home, but how would you like it if I told you that you are going home to Moscow 'in Germany' ", but I caught myself, realizing that there was no sense in starting any quarrels. "It is easy for you to say that", I said, "but I do not know what I shall find when I get there. Will I find my apartment and my books or not?" He shrugged. "Since you are a professor, the main thing is this", and he put his finger on his forehead. "Again, it is easy enough for you to say so, but one cannot live and work in my profession on memory alone." "Well", he said, "1 understand that you need outlines (he used the term konspekty) for your lectures. But who knows, you may still find your books. You may go now and wait in the corridor." This talk lasted over two hours, and as soon as I left the room, I became conscious of being terribly tired. I sat down on a bench and slumped over, but as soon as I realized that the soldier was still standing there, I knew that I could not sit in such a position, showing a sort of collapse. With an effort I straightened out, lit a cigarette and tried to give my face an expression of independent indifference. At this time they took Mrs. B. in, but, as she did not know a word of Russian, the interrogation lasted only a few minutes, and she returned. Then the two officers appeared in the corridor. Another door opened from which emerged a different G.P.U. man, blond and with a gloomy face. Obviously, he was a superior officer. Pointing to us, he asked the tall one, "And who are theyl" "They are miné", answered the tall man who had questioned me. "I'll explain to you . . . " and they entered the room which the superior officer had just stepped out of. After a while I was called in and asked to take a seat in front of the superior officer's desk. Slowly, distinctly, and emphasizing every word, pronouncing each one separately, he said, " Y o u pretend that you are a university professor. How can you prove this?" I took out my university identity card and presented it to him. It was, of course, in Polish, but he saw my photograph and probably could understand the name of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. He returned it to me and then asked, "Is this your first stay in this region?" I said that it was.

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"You are going to Wilno, apparently?" I answered, "Yes." "Then you are free." I do not know why the idea came to me to ask him the following question. "May I ask you why, as a matter of fact, all of us have been arrested?" "Arrested? Arrested people sit in a prison, and you are not in prison. The Soviet authorities have the right to control people traveling in the territory of the Soviet Union." I thought, "Yes, it is already in his mind, 'the territory of the Soviet Union'." Of course, I did not question him about that statement. Instead, I asked, "Could you tell me now how I will be able to reach Cracow from Wilno?" "You are a professor. You should know your geography." "I am not asking you about geography, but about the formalities and permits for the trip." "You will be informed about that by the appropriate authorities in Wilno." The tall man accompanied all of us downstairs and told us, "Now, leave quickly." On the ground floor, we again met Mme. Sobanska and Tarnowski; the latter gave the impression of being in a state of stupefaction and complete detachment from what was going on. Mme. Sobanska anxiously asked me, "What happened?" I said, "Well, we are free and have been told to leave as soon as possible." "Please", she begged, "remain in the town and wait for us." "There is really no sense in that. Night is falling, and where shall we find a place to stay? We'll wait for you in Stolin in the small inn." The tall officer, who was still there, took us to a yard where we found the small peasant's cart. He told us to get our things and leave, and then he returned to the building. In a short time a soldier came and asked for young Sobanski, who had not been investigated at all. Several minutes passed, and the boy returned and said, "My mother is asking for you." I went. It appeared that, although she was able to speak a little Russian, the officer could not understand what she was trying to tell him; all the money and jewels which she had with her had been taken away, "temporarily", as the Russians said. "What does she want?" the tall officer asked me.

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Mme. Sobanska explained to me, and I said, "She would like to give her son two or three thousand zlotys of her money." "All right", said the officer, "I will give it to him." He went somewhere and returned with three thousand zlotys, and, giving this sum to the boy, told me, "I repeat again: Leave immediately." And we did. Early the next morning, Mme. Sobanska arrived alone. She said that all her things, jewels, and money had been returned to her, that she had had to sign a receipt in which she confirmed that everything taken had been given back. Tarnowski had not been released, and Mme. Sobanska told us about the details of his drawing a map, and also about the fact that there in the building he had completely lost control of himself. She mentioned behavior of exactly the same kind as that I described concerning Przyborowski during the last days of his life. Great nervous tension affects some men in such a degree that they cannot control their natural functions. Poor Tarnowski did not know a single word of Russian. He had been cursed by the soldiers who noticed his failure to control himself; they had called him a swine and pushed him into a men's room. The map, the overcoat, the boots, his physical weakness, all of these things told against him. The G.P.U. men probably took him for a German spy. This nice young man had a kind of aristocratic stiffness and, unfortunately, did not have the ability to adapt himself to strange, absolutely unfamiliar, and in this case hostile conditions. As soon as I became aware of what had happened, my first impulse was to go to the G.P.U. office, and, without saying a word to my companions, I went, feeling terribly depressed and pained by the merciless fate of the poor young man, completely innocent and completely helpless. I felt that perhaps I would be able to save him and convince the tall officer, who had seemed to be rather friendly. On my way I met the inn proprietor, who was returning from the town to his home on foot. He asked me where I was going, and I explained. "Are you mad?" he exclaimed. "What can you do for him? You have no influence with the G.P.U. The only result that might happen is that they may seize you, too." I could not but agree with him. As strong as was my emotional impulse, I realized that my going there would be of no help to Tarnowski and would be very dangerous for me. When the first train for Wilno arrived, we left Stolin. We never found any trace of Tarnowski after that. He probably died in some concentration camp. Later in Cracow I saw his charming wife and was obliged to tell her the whole story, and much later, also to his brother Juliusz in Paris.

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Wilno was, of course, occupied by the Bolsheviks. It is, by the way, a city which has always charmed and interested foreigners. It is pleasantly situated on the shores of the Wilja, which are very picturesque. Around the city there are hills covered with beautiful woods, groves, and forests. At that time, the suburbs were also attractive, with gardens and modest, but pretty cottages. In the vicinity there were several famous mansions with beautiful grounds. During the period between the two wars the Polish Government, because of Piisudski's particular attachment to Wilno, made great efforts to restore many old monuments of Polish architecture which had been defaced under the Russian yoke for purposes of Russification, so that the old University of Wilno founded in 1579 was nicely rebuilt. Besides, Wilno was a city in which various nationalities and religious faiths had coexisted for centuries; one could see there Catholic churches and monasteries, Orthodox churches, Protestant churches, synagogues, and even a mosque. For centuries Karaimes lived there, and Tartars who became Polonized, but still preserved their religion. Among the Catholic churches the most representative style was baroque, and the church of SS. Peter and Paul in Antokol, a section of Wilno, was the richest specimen of this luxurious and resplendent style. Inside one could see stone filigree statues with all the typical extravagance of baroque art. The exterior of the church was modest in comparison with the fantastic richness of its interior, where all the figures of saints, madonnas, and angels were decorated with stone lacework. One could say then that the building was like a beautiful woman with her bosom showing in a ball gown, but wearing a coarse peasant jacket over it. There was also a charming little Gothic church, the Church of St. Anna, which was indeed like a gem. A legend says that when Napoleon saw it in 1812, he declared that he would like to take it in the palm of his hand and transfer it to Paris. I remember that once when I brought some French and Belgian historians to my father's estate

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and showed Wilno to them, they were most impressed, saying, "This is really a universe. You have a meeting place here of so many worlds and civilizations!" Wilno was also known for some good restaurants and for a type of life which resulted from the coexistence of the city with the neighboring countryside and gentry. This created a special atmosphere in Wilno's social life. It was a provincial town, but it always gave the impression of being in itself independent and self-sufficient; the natives of Wilno did not care very much about what was going on in Warsaw and other Polish cities. It was naturally painful to see Bolshevik officers and soldiers on the streets, the more so because the Russian offensive at that time was carried out (and I observed the same thing a little later in Lwow) by army units which struck everyone by their shabby appearance. The horses of the artillery and cavalry were not matched and looked seedy, the soldiers' uniforms were badly fitted, and the military wagons and cars were wobbly and run down. One would have thought this was a sort of barbarian horde coming from some remote land and distant time. I had an old friend in Wilno, W. Kozlinski, who was my contemporary, who almost grew up with me, as he was a son of our neighbors in the Smolensk district. Before the First World War we used to see each other almost every day in summer, riding back and forth. He generally came more frequently to our estate than I to his parents' place, because we had a tennis court and a boat on the Dnieper, and life in Borek was usually much livelier than in his parents' home. Of course, he was also an impoverished man; his father had died several years before in Poland, having lost all of his wealth which had been very considerable. My friend was a small lawyer in Wilno, and I used to see him often before my father's death as he visited us at our Wilno estate. I started my day in the city by going to his apartment. He was much happier with his second wife than with his first, and the household consisted of a daughter by his first marriage, a son from the second, his wife, and his mother. I found him with a wounded arm. His story was very typical. As a former commissioned officer in the Russian army (he was mobilized during the First World War; I was exempted because I was attached to the University of Moscow in preparation for a professorship), he first started his career in Poland as a judge in the military court in Warsaw. He retired from that office and became a lawyer in Wilno, but when the war of 1939 started, as a former Polish officer and member of the military court he was drafted and received an order to join some unit on the front lines. My friend never reached his unit.

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Each time he arrived in a town, he was told that the unit had just left and that his section had followed that unit. After several attempts he found himself in a town which he had to leave immediately after his arrival, as the German tanks were approaching. He was driving in a car, and the tanks opened fire; he was wounded, but the engine of the car was not damaged and the chauffeur finally took him to Warsaw. There he found himself under German bombs and, as a wounded officer, he was allowed to return to his home. His "campaign" lasted perhaps ten or twelve days and consisted of vain efforts to reach the constantly vanishing unit to which he was assigned. My friend was one of those Poles from Russia who stoically accepted the ruin of his private life because he felt compensated by the restoration and development of Poland and enthusiastically admired everything in it. I remember we quarreled very often, as he sometimes became irritated by my criticisms. Now the situation had changed, and he appeared to me to be a disillusioned man. I visited him simply because of friendship; he was not a person who would be able to suggest to me what I should now do or how to organize a possible escape from Poland to Belgium. I went to see the University and to call on the rector, S. Ehrenkreutz, a professor of law, whom I knew well. (He was married to the daughter of J. Baudouin de Courtenay, the famous linguist; his son, A. Ehrenkreutz, an orientalist, is now teaching in Ann Arbor, at the University of Michigan.) In the halls of the University, before I reached Ehrenkreutz, I met several professors, and some of them told me that perhaps the University of Wilno would now establish a chair in Russian literature and offer it to me. In those first days of the occupation the Bolsheviks had not yet touched the University. But this suggestion did not appeal to me at all. I was willing to occupy a chair like that in Free Poland, but not under the Russian regime. Later on, a similar suggestion was made to me in Lwow, but I refused categorically. When I saw Ehrenkreutz, the first thing he told me was this: "You should not be here, and you should leave Wilno as quickly as possible, because here you are not a professor, but a landowner, and I would not be able to protect you if anything happened. Hence, my suggestion and my advice - run away." Very soon I learned that there were a number of refugees from various estates in Wilno; among them were Count Puslowski and his wife, Inka, both of whom I liked very much and used to see at the Tarnowskis' at Zaklikow. Moreover, I knew his father well (he was married to the Spanish Princess Pignatelli) and also his uncle, Sawa Puslowski, a distinguished man of letters who brought out his Polish adaptation of

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the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. During my participation in the Cracow carnivals, the latter was my tutor in "the philosophy of aristocracy". He spent the First World War in Moscow, and he now lives in his wonderful palace in Cracow, but he has only one room as he has made the rest into a museum and given it to the University, so that it would not be seized by the Communist Government. The Pusiowskis told me their story, which was one of the hundreds of similar ones with which I became familiar. The restaurants were still functioning, and not only the restaurants; I managed to order a suit from a good tailor and some flannel pants, both of which I sent to Poland several years ago to some of my friends there. (I mention this in order to show how excellent those Polish fabrics were.) In a few days we learned, as trains were still running between Lwow and Wilno, that in Lwow various committees of refugees had been organized. There was a Cracow committee, and a return to Cracow from there seemed possible. On the other hand, we found out that several people had managed to leave Lwow for Rumania and then reached Paris. There they contacted the new Polish Government (as I ascertained later) which was established in France. I was also told that the Lithuanian frontier was so closely watched by the Russians that there was no hope of escaping to Kovno from Wilno. After deliberations, our party decided to go to Lwow. We arrived there about one o'clock in the morning, after several days spent in freight cars, and I remember that we passed the first night in Lwow on the sidewalk at the corner of the railway station, where we tried to sleep on Mme. Sobanska's suitcases, using her furs and the heavy coat which was given to me by Countess Zamoyska as covers. Mrs. B. had some relatives in Lwow, and next morning she went to their attractive villa. Mme. Sobanska went to the spacious house of Count J. Badeni, whom I knew well. (He was a man who had always been very close to the academic world and was the owner of the best Polish monthly review, The Contemporary Review, in which many of my essays were published; for some time I was, at his request, a member of the editorial board.) After some inquiries I found a small room in a private apartment, and so started the last and longest period of our existence under the Soviet regime. The Bolshevik army was present almost everywhere. The hotels and restaurants were filled with Russian officers. Various governmental buildings were occupied by the Soviet military authorities, by the army, and the G.P.U. The commander of Lwow was General Ivanov. Lines formed before every shop; Russian soldiers and officers represented the

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majority of the people in the lines. They were buying everything and paying any price in rubles, not counting them as they all had an enormous amount of cash in their pockets the value of which was very doubtful to the Poles. A rate of exchange had been arbitrarily set up by the occupation authorities. We heard about the battles which occurred around Lwow and in Lwow itself, but no great damage was done to the city. Naturally, after having found my small room and having settled there, I made a visit to the University, as I had done in Wilno, and also to the Cracow committee. I had fond reminiscences of the University of Lwow, as in 1932 and in 1937 I had delivered a series of lectures there on Russian literature, and one on Pushkin and Mickiewicz; this last was extremely successful, had great acclaim, and was even described in the Warsaw newspapers. The public of Lwow enthusiastically attended those lectures, and from the very beginning I was obliged to lecture in the biggest hall of the University, which was the hall of the Polish parliament of Galicia before the First World War. In 1932 I spoke for a week to five or six hundred people, and in 1937 to about a thousand. The first thing which I saw when I approached the largest building of the University, the former parliament building, were several enormous posters bearing the pictures of Maxim Gorki, Stalin, Mickiewicz, and the Ukrainian poet Shevchenko, to mention but a few. The University was active. I quickly met several professors and was told that Ossolineum, an endowed cultural institution in Lwow, with a library and a museum with rare editions and collections of old manuscripts, an institution which also published series of scholarly books and scholarly editions of the works of Polish authors, was preparing an exhibition dedicated to Pushkin. I was asked if I would participate. At the same time suggestions were made concerning the creation of a chair of Russian literature. As in Wilno, I refused, having no intention of teaching, especially Russian literature, under Soviet power. When I contacted the Cracow committee, I learned that the elected chairmen had left for Europe one after the other. It appeared that the people who had organized the Polish Government in France were already able to facilitate these escapes from Lwow. It appeared also that the main task of the chairman was to arrange such an escape for himself. Among the Lwow professors I met the famous anthropologist J. Czekanowski, who had always gravitated toward the National Democrats in Poland. His former Russophilism had been revived and, when

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he learned from me that I had some plans (true they were becoming more and more vague) of going to Brussels, he suggested that I should go and see General Ivanov, whom he had met several times and whom he described as a very cooperative and understanding man. I thought that I might try, and I went to the office several days later. Soldiers who were on guard in front of the gates of the building immediately asked me for my permit. I had none, and asked where I might get one. They told me to go to another office which apparently was issuing them. I got one, but when I presented it, the soldier (not the same one I had seen before) made objections. I tried to explain who I was, but it did no good; while I was talking with him several soldiers and civilians gathered to watch and listen to this conversation. The gate was still closed. Suddenly it opened and a short, young general, surrounded by several other officers, came out. When he saw me talking with the soldier, he asked what the matter was. I explained and repeated what the soldier had told me, that my permit was not sufficient, that General Ivanov's adjutant had to give me a permit as well. I added that I did not see how 1 would be able to gain admittance, as the adjutant was in the building and, in order to see him, I had to get inside. The general asked me who I was. I told him and then he told me to wait, and he returned to the building. One of the men who was there asked me in Russian, "Do you know who he is?" I said, "No." "The one who conquered Lwow!" I asked, "And who conquered Lwow?" "Timoshenko", he replied. (I learned later that the statement was false; I was told that Timoshenko's enormous height contradicted this identification. This general could not, then, have been the Soviet "hero".) At this moment the "conqueror" reappeared, followed by an officer, General Ivanov's adjutant, who immediately invited me to follow him. He struck me as being very odd; his uniform, his enormous sabre, his mustache, his whole appearance was a sort of baroque combination of some provincial infantry officer of the czarist times and of the new Russian "heroes". He was very polite and asked me to wait, as General Ivanov was busy. While waiting there, I saw many officers of different ranks, who were constantly coming and going, talking to the adjutant, who was always excessively courteous, displaying very theatrical manners. A tall colonel came in, a rather comical figure in the

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style of Gogol's and Sienkiewicz's Cossacks. He was complaining about some deficiencies in the barracks where his men were quartered, shouting that an old warrior like himself deserved more attention. At a desk in a corner of the room another officer was sitting, whose uniform was almost exactly like that of a front-line officer during the First World War. He was sitting in front of the window, silently, looking out of it with a mournful, pensive expression on his face; I do not know why, but I thought he was a type who would fit very well into Kuprin's military stories, a kind of disillusioned, unhappy, modest officer from some remote province. Somehow, it seemed to me he was unhappy because of what was going on around him, and I felt a sort of friendly sympathy for him. Hours passed, and finally I learned that the General was not there at all, but that he was expected to come in. At last, he entered, followed by several officers. All the people who were in the room stood up, and the General, with a cordial "Eisenhower smile", addressed everyone and passed on to his office. Then the tall colonel and other men went into the room, and I was still waiting. The mournful officer also remained. Suddenly, a G.P.U. officer, pale, with black, fierce eyes, followed by a Jew, entered and unlocked a door which was opposite to the General's. He and the Jew disappeared inside. Again a long time went by. The talk in the General's room was loud; people laughed and one could hear all kinds of exclamations. The mournful officer was still melancholy, looking out of the window. The door of the office of the G.P.U. man opened, the Jew left, and then the G.P.U. official looked at me and asked, "What are you doing here?" The adjutant jumped from his chair and with all sorts of gestures and with a "Versailles politeness" answered for me, "This is a professor, and he is waiting for the General." When I first saw the G.P.U. man, who looked at me suspiciously when he entered the room, I prayed to God that he would remain in his office long enough for me to go to the General without any encounter with him. Now, when he questioned me, I felt that probably the whole errand was in vain, or even worse, I might find myself in his clutches. "What do you want to see General Ivanov about?" he asked. I answered that I wanted to discuss with him the possibility of leaving Lwow for abroad, for Brussels, where my university was. (Belgium was neutral at that time.) "This is not in the General's hands. He can't do anything about it. There is no reason for you to wait here", he said sharply.

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Then the silent officer turned his head from the window and said to the G.P.U. man, "Leave him alone. Why shouldn't he see the General? The General expects him." The G.P.U. official, obviously angry, went into the General's room. After a while all the noisy visitors left, but the G.P.U. man remained, and then I realized that I would have the pleasure of talking with General Ivanov in company of this "nice" witness. After some time, while the G.P.U. person was obviously instructing the General what to do, I was asked to go in. I briefly explained my case and purpose to General Ivanov, who was very polite. When I entered, he stood up, shook hands with me, and asked me to take a seat, whereas the G.P.U. official remained seated, staring at me. "Oh", said the General, with a jovial expression on his face, and with a friendly note in his voice, "it is a difficult affair. You should see the Belgian and the Soviet consul in such a case. Oh, excuse me, not the Soviet one - there wouldn't be any Soviet consul on Soviet territory (sicl). Y o u should write to the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in Moscow, and that, you understand, will be a long story." Then he expressed his regret that there was no other way of settling my problem, and he started to talk about the conditions of life in Lwow. I was scarcely able to restrain my laughter when I heard what he was telling me. "We are constantly, perpetually bringing in all kinds of food here, but whatever is brought is immediately eaten. One does not know how to organize the supplies." He continued to enumerate all the fantastic amounts of provisions which apparently Russia was bringing to Lwow! Actually, the Russian army came like a horde of locusts which devoured everything this charming city possessed, and now he was telling me that they were feeding Lwow! After some other similar stories I left. The adjutant brought me downstairs to the gate, being polite to the end. When I passed the waiting room, the silent officer was still sitting there. I said goodbye to him, showing him my gratitude for his intervention in my behalf. This episode gave me the opportunity to observe at close range the upper circles of the Soviet army. I saw only the surface, but the whole group of Russian generals, colonels, and other officers remained in my memory as a rather comical assemblage of types. The whole staff was like a group of actors playing on the stage in some satirical comedy. No less funny was the impression which the Bolshevik troops gave me. A military parade took place in Lwow one day, which had obviously been arranged in order to impress the population. From various suburbs

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many military units assembled in the main streets of the city. It was again a kind of parody, a display of uniforms and arms, innumerable flags, some old-fashioned enormous sabres, a variety of saddles which were not standardized, large horses matched with small ones; all of this gave the impression of a sort of military masquerade in which primitive and na'ive pretentions were combined with the shabby elegance of the army to create a show at once anachronistic and slightly ridiculous. One could indeed wonder whether the Soviets had a strategic purpose behind this display, the aim of which was to make people believe that the Russian army was out of date, or whether it was truly so. Everyone looked at this parade with ironic smiles. But, on the other hand, Poles could not have forgotten the fact that when Russia moved on the 18th of September, 1939, the Russian troops crossed the Polish frontiers, often bearing white flags and posters on which there were slogans of fraternal help and solidarity. The ugliness of these treacherous maneuvers was very soon apparent to the Polish population. The behavior of the Russian officers and soldiers in Lwow was in general peaceful; there were no acts of violence during that time. But the miserable appearance of the army conformed to the conduct of the soldiers and officers in the everyday life of the city. Innumerable anecdotes immediately began to circulate about what the Bolsheviks were doing in Lwow; they used toilets as wash basins; they bought women's underwear as evening dresses for their wives; they overate so much that Polish physicians told me that hospitals were overcrowded with Russians suffering from excessive eating. All of this was instructive, as it indirectly revealed the conditions of life in Soviet Russia. This more or less peaceful existence under the Russian occupation was disturbed very shortly by an act of the Soviet Government, when it announced a plebiscite, the aim of which was to get a benevolent acceptance of the annexation of Eastern Galicia by Russia. Poles had to vote either for or against it; no one had any doubts as to what this meant, and what the consequences for anyone voting against it might be, and this became more evident because a few days before the plebiscite the names and addresses of every permanent or temporary resident of Lwow were collected by the Russian authorities through the doormen and managers of apartment houses in Lwow. At this time the Polish Government in France had been organized, and as soon as the plebiscite was announced by the Russians, the Polish Government in exile began to give continuous instructions to the population of Lwow over the radio. It was stressed that the plebiscite had no legal basis, and therefore

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everyone was free to vote for the annexation, in order to avoid persecution by the Russians. Still, as far as I was concerned, I felt deeply disturbed by this whole mock ceremony. I asked the woman in whose apartment I had my room if my name had been given to the doorman, hoping to escape the vote if this had not been done. She answered that she could not be sure, as she may have given my name too late to him. I feared, as did everyone else, that those whose names were listed and who did not appear to vote might get into trouble, and so I went to the polls. Very soon I regretted my action, as it appeared that my name was not listed. There was one entrance and one exit, and men who were obviously Russian spies were circulating in the rooms, watching the voters. There were many desks at which girls were seated, with lists of the voters. Similar lists were also posted on the walls, with indications, according to the alphabet, to which of the numbered desks one ought to go. I first looked at the lists on the walls and did not find my name on any of them, but I also saw that at the exits the controllers were asking each person whether and at which table he had voted. Feeling uneasy, I approached a table at which was a nice young girl. It appeared that these young women were schoolgirls. (God knows how they were coerced into serving on the plebiscite in such capacity.) In a low voice I told her that my name was not on any list and therefore I thought that I was free from voting. She asked me for my name. Still in a low tone, I told her, whereupon she loudly shouted "Lednicki". Then she looked at her lists, after which she said, "You may go to that desk on the other side of the room." Still quietly, I said, "Please do not shout." Looking into her eyes, I added, "All right, I will go, but please do not shout my name." I pretended to go to the designated desk. There were some people there. I looked behind me to see if the girl to whom I had just talked was watching; she was busy. I circulated from one table to another in the crowd, and I manipulated it so successfully that at a moment when the controllers were all talking to other people, I somehow managed to slip out. In this way I did not soil myself with this treacherous vote, although the Polish Government in exile had given "absolution of this sin" in advance to every Polish citizen. When I think now about the fate of Lwow, I feel an exasperation even greater than when I recall the fate of Wilno. We, Poles, were accustomed to the presence of Russians in Wilno, which for more than one hundred years belonged to Russia. But the presence of Russians in Lwow was a repugnant sight because Lwow had never been a part of

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the Russian empire. Although the city remembered the Russian "bear hug" from the time of Russia's occupation of Lwow during World War I, the effects of that "embrace" of forced Russification (which, by the way, exasperated even many of the Russian intelligentsia) were short lived. The city of Lwow was as charming as Wilno, and, like Wilno, it struck everyone by the richness of its historical and cultural backgrounds. For centuries it had been the meeting place of the Orient and the West, of Byzantium and of the Latin world, and these diverse cultural strains combined into the rich spiritual mosaic of its religious institutions: Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Armenian Catholic churches, convents, monasteries, and Jewish synagogues. The University of Lwow, established in 1661, flourished particularly in the second part of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, and was surrounded by many other schools of higher education and by learned societies. For centuries Lwow was a center of printing. The Lwow theater had a distinguished tradition, which complimented Lwow's rich literary life. From 1772 to 1918 the city was the capital of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the seat of the Polish Parliament. But I also had personal reasons for liking Lwow. The delightful liveliness of its life, which was hospitable, gay, witty, cosmopolitan; the physical attractiveness of its people - a result of the intermingling of its many racial strains; and the gratifying success of my lectures there, all made me think of it as a responsive city full of charm. It is sad to contemplate its fate. Soon after the plebiscite I learned that an old friend of my father, Princess Adam Lubomirska, was in Lwow and still living in her enormous house. I went there to pay her a visit. I was most cordially received; thereafter, as it happened that my room was on a street behind the very large garden of the Princess' place, I was able to go there every evening and remain late after the curfew by returning to my room through the garden. A portion of her house was occupied by two Russian officers. When I asked her how they behaved, she emphatically stressed their decency and correctness. I felt that she wanted it to be known that she had no conflicts with them. As an example of their attitude, she told me that they often asked her to sell them some of her things; the day before they had insisted that she sell them a table which they liked, and she added that they offered to pay any price for it. To this I remarked, "Well, they may pay for it, but you can't refuse to sell what they want to buy." She dropped the subject. The Princess was also housing many Polish refugees. There were the

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Zamoyskis from Hungary, the Princess Paul Sapieha (the former mother-in-law of the American woman who wrote The Polish Profile), with her daughter, a nun who had to flee from her convent and hide from the Bolsheviks, and who, for the time being, was not wearing her habit. (Prince Paul Sapieha, a nephew of the Princess Paul Sapieha, accompanied by his wife, Marie née Oppersdorff, had left Lwôw for Cracow several days before my first visit to the Princess Lubomirska.) Also in the house were Prince Sapieha's sister, Countess Jadwiga Czembek, and her mother who were great friends of mine from Cracow, and several girls and young men from the same aristocratic milieu. At this time I was already thinking about returning to Cracow, as escape to Brussels seemed impossible. There were some secret communications between Cracow and Lwôw brought about by the help of some insignificant traders who traveled between the two cities, acting as messengers. I remember that I wrote a desperate letter to F. Potocki, begging him to do whatever he could to obtain a German permit for my return to Cracow. About this time, all kinds of traffic organized by Jewish people began, but these trips were extremely expensive, and one suspected that they were not altogether safe. Mrs. B., with four other persons, got in touch with a Jewish "agent" and paid a high sum to him. I learned later in Cracow that this Jew had formerly succeeded in bringing Mrs. B.'s father and some other people to the German frontier, but he was less successful in her case. They were immediately caught by the Bolsheviks, who took all of her money and jewelry and even her fur, and they ordered her and her companions to lie down and tormented them by staging a mock execution. Finally the party was released, and Mrs. B. received the great favor of at least having her fur returned to her. This was at the end of October or early in November when the weather was extremely cold. One day the Cracow committee secretly received from Professor T. Lehr-Splawinski, the rector of the University of Cracow, a letter addressed to seventeen or eighteen Cracow professors, who now accidentally found themselves in Lwôw. In this communication the rector called all those professors to return as soon as possible, stressing the fact that the Germans might liquidate the chairs of those who were absent. To the letter was attached a group permit, signed by the German authorities; it happened that my name headed the list. We immediately made copies of the permit, as we did not think that it was feasible to return together, since some of the professors were with their wives and children. We did not know how we would be able to get out of the territory of

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the Soviet occupation, and the permit was valid only in the German zone. The venture could even be dangerous, as the G.P.U. was still searching for spies. The copies were legalized by a Polish notary public, and as my name was at the top of the list, I was given the original. We were then faced with the problem of how to leave Lwôw. There were various rumors that the frontier was open from time to time, but the Russian frontier guards had dogs and many people had been caught, not only those who had tried to escape abroad through the mountains, but those who were returning to Cracow or to other towns and cities under the German occupation. While I was wondering how to arrange my trip, I was asked by Mme. Sobanska to come to Badeni's house one evening, as there was someone there who wanted to meet me and have a private talk with me. When I arrived there, I found Mme. Sobanska and the Countess Elizabeth Badeni, née Baroness Goetz, a relative by marriage of Count Stanislaw Badeni. We sat in a large, sumptuous, Victorian living room with very heavy and dark draperies tightly covering the windows, so that the light of the discreet lamps could not be seen from the street. While talking with these people, I was waiting for the mysterious person who wanted to see me. Suddenly a curtain before a door moved, and in the dim light I saw a beautiful woman emerge. She was the Archduchess Hapsburg, née d'Ancarcrona, of Swedish origin. (In her first marriage she was Countess L. Badeni.) I had met her and her husband at the Potockis', and the Archduke more recently at Smordwa, the estate of Count Ledochowski. It seemed that the Archduchess wanted to consult me on some matter concerning the Russians. Her husband had not returned, and believing that he might be somewhere under the Soviet occupation, she decided to come to Lwôw to search for him. She had received all the necessary German permits, but in Lwôw lived incognito, hiding from the Russians for the time being. I told her that in my opinion it was a very risky undertaking and that I thought she should return to her estate as quickly as possible, for I believed that the Germans would certainly treat her, as an Austrian Archduchess, with much more deference and respect than the Bolsheviks would. We had a pleasant social talk which lasted for several hours. She told me that her valet, who was with her, would soon return to Cracow by himself. Mme. Sobanska and the Countess Badeni had given him their jewels in the belief that a "proletarian" would not be searched on the frontier. The Archduchess added that if I had something valuable she would be happy to give it to her servant. I immediately accepted,

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probably, to be honest, because of her charm. At any rate, it gave me an opportunity to see her once more. A few days later I entrusted two hundred dollars in gold to this man. Later, when I was in Cracow in November, he came to my apartment and, with a mournful expression on his face, said that he had lost the twenty gold coins. He had carried them in one of his shoes, and when he was wading across a river, the shoe got stuck in the mud and he was unable to recover it. The Archduchess also returned to her estate in Cracow and found that her husband had been arrested by the Germans, who immediately took her into custody as well! The Archduke was taken prisoner because he had joined the Polish army at the beginning of the war as a Polish citizen and officer. Much later, when I went from Cracow to Brussels, I was asked by the Countess Zygmunt Zamoyska, née Badeni, to see the Swedish minister in Brussels in order to ask for Swedish intervention for the Archduchess and her husband, as the situation and condition of both of them was deplorable. It happened that I knew this Swedish minister from some diplomatic parties in the Polish and Swedish legations before the war. I made an appointment with him without any difficulty, but his attitude in regard to the affair produced an unpleasant impression on me. In an ironic and mocking tone he told me, "Ah! Alice d'Ancarcrona. Yes, very beautiful, but always with some strange ideas in her head. I doubt very much if the Swedish Government will be able to do anything in this case, but we will try."

IX RETURN TO THE INVADED DOMICILE

To return to Lwow, I learned one evening from the Countess Szembek that there was a group of ten or fifteen Polish policemen from the province of Poznan, who were going to try to return to the German occupation zone, and they had decided to take the route that her brother, Prince Paul Sapieha, and his wife had successfully traveled to reach Cracow. She suggested that she would talk to the policemen and ask them to let me go with them. I decided to try. I packed all of my few belongings and one evening took a cab from the station, as the policemen were taking a train from Lwow to Rawa Ruska. From there they were supposed to drive on country roads and cross the frontier at a village which was situated on the shores of a small river; this was the same place where Prince Sapieha, with the help of a village peasant, crossed the border. While I was driving through the snow on the Lwow streets, I suddenly saw Karla Lanckoronska, a woman whom I had known for a long time and who was a privat docent (an assistant professor) in the history of fine arts at the University of Lwow. In her youth she had been extremely attractive. She was the daughter of the famous Count K. Lanckoronski, the owner of one of the most beautiful palaces in Vienna and of the finest art collections, a prominent figure in the social life in Vienna during the time of the Emperor Franz Josef. Karla had always devoted herself to her field of studies. I was on very friendly terms with her and had frequently seen her after my arrival in Lwow. On this occasion, when I saw her on the street corner, I stopped my cab, got out and told her that I was just leaving for Cracow and asked what she was going to do. "My duty is to remain here with my University and share its fate", she said. We parted, and when I was in the cab she called to me, "Arrivederci'\ and I answered, "Bona permanenza".

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At the station I met the policemen. All of them were tall men, wearing civilian clothes and police boots. They took me to the third-class car in which they occupied several compartments, and I saw that in the entrance of the car there were twelve or fifteen bicycles. I sat silently in one of the compartments and wondered how the trip in such company would turn out. In Rawa Ruska we had to change trains and go to another station, where we left the train and hired two carts, on which they loaded the bicycles. We set out. The bicycles were shining in the bright moonlight. At one point my companions told me, "Here is the most dangerous spot. Over there is an alcohol factory, where there is a Bolshevik guard who sits and watches the road. It we get past here successfully, everything will be all right." There was a light in the building, and the gleaming bikes were not at all comforting to me. I remember the few minutes we spent driving past that farm and alcohol plant were moments of great anxiety for all of us. Around two or three o'clock in the morning we arrived in the village where the peasant who had helped the Sapiehas was living. The policemen knew exactly which cottage he lived in; they knocked at the door and the man appeared. We started to talk to him, but in less than two minutes he told us, "Even if you were to give me 10,000 zlotys, I would not do what you ask. I've had enough of all of this. I don't want to be shot or put in jail by the Bolsheviks." While we were conversing, another man approached. The whole settlement was surrounded by trees, and one could see that behind those trees there was a large meadow on the banks of a small river which marked the frontier. This second man listened to our discussion, and then he remarked, "For more than ten days I have been here with the village cattle on that meadow, pretending that I am a herdsman, and that damned Bolshevik guard is always watching and does not turn his eyes from me for one minute." Then the peasants advised the policemen, "Go to the north for a distance of about forty kilometers. There is a large forest there where you may try to cross the frontier." The officers decided to do this and invited me to go along with them, telling me that they would take turns riding me on their bicycles. This did not appeal to me at all. Instead, I made up my mind to return to Rawa Ruska and Lwow. The horses and carts which we had rented were still there, and I drove back to the railway station. I arrived there in the morning, found something to eat in the restaurant, and learned that a train was just leaving for Lwow. I took a seat in a third-class car, which was filled almost entirely

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with Jewish people. In the first compartment (this was an old car in which there were no walls to separate the compartments, so that one could hear and see what was going on in the whole car) an old Polish Jew was sitting close to the window across from me, wearing his long Jewish coat, his Jewish cap, with long locks of hair on both sides of his face. In front of me there was a Jewish woman and on my right another; after a while they started to take some eggs and sausages from their bags, making a mess on the floor around them. In a few minutes other Jews appeared, wearing boots, leather jackets, carrying big briefcases, and as there were no seats empty, they stood between the benches. One of them opened his briefcase, took out a big sausage and a knife and started to cut the sausage right over my nose, so that I finally protested and pushed him away, saying, "Be careful, or you will cut my nose instead of your sausage." All of these Jews were Polish Jews; some of them were local people and some, as I learned later, had been expelled from the German zone to the Russian one. The rest of the car outside my compartment was occupied by Jews, speaking German. From what they were saying, I understood that they were from the Jewish intelligentsia in Vienna. They were talking about various Russian cities and towns on the Volga and about the climate there; obviously that was their destination. From the paradise of Hitler they were ascending to the Russian one! Suddenly the outside door opened and there appeared a Jew with a Mephistophelian face, clean shaven, with a pronounced Jewish nose and piercing eyes. He was dressed all in black leather and had several cartridge belts over his shoulders and around his waist, with pistols in holsters on each side. Behind him stood a Polish conductor, a tall man with his conductor's cap pushed to the back of his head. He had a vacant expression on his face. As soon as the armed Jew saw me, he immediately approached me and asked, "What are you doing here?" I replied, "I am going to Lwow." "Where did you come from?" I said, "From here, from the neighborhood. I am a university professor." "Which university?" "Cracow." "Do you have any documents?" I gave him my university identification card, he returned it to me and went to the other compartment. Suddenly I heard him shouting in a

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ferocious manner to those Viennese Jews. "Alle herausl Everybody out, and quickly." All of the Jews there started to pick up their luggage, and the Jews who were in my compartment began to protest. "What is this? What is going on here? We are not under Hitler!" I felt so miserable in this crowd that I stood up and went over to the conductor; I asked him to gave me a seat in another car. He crossed the passageway between my car and the next, opened a door with a key, and I found myself in a small compartment of the second class. He told me, "You may remain here." It was empty. Then he suddenly exclaimed, "What a mess they've left Poland in! Look at that Jew. Do you know that for more than ten years I let him travel without a ticket and overlooked his cheating. Now you see how he behaves and how he talks to his own people? They are all Jews, and see how he treats them!" And, with an exasperated gesture, he pushed his cap further back on his head and left, after locking the door with his key. So, I found myself again in Lwow. Several days passed during which time a group of various people, some university professors and some persons from Cracow society formed a group which decided to try to cross the frontier on a day when it would be open. I got in touch with them, and we rented a large Silesian bus (from Katowice) which because of the war, was in Lwow. On that bus we left for a large village beyond Rawa Ruska, on the Russian side, facing a railway station and a small town, Beizec, which was within the German occupation zone. Among the people in this company were W. Chodkiewicz and his wife, former landowners in the Ukraine, who lived modestly in Cracow, having lost their estate after the First World War; the Princess Paul Sapieha, with her daughter, the nun; the famous Polish scholar in classical philology, T. Sinko, and his wife; the wife of another scholar in the same field, Mrs. G. Przychocka, with her elderly mother; an assistant professor from the university of Cracow, Z. Klemensiewicz, a linguist; and some other people. We arrived in the village of our destination, feeling comfortable; we felt sure that the frontier, as we had been told in Lwow, would be open for two or even three days, and people would be able to pass from one occupation zone to the other. As soon as we reached a more or less large square - it was the sort of village-town in which there were shops and restaurants and inns - a crowd of Jewish youths assailed us, asking for fountain pens and watches. These were two things which the Russians particularly wanted, and they could be sold for high prices. We brushed them away; however,

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they told us that the frontier had just been closed because of some celebration in the Soviet camps which were located there, but that it probably would be open the next day and that we could spend the night in a hotel. They immediately offered to find rooms for us. Klemensiewicz, terribly disturbed and frightened, approached me and in a low voice said, "Oh, this is obviously a trap. They will arrest us. Let us take the bus and return to Lwow at once." I answered, "Nonsense! I don't think they will arrest us, but if so, they will arrest us when we try to leave the town. They don't need hotels in which to do that?" While we were talking a man arrived with the news that the Russian officers were through with their celebration (drinking) and that the frontier was reopened. We proceeded by foot to the houses which the Soviet frontier authorities occupied. A house was indicated to us as the one in which we had to see the officer in charge. Everyone in our group pushed me to the front, as again I was the only one who knew Russian fluently. When I entered the office of the building, a young officer, probably a lieutenant, was sitting behind a desk. He pointed to a chair in front of a desk on which there was an open registry book, and told me to fill out the questionnaire. With apprehension I looked at it, being again afraid of my birthplace. Fortunately, this was not asked. When I had written everything, he looked at me and said, "So, you wish to go back to your country?" I said yes. "Where are you going?" "Cracow." "What are you going to do?" "I am a university professor." "How much money do you have?" I said, "I do not remember exactly, between two and three thousand zlotys." He repeated, "Between two and three thousand zlotys . . . " A long silence. "Well, I won't take your money from you. Do you want very much to go back?" I answered, "Naturally, I should like to go home." "So", he said. Again there was a long pause. Then he suddenly shouted, "I will not let you go!" I paled and became very disturbed, and tried to overcome my nervousness. I started to ask, "Why won't you let a university professor go

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back to his home?" "You are a university professor, and I am a hero. What's your work in comparison with what I am doing? I am a hero, I tell you, a hero fighting for freedom." I listened silently to his strange tirade, and then he abruptly shouted "Well, go. You signed everything there?" I said, "Yes, I did." "Goodbye." When I came out, all my companions immediately approached me and asked, "What happened? You are so pale." I replied, "You will see." "Will they let you go?" I answered, "Yes, probably he will let us all go." After a half hour or so everyone got a permit, and we were conducted to the frontier. Night had fallen. As soon as we reached the border and crossed it, we found several German officers on the road who politely greeted us and said in German, "Please go directly to the railway station. There is a restaurant there, and you will find hot sausages, sauerkraut, wodka, beer, and there are rooms in the town where you may spend the night. The train for Lublin will leave tomorrow morning." Certainly this reception impressed us. We felt secure and that we were back in Europe. This illusion did not last for long. First of all, when we came to the station where the German officers told us there was a restaurant, we found a completely ruined building, without walls and with only fragments of roof. The kitchen was under a sort of ceiling, as if in a cave, and there were two or three women selling hot sausages, potatoes, sauerkraut, and wodka and beer. All of it was good and I ate and drank a lot for I was tired from all our troubles. When the problem of quarters had to be settled, we could find only here and there in the town a few houses which had escaped bombing. We remained there a day or so; we did not take the train for Lublin in the morning, probably because we were tired, and also Mme. Sobanska learned about a German office which she wanted to consult. I do not remember now even on what subject. It could have been that she thought that the German officers would make some suggestions about how to reach Cracow from Lublin. Here I shall mention an amusing detail. The Sobanskis, with the exception only of the famous Count Michael Sobanski, who got his title of "Count" (transmittable by the law of primogeniture) from Leo XIII, had no title. (Parenthetically, I should like to say that Michael Sobanski was a very distinguished man, known for his philanthrophy, his brilliant social

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tact, and his art of gracious conversation. During the First World War, when the Czarina-Mother, Maria Fedorovna, was in Kiev and talked to Sobanski, apparently with great emotion about the sufferings and agonies of Poland and the Polish people, saying that the thought of it brought tears to her eyes, he answered in French: "Let me express the hope that a tear of a Russian Empress may weigh the balance of justice in favor of the Polish cause.") But the several Sobanskis liked to identify themselves with the titled branch, although, in general, in old Poland no titles had been recognized or were allowed by the Polish diets, and in modern Poland they had been abolished by the constitution, though still used socially. In the times of partitions Poles used their titles because the partitioning governments, Prussia, Austria, and Russia recognized them, and many Polish families received new titles from these governments. Mme. Sobanska liked the title of countess and used it. She even had some documents of membership in some societies (not on her passport because the Polish Government would not allow it) in which her name was preceded by the title of countess. While we were under the Bolshevik occupation, she was busy erasing her title from those documents. Now she restored them. I agreed to accompany her to the German officers, where she appeared as the "Gräfin Sobanska", and the German officers treated her with due respect. The journey to Lublin was a long and indescribably bad one; our whole company was in one freight car with many peasants, and as the trip lasted (as I remember) for at least one day and two nights, one may easily imagine the embarrassing conditions to which men and women were subjected as far as their physical needs were concerned. This was especially hard because Mme. Przychocka's elderly mother had stomach trouble, and at every stop in the country we had to help her descend from the high level of the freight car, which, of course, had no steps. We arrived in Lublin on the eleventh of November, which was the date of the collapse of the German occupation of Poland in 1918, of the armistice, and Poland's independence day. Therefore, the Germans could expect some demonstrations from the people on this day, and this was evident to us when we saw an armored train slowly advance along the tracks between the platform of the station and the train we were on. There was also a platform between the tracks, and all the travellers were walking on it, trying to find either some food or some water in which to wash. The armored train stopped and remained for a few hours, and the long cannons protruding from the cars were constantly swinging from right to left, aiming at our train. It is needless to say how

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depressing this threatening show of German power was for all of us. It happened that at the station I met my former brother-in-law, Baron W. Heydel. I learned from him that everything was all right on their estate, nothing had happened, that my former wife was there with my children and that they had not suffered from the war at all. It seemed that he was doing good business; he was in Lublin for some affairs connected with the management of the estate, and he suggested that I have lunch with him. Lublin was a very beautiful city; it had suffered a lot from the war, but on this day he brought me to a restaurant in which we had an excellent lunch, as if nothing had ever happened. We were obliged to abandon the train in Dgblin, a town with a large railway station, close to the railway bridge on the Vistula. This bridge had been bombed, hence we had to take a ferry across the river, board a train on the other bank going to Katowice, and from there make connections with another train to Cracow. I learned later that Katowice, a great industrial center, and all the territory to the west, in a line north and south of Katowice, had been definitely annexed by the Germans, and that Hitler had conceived the idea that Cracow, surrounded by a very small region, would be the capital of the future "independent Poland"; it was then under the rule of the German General Government, with the famous Frank at its head. In Dublin the train was immediately assailed by innumerable peasants who were trying to climb on board (it was supposed to return to Lublin), so that there was no possibility of leaving our freight car. When the Princess Sapieha and her daughter tried to descend, they were pushed back into the car by the mass of milling peasants stampeding toward the door. I interfered and pushed out some of the people to clear a way for the Princess and her daughter. I was wearing my heavy overcoat and had not shaved for several days as the trip had been so long. At this moment I saw Count Zygmunt Michalowski (a former Polish diplomat), his friend Mr. H. Wysocki, and a German S.S. man. The German shouted at me, using the German "Du", "You, damned Jew! How dare you act like that!" I retorted angrily in German, "I am no Jew!" and continued on in a loud voice, when Michalowski interfered, telling me in Polish, "Be calm and prudent". Then in his excellent German he explained to the S.S. man who I was. This was my first encounter with an S.S. official. Michalowski and Wysocki were also going to Cracow. It seems that they spent the whole time of the war somewhere on an estate near Lublin.

X "WE WILL READ, AND YOU SHALL WORK!"

The train to Katowice and Cracow was a good, rapid passenger train with modern cars. From the station in Cracow I took a cab and went to my apartment. The doorman greeted me warmly; the first thing he told me was that a few days before on the sixth of November, the whole Cracow University faculty had been arrested, and after two days in the Cracow barracks, all the professors and officials were sent to a prison in Breslau. I took the elevator, rang for the fifth floor, and my maid opened the door. The first thing I saw was beds with mattresses and pillows and blankets in my living room; otherwise everything was unchanged. "What do these beds mean?" I asked. She said that there was a family, consisting of a man, his wife, and their daughter, simple people, from somewhere in Poland, who had been looking for quarters for some time and that she had taken them in, in order to defend the apartment against the Germans, who had already begun to requisition empty apartments for their soldiers and officials. What she did was wise, but I told her that since I had now returned, she should tell those people that they must find another place. Both my maid and the doorman cautioned me that I should not circulate on the streets, because the Germans would arrest me. Later I heard the same advice from several other people, but I answered that this was nonsensical, that if the Germans continued to arrest professors, they would certainly find me more easily in my apartment than in the streets or in any other place. I immediately got in touch with Mrs. B., who told me the story of her return. She said that she was now living in the house which she had started to build for herself before the war. It was a building which had been planned to consist of a rather luxurious apartment for her own use, with a panelled living room, beautiful staircases, a modern bathroom, and of several small apartments on three floors, each of them having

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two or three rooms. The war had interrupted the completion of the project; therefore, she had now locked her own apartment, postponing its finishing, (it was almost done), and had taken one of two rooms on the second floor for herself, and she suggested that I come to a threeroom apartment on the third floor, for it would be safer for me to have three rooms instead of my present four, with a large hall, considering the fact that the Germans were forcing people with extra room to take in their own officials. She was rather cheerful and told me that she had been able to sell some of her lots (she had very vast property in real estate in Cracow, which represented great wealth) and that financially she was all right. The story of the University faculty arrest was a dreadful one, she said, and the first symptom of a change in the German rule. Before that, life in Cracow had been more or less normal, with several reservations, however. For instance, the restaurant of the Grand Hôtel and several other good places had been closed to Poles and Jews and they were open only to Germans. The Polish clients of the Grand Hôtel were getting their lunches and dinners in the hotel's café, and the same was true in the other establishments. The streetcars had been divided into two sections, one for Jews, and the other for non-Jews. (I observed a few days later that Poles were traveling in the Jewish section, leaving the other one for the Germans.) Probably on this very same day I went to the F. Potockis and then later to other old Cracow friends, the E. Tyszkiewiczes, where I found Prince Charles RadziwiH and his wife Isabella (née Radziwifl), whom Mme. Sobañska had been so anxious to see at their eastern estate, and a number of other people: the Sapiehas, Countess Szembek, who had also somehow returned with her mother. Very soon I started a sort of social life. I accepted Mrs. B.'s suggestion, and my maid was angry because of this. She did not want to leave my old apartment, the more so that the one in Mrs. B.'s house, having just been finished, had not yet lost its dampness, and here and there the paint was not quite dry on the walls, and the rooms were chilly. It was not easy to arrange the large quantity of my furniture, my library, and innumerable pictures and engravings into those three rooms. I found a practical solution from every point of view, which was to give Mrs. B., who was still looking for furnishings, my bedroom furniture with my father's beautiful mahogany bed and commode from Bortkuszki, our estate near Wilno. I then started with some zeal to arrange my new quarters. In a few days this new apartment be-

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came very beautiful, in a way much more attractive and harmonious than my previous one. My old weakness for pictures and engravings returned, and I was crazy enough to buy some new things, although my funds were limited and I was receiving no salary from the University, not to mention the fact that in the face of the general disaster it was indeed rather ridiculous to engage in such pursuits. There were several other professors in Cracow who were free; from them I learned what had occurred on the sixth of November. What happened was not only terrible, but surprising as far as the Germans were concerned. I mentioned the fact that some eighteen professors who were in Lwow received a permit signed by the German authorities to return to Cracow under the German occupation. Obviously, this permit was given at the request of the University authorities, and this fact should have signified that the Germans had no aggressive intentions towards the University. Indeed, for a rather long period, the situation in Cracow as well as in the whole of Poland seemed not to have been particularly disquieting: the country was occupied by the army and started an existence which was to some degree similar to what normally happens under such circumstances. However, in order to be absolutely objective, I feel it necessary to stress that the behavior of the University authorities was not realistic: they showed too much self-reliance. This attitude of the faculty gave the Germans a pretext for their brutal exploit. Naturally, it did not justify this action, and I do not think that had the University taken a different attitude it would have prevented the arrests at the University. I simply want to say that, independently of what finally happened, the faculty might have acted more cautiously. But what happened? After the dismemberment of Poland by Germany and Russia had occurred, and all battles and all skirmishes had ended, when everyday life under the German occupation was taking a more or less normal and peaceful form, the rector of the Jagiellonian University and his colleagues in the senate of the University decided to resume its scholastic program. The time of enrollment and of the opening of courses had already been delayed. So, they decided to open the University, begin examinations for students who needed them, and enroll new students. The rector and his associates acted as if they were ignoring the fact of the occupation of Poland and did not consult the German authorities at all. This attitude was, in a way, very typical of people belonging to the academic world, but certainly not realistic, as I have already said. There was only one man in the senate, Dean Dziurzyfiski, Professor of Law,

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who tried to convince his colleagues that the University could not act in this way. After several meetings of the senate, he finally obtained one concession: the rector would at least inform the German authorities not ask permission - of their decision to begin the academic year. This all occurred either at the end of October or at the very beginning of November, and it was decided that the inauguration of the academic year would take place on the thirteenth of November so that the University would be open for the public at large after the eleventh of November - a dangerous date because of possible demonstrations. The Rector T. Lehr-Splawinski (I had known him very well since my student days), a distinguished scholar in Slavic linguistics, suddenly received a message from the chief of the Gestapo in Cracow, Oberführer Müller, before he had time to contact the German authorities, asking him to come to see him. Müller started by saying that the University had been opened; so he had heard. The rector hastened to say that he had had the intention of informing him of this fact and that he planned to arrange the inauguration on the thirteenth of November in order to bypass the eleventh as a not very proper day. Müller answered, "Very well. But I should like to have the whole professorial body and all officials working at the University assembled before the thirteenth at a special meeting at which I shall give a talk. You may convene all these people for the sixth of November, for instance. And please arrange it so that everyone will be there, as I have some very important things to say." "May I ask you", said the rector, "what the subject of your talk will be? I shall send a circular, and I shall need to mention in it the title of your lecture." "Oh, it's of no great importance. You may say something like 'Hitler and Scholarship'." The rector sent his circular. The meeting was supposed to take place in the morning on the sixth of November. When he arrived at the University, he saw that there were big trucks around and also soldiers in the Collegium Novum where the meeting was to be held. This naturally struck him unpleasantly, but he thought that perhaps Müller had brought the soldiers for his security. He went to his office, left his hat and overcoat there, and then proceeded to the chancery of the University to sign some letters. When he returned to his office he found Müller with a watch in his hand. He immediately told the rector, "It's time to begin", and he hurried to the large hall assigned for the meeting. Lehr-Splawinski, following him, asked, "Should I introduce you?"

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Miiller replied, "It is not necessary", and he opened the door, passing through crowds of soldiers standing in the corridor. The large room was entirely filled by professors, assistants, and officials of the administration. Some of the older professors were accompanied by their wives, as the latter could hear more clearly what was said than could their husbands. It appeared later that there were also present some people who did not belong to the University. For instance, a lawyer acquaintance was brought by Professor Ignacy Chrzanowski, a famous, old, retired scholar in Polish literature, known for his anti-German feelings, his admiration for France, and his joviality. Chrzanowski met the lawyer on the Planty, a circle of beautiful boulevards surrounding the center of the town and the University, and said, "Come with me to listen to what this Gestapo man has to say about Hitler and scholarship. It might be quite interesting and amusing!" The lawyer objected that he had his small dog with him. "Never mind. It probably won't last long." There were also some professors who had arrived in Cracow on that very day in the morning and hurried to the meeting without even having time for breakfast. Some of the faculty were out of Cracow. Some did not go because they did not feel well, some because they had never gone to any of the meetings at the University except their own lectures or examinations. Miiller went to the rostrum and began his "lecture" in the following way: "All ladies out, and you gentlemen will be searched and arrested. At the slightest resistance you will be shot. You decided to open the University without our authorization. You have not taken into consideration, at all, the great changes which have occurred in this country. You are known for having always been a center of anti-German propaganda." Then he loudly shouted an order to the soldiers who were behind the door. They entered, led the women from the hall, searched the men, and then escorted them brutally to the trucks. The professors were brought to some military barracks in Cracow which were, of course, occupied by German troops at this time. It happened that the commander there was a colonel of Austrian descent. He appeared to be very embarrassed and behaved quite decently. In a few hours, when the news reached the people, the wives, daughters and relatives of the prisoners arrived at the barracks with food and overcoats. I was told that the professors, in the majority, were in a rather

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good mood - joking. They probably thought this was just a temporary arrest without any serious consequences. Many of them appeared at the windows of the barracks, opened them, and were talking to their families. After a few days they were transported to a penitentiary in Breslau where they spent a couple of weeks. There, conditions were not too bad. They were meeting each other, and it was there that they organized those lectures which they continued heroically later in the most terrible surroundings in the concentration camp at Oranienburg, to which they were so suddenly transferred, and where, because of snow and mud, even in the barracks, many of them died in a few weeks. I related what I have preserved in my memory and I wrote these reminiscences in 1959-1961. My story of the arrests at Cracow University is based entirely, as everything in this book, on my own memory. As far as this tragic episode is concerned, I related what I heard after my arrival in Cracow on the thirteenth of November, 1939, from my colleagues who had escaped that arrest, and in February, 1940, from those of my colleagues who had returned from the concentration camp to Cracow on the ninth of February, 1940. On the 29th of August, 1965,1 received a book published in Cracow in 1964 and written by professor Jan Gwiazdomorski under the title, Reminiscences from Sachsenhausen, in which the author without any melodramatic effects describes the terrible truth of the stay and the sufferings and death in that horrible concentration camp. This book should be translated into foreign languages because it shows how deep was the moral degradation of those who believed themselves to be the builders of a "new order" in Europe. The details which this book contains are frightening. The objective narration of the author, who described what he had himself seen in Sachsenhausen, arouses horror in the reader. Particularly poignant are the scenes of the sufferings of many illustrious scholars, who were dying one after the other, suffering the tortures of uraemia, gangrene and dysentery, which were purposely left untreated. This sombre and yet glorious descent into death plunges the reader into a state of utter despair. And remember that in this hell the professors organized secret lectures, which sustained them. In addition, every death was commemorated in speeches dedicated to the deceased and delivered in those muddy, icy-cold barracks. Indeed one may say spiritus flat ubi vult.

I see now that my version does not conform in every detail to the report of my former colleague. I shall not mention small and unim-

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portant divergencies. But I should like to correct two of my statements. I maintained that the Senate had not asked the German authorities for permission to open the University. Professor Gwiazdomorski testifies that the rector informed several Nazi officials about the Senate's decision. I myself stressed that this detail was probably of almost no importance, as the obvious goal of the Nazis was to liquidate Cracow University and silence it as they silenced, for instance, also the Polish Academy of Letters and Sciences. In general, they intended to destroy Polish culture. Professor Gwiazdomorski is of the same opinion, but he was able to support it with a very eloquent document. The notorious governor-general of occupied Poland, Hans Frank, delivered on May 30, 1940, at a police meeting in Cracow, a speech, which contained the following passage: When now there in the West we must sacrifice at any minute or second thousands of men of the best German blood, we, the National Socialists, have the duty to see to it that the Polish people should not gain any advantage from the cost of this martyrdom. . . . I admit quite openly that this will cost the lives of several thousand Poles and first of all from the stratum of the spiritual leaders of Poland . . . the Fiihrer expressed himself in the following way: 'The strata recognized by us as the leading ones in Poland should be liquidated; we must protect what will grow up again and eliminate it again at the proper time'. Hence we do not need to burden with that either the German state or the organization of the German police within the State. We do not need to drag these elements to the concentration camps in the State, because in that case we would have only trouble and a useless exchange of letters with members of families. But we shall liquidate these problems in the country [i.e. in Poland]. And we shall do it in the simplest form. . . . We can't again burden the concentration camps in the State with our problems. The troubles which we had with the Cracow professors were horrible. Had we settled the whole affair here, it would have run a different course.1 In my text I used the name Oranienburg as the appellation of the concentration camp to which the Cracow professors were sent. I learn now that this was the name of the railway station on the way to the camp known as Sachsenhausen. I purposely did not revise my text in order to preserve its essential character. My work is not intended as a historical document, but as

1

The reader may find Frank's statements concerning the extermination of Polish intellectual elite in the following publication: Stanislaw Piotrowski, Hans Frank's Diary, Paristwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1961.

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purely personal reminiscences.2 I would like to tell of several episodes concerning others which, by contrast, show what inexplicable luck I had under the Germans; this luck was striking particularly after what I heard went on immediately after the arrest of the University faculty and officials, when I was back in Cracow. It appeared that some "distinguished" Germans, such as Doctor in Law Baldauf, the Vice-President of the city, used to visit private Polish apartments, escorted by several soldiers, and take whatever pleased them. There was the case when he entered an apartment in which a man was dying. He did not pay any attention to the pleas of the wife and went directly to the bedroom, where the dying man lay. He pointed various things, such as a carpet and a picture, to his soldiers, who immediately took them. Then, when he noticed a small electric heater standing close to the bed, he pushed it with his foot and said, "Take this, too." The wife began to implore him not to, telling him that her husband needed heat, for he suffered from chills. (The winter had started early, and that winter of 1939-1940 was a terrible one.) Mr. Baldauf answered, "I don't care whether he is dying or not. Take it!" And they took it. The pro-rector of the University, Professor Szafer, who was the director of the University botanical garden in Cracow and the botanical laboratories and library there, did not go to the meeting at which the arrest of the University faculty took place because of a liver attack. He gave me many details about the whole story and also told me the following: a few weeks after the arrest of the University professors, several German scholars visited the botanical garden, the collection, and the library, and at the end of their visit they told soldiers who escorted them to start to take all the books and load them in the trucks. Professor Szafer tried to convince them that at least the books should be left (they wanted to take various objects from the botanical collection also), as they certainly had them in Germany. The answer was "Wir werden lesen, und Sie werden arbeiten." The wife of the German

2

For all the facts mentioned above see: Jan Gwiazdomorski, Wspomnienia z Sachsenhausen, Wydawnictwo Literackie: Kraków, 1964; see also Jan Zaborowski and Stanisiaw Poznañski, Sonderaktion Krakau, Warsaw 1964; and the English publication: Stanisiaw Piotrowski, Hans Frank's Diary, Warsaw, PWN, 1961, which contains Frank's several statements concerning the necessity of the destruction of the Polish cultural élite. The author of this book was able to study Frank's Diary as after the Nuremberg Trial it had been handed over to the Polish authorities and is now in the archives of the Ministry of Justice in Warsaw.

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president imposed on the city used to go to various museums or art galleries and select pictures or other objects of art which were sent immediately to Germany. All the streets around the Planty were filled from morning to evening with enormous German trucks, which day after day were loaded with our goods and driven to Germany. I shall later relate some other episodes which I witnessed myself, but now I would like to give some examples of the amazing good fortune I personally had under this German rule. Before leaving Cracow, I had left my apartment as it was and had removed only my father's archives, together with my own papers, putting them in two large trunks and leaving them with the Polish Academy of Letters and Sciences. And they were supposedly still there, but the Academy was closed. I learned that there was a German official there, doing what I do not know probably evacuating the wealth of the Academy to his fatherland. I decided to take a chance; I went there. He was a civilian, a rather young man, dry and uncommunicative. I told him that, fearing the bombs, I had brought my personal archives and papers there to the Academy and that I should like to take them back. He asked me "Do you know where they might be?" I said, "Perhaps in the cellar where they were probably put for protection." Then he rang for a janitor and told him, "Please take Professor Lednicki to the basement, and if he can find his two trunks, he can have them." In this way I got those archives back - the fate of which later was so deplorable, as the reader will see. One day, while I was still busy with the arrangement of my apartment and unpacking my books in the vestibule, the bell rang, and I saw Mrs. B. with a very tall, handsome German, wearing the black uniform of the S.S., with silver epaulets. Mrs. B., who spoke excellent German, said to the man, "Well, here is the professor about whom I told you. As you see, he is busy with his books." He greeted me, did not even look into the apartment, and they left. After half an hour Mrs. B. came and told me, "Well, we shall have them here in the house. They ordered me to free one apartment on the first floor for them and give them the entire large one, which obliges me to finish it. In addition, they want a door cut from the small apartment into the large one. It so happens that the place that they indicated for this door is in the bathroom of the large apartment, between the lavatory and the bidet. I tried to convince him that this it not the proper

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thing to do, but he insisted, saying that he needed the door right there. Now I shall be obliged to spend a lot of money for that, in addition to moving one of my tenants from the small unit. Fortunately, as you know, I have an apartment house on Botanic Street, where it happens that there is a free one, so that the poor person will at least have a roof over his head, and he won't have to look for a place or have any expense. I shall pay for all that." So started a coexistence with the Germans in that house, which for some time was peaceful enough. They did not disturb me nor did they bother Mrs. B., except that she spent a lot of money for the alterations. Gradually I started a sort of social life, seeing my friends either in their homes, or from time to time inviting them for lunch or dinner at my flat; we often went for lunch or supper to some of the restaurants which remained available to us. That life was of course limited as far as the evenings were concerned, because at eight o'clock the city was completely dark, and no one was supposed to be about after ten. The winter, as I said, was extremely severe. Heavy snowfalls came, so that Cracow was completely covered with snow, and sleighs were constantly in use which was exceptional for this area. Various German troops marched through the streets from time to time, and they sang German songs. They were beautiful melodies, but they stabbed our hearts. At intervals we heard salvos of German guns. For a rather long period there was plenty of food in Cracow; the restaurants served good meals, and one was still able to find in the famous Cracow porkbutchers' shops those excellent Cracow hams, sausages, pork filets, comparable in the delicacy of their texture and flavor to the famed Russian smoked salmon of former days.

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The Radziwiiis were expecting an Italian visa which had been promised to them as a favor of the royal court, and for this reason the princess occasionally visited a special German diplomatic office, which was located in a large and imposing building of the Mining Academy in Cracow, a building which had been completed just before the war. The office was a political and diplomatic curiosity; it was a kind of German legation accredited to the General Government of "Independent Poland", established by Hitler. The Germans had their own diplomats representing the Reich to their own governors of Poland! But it happened that somehow in this office there were two exceptional Germans, and the head of it was Minister Johann von Wuhlisch, the former counselor of the German Embassy in Warsaw, a man who had been very popular in our social circles, known for his very friendly attitude towards Poland and the Poles. His right-hand man was Mr. Baum. The princess knew both von Wuhlisch and Baum. One day I received a postcard from the Belgian consul in Berlin, telling me that the Belgian Government was offering me a visa. I do not know how this occurred; I received that card it seems to me sometime early in January. A little earlier Princess K. Lubomirska had left Poland; she was supposed to have gone to Brussels. She had promised me that she would remind the University there about me. But this communication could not have resulted from her intervention, which she made, as I later learned. When I mentioned to the Radziwiiis that I had received such a note from the Belgian consulate, the princess suggested that I go with her and see von Wuhlisch. So I did this one day. It was strange to find myself in the enormous Mining Academy building and see all the classrooms, laboratories, and library rooms occupied by German officials, with their stenographers and typists, and also to see crowds of non-academic people circulating in the corridors and halls. At the entrance we got our permits, went to

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the second floor and into a large room in which there were no less than fifteen or twenty people either writing or typing. After a while von Wiihlisch appeared from a door which led to his personal office. The German diplomatic officials were also militarized and wore war uniforms which were very elegant. He kissed the hand of the princess, and they started to talk in French. She introduced me to him. It happened that von Wiihlisch arrived in Poland after my father's death, and this was probably the reason I had never met him; otherwise, he would certainly have known my father and have visited him. After my father's death I was seldom in Warsaw and seldom saw officials from the embassies, except the Belgian and French. When the princess was through with her problems, von Wiihlisch turned to me. I showed him the Belgian card. He looked at it and said, "Unfortunately, I cannot do anything in your behalf, because this is a consular communication. I would be able to act only if a diplomatic intervention in your behalf should occur. Take this and try to see Major Nimpfer", - and he explained where I would find him. " I am sorry, but that is the only advice I am able to give you." On our way back, the princess said to me, "Listen, I know this building and everything about it. I have been there. Nimpfer's office is in a private apartment, on the third floor. This is what you should do: Don't take the main stairs: there are always long queues and you will never reach him. Go to the kitchen entrance; they still have a Polish cook there. Give her a few zlotys and she will let you in." I did as she told me, but first I tried the main entrance, having a sort of fear, and there I did indeed find the queues and waited a long time. Finally, someone knocked at the door, which was still closed; the door opened and a German sergeant appeared, shouting, and locked the door again. I learned later that the same thing occurred every day and that probably the Germans had some German stationed there whose function was to knock and provoke these scoldings. Finally, I went to the kitchen side, following Princess Radziwill's instructions, and then I saw Nimpfer. (His name suited him very well.) He was a young, effeminate German, smiling, and gay. When I told him about the card and about the promised visa, he burst out laughing. "What! W e should allow a Cracow professor to leave and go to Brussels? A professor from this center of anti-German propaganda?! Allow you to go to Brussels so that you will immediately join the Polish legions in France?" I answered that I was no longer of military age, that I would join the

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University of Brussels, that I was not only a professor here, but also in Brussels. I added that Belgium was a neutral country. After some discussion, he said, "Well, write me a memorandum." My German was bad, so I asked Count A. Szembek to assist me. He was a man who for some reasons was not too popular in Cracow, but at that time he had apparently helped several people in the city by taking advantage of his personal contacts with the Germans. He helped me to write my memorandum, and a few days later I gave it to Nimpfer. Soon after this Nimpfer told me that the memorandum did not help and that my trip would not be allowed by the German authorities. I went again to von Wiihlisch, and here occurred an extremely interesting episode. Before telling it, I must go back in time to an incident that happened one evening when I was at the Tyszkiewiczes. We heard a car stop in the yard rather late, and someone rang the bell. It happened that I was looking for something in the vestibule at the moment; I saw a German in a military uniform standing there. Tyszkiewicz went to see him, and when he returned to the living room, he told us that it was Baum, who brought the good news that von Wiihlisch and he had succeeded in freeing the Czartoryskis and the K. I. Mirskis from prison, and also the Platers, the Tyszkiewiczes' daughter and son-in-law. Then Tyszkiewicz told me, "You know, this Baum is really a very decent man, and both he and von Wiihlisch do their best to help people whenever they are able." When I arrived to see von Wiihlisch and entered the big room in which I had been before with Princess Radziwilf, I asked the secretary whether I could see him. My custom was, when I went to those German offices, to wear a good fur coat (I had many of them, which I had inherited from my father), and the one I had on was indeed very fine. I also wore a black bowler to conform to my theory that one should meet the enemy in the best physical condition and appearance, in order to eliminate any elements of inferiority. Standing there with gloves and cane, I waited for the answer and after a while the secretary came; she asked me to take a seat, and said that Minister von Wiihlisch was busy, but instead of him Mr. Baum would receive me. In a few minutes I saw a man, who had been writing at a desk near one of the windows and who was in civilian clothes, stand up and approach the table at which I was sitting. When he came closer to me and I could see his face clearly, I thought that this was, in a way, a typical German face. I did not recognize him, not only because of the fact that at the Tyskiewiczes' I had seen him only briefly in the hall but also because he was wearing a uniform, whereas now he had on a business suit. He was a handsome

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man, in his fifties, blond, with expressive eyes, and a short mustache; there were circles under his eyes, so often characteristic of Germans, which gave the impression of great fatigue. He asked me in German if I were Professor Lednicki. I stood up, we shook hands and then sat down. Around us many officials and typists were busy; one could hear the clacking sound of the typewriters and some conversation from time to time between people who where circulating among the desks and typists. Still in German, he said, " Y o u are a famous Slavicist." I answered, "Whether I am famous or not, I do not know, but I am a Slavicist." " A r e you the son of Aleksander Lednicki?" I confirmed this. " I had the honor of knowing him when I was appointed to our embassy in Warsaw; I spent some time as a press attaché in Moscow, and when I arrived in Warsaw, I was eager to be introduced to your father who, as you know, was the greatest authority on Russian affairs. It was through our commercial counselor at the embassy, Baron Behr, that I became acquainted with your father." A t this moment I asked Baum, "May we speak French, as my German is rather poor." He replied, "Of course, please do", and he spoke perfect French. " A h , Baron Behr", I said. " I knew him well and saw him often as he and his wife used to be guests in my father's home in Warsaw; they also visited our estate near Wilno where Baron Behr went hunting. I still cannot forget an unfortunate accident which occurred in Warsaw; while driving on the Poniatowski Bridge, I ran over their dog which jumped from behind a streetcar under the wheels of my car. He was being walked by a servant of the Behrs, who was calling him from the other side of the street. I remember how disturbed my father was by this accident, as Mme. Behr was terribly attached to the dog." (Personally, I did not like Behr very much. When he came to my father's estate, he never brought his own guns, but used mine. There is a Polish saying, " Y o u should never lend your wife, your horse, or your gun." Behr was a German from the Baltic provinces, and his wife was Russian, also from a well-known Baltic family. She was the daughter of Baron A . A . Budberg, who was the chief of the Czar's chancery. She was very beautiful and known as a person who had an almost physiological disgust for the Bolsheviks, so that in the diplomatic corps the Behrs were never invited if any member of the Russian Embassy was supposed to be among the guests.)

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Continuing our conversation, Baum suddenly said, "May I ask you a question in connection with your writings on Russian literature? I read your annotated Polish edition of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, and of course your introductory essay. Who do you think is the greater poet, Byron or Pushkin?" I was indeed surprised to start a talk like this in the office of the German diplomatic mission in Cracow, surrounded by all those German officials and typists. "It depends. From the point of view of pure poetry, if we compare Eugene Onegin and Don Juan, Pushkin is perhaps superior, but on the other hand, Byron's vast intellectual and political horizons are much broader." "I completely agree with you. What do you think about the Polish translation of Eugene Onegin by Belmont?" (I had used this translation in my publication.) "I think that the main defect of Belmont's translation is that he preserved Pushkin's iambic meter and the Pushkin stanza, which has eight masculine rhymes against six feminine; the iambic meter and particularly masculine rhymes do not suit Polish versification very well, whereas in Russian poetry this meter is the most common one. Because of this, Belmont's text is strange to the Polish ear, and hence the aesthetic effect is different from the one which the original text gives, and, in addition, is a bad one." "Oh, you said that in the chapter on the verse in your introduction." "I see you have read my book really attentively, but, since you are interested in Pushkin and in Polish translations, may I ask you whether you have seen my Pushkin's Bronze Horseman}" "No. When did it appear?" "In 1931 or 1932, I think, published by the Biblioteka Polska." "Oh, by Koscielski?" "Yes." "By the poor Koscielski!" W. Koscielski was a rich Polish landowner, whom I had known very well, a man who was interested in the humanities. He established his publishing house for purely cultural reasons. He had a beautiful house near the king's castle in Warsaw, an old house which he had restored magnificently. Suddenly a few years before the war, in Poznan, which was his native city, he committed suicide; he jumped out of a window of the Hotel Bazar. "Yes, poor Koscielski", Baum continued. "How unfortunate that he

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should end his life like that. And who translated the Bronze HorsemanT I said, "Tuwim." "Tuwim? Where is he now?" Tuwim was one of the outstanding modern Polish poets, a Jew. I knew that he had escaped from Poland with his wife, and that they were in Paris. So, I thought that there was no danger in mentioning this to Baum, and I said, "He is in Paris." "So he is safe. Thank God!" This was, of course, a remarkable statement, taking into consideration what the Germans did to their own Jews before the war and what they were already doing to them in Poland. We continued our literary discussion, and I had to explain to Baum that, against my advice, Tuwim also preserved Pushkin's meter, but as he was a much greater poet than Belmont, and, as the Bronze Horseman was a small work in comparison to Eugene Onegin, the strangeness of the iambic meter in Polish (it is generally used only in very short poems) was less disturbing. This literary talk, so out of keeping with its surroundings, was interrupted when suddenly von Wiihlisch appeared. We stood up, and I informed him in French about Nimpfer's refusal. "Then, unfortunately, as I have already told you, I cannot handle your case. You need diplomatic intervention. Why don't you write to the Viscount Davignon, the Belgian ambassador in Berlin? You certainly know him, as he was in Warsaw for several years." "Yes, I know him, but will my letter reach him?" "Oh, I can't look after your letter personally. You must send it yourself. I hope Davignon will receive it." He left, Baum asked me to remain and said, "Please, write your letter and give it to me. I shall take care of it." After that I had to see Baum from time to time to inquire about the news concerning my possible authorization to leave Cracow for Brussels. I must frankly confess that Baum impressed me, not only by his general friendly attitude as far as I was concerned and with what he told me about my father, but by what he told me about my imprisoned colleagues in Oranienburg. He quite often expressed his criticism of the Gestapo action with respect to the University and informed me that both von Wiihlisch and himself were doing their best to obtain from the German Government the release of the prisoners. He said that there were many international protests and that even Mussolini had interfered in behalf of the Polish professors. He called me on the telephone from time to time and once invited me to dinner at his house. Just because of his

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personality, I decided to accept, although it was certainly a rather delicate affair. A Pole, a University professor, seeing a representative of the German occupational authorities privately was not a thing to have publicized. In my own conscience, however, I felt free to do so, as Baum was giving me proofs of his disagreement with the behavior of the Germans in Poland and of his opposition to the terror which was growing, which had started chronologically with the imprisonment of the Polish professors in Cracow. Why the Germans started that policy of terror in November and not immediately after the conquest of Poland was of course a sort of enigma. I think that the answer was that, short as the Polish campaign was, the Germans suffered great losses, and during the first weeks they were probably licking their wounds and were busy with the problems of reorganization; they had no time to start their policy of extermination in Poland. However, conditions were becoming worse and worse, and against the background of what was going on in the country in general, Baum's attitude became for me an object of curiosity and attraction. I accepted his invitation and went to his apartment. He was living in one of the large, modern apartment houses in Cracow, where he had a living room, a bedroom, and bath; he had a maid, I think a German one, who served a dinner which was not too rich, but a fine one nevertheless. Baum offered me some wddka and some German white wine. I remember that later I reciprocated and also invited him to my place for dinner. I often talked to Potocki about Baum; he knew him, of course, as well as von Wiihlisch, and he very often told me that I was too much impressed by Baum and that I should not exaggerate his good qualities. After all, he was a German, and he was participating in the regime. Very soon macabre news came from Oranienburg. We learned that thirteen professors died there from the horrible conditions in which they were kept. One of the former rectors and the former president of the Polish Academy, a famous professor in anatomy, K. Kostanecki, a very distinguished man, a prominent scholar and marvelous orator, died from gangrene of the foot, which had become frozen in the barracks. Professor S. Estreicher, also a former rector, who continued to publish the great Estreicher's Polish Bibliography (he himself was a scholar in law), died after several days of dreadful suffering caused by the fact that the camp's authorities did not provide him with the instruments which he needed and the lack of which finally caused uraemia. As we learned later, his organism became poisoned, and he exuded an

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odor of decomposition. In order not to affect his colleagues, he remained standing for hours in a corner of the barracks, where he finally died. The famous scholar in Polish literature, I. Chrzanowski, who during his long career helped form innumerable generations of scholars in Polish literature, died from pneumonia. The bodies of the dead were cremated by the Germans. Chrzanowski's widow obtained the favor - it was quite unusual - to get his ashes, which she brought to Cracow and buried in the Cracow cemetery, secretly. During this ceremony she was accompanied only by Professor St. Pigoñ, who had not been arrested, and who was one of Chrzanowski's distinguished pupils and his successor in the University to the chair of Polish literature. There was, indeed, something particularly poignant in the whole story, especially since Chrzanowski had been a very popular man in the community. He used to walk on the Planty every day, never with a hat, and his tall figure with its shock of white hair was a kind of characteristic feature of the town. Everyone remembered this jovial, gay man. For this reason, the secret burial of his ashes (this was a condition imposed by the Germans) created a macabre, sad contrast to what would have happened under normal conditions when undoubtedly he would have been honored by the entire city at his funeral. My life in my apartment and in the house was still more or less normal. Everyone had to be at home not later than ten o'clock in the evening, so I used to spend my hours at night either in writing or reading. This was the period when I read with enormous enjoyment Les Giróndins, which immediately gave me the impression of being one of the first modern biographies romancées, and I became simply enamored with Leskov, particularly with his stories about the Russian clergy and Russian monastic life. I remember that I gave those novels and short stories to Potocki, who also enjoyed them very much. In my opinion, Leskov is the greatest Russian short story writer, one of the most admirable masters and gourmets of Russian language, who combines his deep Russianism with a genuine and enthusiastic admiration for Western European culture and literature, and, in particular, shows a high respect for and interest in Poland and Polish belles-lettres. Along with my reading, I began to write my memoirs in Polish, evoking from the past the most dear and intimate memories of my childhood and my parents, about our relatives, friends, our life in Moscow, on the Smolensk estate, and our visits to our relatives in White Ruthenia and Lithuania. Probably two reasons turned me to writing: first, the feeling of insecurity, the feeling that I should somehow preserve for the future

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that bygone life; and second, the fact that I was in my apartment surrounded with many objects which had belonged to my parents and which had been miraculously saved from the Bolshevik disaster; I had my father's archives and my complete correspondence with my parents from my early childhood to my parents' deaths. Hence, I had all the necessary documents, and I was able to reconstruct that past and check my memories, not only from their letters to me, but from my own to them, and from my letters to my sister and from hers to me. All this could have been destroyed at any moment, and every night I had the feeling that it could be my last one in my apartment, the more so because after dark I heard salvos in the town and the noise of German Gestapo cars which prowled the streets, and which stopped here and there; all of us knew what the blinking lights of those cars and those stops meant. But still, nothing happened to me. Mrs. B. went to lunch at the Grand Hotel café every day about noon, or to another restaurant on Florianska Street, where both of us knew almost all the waiters. I had an agreement with those waiters that the usual large glass of wódka which she was accustomed to take should also be the last one and that they should manipulate it in such a way as not to give her any more liquor. This was not an easy accomplishment, as the first drink sufficed to put her in a state of aggressiveness. One day, towards the end of December (as far as I remember, it was on Christmas Eve), we went to the Grand Hotel; incidentally, the Radziwills also had their wódkas there around lunchtime. When I thought that Mrs. B. had had enough, we left, and when we passed close to their table, they asked me to remain for a moment or so with them. Mrs. B. had gone ahead of me, and as she did not know them, I suggested that she wait for me a few minutes in the hall where I would meet her. She seemed angry and said that she would go home by herself. I returned to the Radziwilis for a short chat. When we separated, as if taken by a sort of premonition, instead of walking home as I often did, I took a cab. After I paid the driver on my arrival, I saw the doorman in front of the house, with a frightened expression on his face. Then the door opened, and his wife came out in tears. I asked what had happened, and they said the Germans were in the house. I said well, they always had been there. The answer was, "Not these Germans! They came here and are now in Mrs. B.'s apartment, and a terrible thing has occurred." I opened the door. It was one with an automatic lock like those in France; one had to press a button in order for the entrance door to be

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opened. There was no elevator as the house had only three floors. My apartment was, as I have said, on the third floor, while Mrs. B.'s was on the second. When I walked up the stairs I saw that the door to her apartment was open and I heard a tumultuous conversation inside. I went rapidly to my own place and told my maid that the Germans were in the house and that probably at any moment they would come to us. In one of my living rooms I had several old clocks; I do not know why - probably in order to calm myself - I started to wind one after the other. Suddenly I heard a terrible banging at the entrance; my maid was frightened and in tears. When I opened the door, I saw five or six men in civilian clothes and with them also the tall S.S. man who lived in the house. Two civilians were busy trying to pick the lock of my neighbor's door; he worked in an office and was not at home. When some of the others saw my door open, they shouted in German, "Herr President, the door is open." I at once realized that one of those men was President Zorner. (He was a former president of Dresden, an artist by profession, who used to entertain several Polish scholars in that city, those who were indifferent enough to visit and lecture in Hitler's Germany.) All of them quickly turned their faces in my direction and poured into my apartment like water over a broken dam. Immediately, as they walked rapidly through the vestibule to the living room, questions fell on me one after another which I had to answer in the same staccato rhythm. "Professor?" "Yes." "Philosophy?" "No philology." A t this moment we were in the living room. One of the men turned to Zorner and said, looking around into my showcases and at the shelves with old, beautifully bound books, and at my engravings and carpets, "Herr President, was fur schone SachenY' He went to the other living room, still praising my furniture, and then the rapid questioning began again. " Y o u are alone?" "Yes." "Do you want a lodger?" I answered, "I can't have any because, as you see, I have no bedroom and no bed." "Alles in Ordnung (everything all right)", and repeating this, they left.

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One of them told me, while leaving, "I am Dr. Jordan. You will get a certificate from me which will free your apartment from compulsory guests, and you will have to bring it to Dr. Baldauf, Vice President of the city", and he pointed him out to me. "I am in the Mining Academy Building, and he is in the City Hall." They left. So, the President of the city, the Vice President, and a director of an important German office were personally invading private houses and picking the locks! I immediately went downstairs to Mrs. B. She was in tears. This is what I heard: When Mrs. B. returned from the Grand Hotel, she saw the German crowd which was surging around the entrance and trying to open the door. The doorman was probably somewhere upstairs. Mrs. B. approached them and went to reach the button in order to open it. They stopped her and asked "Who are you?" "I am the owner of the house", she answered. "Where is your identification card?" "I don't need one. Everyone in the house knows me, and everyone knows that the house belongs to me." (She was, of course, irritated already.) "Well, it is war. You must have your identification card." To this she answered, "One day you say war, another day you say peaceful occupation." "What?! Stop your arguing! You, a Jewess!" said one of them. She exploded and said, "I am not a Jew. You, yourself, you are a Jew!" "What!" all of them shouted. "You will be arrested. Go to your apartment!" They accompanied her there, and they told her that she would have to share it with a chauffeur, whom they would send her as a lodger. She showed them the sliding glass door which separated the only two rooms in the apartment - the bedroom with the connecting bath, and the living room. She said, "How do you expect me to live here with a chauffeur?' "He is a good man, and he will take good care of you." They left and came to my place. Mrs. B. was in tears and called Maryncia Michalowska, a great friend of hers, who immediately came to her place. She promptly decided that Mrs. B. should stay either with her or with another friend of hers, Mme. Krasicka, and simply abandon her apartment to the Germans.

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I went out and saw the tall S. S. man, who was still living there, at the entrance door. I approached him and told him, "It is impossible to put a chauffeur in Mrs. B.'s apartment. Y o u know that very well." "I do", he said, "but one cannot behave like Mrs. B. did under these circumstances. After all, we are in the war, and she provoked them." I asked, "What can be done?" He replied, "I will try to do what I can, but it seems rather hopeless for the moment when they are so irritated and angry." Then I told him, as he had heard, that I was supposed to see Dr. Jordan, and perhaps I would be able to talk to him about the matter. He said, "Try." I asked Maryncia Michalowska to go with me the next morning to see Dr. Jordan so that she could help me, since she spoke German fluently. She agreed, and we went. When we approached the door of the office, we heard shouts, and when we opened the door, we saw that it was Dr. Jordan himself shouting. As soon as he saw me, he said, "Ah, yes. The professor. Yes, I do remember I told you to come. Your document will be given to you right now." He turned to a typist, telling her to type a card which was supposed to be signed by Baldauf and then put on my door. While the typist was busy with the card, I said to Jordan, "Herr Direktor, I should like to touch upon the unfortunate incident which occurred yesterday with Mrs. B., the owner of the house in which I live." He immediately interrupted me, saying, "Herr Professor, not a single word about diese bose Dame, because if you do so, we shall think that der gute Professor is as evil as is this wicked woman. Not a single word about her, please!" The document was given to me, and we left. Even now, I cannot understand why I was called "the good professor". The miracle of my security was still active. I went directly to see Baldauf. I spent two hours waiting for him before lunch, and then I returned after lunch, and again hours passed. Finally, I moved from the waiting room into the corridor which I supposed led to his office, and at that very moment the door opened. Baldauf's secretary, an attractive German girl, who had told me repeatedly that I had to wait, appeared, followed by Baldauf himself. When he saw me, he said to the girl, "Greta, why didn't you tell me that the professor was waiting here?" He turned to me, "Please come in." I gave him my document. He said, "Yes, certainly I'll sign it", and then I tried to speak in

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behalf of Mrs. B. This was his slowly articulated answer: "Please understand, professor, that when a Jewish person acts against us, then this person is finished." To this I said, "Mrs. B. is not Jewish. She belongs to a distinguished Polish family of the Polish nobility. There is some Spanish blood in her veins and that is why she is dark, and it happened that she was in a state of nervous tension yesterday, and - ." He interrupted me. "No matter whether she is Jewish or not, when a person who seems to us to be Jewish acts against us, as I told you, this person is fin-ish-ed." The S.S., however, did something. Instead of a chauffeur, two German women from some German office were billeted in Mrs. B.'s apartment. One should remember that the incident occurred on Christmas Eve, and on the first day of Christmas Mrs. B. was called to come and see these women. When she arrived, they told her, "We must have our breakfast every morning, which your maid will prepare for us. You are not allowed to come to the apartment in our absence. You may take some of the photographs with you if you wish", and they opened some drawers, "and some of your underwear and stockings. Now please show us your library because we like to read in bed in the evening. Where are your German books?" Mrs. B. opened her bookcase and said, "Here are Polish books, French books, and English books. I have no others to offer you." The women left a day or so later for Berlin for their vacation, and before leaving they turned off the heat so that the heaters became frozen and broke, and finally the apartment was damaged by water and the whole heating system ruined. After some time, still through the intervention of the S. S., Mrs. B. got permission (I was very much interested in this) to take her furniture from the apartment on the condition that she would install complete new furniture for the German women at her own expense. In this way my whole bedroom set, with my father's bed, was saved. From time to time Mrs. B. visited the house and visited me, and one day, when we were just leaving to go out, one of the German women, who was quite ugly, approached Mrs. B. and said to her, "You did not give me a full-length mirror (psyche) without which I cannot dress." Mrs. B. opened her bag and took out a packet of bills which she chanced to have with her and said, "I have already spent several thousand zlotys for your furniture. Besides, there is not a single mirror left in Cracow as the Germans have taken everything."

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"Oh, I saw yesterday a shop on Florianska Street in which you may still find a mirror." I do not know how I restrained myself from using my cane on the face of that creature. One day the great news came from Baum, who telephoned me, telling me that the passport would be given to me, as the necessary diplomatic steps had been taken, and he asked me to come and see him. I learned from him that von Wiihlisch had received instructions from Berlin to facilitate my departure to Brussels, to give me the passport, and that the Berlin Foreign Office had received two requests: One was from the German ambassador in Brussels, von Biilow, who asked for this favor, referring to the demands of the Belgian Government, which was taking into consideration the wishes of the University of Brussels, whose president at that time was a former Belgian minister of foreign affairs, Paul Hymans. Hymans was an internationally known figure, who very often presided at the sessions of the League of Nations in Geneva. The other diplomatic intervention came from the Belgian ambassador in Berlin, the Viscount Davignon, who made the same request, following the instructions of his government. Baum told me that since this had happened, I would be able to leave Cracow whenever I wished. It would be hard for me to express my feelings of gratitude for this wonderful solicitude of my Belgian friends and protectors. A t the same time Baum also gave me another piece of good news, which was that the Cracow professors were supposed to arrive from Oranienburg very shortly, in the early part of February; our conversation took place some time in the second half of January. I thanked him for his good news and told him that, in any case, I would not leave Cracow before the arrival of my colleagues. I felt a sort of subconscious solidarity with them; and I experienced an uneasiness at the thought that I would be leaving for the free world while my friends and co-workers were exposed to horrible sufferings in a German concentration camp. While I was waiting for the return of my colleagues, I received a letter from the Italian consul-general in Katowice. Mussolini was, as we know, still neutral, maintaining his friendly relations with Hitler, but not participating in the war, which apparently enraged Hitler. Mussolini recalled his embassy from Poland, but left a consul general in Katowice. Katowice was already in the zone of Polish territories definitely annexed by Germany, but the Italian consul was still acting in the territory of the German General Government, and in connection with his duties, every week he came to Cracow, where he had an office. The letter which

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I received requested me to come and see him at his office; he informed me of his Cracow calendar. When I saw him, he took a sheet of paper out of his briefcase and read a text to me, a copy of which I still have: "Her Imperial and Royal Highness, the Princess of Piedmont is interested in the health and conditions of life of Professor Waclaw Lednicki, and asks for information about him. In connection with this interest shown for Professor Waclaw Lednicki by her Imperial and Royal Highness, the Imperial and Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy is ready to give to Professor Lednicki at his request a visa for Italy without any qualifying formalities being imposed, and at the same time, Professor Lednicki might consider himself as being under the protection of the Italian Government." I immediately realized that this intervention was due to my sister's friendship with Princess Marie-José, and with her husband, Prince Umberto, the heir to the Italian throne. My sister was often a guest of Marie-José in Naples and in Turin, and whenever the princess and her husband were in Milan, where my sister used to live, Umberto visited her, and the princess invited my sister to come and see her. My sister made a bust of the princess; one replica of this bust was in the royal palace in Naples, and the other was bought by Lloyd Triestino for the magnificent ship Conte di Savoia on which there was a separate small salon where the bust was placed; I saw it myself when my sister traveled on the ship. She was permanently given a de luxe apartment on the ship for her trips to America and back, without cost to herself. I remember once when I was in Genoa, I saw her off and witnessed how the captain, with all the officers, greeted her as she came aboard. When the Conte di Savoia made her maiden voyage, my sister was invited to sail from Genoa to Naples, and Umberto, who made the voyage as a representative of the dynasty, opened the ball with a waltz with my sister. She had many friendly relations with high Italian society; on many occasions when I was in Italy, I met some of her friends in Rome, Milan, Naples, or Portofino. Some of them sent me letters after the war started, offering me their hospitality. Had I not received the visa from Belgium, I would have perhaps taken advantage of these invitations. Needless to say, however, only the letter from the Italian Foreign Office made these invitations feasible. But, since my departure for Belgium had been authorized by the Germans, and I realized that the Belgian intervention implied that the University would take care of me, my choice was clear. The chair had been paid for, as I mentioned earlier, by the Polish Government. This subvention naturally no longer

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existed. Obviously, then, the University had decided to give me material conditions for my work at the University, for otherwise they would no? have fought so hard to enable me to go there. Hence, in Brussels, I would be able to work and live as a professor of the University, whereas in Italy, I would be obliged to lead the existence of a parasite, of a guest of rich people, who would take me into their homes as a "friend of the family". Obviously, I did not examine the whole situation in such a detailed way while I was talking to the Italian consul. I thanked him and asked for a legalized copy of the letter from the Italian Foreign Office, as I quickly realized that such a document would be invaluable to me under the German occupation and probably on my journey to Belgium, since I had to cross Germany. The consul made no objections and gave me a copy of the letter. My departure was certainly not a simple problem. I had to do something with my apartment - put away safely my most valuable belongings and furniture, hide my father's political documents and my own personal papers (such as my correspondence with my parents, my general correspondence, family photographs, keepsakes) and then secure for myself the possibility of taking with me some of my manuscripts (I had a work of some six hundred pages prepared for publication, of which the first one hundred pages had already been composed by the printer), my notes for my courses and my research notes, some family jewels, and at least a part of my wardrobe. There had been created a Polish relief institution called the "Main Council of Protection", the chairman of which was Count Adam Ronikier, a former personal and political friend of my father, who, while my father was a representative of the Council of Regents in Moscow, held a similar diplomatic post in Berlin. I knew him well, and we very easily came to the agreement that he would settle in my apartment. As Ronikier was himself a man who knew Germany and Germans well and still preserved some relations with decent Germans, with the German Red Cross, and other institutions, and as his Council was tolerated by the German occupation, this gave a sort of guarantee that a tenant such as he would give some protection to my place. But as I knew that Ronikier would have innumerable visitors and that, owing to this, many of my things could be damaged, I packed all of my most valuable china and silver, pictures, engravings, and carpets and distributed them among various friends - the Potockis, the Tyszkiewiczes, several professors, etc., and I left all political photographs (of the first Duma, of the Polish war relief organizations, of various famous political

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Russian and Polish figures who were my father's friends, and so on) with a friend of mine who was a well-known Polish painter. The most valuable pictures by great Polish artists had also been left with some friends, as well as the beautiful head of St. Francis of Assisi, a sculpture of my sister's. (The bronze replica of this head was in the Museum of Forli in Italy; she got a gold medal for it at the exhibition of religious art in Venice, and the marble replica was always in my father's apartment and remained with me after his death.) My father's and my own archives were left in the office of Mrs. B.'s lawyer, an insignificant place, and we thought that no one would search there for any documents of that kind. A s far as the problem of the things which I wanted to take with me, Baum told me that the Italian letter would probably help. For this matter I was supposed to see a special German office which took care of customs problems. Naturally, all of this was worked out only after the return of the professors from Oranienburg; it was only after their arrival that I definitely determined to go to Brussels. I made this decision after having seen some of my colleagues, those whom I knew more closely, and also the president of the Academy, and the older members of the Academy and the University. All of them told me that it was my duty to take advantage of Brussels' intervention in order to inform the West about the situation in Poland and what the Germans were doing. The stories which I heard from the returned faculty members were horrible; some of them had changed physically to such an extent that I was deeply moved by those faces which silently told me of the sufferings they had undergone. Suffice it to say that four of the one hundred and two who returned on the eighth of February died almost immediately afterwards in Cracow. Their stay in the Breslau prison had been quite decent, and what amazed me and evoked my admiration was that they had started to organize lectures for themselves, which they continued in the dreadful conditions of the Oranienburg camp barracks. In snow, in mud, in cold, they delivered their lectures. There was a professor of linguistics there whom I had known well for some time; we all held him in the greatest esteem, but also feared and were irritated by him. The esteem was due to his immense merits. It must be said in passing that the "linguistic school" of Cracow represented a team of scholars of the first rank; in latter days the linguists of Cracow had won a position in Europe which no other European linguistic schools could dispute. Like the mathematicians and logicians of Warsaw, our linguists of Cracow were known and renowned throughout the

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world. This professor, Kazimierz Nitsch, was one of the leading men of that school. His erudition, his faculty for work, were truly extraordinary; he was a fanatic. He was also a man of absolute scientific probity; in all his judgments, in all his opinions, he let himself be guided only by purely scholarly considerations. That is why one knew that in any personal question his judgment would be characterized by the greatest possible certainty and integrity. But this man had a particularly disagreeable character, disagreeable in the sense that it was entirely impossible for him to conceal his opinions, to attenuate his judgments, at least the expression of those judgments when they were unfavorable. That is the reason he caused fear and irritation; every opinion he uttered was aimed at the truth, without the least effort to be circumspect, to spare ambition and self-love. On the other hand, there was in him a deep personal humility toward those whom he recognized as scholars "without blemish or reproach". Such was always his attitude toward our great philosopher and "scholar-poet" of language - Jan Michat Rozwadowski. While savage and ferocious in his criticisms and crushing in his words as an angry scholar, he was all softness when he spoke of things or of personalities which became the object of his admiration; at such times a deliriously appreciative smile appeared on his lips. I went to see this man after his return from Oranienburg in his modest villa, situated, as it happened, in the most ravishing quarter of Cracow on a little hill, with a delightful view of the Vistula and the Wawel. (The seat of the Polish kings.) He had changed greatly, he had grown terribly thin, his hair was shaven, he coughed continually. But in his eyes I recognized the same energy and the same will, which glittered through the glass of his very thick lenses; he was nearsighted. Fearfully, with a constricted feeling in my heart, I asked him, "Was it terrible?" The voice we knew so well, always snappish and dry - but which had suddenly become known to me, so dear and so immensely precious, that I stifled sobs in my throat - replied: "Yes, it was harsh - but, you see, I held out, and I don't feel so bad . . . " And then he changed the conversation . . . Such reserve was typical of all of them. They did not want to tell; in them there was the shyness of the man who has undergone many degradations, horrible defilement of his human dignity . . . They did not want to talk about it . . . I immediately caught . . . this characteristic in him as well, and that made me shudder inwardly even more. "You know", he told me, "that we were able to organize lectures

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there, during the first three weeks. Later the Germans forbade it . . . Everyone gave lectures on different subjects, of course . . . And, as always, there were good ones and bad ones . . . " Here he began to list the speakers and pass them in review, for all the world as he had been accustomed to do before . . . He did not spare even those who had died in the camp . . . When it came the turn of one of our greatest masters of the history of Polish literature (and he was a friend of my host who had died in Oranienburg), he made the following observation: "Well yes, he spoke too, he dealt with the history of the literary life of Warsaw at the end of the nineteenth century; it was good, it was vivid, but well, you can imagine, you are familiar with his style - anecdotes, reminiscences, Kleinmalerei." Then he continued, "One day we had a lecture from Mr. - whom you know. It was very weak. Y o u know me too, so you will foresee that I did not hide my opinion from him. Well, and can you guess how he replied to me? He said, 'I did not have time to prepare my talk.' . . . He did not have time!" "I did not refrain", he went on, "from telling him what I thought of him: 'How is this - no time! You know of course that in this terrible cold, in this snowy mud we have here in the barracks, in this stench - no one can sleep or even close an eye. And yet you tell me that you didn't have time to prepare your talk.'. . . " I am not capable of translating into words the awe, admiration, and enthusiasm which this man roused in my heart. I felt crushed; I was there like a poor earthworm contemplating a star . . . That man shaven like a prisoner, peering through glasses that glittered in the twilight coming from the snow-covered plain into the room, that man who was physically weak, bent with age and with the torture itself, coughing, but sweetly and tenderly smiling at every scientific idea that pleased him, appeared before my dazzled eyes as the perfect example of what I should like to call heroism, the holy ascetism of scholarship . . . Its living representative, before my eyes, was this "knight errant" of science. But to go back to general life in the Oranienburg camp. In the daytime the imprisoned faculty members were taken outdoors and there, under the command of German corporals, they had to perform all sorts of gymnastic exercises, to lie down in the snow, to stand up, to flex their knees, and so on; and when many of those old men were unable to execute all these calesthenics, they were beaten. Usually these men did not want to talk about these events. I forced confessions from some of them. As I have said before, there was in them a sort of timidity, embarrassment,

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a feeling of humiliation in revealing such details. When I went to see the office where I was supposed to get the authorization for the objects I wanted to take with me, the official there told me to make a list. Baum had suggested that I should not mention at all my manuscripts and notes, that he would try to take care of this matter himself in some way. When the man read the list and saw several articles of jewelry, such as my father's gold watch, my own, my mother's brooches, pearls, my cigarette cases, and so forth, he told me that he would prefer to see those things remain in Cracow, within the German occupation. I told him that they were family heirlooms, not objects for commercial use, but he was still unwilling. Then I took the Italian letter from my wallet and showed it to him, saying, "I am protected not only by the Belgian Government, but also by the Italian Government." This result had the desired effect; he ordered a clerk to prepare the necessary authorization. Here a very amusing incident occurred. While waiting for that document, I started a conversation with him; and, as my German was always rather weak, desiring to ask him from which part of Germany he was, I used the cognate German word "Partei." He opened his eyes wide and indignantly asked me, "What do you mean? PctrteP. There is only one - Hitler's party." I was still postponing my departure, and in this case my approach to the very idea of leaving Cracow was entirely different from that at the beginning of the war. What I have already said shows that I was very much preoccupied with all the precious things I had to leave, precious not only from the point of view of money, but mostly because of their association with my past and my family. I have also mentioned that after my father's death I had no wealth except my apartment and my earnings. Here again I should like to stress that the tragic death of my father and his political fate in Poland detached me from my country, and before the war I was thinking about leaving for good. Some tasks which I considered it my duty to accomplish before that contemplated final separation from my country, reconciled me with the material impossibility of my leaving Poland. But had I not considered them essential, and had I had the actual, feasible means of leaving, I would certainly have been happy to have settled somewhere in Western Europe. The war changed the whole situation objectively and subjectively. The whole of Europe was embraced by war hostilities; the former Polish Government ceased to exist. The suffering of the whole nation transformed entirely my personal attitude. Hence, a trip to Europe under

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these new circumstances acquired a completely different character. I now considered it a temporary sojourn, the aim of which was to free myself from the yoke of the German occupation and accomplish some useful work for Poland in Western Europe. Despite the bad impression which France had given me just before the war, I was inwardly convinced that France, and especially Great Britain, would defeat Hitler. In addition, the Polish Government in exile which replaced the Colonels' regime included several personalities whom I respected and who had always been faithful friends of my father. The existence of this government had no influence on my departure. I may even add that F. Potocki, with whom my friendship had become particularly close and who was in principle against my going, warned me that I should not get involved with the government. He was not sure of the source of the finances of the Polish Government; therefore he warned me, "Don't touch any of the money they might offer you." True, he did not know that the Polish gold had been saved, and that the government in exile had obtained loans from the Allies on the basis of this gold reserve. Thus, the Poles were not mercenaries of the Allies, as they were existing in principle on Polish funds. At any rate, Potocki was full of apprehensions. As I explained, I was planning to go to Brussels and to remain there. Another circumstance should be mentioned; this was the period of the "phony war"; the Allies did not do anything in order to help Poland when Hitler and Stalin attacked it, but the general opinion - more than that, the general belief in Poland - was that very soon the Allies would move and Hitler would be defeated. This conformed to my own opinion. On leaving Cracow, I was sure that sooner or later I would be able to return. But still, the "phony war" worried the Poles, Potocki often told me, "You will see; nothing like what has happened in Poland will happen in the West. The Germans will bomb neither the French nor the English cities, and the British and French will not bomb the German cities. As far as Germany is concerned, I would be happy to see Russia go in there, and perhaps it will happen, because only Russia will be able to annihilate them. Neither the British nor the French can do so." It was obvious that I had practically no good reason to continue to remain in Cracow, but still, as I said, I did not hurry. I observed a great change in Poland which occurred under the pressure of the German occupation; a sort of general solidarity among all the people developed. One would say that, indeed, class differences were gradually disappearing, and a sort of national fraternity was established. The same might be said also as far as Polish-Jewish relations were concerned. I

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know of several cases where former anti-Semites protected and gave asylum in their homes to Jews persecuted by the Germans. The German anti-Semitic persecutions and the ghettos which the Germans began to organize also pushed the Jews closer to the Poles. In other words, despite the fact that material conditions of life were becoming more and more difficult, the spiritual atmosphere of Polish life was comforting. It was not easy to separate myself from my friends, and particularly from Mrs. B., who decided to remain in Cracow. Our agreement was that, depending on the outcome of the war and material circumstances, either I would return to Cracow or she would join me in Europe. I think that at the end of February I learned from my former wife that my daughter had to have her appendix removed. She was in Warsaw and I went there to see her. This was the first and last time I saw this city during the war. When I arrived at the main station in Warsaw I found everything in ruins, and I decided to go to one of my closest friends, S. Saski, who lived on the opposite side of the street on which I formerly had my apartment. There were no taxis and no cabs, but there were small sleighs around the station which boys used to transport luggage. Following one of these sleighs, I walked through the heavily damaged streets of the city. Later in the day Saski took a walk with me through the whole town to show me the major areas of disaster. I must say that I was in tears at seeing what had happened to Warsaw. I saw my daughter, who at that time was almost fifteen years old; fortunately the operation had been successful. I left her some money, and in a few days I returned to Cracow. I saw several friends, among them Mrs. M., the wife of a high functionary in the foreign office; at that time he was in Paris. I had loved this charming woman from my first meeting with her after the First World War. I remembered her from the Cracow Carnival days, but strangely enough at that time she had not attracted or interested me. Later, however, in the 1920's, I became very attached to her and used to see her frequently. She was from an opulent and aristocratic family in Poznania. At the very beginning of Hitler's rule, she was one of those in Poland, as in many other countries, who were impressed by the "rejuvenation of the German nation" and by the German youth. Before the war, the Polish ambassador in Berlin, J. Lipski, a cousin of hers and a good friend of mine, promised to invite her to Berlin some day so that she could see Hitler. At that time I had very emotional discussions with her on this subject. It was strange to see how such a delicate flower of aristocratic

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tradition, and a woman highly cultured and at the same time endowed with the most charming femininity and kindness, a charitable woman who would help any man in any of his troubles, like a sort of Maya, guided with a supreme spirit of tolerance and comprehension, could have been attracted by the ferocious brutality and ruthlessness of Hitlerism. The French proverb says, Les extrêmes se touchent-, her feminine nature might have felt a manifestation of the triumphant male in Hitler's movement, but in this sense, too, she was misled, as Hitler was an imposter even in that sphere. I do not mean that she was active in any way as far as her political infatuation was concerned. Her feelings were absolutely personal, and her desire to see Hitler was probably a matter of pure curiosity. Many other admirers of this movement were drawn toward it by their brutal natures and by their political temperaments and outlooks, but nothing of that existed in her. She did not think about becoming an advocate of the movement or an adherent of it, and as in general she had always been entirely indifferent to politics, her peculiar infatuation was a purely personal affair. When I reached her home, a very nice villa in a modern residential section of Warsaw, which fortunately at that time had not been damaged by Hitler's bombs, and entered the door of her living room, I saw her stretched on a large sofa, covered with a lap-robe, as it was cold. (Poland, which was never lacking in coal, was frozen under the German occupation.) She stopped me in the doorway with a gesture of her hand, and said, "Please don't say a word. I know what you're going to say." I immediately understood that she referred to the terrible collapse of her former enthusiasms and beliefs. After a while, she added, "The only thing I can offer you is a bottle of Chablis", and when we started to drink it, she told me her story and said that probably she would also be obliged to leave Warsaw for Paris, not being, however, at all happy about it. Her feeling was that she should remain in the country and continue to share its fate. She is exactly in the same mood now that she lives in Paris, and, were it not for the political situation of her husband there, she would go to Poland immediately. I remember when I was at lunch at their home in Paris in 1957, I met one of her sisters (the only one whom I did not know before) who had visited her relatives in Canada and England and was returning to Poland; I myself was supposed to go to Poland and had been invited by the Poznan Society of Friends of Science for the celebration of their centennial. When I expressed some doubt - I was not very much attracted by this trip - she remarked, "You must go;

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and if you don't, I don't want to see you again." Her sister, I remember, told me when describing the conditions of life in Poland, that I certainly would not be able to have a bath easily. "But you will bathe in your own tears and the tears of your friends", she said. Returning to my stay in Warsaw in 1940, I also saw W. Dzwonkowski, the historian, who was writing a biography of my father. He was living in a modern apartment house near the Vistula, and had several volumes from my father's archives which I had lent him. The most important part of those archives had been segregated and bound in separate volumes. Dzwonkowski, I remember, offered me some French white Bordeaux wine, a selection typical of the Polish intelligentsia who always liked those particular French wines. When he learned that I was leaving for Brussels, he came near to expressing indignation. He advanced the opinion that I had no right to separate myself from my father's archives, that I should guard them. In answer to that I said, "First of all, it seems to me that in certain moments personal life and activities have some priority over duties to the past, and besides this, I have found a possibility of granting absolute security to these documents." He immediately suggested that I should bring the whole archives to him before I went abroad, as they would be most secure under his guardianship. To this I objected, saying that I was not able to return to Warsaw before leaving Cracow, and I told him where I had deposited the archives; I mentioned the name of the lawyer in Cracow. Poor Dzwonkowski! He could not foresee at that time the final fate of Warsaw in the war and the complete destruction of the city after the Polish uprising against the Germans, while the Russian army patiently watched in the suburbs of Warsaw, waiting for the time when the Germans would completely destroy the city and annihilate its population. Dzwonkowski escaped death and moved to Lódz; he died several years ago. I recently learned that the Polish Academy of Sciences acquired his library and his archives from his widow, and fragments of his biography of my father had been found, but nothing else as far as my father was concerned; none of the volumes of my father's archives which Dzwonkowski had in Warsaw were discovered.

XII A TOUCHING T A L K WITH T H E F O E

When I returned to Cracow I had to make my final preparations for my departure, which was encouraged by Baum. I saw him at one time in the middle of March and he told me, "If you have definitely decided to go, this is the last moment to do it." In his room I noticed a tall man who appeared to be a German diplomat from Berlin visiting Cracow. When he had left, Baum gave me to understand that this man had told von Wiihlisch that he felt the approach of some grave events. Baum did not say more, but when I reported this to Potocki, we both came to the conclusion that Hitler was probably preparing an offensive in the West, and that Belgium might be the first place for this aggression; in other words, Hitler would not respect King Leopold Ill's neutrality. This was also the time when Baum discretely touched upon a special matter. He asked me whether, in my opinion, it would not be good if contacts between him and some of the professors in Cracow could be established. He referred to my relations with him and said that, after all, they had not been fruitless, not only as far as I was concerned, but also for the arrested professors who had benefited from the information I had given him which he had been able to utilize. Hence, it would be advisable, in his opinion, for the Cracow professors to know him or von Wiihlisch, as both would always try to help them in case of necessity. I discussed this with Maciej Starzewski, a young professor, who had returned from Oranienburg, but after reflection he refused and said that he preferred not to have any relations with the Germans at all. He said, "Your case is different; you were obliged to negotiate with them for your departure, but for those who remain here, in my opinion, the best attitude is that of keeping the greatest distance from the Germans, even from the decent ones." Several days later I came to tell Baum that I had decided to leave Cracow the following week on Thursday, the 26th of March. His immediate answer was, "You are indeed a lucky man."

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I asked why. "Because on that very day von Wiihlisch is going to Berlin." "What does that mean?" I asked. "It means that you must go to the railway station at once and ask the clerk to reserve a compartment for you in the sleeping car in which von Wiihlisch will be; it will be good for you to have him near. Do it, as I said, right now, because the compartments might be sold out." I went, and at the station I found myself in a line in front of the ticket office. A peasant was standing in front of me. As usual, I was wearing my fur coat and my bowler hat. Suddenly, a man, obviously a German, pushed the peasant aside and took his place in the line. Then I interposed in German, "Why did you do that?" He looked at me and asked brusquely, "Are you German?" I said no. "Then you will wait and I will go first." There was nothing I could say to him. I waited. When I reached the clerk, I repeated Baum's words exactly. The clerk, without any comments, immediately gave me my railway and my sleeping car tickets. Obviously, Baum had phoned the clerk; otherwise I would certainly have been arrested if I had suddenly come and asked for a compartment in the car in which Minister von Wiihlisch would be traveling to Berlin on the 26th of March. Baum had suggested that I return to see him again for some other business. He gave me my passport, and then the Passierschein (travel permit), and told me that I must not lose this document under any circumstances, for it was more important then the passport itself. The passport was still a Polish one; the Germans used the Polish passport books which they had found in the foreign office in Warsaw, and which they filled with their inscriptions and stamps. The other problem was that of my luggage. I told Baum that I had seven pieces, five suitcases and two trunks, and that in one of them I had all my notes and manuscripts, as well as some photographs and other personal effects. All this had to be checked and sealed in Cracow. Baum thought for a while and said: "Those notes and documents should be checked by the Gestapo, but I don't want to let them come to your house. Try to do this: call the customs (on the railway customs former Polish officials were employed, although they worked under German supervisors) and ask them to come to check your things at your home, to bring the strings, sealing lead, and their stamping equipment, and to seal your luggage at your

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place. In case they make some fuss about the documents, tell them to call me. Say that I know Russian, Polish, English, French, Latin and Greek, and that I will come and check the documents for them." I did what he said. The customs officers came, and they did not investigate my things at all; they were all Poles. They sealed everything, with the exception of two objects: one was a small bag in which I had my toilet articles and some new books to read, and the other was a briefcase with a lock. It happened that they ran out of the official string and needed some more for the briefcase. They asked me if I had any string. M y maid gave it to them, and they sealed the briefcase, although the string was different from theirs. Two days before my departure, when I returned home in the afternoon, I found a handwritten note in German, signed by a major, saying that he would like to see me and that I should come to the police department, which was not far from my house, at my convenience. Needless to say, this note worried me. On the other hand, its tone was very polite; it was not an order. I went to see Baum and showed him the note. He immediately recognized the man who had written it and said, "Oh, I know him. He's a decent fellow. A s it concerns you, it's probably some new intervention. There seems to be an hypertrophy of interventions in your behalf. But it is good that you told me of this note, and that I know about it, just in case. When do you expect to go there?" I said, "Tomorrow morning." Then I went to see some friends to tell them what had happened so that they would know where to look for me in case I disappeared. The next morning I entered the office of the major and found an old corporal, who was seated at a desk. When he saw me he said, " Y o u are Professor Lednicki?" I confirmed this, and he went on, with a smile, "The major will be back in a few minutes. Take a seat, read a newspaper, and don't worry. Nothing bad has happened." I waited. In a few minutes a tall, blond, very handsome major came in. He greeted me, and when we took seats, he asked me, " H o w are you getting along? What is your financial condition? We would be happy to help you." I was astonished, and my face obviously expressed my amazement. I answered, " I don't need any help, I am leaving on the 26th, tomorrow, for Brussels, at the intervention of the Belgian government, and that is all." Then he told me something even more amazing: " I asked you these questions because we received an order from Minister von Ribbentrop to help you."

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"Minister von Ribbentrop?" "Yes." The corporal was listening to us and smiling at me all the while. I thanked the major and said, "Under these circumstances I may perhaps ask for a favor. As I mentioned, I am leaving. My apartment will be occupied by Count Ronikier for the duration of the war. I would be happy to know that you would keep an eye on it, as Count Ronikier might be away often." Since Baum had asked me to call him after my visit, I phoned and told him the story. "I told you that it probably was an hypertrophy of interventions; I can't understand what happened here." Several people and several Polish institutions, which were still secretly active, asked me to deliver some messages to the Polish government in France; I had to memorize them. The Polish President of Cracow, Ronikier, and several others approached me. I also had many family messages. It happened that just at that time, Prince Janusz RadziwiH returned from his first imprisonment in Russia and was visiting his sister in Cracow. I met him at the Potockis', and he told me his story. The whole Polish government, with the President of the Republic, Moscicki, arrived in Olyka, the RadziwiHs' estate in Volhynia, several days after the bombing of Warsaw. They were there with all their cars and families, and the prince offered his hospitality to the whole group. A few days later, they all left for Rumania, and, as we learned later, the Bolsheviks seized the prince, his wife, and his son. The princess was put in prison in Kiev, and the prince was brought to Moscow, where he was investigated and had several hearings with the Bolsheviks. I remember he told me with what kind of malice the Bolsheviks asked him whether he knew why the Polish government left. He said no, and then, simulating a "noble indignation", they said, "What! They did not tell you? They did not inform you that Russia had moved?" The prince had to confirm with embarrassment the fact that he had not been informed. Then he told me what the last words of the president were to him, when they were leaving Olyka: "I thank you so much for your wonderful hospitality, and I regret terribly that I have to leave, as I hoped that I would spend the whole of the war here." The prince had been saved from the Bolsheviks through the intervention of the Italian court; Mussolini had approached Goering, and Goering had obtained the release of the prince and his family from the Bolsheviks. (Later, the Radziwills were again seized by the Russians, and the princess died in Siberia.) I also had a conference at the home of the Countess

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Zamoyska, née Countess Badeni, who had once been married to Count Adam Krasinski, a friend of my father. The Countess Jadwiga Szembek, several other friends and the Cardinal Prince Adam Sapieha were also there. The Countess Zamoyska asked me to approach the Swedish legation in Brussels on behalf of the Archduke and the Archduchess Hapsburg, who were still imprisoned by the Germans. The cardinal entrusted me with several messages concerning the general situation in Cracow and particularly that of the clergy. On the evening of my departure I was approached by someone whom I do not remember now, but who gave me a long, narrow strip of paper on which the names and addresses of various people were written. I was told that these were the names of relatives and friends of General Sikorski, the prime minister of the Polish government in France and the commander in chief of the Polish army, to whom I was supposed to give the list. I must admit that this proposal did not make me happy at all. I did not know how I could smuggle it through Germany. My suitcase had already been sealed; to carry it on my person would be to take a great risk, as at any moment I could be stopped and searched by the Germans. After some hesitation, I finally accepted, still being greatly perplexed about what to do. I could not memorize those names and those addresses, as my brain was preoccupied with so many other problems that the faculties of assimilation and absorption were weakened. When I came home, I looked at my suitcases; I saw the briefcase and the idea occurred to me to push the list under the flap into the sealed briefcase. I did it; this was an accomplished fact. It would have been impossible to take it out again, so I decided not to think about it any more. I must also stress that I had only a vague idea of the sense of the procedure of sealing my things. I did not know whether the seals would be broken or not, and if so, where and by whom, whether in Berlin or at the German-Belgian frontier. A t any rate, I decided to let the fates act as they would, and not worry about it any more. My last evening in Cracow, the evening of March 25th, was a painful one. I went to see the Potockis, and there, Pela Potocka, who had not quite recovered after her terrible plane accident which occurred a year or two before the war, suddenly appeared in the living room, stood in the doorway, and sharply told me, "Don't you realize that your duty is to remain here?" And she left. Potocki, as I mentioned, was against my trip. He told me, "Look. We are like people who are in a dark basement and who know only one thing, that everywhere around them there is broken glass, and that the

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only thing to do is not to move, for at the first step they will cut themselves." The meeting with Mrs. B. was not a happy one either; we consoled each other that this separation would not last too long, that the Allies would finally move and win the war. My maid was also unhappy. Her unhappiness was mainly due to the fact that Ronikier insisted that he have his own housekeeper in my apartment. Nolens-volens, I had to accept this condition, and it was a great mistake on my part, as I later learned from my son, who visited the apartment before and after Ronikier's departure. The housekeeper had damaged the furniture and, for some incomprehensible reason, several of my beautiful couches were in the kitchen, where she kept casseroles on them. Had my maid remained, none of this would have happened, for she would certainly have protected my things. I paid her as generously as I was able, and she went to her village. Mrs. B. was the only person who accompanied me to the train on the evening of March 26th. The main part of my luggage had been registered, and the rest was put in my compartment. While I was talking with Mrs. B. on the station platform, von Wiihlisch appeared, accompanied by a young officer. He had changed his customary uniform for civilian clothes. As I mentioned, he usually spoke French with me. Now, probably because of the presence of the young officer, he greeted me in German, and then patted me on the shoulder and said, "Sehr gut, Herr Professor. I am very happy that you are traveling tonight." And he went into the car. After a while a good friend of Mrs. B. and an acquaintance of mine, Zelenski, who had just arrived in Cracow by another train, came and greeted us, and we exchanged a few words. The moment came when I had to go into the car; I opened the window in the corridor and said goodbye to Mrs. B. The train moved. In a state of nervous exhaustion I almost collapsed on my bed, in tears. At this very moment von Wiihlisch appeared in the doorway of my compartment and said to me in French, "Now, please come to my compartment. It will be good for you." I tried to compose myself and followed him. He took a seat close to the window and I close to the door. Looking at me, he said, "I think that a glass of wine would make you feel more comfortable." He rang, the conductor appeared, and he ordered a bottle of red wine. In a few minutes the conductor returned with the bottle. Von Wiihlisch looked at it and said, "This is Margaux; you will be pleased with it", obviously alluding to the fact that this was a Bordeaux wine. Suddenly I remembered Blok, the great modern Russian

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poet, and his beautiful poem Retribution, written on a Polish theme, on the theme of Poland tortured by Russia, in which there are the lines: "The father has forgotten everything, the mother is in tears, and the son already drinks wine with the foe." We had scarcely exchanged a few words, when a Gestapo man appeared in the door. The new German-Polish frontier was now only ten or fifteen minutes from Cracow! He shouted, "Hell Hitler!" to which von Wiihlisch automatically repeated, "Heil Hitler!" Then, turning to me, the Gestapo man ordered, "Your pass!" I gave him my passport and the Passierschein. He checked both, returned my passport, and pushed the Passierschein under the cuff of his sleeve. Von Wiihlisch, who was smoking a cigarette, asked him, "Why have you withheld this gentleman's Passierschein?" "Your pass!" shouted the Gestapo man rudely. Von Wiihlisch quietly gave him his passport, continuing to smoke. The man agitatedly opened it and read there, "Plenipotentiary Minister Johann von Wiihlisch." He immediately closed the book, saluted von Wiihlisch, and returned the passport, saying, "Danke sehr, Exzellenz." He took my Passierschein from his cuff, gave it to me, saluted, and left, pronouncing again the sacramental "Heil Hitler!" Then von Wiihlisch said to me, "How strange our functionaries are! Why did he try to keep your Passierschein? Without it you wouldn't be able to leave Germany." To this I answered, "Monsieur le Ministre, it is not I who can answer that." And then, with an expression of dolour, von Wiihlisch said, "Where have they brought our Germany? What are they doing? They have destroyed our culture and civilization. Myself, I graduated from Bonn; Baum, my friend, from Heidelberg. We are both in our fifties; we can't accept what is going on. Baum is the only person there in Cracow who is my friend. That junior officer whom I had with me is of another generation. I have nothing in common with him." And he continued like that. Finally, I stood up and said to him, "Monsieur le Ministre, I think it is time to go to bed. I thank you very much for your hospitality." Von Wiihlisch asked me, "By the way, do you know Count Morstin?" "Which one? There are many of them. I suppose that you have Paul Morstin in mind, the one who was in the diplomatic protocol in our foreign office. I know him well; he is a good friend of mine." "Yes. When you see him in Angers (this was the town from which

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the Polish government operated), please greet him for me. I like him very much." At this moment I thought, "God knows, it might be a trap", and Nimpfer's words came to my mind, about the professors who would join the Polish legions in France. I straightened up stiffly and, looking von Wiihlisch in the eye, said in a clipped tone, "Monsieur le Ministre, you know that I am going to Brussels, for I was called by the University of Brussels." Von Wiihlisch touched the bottom of my jacket and, also looking directly in my eyes, said, "He is a dear friend of mine. Please greet him when you are in Angers." So we separated, myself deeply touched by this man who was above official duties. After all, it was clear that von Wiihlisch, assuming that I was going to Angers in order to communicate with the Polish government there, should not have allowed me to leave Poland. As a German official he ignored that fact, but, as a man, he let me understand that he had no doubts about what I would be doing. As I will not return to von Wiihlisch, I should like to allow myself a small digression concerning him and some other members of the prewar German Embassy in Poland. Like von Wiihlisch, all of them were popular in the various circles of Polish society; it seemed that they were decent Germans and friendly to Poland. The ambassador, Count HansAdolf von Moltke, like other members of the Embassy, was a frequent guest of the Hunters' Club in Warsaw and had been invited to many Polish homes for luncheons and dinners. I often met him and his wife at my father's. Besides von Wiihlisch, Baron Behr, and Baum, there was another member of the Embassy, Mr. Scheliha, who had various connections with Poles. Significantly enough, all of these people perished, and not by Polish hands. Scheliha was killed and Baum died from a mysterious pistol shot in Warsaw. They were not liquidated by the Polish underground. In 1959, when I saw Prince Janusz Radziwifl in Warsaw, I mentioned my relations with von Wiihlisch and Baum to him. Prince RadziwiH, who because of his birth and education, had a vast knowledge of Germany and preserved his family and personal relations with many German aristocrats, told me the following story. "You know the Germans finally liquidated all the members of their prewar Embassy in Warsaw. You know about Baum and Scheliha. Now, what happened to von Wiihlisch? He became ill in Cracow and was put in a German hospital there. Feeling bad, he asked for a

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Polish physician. This physician visited him and examined him and the medicines which had been prescribed; he suggested to von Wuhlisch that he ask to be transferred immediately to a hospital in Berlin. It was obvious to the Polish physician that the way in which the Germans were curing von Wiihlisch in Cracow was dangerous to him. Von Wuhlisch was transferred to Berlin, but it didn't help him. He died there. It was clear that in Berlin they continued the same 'cure' the Polish physicians hoped that in Berlin it would be different." "As you know, Count von Moltke died in Madrid, as the German ambassador there. After his death, I wrote a letter of sympathy to the Countess, who was a cousin of ours through the Prussian dynasty. In the short reply which I received, the Countess thanked me for my letter and said, 'My husband died in Madrid from an appendix operation, but I know that his appendix was removed when he was twelve years old." I shall leave all this without any further comments.

XIII DIPLOMACY AND FATE

I was allowed to take only a limited amount of German money with me. I do not remember now exactly how much it was, but the prescribed sum was sufficient for my ticket to Brussels, a hotel room, and three meals for my one-day stay in Berlin, where I arrived in the morning. Baum had given me a card of introduction to the Continental Hotel in which he used to stay himself; he knew the personnel there. I should also stress that the train which I took from Cracow was just like any German express train before the war; the sleeping cars were, of course, the Mitropa cars which I always liked and considered very pleasant. Berlin gave me the same impression of comfort and normal conditions of life on the morning of my arrival. At the hotel, Baum's card immediately created an atmosphere of polite hospitality; I took a room with a bath, and the hotel gave me stamps for food. Baum had told me that they would do so. This was practically the only feature of war; I did not see many military uniforms and, after my breakfast and bath, when I went into the streets, the general aspect of the city was like Berlin before the war. I had no business there other than making a reservation on the night train to Brussels, seeing the Belgian ambassador, and eating my lunch and dinner. Knowing that the embassies never opened very early, I spent a few hours (my train arrived at six o'clock in the morning, when it was still dark) walking along the avenues and main streets in the center of the city, which I had known since my first trip to Berlin with my mother in 1903. I remembered Wertheim and Tietz, the big department stores, where I used to wait impatiently for my mother while she was shopping. At that time the only pleasant element for me in those department stores was the toy section, where my mother used to buy me wonderful steam locomotives. Tietz was still there, as was Wertheim. I saw the famous Kempinsky restaurant and decided that I would eat my lunch there. Around eleven I went to the Belgian Embassy; the ambassador was not yet in his office, but

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the secretaries greeted me enthusiastically, for they knew about my case, and they questioned me with great anxiety and curiosity about what was going on in Poland. The contrast was terrible; I had seen ruined Warsaw only recently, and Cracow, although it had not been seriously damaged, presented a sharp contrast to the peaceful and comfortable atmosphere of Berlin and the Belgian Embassy. After half an hour I was called by the ambassador. He was very friendly and told me that he would give me the Belgian visa immediately and also a special document, a sort of safe-conduct in which it would be stressed that I was under the protection of the Belgian Embassy. I must say what I heard a little later from the ambassador astonished me, to say the least. Before I describe this conversation, I would like to mention the ambassador's particular request addressed to me. Jacques Davignon belonged to the Catholic camp in Belgium; his brother was the well-known editor of a Belgium Catholic review, and the ambassador himself was a former student at Louvain, the famous Belgian Catholic University. Belgium had four universities, as it has now; two state universities, one French in Liège, the other Flemish in Ghent, and two private universities, the Catholic University in Louvain, and the free-thinking University of Brussels, which was established in the early 1830's as a counterpart of Louvain. I remember very well how irritating was all the fuss that Brussels made about their principle of libre examen (free research). Every appointed professor had to sign a sort of statement that he agreed with this principle, as though other universities in the world were not free in their research. It was a sort of imposition of liberalism, which for many of us was indeed unpleasant. True, the whole thing depended very much on the personality of the presidents of the University. I recall, for instance, that in 1926 a very distinguished Belgian scholar in law and a former minister of education, Professor Maurice Vauthier (when I paid him a visit before the inauguration of my chair), mentioned the libre examen only casually in the vestibule as I was leaving him. Some other presidents were often fanatical in emphasizing this condition of being a member of the Brussels faculty. At any rate, the University of Brussels had the reputation of being not only progressively liberal, but leftist. However, it was the university of the capital, and in my time it had already become the most important learned educational center in Belgium. Davignon asked me to be very cautious in Brussels. He said, "You of course know the atmosphere of the University; they will certainly try

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to arrange some lectures for you and talks of a political character, about what the Germans have done in Poland, but please be, as I said, very prudent and cautious, because I may help some other people escape from Poland to Belgium, and any public statements on your part against the German occupation might handicap my efforts." I promised him that I would follow his advice, the more so because I had to take into consideration my children, my colleagues, and friends in Poland also. From this point, Davignon went on to discuss the Belgian situation and his own role in Berlin. "I am keeping back two hundred German divisions which are on the Belgian frontier. Y o u see, Hitler is a madman, but a man whom one might appease. The main thing is not to irritate him. Do you know that he launched the war against Poland because of the articles which appeared in Czas (Time)?" I listened to this with the greatest stupefaction. "He promised Mussolini, who was organizing his great world exhibition, that he would give him time for his display and postpone the war. But, when Hitler read the articles in Czas, as it was the organ of the Polish conservatives, the most moderate political party in Poland, he became enraged and launched the war." I must again admit this analysis of events surprised me to a great degree. How was it possible to believe that two articles in a Polish newspaper could have precipitated that world catastrophe? Hitler's conceptions and his policy were clear enough after the seizure of Austria! I did not say anything besides the short remark, "Do you really think so?" "Oh, yes. I am absolutely convinced. And you understand then how dreadfully difficult my situation here is, how great are my responsibilities, and how prudent I must be, even in the most insignificant matters." A t this moment the door opened and Mme. Davignon appeared. I did not know the Davignons very well; I had met both of them only casually in former days in Warsaw, and I saw them once at the Potockis' in Cracow, so she of course might not have recognized me. I stood up, and then she said to her husband, "Oh, excuse me. I came to get the dog to take her for a walk." The dog was in the ambassador's study. "But say good morning to Professor Lednicki, who just arrived a couple of hours ago from Cracow." I approached her and kissed her hand; she took the dog and left. There was nothing particularly shocking in the fact that Mme. Davignon should walk her dog. But at that time, having just crossed the

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frontier between the two contrasting worlds, I felt startled. I thought, "If this is how they pass their time here . . . " I got my visa and that safe-conduct; the ambassador told me that unfortunately they were engaged for lunch and, because of that, could not invite me. Having thanked him for everything he had done on my behalf, I left. Davignon's views not only astonished, but frightened me. I realized how precarious his situation was. But at the same time I was extremely touched by the help he gave me and understood very well how justifiable his warnings to be cautious in Brussels were, all the more so in view of his generous desire to provide refuge for other Poles. I had a very good lunch at the Kempinsky restaurant; I remember that I ate steamed trout with a very good Rhine wine, and then I took another walk around Berlin. After paying for my ticket to Brussels, I found that I had money enough to buy a hat and an umbrella. I could not take any German money out of Germany, and planned to keep only a few marks in order to buy some Belgian cash for the porters. After a dinner which I took at one of the Pschorrbrau, I took my bags from the hotel and boarded the train. I was traveling second class, without sleeping accommodations, as all the compartments were already reserved. This was not a pleasant circumstance, not because of having to spend the whole night sitting up in a coach, but because of the necessity of being surrounded by German passengers, whereas in a sleeping car I would have been alone in my compartment. Although the Allies were not flying over German cities and bombing them at that time, in the evening Berlin was completely dark; this was the other feature of the war (besides the food stamps). The train was filled with officers; in my compartment I was the only civilian. One may easily realize how I felt; I did not say a word, and tried not to speak even to the conductor when he checked my ticket, so as not to attract the attention of the officers by my foreign accent. In the morning we arrived in Cologne, which I have known well since childhood. The whole railway station gave the impression of a military camp. All the tables in the restaurant were occupied by officers or soldiers, except one table at which a girl was sitting alone. I asked her permission to take a seat, and she politely allowed me. The waiter brought her a hot sausage, some eggs, coffee, bread and butter. Then he asked me what I should like to have. I said, "Just the same as

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this lady has." He asked me for food stamps. I answered that I had none, as I had spent all of them in Berlin. The girl immediately opened her bag and gave me the number of stamps I needed. I thanked her, and then, after breakfast, as there was some time before the departure of the train for Brussels, I went to the barbershop to be shaved. There I saw that all the chairs were taken, and there were many men waiting. The whole crowd consisted of pilots, young men who were eighteen or twenty years old, not more. Instinctively I thought, "Probably they bombed us, and perhaps there is one among them who machine-gunned me while I was traveling in Poland." I tried to find out from the owner of the barbershop how long I would have to wait and mentioned the time of the departure of my train. Upon hearing this, a young pilot who was just going to take his turn offered me his place. I had no difficulties in Berlin registering my suitcases and trunks for Brussels, and I had only one suitcase with me, my bag with the toilet things, and the briefcase. When the train left Cologne, there were two German civilians in my compartment, probably secret agents of the police. They did not pay any attention to me, and when we reached the frontier, they disappeared. Then an enormous German customs officer entered my compartment, accompanied by a young clerk. He greeted me with a "Heil Hitler!", of course, and he asked me, looking at my luggage, whether this was all I had with me. I said that I had some suitcases and trunks in the baggage car. Then he inquired as to whether I had any letters to people in Belgium or other oountries, or any addresses. I said no, and then he opened my leather bag with the toilet articles and took all the things out. When he saw a Russian book about Ivan the Terrible, he immediately translated the title into German, "Ivan der Grausame". Then he took a Polish book and also translated the title into German. After this display of his knowledge of Slavic languages, having finished with that bag, he looked at the suitcase and the briefcase. Suddenly he said, "Now, let us see whether something hasn't been put into the briefcase after it was sealed", and he took the briefcase and held it up near the window to see in the light if there were anything under the flap. I felt myself become paper white. In order to hide my face from him, I turned and started to put the toilet things back; my hands were trembling. Suddenly the man turned to the clerk, saying, "Give me a knife so I can cut the string." I immediately realized that I was lost, that I had oome to the end of my journey. I waited for the moment when he would ask me for the key, and I knew that the first thing he would find would be that

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list of addresses for Sikorski, and even if I refused to tell him who the addresses were meant for, the German police would be able to send a telegram to Cracow and find out who those people were. In other words, I had nothing before me but a concentration camp. But fate was constantly creating miracles; the German, when he got the knife, suddenly remarked, "This is not the official string. Why?" Trying to compose myself, and making a last effort to appear calm and natural, I told him the story, explained how it had happened and stressed the fact that the seal was the official one, the same as on my suitcase. That string saved me; the German obviously forgot his first intention to find out whether something had been put in the briefcase after it had been sealed. My rather long story about how and where my suitcases had been checked and sealed distracted him from his suspicion. He forgot about it, and said, "Alles in Ordnung". (Everything is all right.) "Heil Hitler!" And he left. When I reached the Belgian frontier, the Belgian customs enraged me. I had known them well for years. Speaking with their typical Belgian accent, which I am able to recognize immediately, but unable to imitate, they cut all the strings and forced me to open all my suitcases and trunks. When I showed them the document signed by the Belgian ambassador, they asked me sarcastically, "Are you yourself an ambassador? Are you a diplomat? Do you know that only diplomats are free from inspection?" Irritated as I was, I tried to explain to those brutes that, coming from occupied Poland and being a Pole myself, I could not have a diplomatic passport and that, in my opinion, the document of the Belgian ambassador sufficed. All this was in vain; they did not charge me for anything, but they put everything in a terrible disorder so that I had to spend a lot of time getting my suitcases to close again.

XIV MY BRUSSELS ALMA

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I arrived in Brussels around three o'clock in the afternoon. I had only a few francs, with which I paid the porters and took a taxi to the University Foundation Club, where I always used to stay during my sojourns in Brussels. It is a charming club with a beautiful library, very comfortable rooms, and an excellent restaurant. Brussels seemed exactly as it had been when I left it, just over half a year before. After the upheavals which had engulfed and destroyed my country so catastrophically and had shaken the world in this short span of time, the fact that the European crisis had worked no visible marks of change on the quiet city astonished me. This was, of course, a very personal reaction. But . . . even though Polish disasters were too distant to affect the life of the Belgians, the war had come to the threshold of Belgium - the two hundred German divisions about which Davignon told me were poised on the Belgian border. Yet, as I drove from the station along the boulevards and streets of Brussels, I saw exactly the same sights, felt the same undisrupted rhythm of life that prevailed before the war. When I arrived at the Club on the Rue d'Egmont, the small street was as still and cozy as always. I had sent a telegram from Berlin to Jean Willems, a very good friend with whom I had become acquainted when he was a young secretary of the University and who, since several years before the last war, had been the director of the National Research Fund in Belgium to which the club of the Foundation also belonged, and in which he had his own apartment. When I entered the vestibule, it happened that Willems was there; he embraced me and said, "Oh, I am so happy that you have been able to come at last and that you arrived today, because at five o'clock, there is a ceremony in honor of the President of the University, Paul Hymans, which you must attend. You know, practically everything which has been done for you, as far as our intervention was concerned, was done by Hymans; besides, you will see the entire

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faculty there at once, and they will all be so happy to greet you. And for the evening, we shall have supper with Yvonne Nevjan. (She was a great friend of his, as well as of mine, and a girl whom I had known for a long time.) We have to change for supper, as we shall go to the Savoy. (This was the most elegant restaurant in Brussels.) Do you have a dinner jacket with you?" "Yes, I have everything with me, and now, of course, I also have to change for Hymans." "I shall pick you up at five", he said. "But there is something else to be done." "What?" "My taxi. I haven't a cent." "Oh, we shall take care of that", and he called the custodian to pay my cab. "By the way, I forgot to tell you that you will find in your room a letter from the Francqui Foundation, which will make you happy." We separated; I went to my room to take a bath and change, but first opened the letter. It read: "The Francqui Foundation, being guided by the spirit of the international, intellectual solidarity, and taking into consideration the gratitude that this country owes you, asks you kindly to accept the herewith enclosed cheque for 5000 Belgian francs to cover your first expenses in Brussels." This was gratifying news, and I was sure that Willems had had a hand in it. I changed, and Willems took me to the University, where I was deeply moved by the reception which was given me by my colleagues and by President Hymans himself. After this ceremony in honor of Hymans, we had to change again for the restaurant. In an hour or so Willems arrived with Miss Nevjan to pick me up at the club. I was still possessed by the fresh memories of what I had felt behind in Cracow; hence, to find myself wearing a black tie and entering a brilliant restaurant, with dancing, with all its flowers and magnificently appointed tables, luxurious china and glass, with the waiters in white jackets, and all the men and women in evening dress, was certainly a sharp contrast, so that I at once felt tired and depressed. It was too much of the luxury and normal comfort to which I had grown unaccustomed during the terrible months in Poland. But the meeting with Yvonne was a moving one and revived me a little. Willems ordered a magnificent supper and champagne to celebrate my arrival, and while people were dancing and the music played unobtrusively (never in any European restaurants did one have to suffer from the terrific blare

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which one has to endure in American restaurants and nightclubs), I started to tell him the story of my peregrinations in Poland, the horrors of the two occupations, and of the uncommon details of my departure. I did not forget the episode of the handsome policeman and of the mysterious intervention by Ribbentrop, and I said how puzzled I was by this fantastic offer of help. As Ribbentrop probably did not even know that I existed, it was obvious that some one must have interceded for me. But who? This was the great enigma. At this moment Yvonne smiled and in a low voice said to me, "I was the one", and she told me that in connection with her position (she was the head of a large institution, L'Oeuvre de I'Enfance - protection of children) she used to participate in various international congresses before the war. I knew about that and that Germans working in the same field still visited her in Brussels. As she realized that I might be in a difficult or even precarious situation in Poland under the German occupation, she asked one of those visitors whether it would be possible to inquire about me and, in case of need, to send me some financial help. This man told her that he happened to be a personal friend of Ribbentrop, and promised that he would speak to him about me. It is needless to say how touched I was by this story, which gave me another proof of Yvonne's kindness and generosity, well known to me from my previous friendship with her. I returned to the club in a state of complete exhaustion, despite the lift which the champagne had given me. After this inauguration of my stay in Brussels, I was faced with two problems: first, to find out how my existence in Brussels and my work at the University would be arranged, and, second, to go to France and deliver the messages I had brought from Poland to the Polish Government. Upon my arrival in Brussels I learned that M. Kridl was there; I was not partcularly moved by this news, not because he had been saved from oppression; I had many reasons to dislike him. He had written from Wilno to Professor Aleksander Pinkus, who was a very good friend of mine, asking for help. Pinkus, a Polish Jew, was a prominent chemist who had worked for many years in the field of atomic energy. Here I would like to add a small but, I think, a very significant digression which might give the reader an immediate impression of this man's personality. I was completely unaware of what atomic energy meant, but Pinkus once explained to me that his research in this field might lead him to the discovery of a terrible power

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which might be used as a weapon, the destructive force of which would be almost inconceivable. He asserted that in case of a success in his research work, he was determined to give his weapon to the League of Nations, so that the League would be endowed with the power of radical intervention for the sake of the defense of universal peace. Pinkus was the nephew of the famous Polish historian, S. Askenazy, who, besides his scholarship, also played a political role; Askenazy was known not only for his talents, brilliant style and scholarship, but also for his snobbishness and arrogance. Pinkus physically resembled his uncle to a great degree, but this was the only similarity between them, for Pinkus was extremely kind, modest, and generous; I have seldom met such a perfect gentleman. His family had been wealthy, but they had lost everything in Russia, and his mother and his divorced sister were now living with him. He had two apartments on the Avenue Marie-Louise, a large one for them and a smaller one for himself. It was a very heavy financial load for him, so that he never had any extra money for himself, but he made great efforts to give the best of comfort to his mother and allowed her to continue in her old habits of ordering her shoes from a shoemaker in Warsaw whom she liked, clothes from the best shops in Warsaw, of buying bread like that which she used to have in Warsaw, and of subscribing to Polish newspapers. He himself liked to go to restaurants, but only to the best ones and to have there the best things, which he would discuss at great length with the maitre d'hotel. In former days we used to do this occasionally, but from the time his mother and sister settled with him, he was no longer able to afford good restaurants and so preferred not to go at all. Kridl asked Pinkus to facilitate a trip for him and his family to Brussels, where he obviously expected to get a position, since he was a former professor at the University there. Pinkus collected a large sum from wealthy people in Brussels and sent it to Kridl, who, however, arrived alone, having left his family in Wilno. If I was displeased by Kridl's presence in Brussels simply because I found him a disloyal friend, my arrival was a greater shock for him. I was still connected with the University of Brussels, and it was rather doubtful whether the University would employ him. This caused me some embarrassment. The administration of the University, which was headed by Heger, a man who was very close in his financial dealings, offered me a salary, which, of course, was not comparable to the one which I had had before. But I was still happy with the settlement and could not but consider this gesture of the University a generous one, as the Uni-

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versity by paying me was assuming the responsibility of the Polish Government. I do not remember what the exact date of my new appointment was; I suppose the salary started from the first of April. For the time being, I was not giving courses, so I was free to leave for Paris at my convenience. I, naturally, met Backvis immediately after my arrival; he was still teaching at the University. I found great changes in the Polish legation in Brussels. This was due mainly to the activities of S. Kot, a former Jagiellonian professor, who was the sharpest enemy of the previous regime and the closest personal and political friend of General Sikorski. The Polish Government dismissed many former Polish diplomats, and although replacements were perhaps desirable and justified in some cases, in many others the changes were acts of pure political revenge. This was true at least for Brussels, where M. Moscicki, the son of the former president of the Republic, was dismissed. He was not a particularly brilliant man, but I am happy to testify that both he and his wife created an excellent position for themselves in the diplomatic corps, Brussels society, and the Belgian Government. In place of Moscicki the Polish Government appointed the former commercial counselor, Litwinski, an economist married to a middle-class Belgian woman, I suppose simply because of his friendship with the minister of foreign affairs, A. Zaleski. The legation lost its social prestige, as Litwinski had no important connections and influence in Brussels. Strzalko, the former secretary of the legation, was still there. He was a nice young man, and I was on very good terms with him and his wife. However, later he was partly responsible for the loss of my trunk with all my manuscripts and notes. The honorary consul-general, Georges Vaxelaire, was also still there, continuing to give his receptions, dinners, and luncheons, but naturally the new Polish minister did not have the same standing as the former Polish envoys in the house of that Belgian millionaire. The Litwinskis themselves were rather modest people, not all accustomed to the chic of diplomatic life. It appeared that the legation was practically unable to help me obtain a French visa. I made several phone calls to Kot in Paris whom I knew well, but nothing definite came of it. It was indeed rather astonishing for me to learn that I had to wait so long for a French visa and that the Polish Government was either unable to get the visa or not very anxious to obtain the information which I carried from Poland. Finally, I wrote to some French friends in Paris, to Professor Paul Boyer, the former director of the School of Oriental Languages in Paris, with

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whom I had always been on the best of terms, and I also approached some French people in the French embassy and the French military attachés in Brussels. I got my visa, but only at the end of April after having taken my own steps and having lost all hope in Kot's ever doing anything. In the meantime, I was asked to give some talks about the situation in Poland, and the press immediately approached me for interviews. Vaxelaire arranged luncheons with various political personalities and journalists for me, and finally a large meeting one evening at which I spoke. In my interviews with the press I was very cautious and reserved, remembering the promise I had givenDavignon; at the luncheons I spoke more freely, and when Vaxelaire sent his invitations for my evening talk, he stipulated that this meeting would be strictly confidential. A t one of those assemblies, several days after my arrival, I met the British military attaché, Colonel A . Blake, who invited me several times to his home. There I spent long evenings with him, sometimes lasting until two or three o'clock in the morning, drinking Scotch and giving him detailed reports about my experiences under the German and Soviet occupations, and what I had seen of the two armies. I also visited my Russian friends who were still in Brussels. Some of them had still not lost their infatuation for Hitler. I also had luncheon with Ganshof, the Belgian historian from Ghent, who visited Poland immediately after the Anschluss of Austria and was so astonished at that time by my apprehensions. When I met him at the restaurant to which he invited me, I reminded him that I was justified in my fears and that I hoped now he was convinced that I was right. I asked him what the expectations of Belgium were and expressed my great doubts as to whether the Belgian neutrality could be maintained. To this he answered, "We don't want to be a battlefield between the Germans and the Western Allies again." I replied, "But this is precisely what you will be if Hitler does not respect your neutrality. In my opinion, you would be much more secure if the Allies were already on your territory and perhaps building the continuation of the Maginot Line for your protection. Besides, this would certainly help the Allies. Aren't you interested in that?" "We are neutral", he answered, "and we are not interested in the victory of the Allies." "Ah! If this is the case, then our disagreement continues." Frankly speaking, I was shocked by this statement, and lunch ended

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on harmless topics, such as academic life, university problems, and so forth.

XV THE POLES IN FRANCE

On the 28th of April I left for Paris. Once there I first went to the Polish Embassy where a part of the Polish Government stayed from time to time with the ambassador and his staff. The entire government and all the ministries were in Angers. The large Hotel Regina on the Rue de Rivoli was entirely occupied by the Polish military staff; there were innumerable generals, colonels, majors, and lieutenants circulating in the hotel and around it. The minister of foreign affairs, Zaleski, had just come to Paris from Angers when I arrived. I knew him and his wife very well, and I saw him almost immediately after my arrival. I remember the talk I had with him; at its end, after having listened to my reports about Poland, he said, pounding the desk with his fist, "You will see. The peace treaty will be signed in Paris, and the Germans will sign it on their knees." I also saw A. Mühlstein, an officer of the Polish diplomatic service with vast social connections, who at that time was no longer in the embassy, but who continued to know and see all the leading political figures in Paris and entertain them in his large and luxurious apartment. (He was married to a Rothschild.) He was also sure that the Germans would be beaten. In the evening Paris was blacked out, although there were no air raids. I often met Polish friends who had also escaped from Poland. Inka Puslowska was there; her husband was working in some Polish office in Angers, and she was constantly with the Radziwills, Charles and his wife, as a kind of lady in waiting to the princess. We used to go to some small French restaurants in the evening, dining outdoors in the darkness of the streets, with only small, shaded candles on the table for light. In Brussels I had met Wladyslaw Radziwilt, who was constantly traveling between Brussels and Paris, busy with some financial affairs. I learned from him that his wife, the charming young woman whom I had met at the Ledöchowskis' estate, Smordwa, at the time of my peregrinations in Eastern Poland, was in Paris. When

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I saw him in Paris, we agreed that I would meet him and his wife one evening in a café on the Champs Elysées. I went there with great joy, as I was anxious to see her again. She was already there, but she was alone. I spent the whole evening with her, and Wladek did not arrive at all. Probably about midnight I brought her to the Hôtel Lambert in a taxi. The Hôtel Lambert is an historical palace on the He Saint-Louis built in the seventeenth century by Le Vau and decorated with paintings by Le Sueur and Le Brun. After the defeat of the Polish Insurrection of 1830-31, the exiled Prince Adam Czartoryski, whose estates in Russia had been confiscated and who had been sentenced to death by Nicholas I, acquired this palace. It became for many decades a famous political, cultural, and social center in Paris. This palace belonged to the parents of Princess Jolanta Radziwifi, née Princess Czartoryska. It now belongs to her and her sister, the Countess Stefan Zamoyski. (In 1957, when I was in Paris, I met her again and had a charming evening with her.) After my arrival in Paris, I learned that my friend, W. Grzybowski, our last ambassador in Moscow, was in Paris with his wife, and I hurried to see them. They were living in a small apartment on the Boulevard Saint Germain on the eastern side of the Boulevard Saint Michel. I had not seen Grzybowski since our lunch and talk in May of 1939. I did not bring up the subject of that conversation, taking into consideration the tragic events which had so drastically contradicted his optimism of those days. He told me the story of his terrible talk with Molotov's aide, Potemkin, after which Russia invaded Poland. Grzybowski had been a very dear friend of mine ever since I had become acquainted with him in 1910. In Cracow he studied philosophy, wrote his Ph.D. thesis on pragmatism, and later stayed for some time in London (he knew English very well) and also in Italy, where he became acquainted with Papini. The death of his father obliged him to take over the estate in Podolia, which his father had been leasing, and the management of some other estates which his father had operated. He rapidly acquired a considerable income, and during the First World War also began some activities connected with Polish War Relief organizations and politics. He lost his first wife by whom he had three daughters and married his sister-in-law; they had one son. Unfortunately, this boy had a damaged brain and later died. The mother suffered severely from this misfortune. She was in a way a very brilliant woman; she spoke foreign languages fluently and was extremely well read, particularly in the field of English literature. She was an enthusiastic

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rider, and once suffered a bad fall as she was taking a horse over a jump. Head injuries may have been the cause of her subsequent overly sensitive temperament. The Grzybowskis were both deeply attached to the memory of Pilsudski and completely devoted to the pre-war Polish regime. I never could agree with them on this subject. I gave them some details about the behavior of the officials of the former Government and of many army officers during the war who, in addition to many other abuses, had often forced private individuals to abandon their cars at the time of the exodus from Warsaw, and I told of the deep and general resentment of the Poles in Poland towards the Government which had abandoned the country. She reacted violently to this by asking me how I dared to say such things and offend Polish officers. I liked my friend Grzybowski and admired his dignified conduct in Moscow, when he had his last encounter with Potemkin, who, on the seventeenth of September, at three o'clock in the morning, read to him Molotov's insolent and cynical note, declaring the non-existence of the Polish state and renouncing the Soviet-Polish Pact of Non-Aggression. Therefore, it is painful to me to bring to the fore any criticism of him. But I cannot help reflecting upon the vagaries of human nature which, strangely enough, caused this very perceptive man, who was endowed with a great sense of humor and with a rather sceptical mind, to become unnaturally affected by his diplomatic career. Suddenly, he developed all kinds of infatuations of a very futile nature after he became an envoy, such as golf, which was not at all popular in Poland (there was only one golf course in Warsaw, for the diplomatic corps), the ambassadorial uniforms and the elegant ceremonial hats and swords, the monocle, the large collections of decorations which all the envoys and ambassadors used to receive automatically, and the concern for this title of "ambassador". (I remember how I once wrote to him from America in the late '40's and did not use it on the envelope; he wrote to me that I had addressed my letter to him as to a tailor.) All this was rather astonishing in a case like his; he certainly did not belong to the group of young "asses" of the foreign office whose only distinction was their snobbishness. But along with these trivialities there was in him a great feeling of personal dignity and deep devotion to his country and to its prestige. He wrote well, and he published many articles in Poland on political topics and continued to do so during his years of exile in France. He spent the whole war hiding somewhere in the country from the Germans, and finally settled in a very small, poor apartment in Paris on rue Censier, in quarters which until now

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look like the poor sections of Balzac's Paris. He spent his final years on the fifth floor in an old apartment house which had no elevator, and the last time I heard his voice was in a talk he gave which Radio Free Europe broadcasted to Poland, where I was visiting at that time. This talk was delivered from his bed some ten days before he died. When I said goodbye to him before my trip to Poland in August, 1959, we both had the unexpressed feeling that we would not see each other again. The Grzybowskis were living in complete poverty; I used to help them, and whenever I was in Paris I visited them and would bring some food, wines and liquors, as they had no means with which to entertain people. On the day before my departure, when I came to say goodbye, I found him in a very poor state. Perhaps intentionally, as weak as he was, he suddenly started to complain in the tone of an irritated, capricious old man that the things which were given to him were bad and that he was indignant that at least some good sausage or roast beef and a glass of wôdka were not offered to him. He smiled and laughed - all of us knew that those things were forbidden by the physician. But, on the other hand, it gave the impression that perhaps he indeed felt stronger; his wife remarked that on that day his temperature was steady and did not fluctuate from one extreme to the other. I went out to buy some things; it was a Sunday and late, so that I wasted a good deal of time searching for an open shop, but I finally got some chicken, pâtés, wine and calvados. When I arrived with all this he decided to leave his bed and come to the table. The poor man made a horrible effort in order to do so; he tried to eat a little, and even took a sip of liquor, but after a while had to return to his bed. From his bed he started to tell me with the greatest effort that I should explain in Poland that Russo-Polish relations could not be based on hatred alone and that some constructive elements should be found, as the normalization of these relations was most necessary, even indispensable, taking into consideration the fact that Poland for a long time would be dependent on Russia. This was a completely new view, as far as he was concerned, and astonished me enormously as I well knew what his ideas had been on Russia, particularly the Soviet régime. The ironic, sceptical, witty, constantly joking diplomat now became pathetically realistic. I, myself, shared this view in principle, but where could one find the magic key for this dilemma? This dilemma is indeed tragic as Poland is attached by every fiber to the West - to the impotent West - and is so alone among the so-called satellites. No help can come from the Baltic countries because they are too small and weak, no help from

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silenced Hungary, and naturally no assistance from Czechoslovakia, which for a long time had been a country of opportunistic conformism. One of his married daughters, who came from Poland to visit her father, was there. At a certain moment, when I remained alone with her in the living room, she whispered to me that there was no hope at all for his recovery, but that fortunately her father - and especially her mother - were not at all aware of the situation. In 1940 Grzybowski seemed to have some means; he was still well dressed (he had saved his wardrobe - ironically enough, it was the German ambassador, as it happened, at that time, the dean of the diplomatic corps in Moscow, who took care of them when they were leaving the embassy for abroad), but his political situation was that of a sort of interior exile; the new Government was against him, although he loyally cooperated with them; for instance, he wrote a long ambassadorial report about the last period of his stay in Moscow and about his talk with Potemkin. I used to lunch and dine with him very often in a good, but not expensive restaurant behind the Musée Cluny, on a street which ran parallel to the Museum and into the Boulevard Saint-Michel. I am mentioning this detail because I shall have to return to that street a little later, just before the fall of France. I also saw Professor Paul Boyer frequently, a man who in former days was a dynamic director of the School of Oriental Languages, notorious for his infatuation for young co-eds, despite his age, his white beard and mustache, and the tufts of hair which grew out of his ears and gave him the appearance of a lynx. He used to see visitors on Monday afternoon, and one .always had to wait for hours before seeing him. Gossip said that frequently the janitor found a girl sitting on the knees of the director when he opened the door! In 1940 Boyer was retired and living in a nice apartment with his very old wife, probably no longer thinking about girls, but very worried about the world situation, particularly because his wife was of Russian Jewish origin. A few days later I left for Angers. There I found that this pretty city, and its beautiful French countryside, the city of the famous French tapestries, was almost entirely taken over by the Poles. All cafés and restaurants, all the streets were filled with innumerable officials of the Polish Government and with military men. I first went to see S. Kot in order to get an appointment with General Sikorski. General Sikorski was a friend of my father. I personally knew him well; I had been decorated by him when I was in the Lancers in 1919 and used to

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.->ee him later while he was living in Paris in a sort of political exile before the war. Kot was a colleague of mine, the man who organized our University protest against Pilsudski in 1931 for the arrest of the leaders of the parliamentary opposition and their imprisonment in the fortress of Brzesc. This was quite a story. I cannot enter into any of the details of that time. I shall simply stress that this action of the University of Cracow enraged the Government, particularly because all of the professors who signed the protest had tenure on the basis of the Constitution of 1921. After Pilsudski's death, the Colonels' regime endeavored to change the status of the University professors in Poland in their new Constitution of 1935. The old Constitution of 1921 guaranteed tenure to full and associate professors and accorded them high ranks, giving, for example, to a full professor a standing equivalent to a governor of a province, a director of a state department, and a general. This irritated the Colonels, and, in addition, they wanted to put the majority of university professors under their direct control. They did not succeed in this effort because of Polish public opinion, in whose eyes the professors traditionally possessed great prestige. In Poland the President of the Academy of Letters and Sciences had a social position equal to that of the Prime Minister of the Republic and the Primate of Poland. However, the Colonels did introduce some stipulations into the laws concerning academic institutions, which made it possible to transfer some chairs from one university to another. In this way Kot lost his chair in Cracow and started an intense campaign of political propaganda in Poland and abroad against the Polish Government. My own personal relations with Kot, independent of the protest (I was one of the forty-four professors who signed it), were friendly, and my dealings with a publishing house of which he was the main editor added some business elements to this relationship. Hence, I had every right to believe that Kot would do his best to give me a proper reception in Angers. Besides, I did not expect that I would have to wait for an appointment with Sikorski, particularly as I had that personal note for the General which had caused me a great deal of concern and which should have been of some interest to him. Kot asked me for the note and said that he would try to arrange an appointment with the General, but remarked at the same time that the General was continuously busy seeing the Allies. This was not too convincing to me. Kot also asked me to write a report on Poland and said that he would have one of his aides give me a stenographer and a typist. This report took me several long evenings; it was mimeographed and sent to all the

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ministers and military chiefs. Apparently it made a great impression. I did not see General Sikorski at all. Every day I heard the same story; he was too busy. This irritated me especially because I was the first man of my position to have escaped from Poland, after having spent so many months under the German occupation and also some time under the Soviet one. Hence, I considered my personal comments of some interest to the General. The President of the Republic, W. Raczkiewicz, who had known my father well, invited me for lunch. He was staying in a large chateau, surrounded by a beautiful park and gardens. He asked me to come an hour before the lunch so that we would have an opportunity to talk alone because, as I learned later, about twenty people had been invited. When I arrived, after several minutes of talk, he suggested that we take a walk in the park so that we would not be disturbed by any telephone calls or by secretaries. He listened very attentively to all that I had to say, and he continued to talk with me for another hour after lunch. The lunch was very good and perfectly served. I also had a long interview in Angers with General K. Sosnkowski, a great friend and follower of Piisudski, and one of the most popular commanders in the Polish army. He was the only person in the Polish Government I had not known well before the war; however, he later gave me more attention than any other person in the Government. At the end of the conversation he told me that he might be sent to the United States as the Polish ambassador, and if this should happen, he would like very much for me to join the embassy in the capacity of a cultural counselor. This was a very kind offer on his part, and a tempting one, the more so because I was also thinking about my sister, who wrote to me after my arrival in Belgium strongly suggesting that I come to America. She said that she would try to do everything possible in order to get a visa for me. At that time I did not know very much about American visas, but if I were to go as a member of the Polish embassy, this problem would not arise at all. I learned later in Angers that there were differences of opinion concerning the appointment of a new ambassador in Washington. The former ambassador, Count George Potocki, who had been very popular in Washington, as I heard from everyone when I arrived in America, had been dismissed by the new government. Sosnkowski was Sikorski's candidate for this post. His great popularity in the army, as well as his ideological fidelity to Pilsudski's political tradition, caused some trouble for Sikorski, and because of that, Sosnkowski's stay in Washington would make it more

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comfortable for Sikorski. On the other hand, the minister of foreign affairs, Zaleski, who had had some disagreements with Sikorski, supported another candidate, J. Ciechanowski, on the grounds that the latter was a career diplomat, a man from the foreign office. " The reader already knows some of my points of view on the art of modern diplomacy. I would be the last to criticize Minister A. Zaleski for whom I have always had the sincerest admiration, but the argument in favor of a diplomatic career, particularly in the case of America, did not seem too convincing for me. As little as I knew about America, I had the impression that there personal qualities and abilities meant more in politics than professional diplomatic training. Now, after twenty years in this country, I have come to the conclusion that almost everything in America is based on personal contacts and the knowledge of how to create friendly human relations. Besides, from my acquaintance with various foreign and Polish career diplomats whom I had met in Poland and abroad, I remember how many of them represented extremely narrow views, often completely detached from reality, from factors and elements which determine the social and political life of a given country. One typical Polish figure comes to my mind. This is how I would define the hierarchy of values and ranks upon which his outlook was based: first there were those who belonged to the titled aristocracy; then the members of the Hunters' Club in Warsaw (the most exclusive club); then diplomats; if one were not a diplomat, then at least one should speak perfect English. For him, anything else was of secondary value, and he reduced his personal relations to those who had a place in his so firmly established categories. As far as Mr. Ciechanowski was concerned, at the beginning of the twenty years of Polish independence, he became the personal secretary of Paderewski. He continued to serve in the foreign office, and I do not remember exactly when he abandoned it. For some time he was the Polish Minister in Washington, I think from 1925 to 1929, hence, during a period when the Republican Party was in power. It is quite probable that his political relations in the United States were primarily with the Republicans. This was considered a handicap at the time when President Roosevelt was in the White House. Another detriment to his popularity in Washington circles might have been his Oxford English, if we are to believe Oscar Wilde's statement when speaking of England and America: "We have many things in common except the language." Ciechanowski married a very rich Belgian, settled in

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Paris, and bought a large estate in Poland on which he gave luxurious hunting parties. The new government in Paris, established during the war, called him back to the Foreign Office. I had known him since the time when I had been in the foreign service; I saw him fleetingly in Paris and, naturally, more frequently later in the United States. His situation in Washington was not an easy one, mainly because of the overwhelming power of international political trends which brought the Western Allies to the tragic compromises with Soviet Russia. In his excellent book, Defeat in Victory, published after the war and which was very widely read, he gave a brilliant and pathetic picture of these fatal events. Sosnkowski charmed me, which was not an astonishing thing as his great popularity in Poland was due to his warm personal qualities and grace. I was also invited by the Zaleskis to a dinner at another château in the neighborhood of Angers in which they were staying. A. Zaleski, one of our best diplomats, and a very well-educated person, was also known for his interest in fine cuisine and his extraordinary memory and ability to tell anecdotes. Before the war, when he was minister of foreign affairs in Warsaw, he had the best chef in Warsaw, and he had always amused his guests with innumerable and excellent stories. The dinner in Angers was good in spite of its modesty; I remember that towards its end the mysterious L. Raichman arrived, to me an ambiguous political figure who played a rôle both during and after the war in Europe, America, and in the Far East. He brought with him a particularly expensive radio, which he demonstrated. In our conversation we touched upon the United States, and he said that if America became involved in the war, the Germans would be finished, and he described to me the limitless financial and industrial power of America. Here I should like to mention something which I, myself, considered extremely significant, something which I indicated in my talks with Minister Zaleski, General Sosnkowski, President Raczkiewicz, as well as with many other people in Paris and Angers and which, if my memory does not fail me, I developed in the report Professor Kot asked me to write for the government. I may add that later on, in America, I often returned to this subject in my public lectures and in my conversations with various American and European personalities belonging to academic circles as well as to officials of the State Department and European diplomats. I have in mind not the secret messages of which I was the bearer

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from Poland to the Polish government and certainly not anything connected with my personal future fate nor even with my views on the outcome of the war, but rather a very significant phenomenon to which I have already alluded and which I was able to observe during the several months I spent under the German occupation. I would call this phenomenon "fraternity". The German terror abolished all the barriers and social demonstration which existed in pre-war Poland, as they did everywhere else. National suffering united people in the face of all German persecutions. Under the blows of German oppression the Polish people formed, one would say, one great family in which all its members were equal. Everyone tried to help one another; never before, anywhere, had I observed that genuine solidarity with one's fellow men. Only when I had left Poland did I become aware of the social change which had occurred in my country. Great lords, intellectuals, bourgeois, artisans, workers, and peasants, all of them became, above all else, human beings; a marvelous common understanding and sympathy had suddenly been created among them. The Germans did not initiate any social and economic reforms aiming at a socialization of the country. On the contrary. For instance, the agrarian reform which had been in progress in Poland before the war, was halted. The Germans needed agricultural products for their army and for their country, and therefore, they protected and promoted the production of large estates and arable units. As a consequence, many Polish landowners found themselves in a better position, from a financial and economic point of view, than before the war. Many of them were able to pay off their mortgages and debts. These German measures did not originate from any class conceptions - the Germans were interested only in the intensification of production. But this German economic policy did not result in the development of class egotism among the Poles - just the opposite. The wealthiest people in Poland generously shared their resources with those who had been deprived of them. For example, Mrs. B. gave a large sum for the needs of the professors at Cracow University at the time when they remained without any salary. Only a couple of months later the Polish government in exile found a possibility of paying those salaries through secret channels and of helping various other groups of Polish officials belonging to state or other institutions liquidated by the Germans. I can still see Count F. Potocki walking in the streets of Cracow with some food packages he was taking to the homes of such people as the secretaries and clerks of newspapers and reviews which were no longer in operation.

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And this fraternal charity embraced not only the persecuted and poor Polish people who were victims of the German occupation; the same was also true with respect to the Jews. The nation was not at all indifferent to the fate of the Jewish population. Here is a small but significant example which I could observe myself. I have already mentioned that the Germans divided the streetcars in Polish cities into two sections: one for Jews and the other for Gentiles; Poles traveled in the Jewish section - this was a manifestation of the solidarity which they felt with the Jews. I know of many Poles who, before the war, had the reputation of being rather anti-Semitic and who now hid Jews in their country and city homes despite the great danger which this involved. (The Jewish problem in Poland was very complex as the large Jewish minority often constituted a majority in towns and cities, and this obviously created conflicts of a purely economic nature. One should not confuse the free settlements of the non-assimilated mass of Jews in prewar Poland in separate quarters of towns and cities with the ghettos forcibly organized by the Germans.) Indeed, I had a distinct feeling that a radical and definitive social transformation had occurred, and not as a result of a social revolution. As a matter of fact, the only "nice gift" of the Communist régime to Poland - the equality which they preach - had been established there without the help of Communist doctrine. A different factor was operative in Poland, and equality arose as a spontaneous and genuine answer on the part of the national soul to forces of evil. Suffering is a great teacher, but the results may be either good or bad - it all depends on the moral quality of the person concerned. This was perhaps the most valuable and enriching experience which I brought with me from Poland to Western Europe, and I remember how deeply impressed all my interlocutors in Angers were by my story. I found a room in a private apartment and spent about ten days in Angers. I took my lunches in the house of a French woman who served them for many Polish officials. It was not easy to be accepted there, as her dining room was not very large, but K. Morawski, who was one of the political directors in the Foreign Office, and who used to eat there with his charming daughter, introduced me to her. Among the guests was F. Pusiowski. I came to like him very much, and later in America he became one of my closest friends. These luncheons and dinners were quite pleasant. We ate well; we drank an excellent local wine; and each of us naturally had a lot of stories to tell about our war experiences. For dinner I went to the Au Cheval Blanc which was always filled with

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Poles. There I met almost everyone. There was a coffee shop across the street from the restaurant where many Poles had their breakfast. Kot was there every day, drinking coffee and reading his newspaper. On the same street, which was the main street of Angers, were located many Polish offices, among them the Foreign Office. I had to go there in order to secure a permanent Polish passport; I had traveled from Belgium to Paris with my Belgian identification card and with a temporary pass which was given to me by the Polish legation. The foreign ambassadors and the members of their embassies often visited the Foreign Office. I became acquainted with Mr. E., a secretary of the American Embassy, whom I somehow had not met in Warsaw, and I also met the French ambassador, L. Noel, whom I knew from Warsaw, and who courteously promised to give me a French diplomatic visa. It was given me the day after I had received a Polish service passport. They did not give me a diplomatic passport, which I had had for my trips to Brussels before the war. Besides the top personalities in the Polish Government, whom I have already mentioned, I also knew the Minister of Foreign Trade, H. Strasburger, quite well, and his very pretty wife. They both had visited Bortkuszki, my father's estate, and for some time I had had a very warm regard for her. I used to dance with her in Warsaw and see her often. But when I dined at their place in Angers once or twice, a sort of mutual disinterest developed between us. Talks were mostly between her husband and me, as she generally disappeared after dinner. I also saw Mrs. W. Grabowska, who was for a long time the secretary of the political-diplomatic department of the Foreign Office, and who remained there immovably during all its vicissitudes and the changes of ministers. Mrs. Grabowska was one of the daughters of the famous Russian woman, the humorist Teffi. As Mrs. Grabowska's father was Polish, she received a Polish education. We had a warm friendship which dated from the time when I was first in the Foreign Office and was never disturbed by any misunderstandings. In Angers I visited her often, and I remember that in the evenings we frequently took walks around the suburbs of the city, which she knew very well, and she showed me various beautiful spots of the charming, peaceful, and restful countryside. I remember that we took one such walk on the eve of my departure. I was leaving for a vague destiny, as Belgium's fate was certainly not a secure one, so our separation was rather melancholy; we both feared that events could develop in such a way as to disperse us in completely unknown directions.

XVI BELGIAN ILLUSIONS

In Paris, on the 9th of May, which was the day of my departure for Brussels, I had lunch at the Mühlsteins. (I was taking an afternoon train as the former excellent pullman trains had been suspended and there were only ordinary, express trains.) Mühlstein, owing to his former career in Belgium, continued to maintain his Belgian connections, so I met there Mme. Cattier, the wife of the Belgian millionaire. We talked with great apprehension about what could happen in the very near future. Mme. Cattier, who had a taxi, took me to my hotel where I picked up my luggage and hurried to the station. I had only a few minutes to buy a ticket and when I reached the platform with the porter, the train was already moving. With the help of the conductor the porter threw my luggage into a car, and I scarcely had time to pay him and jump on myself. There were several French officers in the compartment, and several others in the car. They gave the impression of being quite bored by the necessity of having to do something for which they didn't care at all. This was obviously the result of the "phony war"; for the whole winter and spring nothing had happened on the front lines, and the French army probably was demoralized by this inactivity. When night fell, we passed French towns in complete darkness; all the stations were also blacked out. As soon as we reached the Belgian frontier, I had the impression of finding myself in the midst of a countrywide celebration. Lights were on as in normal times, and against the French darkness it seemed lit up as if for some holiday. I arrived in Brussels at one o'clock in the morning; the chauffeur told me that everything in Brussels was just fine. When I entered the Club de la Fondation Universitaire, I met a Russian professor, M. Filonenko, in the vestibule; he had formerly played a politcal role in Russia. He told me that he had several books of mine which I had left in Brussels long ago, before the war. After a few minutes he gave them to me, and I also found several letters, among

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them a letter from Mrs. B., written in German, telling me how much she missed me. I spent a few hours reading the letters and looking at the books, in which I found some of my notes. At six o'clock I was awakened by sirens, and a few minutes later the explosions started; Hitler had invaded Belgium. This was the 10th of May. Exactly as in Cracow, on the first of September, 1939, the first thing I did was to take a bath. In Cracow I had not known that the war had started; here I was aware of it, but following my theory that in danger one has to be washed and shaved, just as under normal conditions, and thinking that if a bomb were to fall on the house it would make no difference if I were in the bath or elsewhere, I shaved, dressed, and went down. In the living rooms and in the vestibule of the club there were many people sitting on their suitcases. These were all kinds of French professors, women, lecturers, etc., who were in a hurry to leave Brussels for Paris and were waiting anxiously for cabs. After my breakfast I went outside on the streets. Bombs fell from time to time, and the population was in great panic. The Belgians had lived for almost a year in a senseless dream, being sure that their king's neutrality would protect them better than military defense measures. Obviously one could expect that the Allies were aware of the situation, and that at Hitler's first attack they would move into Belgium. In other words, the hope for a successful counteraction rested with them. I went to the British Embassy about eleven o'clock to try to see Colonel Blake, although I realized that he must be terribly busy, and I did not have great hope of being able to see him. When I entered the section of the building where the office of the military attachés was located, I found crowds of officers and soldiers going in and out. I became definitely convinced that my attempt to see him would be useless and in vain. However, the charming Colonel Blake almost immediately received me, naturally for a short talk, but he had time enough to tell me that everything was in order and under control. Then I went to see Pinkus and my Russian friends, the Basilevskys. I mentioned before that Yury Basilevsky was a great admirer of Hitler before the war, seeing in him someone who would be able to overthrow Stalin, and he also was a great supporter of the little "Belgian Hitler", Degrelle. The air attacks on Brussels were, both at first and later as well, not comparable to those in Warsaw and even in Cracow. There were intervals of several hours when nothing happened. Pinkus was of course frightened, particularly because of his elderly mother and his sister. They did not know what to do; in case of German success and the

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entry of the German army into Brussels, they probably would leave. They were in a sort of perplexity and stupor, probably caused by the terrible menace which threatened them as Jews. The Basilevskys and some other Russian friends firmly declared that they had decided to remain in Brussels, that they had no reason to go to France, no means of existing there, and that probably nothing would happen to them, even if Brussels were taken. In the evening I called Colonel Blake on the telephone, and he again reaffirmed his previous statement that everything was going well, that the French and British troops were already in Belgium, and the Belgian army was successfully fighting against the Germans. The next day the situation looked much less promising. The general atmosphere in the city was increasingly gloomy. I continued my walks here and there, and I learned that the University had been closed and that all professors, myself included, were supposed to get their salaries in advance immediately; I do not remember now whether it was for one or two months. I have the impression that I received about 6,000 or 7,000 Belgian francs, which, in addition to the 5,000 francs I had received a month before from the Francqui Foundation, of which I had not spent very much, gave me financial security for some time. I was almost constantly walking around the town; bombs fell from time to time. In the evening I decided to go and see Vaxelaire in his sumptuous palace in Brussels, at the Boulevard de l'Astronomie. It was late, after dinner; he was there with his amie, and as far as I remember, I was there with the secretary of the legation. Vaxelaire received us in one of his living rooms. He was naturally not in an enthusiastic mood, but in order to comfort us and himself he suggested we have some champagne. He ordered a few bottles which were brought from his cellar, and we drank to the victory of Belgium and of the Allies. From Vaxelaire's I went to the Polish Legation. When I arrived there it was around midnight. Everyone had to walk in complete darkness. As soon as I reached the legation, a young press attaché arrived with alarming news. He said that Louvain was already in the hands of the Germans, that it was in flames, and that the Germans would be in Brussels in a few hours, or not later than Sunday - the next day. I reacted to this with indignation and brusquely told him that he had no right to spread such frightening news, which was obviously German propaganda. I added that this was clear to me, as they had used a similar strategy in Poland through their secret agents. This was one of the German

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weapons designed to demoralize the civilian population in the country and towns. The press attaché insisted that his information was first hand. Then I answered, "I shall immediately call the British Embassy and learn what the true situation is." I called the embassy with some anxiety and embarrassment, as it was already close to one o'clock in the morning. Colonel Blake was there and came to the telephone. With his usual friendliness and in a sort of carefree tone, he said, "The University has been closed, I've heard." I answered that it had. "Then you are on vacation. Don't you think that you would have a much more pleasant time in Paris?" I understood immediately. Naturally, we had to talk on the telephone in a very cautious way, as the German fifth column was probably spying and listening. I asked him, "When do you think I should leave?" "At your earliest convenience." "What do you mean?" "Right now you probably won't find a train, but I would say tomorrow morning." "That soon?" He said, "Yes." "So, goodbye." "Goodbye. Good luck." All the people in the legation took this information into consideration and decided to prepare themselves to leave Brussels as soon as possible. In the morning I met Willems in the living room of the club. As soon as he saw me, he ran to me. "What are you doing here? I didn't inquire about you because I was sure that you had already left." "Well, what are you doing here yourself?" His answer was, "I am with the Government, and I shall leave with them. But you must arrange your trip by yourself. It would not be advisable at this time to take a train. God knows when and where the trains might be stopped." He looked around and said, "Wait a moment. I have a solution for you." He pointed to a young woman having her coffee, and added, "That is Mademoiselle Leclercq, a professor from the University in Liège. She just arrived from Liège in her car. The city has been terribly bombed and is burning, and in a few hours she is going to La Panne with the purpose of continuing to Paris. This is the safest way, as you will go to the West and avoid the battlefields, and I am sure she will be happy

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to have you as a companion, so that she will not be driving alone." Willems was efficient as usual, and as always a really good friend. He introduced me to her, and we agreed that we would leave at two o'clock, that she would be able to take two suitcases of mine, and a bag of toilet articles, and that in the meantime I would try to send my trunks and six other suitcases by railway to Paris. As soon as I had packed everything, I got a taxi and went to the station. Bombs were falling more frequently now than in the first two days of the invasion. All the station officials were nervous, but doing their jobs as well as they could, so I shipped my luggage, paid, got my receipt, and returned to the club. After a rapid lunch in a nearby restaurant, we left. She had a nice limousine and drove very well. The traffic was not too heavy, but after an hour or so of driving, we started to meet French and British detachments, infantry in big trucks, and light artillery, and we were constantly obliged to make detours and follow side roads, as the main routes were being used by the Allies. The trucks with French infantry made a rather sad impression on me, as I did not see any guns or arms; they were loaded with men who were shouting and greeting the passing cars. Their mood seemed good, but I did not see any tanks or armoured cars, and the British artillery detachments, as elegant as they were, gave the impression of being an emergency improvisation. The villages in Flanders amazed me. The peasants were sitting in front of their homes, drinking beer and smoking pipes, calmly observing the passing of the Allied troops and in general showing their complete indifference. The weather was beautiful. During the trip I told Miss Leclercq all the details of the campaign in Poland: about all the horrible things which had happened there, particularly to the civilian population; of the machine-gunning and bombing of private cars and people in the fields and in villages and towns; and of the caravans of refugees wandering in opposite directions through the country, not knowing where they should go in order to save themselves from the Germans. She listened with a sort of scepticism behind which I felt, as I later did in France, the presumption that this could have happened in Poland, but not here. Her calm attitude towards the coming catastrophe was encouraged by beautiful weather; never did Flanders impress me so much with its peaceful, serene and modest, but appealing beauty. The sky was blue; and the sun, now setting, covered the whole landscape with its golden beams. And where else are they so golden? Furthermore, nothing happened to us. Planes flew over from time to time, but we remained

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safe and arrived in La Panne in a rather calm frame of mind. Mile. Leclercq suggested that I go with her to her cousin's villa in La Panne and then find a room in an hotel to spend the night before leaving for Paris the next morning. However, I felt that she was not quite sure about the continuation of our trip, as our drive from Brussels to La Panne had given her hope that perhaps the situation was not really so bad. In her cousin's villa, a vast and, as is customary in Belgium, a very comfortable one, the hostess received us with charming hospitality. As soon as we were seated in the living room, she began to apologize that the carpets were rolled for the summer, as they did not expect to be in La Panne then, the chairs and furniture had dust covers on them, she couldn't find an ashtray for me, and so on. This amused and at the same time irritated me. It was not proper to mention all these trivial details in the face of what was going on in the country. After a time I left, and I found a room with some difficulty, as La Panne was becoming more and more crowded with refugees from Brussels and other cities and towns. During the night someone knocked on my door; it was Pinkus. I do not remember how he found me, but he told me that he was in some other hotel close to mine, with his mother and sister. They had left Brussels in haste, by train, and he planned to go back to Brussels the next day to pick up some things which they had left in their apartment, not having had time to take everything they needed. I told him that it would be better to forget about going back and rather go on to Paris. The next morning I found that Mile. Leclercq had definitely decided to remain in La Panne and see what would happen. I felt not only surprised but also annoyed. Had I known this, I would not have gone with her; I could have taken the train. Now there was no way for me to find any transportation from La Panne to Paris. We both knew that Professor Jacques Pirenne, a friend and colleague of mine, was in his villa in La Panne with his family. It came to my mind that we should go and see him. I hoped that he would be able to persuade her to leave La Panne immediately. When we arrived at his villa, we saw two or three cars in the yard, pierced by bullets, and with broken windows. I showed them to her and said, "You see, it was pure chance that nothing like that happened to us." We met Pirenne, and he supported my opinion energetically. He told us that the cars which we saw belonged to friends of his, who, on the day when we were driving, had been machinegunned by the Germans. He felt that the situation was hopeless, and he himself was planning to leave very soon with his family, but he had a

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few things to take care of before leaving Belgium. Mile. Leclercq then agreed to go on to Paris. We went to my hotel to get my suitcases and to her cousin's to say goodbye and pick up her luggage. The road to the frontier, some twelve kilometers away, close to Dunkirk, was completely jammed with cars, so that we had to drive five kilometers an hour. The cars behind and around, and those we saw in various villages and towns, were just like those I saw in Poland. People were driving with their mattresses, pillows, children, dogs, cats, and parrots; and all that caravan was slowly moving towards the frontier, like a sluggish serpent. Finally we reached the border, where French commissioners checked the passports. When our turn came, the commissioners, checked Mile. Leclercq's passport and said, "Proceed". When I gave him my Polish passport of service, which I had obtained in Angers, with the diplomatic French visa signed by the ambassador Noel, the commissioner returned my documents and sharply said, "Les polonais ne passent pas". I said, "What do you mean?" "I told you already what I mean", he answered in a rude tone, and showed me a group of people standing or sitting behind barbed wire. "There is your place." "With a French diplomatic visa, I, a courier from the Polish legation, can't enter France?" I asked. Then he used a string of popular derogatory French words and started to talk to the other people who were behind me. What could I do? I left my two suitcases with Mile. Leclercq. She gave me her address in Paris. I took my bag with toilet things, which was heavy, and walked back to La Panne. It happened that, at that time, I had a very severe ache in my left knee so that walking was uncomfortable. The weather was terribly hot, and after a couple of kilometers, because of limping, I felt that my feet had become blistered. But my morale was even worse. I simply did not know what I should do. I watched the constantly growing caravans of cars, coming from Belgium, going toward the French frontier; I was going in the opposite direction, toward the enemy, and completely alone. People were looking at me in astonishment. I continued to walk, and from time to time was seized by the desire to head to the west and walk into the sea. But the instinct of life was stronger than this agony, and finally I reached La Panne, still not knowing at all what I should do. Suddenly in one of the big squares, which was completely filled with cars and people, J saw Pirenne. He jumped at me and cried, "Lednicki! You are here? You

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were supposed to have left." I explained to him what had happened. This meeting was again a blessing of providence. Pirenne immediately told me that he would take me to the city hall and there they would instruct me at which point on the Belgian-French frontier I could reach France, as probably the one which I tried to cross was a sort of temporary passage. We did go to the city hall, and indeed there I was directed to a town which apparently was half Belgian and half French - Tourcoing, about hundred and fifty kilometers from La Panne. Pirenne told me to take a taxi. He said he would find one from Ghent for me, since a driver from there might be willing to take me to Tourcoing, as this would not be too great a detour on his way back to Ghent. Naturally, without Pirenne I would not have thought of going to the city hall, and I would not even had any idea about which kind of taxi I should look for, even if I had known that I should go to Tourcoing. In two minutes Pirenne saw a taxi, stopped it and started negotiations. The driver asked 1000 francs, and Pirenne offered 200. The driver went down to 800, and Pirenne offered 400. Finally for 600 francs the problem was settled. Then I asked Pirenne whether I could borrow some money from him, as my money was sealed in a courier's envelope of the Polish legation in Brussels. Pirenne answered, "Unfortunately, I can't. I have only 10,000 Belgian francs with me, and my whole family to take care of." I shook his hand, embraced him, and departed. I have not mentioned the feeling of humiliation and offense I suffered not only through the rudeness of the French commissioner, but by the very fact that Poles were not allowed into France. Later I discovered that the Germans, who had seized all the passport books in the Polish offices in Warsaw, used them for their fifth column, and this was the reason why the commissioner at Dunkirk had acted as he did. True, the general order which was given by the French Intelligence in connection with these fake Polish passports did not allow any exceptions, but the commissioner had entirely disregarded the fact that my passport had been issued in Angers and that I had a diplomatic visa signed by the French ambassador. He acted like a typical French boor and an ass. While traveling in the direction of the town which was supposed to be a gate to France for me, we were again constantly obliged to make detours because of the movements of Allied troops on the road. This infuriated the driver, who constantly complained about the fact that his mileage was becoming greater than he had anticipated. I could see his angry face and his glances at me in the rear-view mirror. I did not

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feel comfortable for several reasons. I mentioned before that I bought a hat and an umbrella in Berlin; the umbrella had no label but the hat did, and I could not remove it. Besides, I was traveling with my Polish Angers passport and a Brussels identification card given to me as a resident of Brussels. From these two documents no one could have understood that I had entered Belgium from Germany, but I had preserved, just as an historical document for the future, the Polish passport book given to me by Baum in Cracow, with the German visa, and also the safe conduct of the Belgian ambassador. This last document was not dangerous, but I realized, although I did not know at that time about the Germans' use of Polish passports, the latent threat of that "historical document". It also happened that I had in one of my suitcases, which I shipped to Paris, the diplomatic passport of the Polish legation in Moscow of 1918 with the signature of Chicherin, which I had also preserved as an historical document with my personal documents, such as academic appointments in Poland and Belgium, which I thought I might need in Europe and possibly in America, if I should finally go there. I still have these here in America. I decided to throw the Polish Cracow passport away, but as the roads were filled with people, I was afraid of doing so. The passport might be found immediately, and God only knew what might happen in that event. Then I decided to destroy it, to tear it up and put it in an envelope, wad it up, and throw it out of the window. I could not throw the torn pieces away because I was again afraid that the wind would disperse them and the crowd on the roads could think that they were leaflets; the Germans were constantly dropping propaganda leaflets from planes. I started my work of destruction cautiously, so that the driver would not see me in the rear-view mirror. It was very difficult because the passport book was strong, and to tear it up demanded really great effort. Finally, constantly looking into the mirror and doing the work between my knees, I succeeded. I took the envelope in which I had my money sealed with some documents of the Polish Legation and packed it with the fragments. At a moment when the driver was concentrating on a curve I threw the wad down out of the window so the wind could not reach it. I told the driver to go directly to the railway station. When we arrived, an air raid had just begun, and crowds of people were running downstairs to the underground tracks. I paid the driver and followed them. On the stairs I was stopped by a young man, who addressed me, "Professor Lednicki?"

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I did not know who he was. I said, "Yes?" He continued. "You have a chair of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University?" I said, "Yes." "Well, I should like to tell you that in former days I was very much inclined toward communism, but I am happy to assure you that I have entirely changed my opinion." "I am very pleased to hear that", I answered, "but as important as this change is, I am now preoccupied with some other problems. I must reach the French frontier and then Lille, from where I expect to go to Paris, and I don't know how to go about it." Bombs were falling and the noise was horrible, but the boy answered, "My father is the stationmaster here. He knows the town and all the communications very well, and he will explain everything to you." He brought me to his father, who was terribly busy. However, he explained that I should go to a certain street where I would find an electric train that would take me to the part of the town where I could cross the frontier. Everything turned out all right. I found the train, which, despite the air raids, departed, and I arrived at a street from which there was a passway to the French frontier post. It was late in the evening and becoming dark. I suffered terribly from sore feet and was very hungry as I had not eaten anything all day. When I approached the post, I saw a line of wire and a small table at which two young French military men were sitting; at some distance I saw more wire and two passages; one of them had wire on both sides. I presented my Polish Angers document and my Belgium identification card. As his superior was checking them, the younger man stood up from his chair and looked over his shoulder. Suddenly he pointed out "born in Moscow". The other one answered, "That's all right", and stamped my Polish document. When I asked which passage I should take to reach the railway station in order to go to Lille, he indicated the one with the wire and said, "You probably need protection?" To this I answered firmly and brusquely, "I am traveling with a diplomatic French visa. I have money enough, and I don't need any protection, thank you. I will not go into a camp." My tone was so resolute that I probably impressed him, so he saluted me and said, "All right. Take the other road." It was six or eight kilometers from there to the railway station. As difficult as it was for me to walk, I made it, and when I arrived I im-

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mediately saw that it was one of those French establishments, a hotelstation. In other words, the station included a large restaurant and an hotel. I entered the restaurant. It was close to midnight. Behind the counter I saw a dark, fat woman, and behind her, on glass shelves, magnificent cold roast beef, veal, chicken, and salads. First I told her that I would like a room with a bath for the night, and then asked when there was a train for Paris. She said the train would leave at six o'clock in the morning. I asked her to wake me up at five, and now to give me some cold chicken, with salad, and a good bottle of red burgundy. She asked me for my documents and also where I came from. I said from Brussels. When I gave her my Polish passport and the Belgian identification card, she looked at them and said, "You don't have any stamp on your Belgian card. Then, no room and no supper." I exclaimed, "You are crazy. You have the commissioner's stamp on my Polish passport. You have a French diplomatic visa." Her answer was, "I have already told you, no room and no supper without a stamp on your Belgian card." I said, "Do you expect me to walk another twelve kilometers again to get a stamp on the Belgian card?" She unwillingly informed me that there was a commissioner behind the restaurant. I went there and found a small room with a radio and telegraphic apparatus, and a soldier sitting at his desk and writing a letter, probably to his girl friend. I asked him about the commissioner and if I could see him. The answer was, "He is not here." "When do you expect him?" "I don't know." What was I to do? Then, suddenly, the commissioner entered. He asked me brusquely what I needed. I explained. I showed him my documents. He exclaimed, "Nom d'un chien! You have here a French diplomatic visa. What more do you need?" I said, "I don't need anything, but the proprietress of the hotel won't give me a room or a meal because I don't have a stamp on my Belgian card." "Merde. There you have it." And he stamped it. I thanked him and went to the woman and showed her the stamped card. The commissioner was following. I insisted on having my supper and took a seat at the table, watching the woman. I saw that she conferred with the commissioner and finally, after a while, the chicken, salad, and burgundy were

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brought to me . . . After I had eaten, I went to my room and discovered it was large, and with a large bathroom, but there was no hot water, so that I had to soak my blistered feet in cold water, and to take a cold bath. I went to bed terribly tired, and I immediately fell asleep. At five o'clock the maid knocked at the door. Formerly, when I returned home from Brussels or Paris after long stays there, and my maid knocked on the door the first morning, I answered in French, having become accustomed to it. Now, here in this little French town, probably because of all that happened, all my worries about the Berlin umbrella and hat, the Polish passport with the German visa, and all the possible threats to me which probably obsessed me even during my sleep, I suddenly answered, "Jawohl". Quickly realizing what I had said, I promptly shouted "Entrez". The maid opened the door. Fortunately she had not heard the German word and simply said, "It's five o'clock, and your train is leaving at six." On the train I saw no indication in the countryside between Lille and Paris of war, defense preparations, fortresses, trenches, or troops. For hours and hours I traveled through an absolutely peaceful and quiet oountry, with peasants working in the fields here and there. Sometime in the afternoon I arrived in Paris. This was on the 15th of May. Those last five days seemed more like a month, now that I look back at them. They were so filled with events, worries, and danger.

XVII PARIS BEFORE THE FALL OF FRANCE

Yes, only five days had passed since I had left Paris for Belgium. Five days before, France had still been in the climate of the "phony war". Since then the "phony war" had been replaced by a real one, not far away in Poland, but on the very French frontiers. The Maginot Line had been broken, and a large gate leading to France had been opened. Hitler, that "genius of confusion", as I used to call him, certainly was not lacking in imagination. He had perceived for a long time that France was vulnerable precisely because of her Maginot Line. It was the blanket under which the French nation slept quietly and comfortably, just as the United States did twenty years later with their atomic bomb under their pillow. And yet, the hotels, restaurants, the aspect of the streets with their traffic and crowds were still the same. Only groups of Polish officers were a sort of memento mori, but since they had been there for several months, they had also lost their particular significance. However, already on the next day I felt some nervousness beneath the surface of the seemingly normal life. The alarming news in the newspaper headlines, news from Belgium and the battles going on, not only between the Belgian army and the Germans, but also the skirmishes between the Allied armies and Hitler's divisions naturally interrupted the fairy-tale life which Paris was living, sunk in an astonishingly obstinate oblivion. These are of course the observations and memories of a tourist who was able to judge only from the surface. I remember very well that my feelings were not those of admiration. I did not see in the atmosphere of Paris any elements of supreme courage; on the contrary, this very atmosphere of the city became a sort of nightmare for me. I often felt worried and revolted, but the few people I was able to talk to continued to encourage me by saying that the long months of military peace had not been wasted, that France had mobilized and organized her defense. However, it was obvious that the military situation was not good, and people were still waiting for the time when finally

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the whole might of the French army would be used. The feeling of fear began to grow when the newspapers started to announce the frightening speed of Hitler's Panzer divisions, rolling now not only through Belgium, but penetrating into French territory. I began to realize that my stay in France was becoming very precarious. First, it was clear that I would not be able to find any work there. I discussed this with professor Boyer who made some suggestions about seeing people at La Sorbonne, but my talks with the deans and other members of the administration there did not offer any hope for me. They were, as usual, drily polite and stressed the fact that since the war had started all academic activities had had their budgets reduced. Second, the general situation was becoming less and less encouraging, and no one was sure what might happen to Paris itself in a few days. The members of the Polish Government who were in Paris, and whom I naturally continued to see, were still trying to make a show of optimism, and there seemed to exist a possibility for me of joining the Government and beginning some work; for instance, in the Ministry of Information. However, as I have mentioned before, I was not very inclined to ally myself with the Government, and this was for various reasons. I have never had the temperament of an official. One would say that in the given circumstances I should have taken into consideration the factors of emergency. However, the activities of the Polish Government in France acquired, because of the months of the "phony war", the character of a bureaucratic permanence. Also, all posts and positions which would have been appropriate for me had already been occupied. On the other hand I had to think about my material situation. The salary which had been paid by the University of Brussels for a couple of months in advance would not last too long. Therefore when the Minister of Information, Stronski, a former scholar in Romance philology who later became involved in intensive political activities and violent journalism (for many years he had been a political adversary of my father, but now he had entirely changed his former attitudes and views) offered me a provisional appointment with a salary of 6,000 francs a month, and the suggestion that after some time we would see what kind of work would suit me, I accepted his offer. I should like to take this opportunity to pay a tribute to the action of the Polish Government in exile. I hope that the reader knows what this government achieved later (on a larger, international scale); that he knows the deeds of the Polish army and navy, and the heroic accomplishments of the Polish pilots in the Battle of Britain, and before that,.

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of the really fantastic collaboration of this Government with the underground army in Poland. I will return to these great undertakings in the last volume of my memoirs, as well as to the tragic vicissitudes of Poland on the international scene. But even in France, where the work of the Poles developed under the precarious conditions of the disintegration of France, the Poles achieved a lot. It was there that the organization of the Polish army started; as we know, the Polish military units continued to fight until the last moment, and after the defeat of France, they miraculously reached England, where they were greeted as the first messengers from Europe of unbroken devotion to the cause of freedom. The government also did a lot as far as their cooperation with the activities of the French General Staff was concerned - they provided that staff with a rich documentation concerning the campaign in Poland. Unfortunately, the French did not attempt to profit by it. Finally a great deal had been done in the field of propaganda, dedicated not only to the Polish cause (a Polish university was established in Paris in which Polish scholars, writers and poets lectured on Polish history, culture, and literature), but also to the strengthening of the spirit of national resistance in France. But I arrived in France almost on the eve of her defeat, and at that time I began to think more and more about the United States. I received letters from my sister, who had already done so much for me, insisting on my coming to America. With her customary generosity, she suggested that she would help me financially to make the trip, but as the main obstacle, as I very soon learned, was not of a financial nature, but the problem of securing an American visa, I decided to try to find some channels to the American Embassy in Paris. Our former ambassador in Paris, J. Lukasiewicz, now removed by the new Polish Government from his post, helped me in this matter. He was always on very good terms with the American Ambassador, Mr. W. C. Bullitt. Mr. Lukasiewicz promised that he would introduce me to the ambassador and the embassy. He phoned me one day at my hotel to tell me that the next morning I was to see Mr. M., secretary at the embassy. At the embassy I passed through the big hall in the main building, located on the Place de la Concorde. This hall was terribly crowded with people, and in the center stood a desk where an official sat, interviewing all the applicants for visas. I went directly to one of the upper floors and was introduced to Mr. M. He only shook hands with me and immediately took me back to the large hall, saying that I should talk with the gentleman who was interviewing the crowd in the vestibule. I

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must say this was not a great help on his part. There was no possibility of explaining my case or my identity to him. However, he did at least one thing for me - in getting the official talk to me at once. I cannot forget this interview for various reasons. First, my encounter with Mr. M. was a deception - I thought that he would introduce me to the ambassador; second, he was so hurried that he did not pay any attention to me. This machine-like attitude shocked me. Here I must stress, parenthetically, that naturally Mr. M. and everyone in the embassy (although the United States was not yet in the war) must have been in a state of agony because of what was happening at the front. The first thing I learned from the newspapers, which I bought when I left the embassy, was the news of the surrender of Leopold III and hence the fall of Belgium. Still, I expected that a little more personal interest would be shown to me. My interview with the official in the hall of the embassy began in a way which amused me greatly. As soon as the interviewer learned that I was born in Moscow and that I held the chair of History of Russian Literature at the University of Cracow, he asked me the following question: "Is it true, may I inquire, that Pushkin was of Negro descent?" I was obliged to give him some genealogical and biographical details and to explain that the great Russian poet, on his mother's side, was a descendant of an Abyssinian princeling, who had been captured as a war hostage by the Turks. They intended to use this boy, whose name was Gannibal, in the Sultan's harem; but he escaped this unpleasant fate as he was bought by the Russian envoy in Constantinople and sent as a gift to Peter the Great. At that time, Negroes were a fashionable ornament in European courts, and we see them often as a detail in an exotic background in pictures of the 17th and 18th centuries. Even in this, Peter the Great was anxious to imitate Western Europe. This Gannibal became a favorite of the Tsar, who had him baptized in Wilno, with the Polish Queen, Christine Eberhardine, as his godmother, and later he sent him to Paris to be educated. Under orders from Peter, Gannibal married a girl from the Russian nobility, and so began the Russian line of the Gannibals. This Abyssinian had a brilliant career in Russia, and Pushkin's mother was his great-great-granddaughter. The poet himself started an historical novel, which he never finished, The Negro of Peter the Great, in which he told the story of his ancestry. He often alluded to his African blood, which revealed itself in the "shameless madness of his desires", and in his facial features. The American official was quite satisfied with this historical explana-

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tion, and, perhaps noticing my impatience, touched upon my own problems. It appeared that I should first be invited by an American university, and, secondly, that I should get a French re-entry visa. The official suggested that I might try to find out what the Quai d'Orsay would decide. I left, feeling that the whole procedure would not be at all simple and that the French Foreign Office would send me to the French Embassy in Angers. And that is what actually happened. The suggestion concerning contacting the American universities did not sound very promising to me. Among all the American scholars in the Slavic field, I knew personally only Clarence Manning from Columbia University, whom I met once in Paris in the Café des Deux Magots. I do not remember who introduced us, but I do remember that the talk I had with him was a rather strange one. He was silent almost the whole time and very reserved in any of his statements concerning Slavic literatures. But I had had correspondence with Professor George R. Noyes of the University of California, who was certainly a leading figure in the field of Slavic studies in America. I had learned of him from Professor Roman Dyboski, our outstanding scholar in English literature at Cracow, who often visited England and America, where he gave lectures on Polish literature and culture and also published several books on these subjects. He became very popular among English and American scholars. When I got my chair in Brussels, Dyboski suggested that I get in touch with Noyes, as perhaps he could be helpful in building a seminar library in Brussels by sending some American publications on Russian and Polish literature. My correspondence with Noyes started in this way. I began to send him my books and he reviewed one of them, my French book on Tolstoy, in the Slavonic and East European Review in London. At the same time I wrote to my sister about what I had learned in the embassy. She answered very quickly that she would try to get in touch with Manning; and, as I later learned, she did more than that. She conferred with two famous Russian scholars. One was George Vernadsky, a professor of Russian history at Yale, and the other was M. I. Rostovtsev, an historian of ancient cultures at Yale. Professor Rostovtsev and his wife had been personal friends of my parents, and Vernadsky was the son of a political friend of my father and had married the sister of one of the juniors in my father's law office, a man whom my father liked very much. Both did what they could (Vernadsky in 1928 had published a very eulogistic review of my French book, Pouchkine et la Pologne), inquiring here and there at the various universities, but

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without any success as there were no vacancies and no possibilities of any special appropriations for professorships in Slavic or even in com' parative literature. When I wrote to Noyes I received a very friendly answer, but he told me that the only thing he would be able to do would be to send me an invitation for two lectures at the University of California in Berkeley, each lecture paying a fee of $50.00. Hence, for the time being, the American project was very vague. I continued to see Boyer who was more and more worried by events. His feelings, as I already have said, were particularly painful because of the fact that his wife was of Jewish descent and he was naturally worried as he was not sure whether he would be able to risk staying in Paris in case of Hitler's occupation of the city, which was becoming more and more probable. People did not talk about this danger, but began to fear it, the more so as there were still no signs of any French counter-offensive. Naturally, I saw many Polish friends often, among them the Charles Radziwills with their permanent companion, Inka Puslowska. A number of times I went with the Radziwills and Mme. Puslowska for very modest dinners in small restaurants, sitting at tables on the sidewalk and eating by candlelight, as Paris was blacked out. The Polish Legation from Brussels was also in Paris, as well as some members of the Belgian Government who did not accept the King's surrender and had escaped to France, and later to London, where they formed a Belgian Government in exile which continued the war with Hitler. I saw some of these people, but unfortunately they could not give me any assistance. Shortly after my arrival in Paris I found Mademoiselle Leclercq, who had my two suitcases and collected them from her. I also found the rest of my trunks and suitcases which I had had shipped from Brussels. I got in touch with Strzalko, the secretary of our legation in Brussels, who was now in Paris with his wife and small son. They had fled Brussels in their car, with a trailer attached. The horizon to the north of Paris was becoming darker and gloomier every day. I used to eat my luncheon from time to time in fashionable restaurants, for instance La Crémaillère, where people were still eating excellent food and drinking expensive wines, but one felt that the ground was shivering. I used to see Boyer, mostly in the evenings in that complete darkness of Paris, in his vast apartment, where he gave me his best wines, telling me that this was the time to drink them, as

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one should not leave them for the Germans. One day, at the end of May or the very beginning of June, I went to see Grzybowski at lunch time, but did not find him, and then decided to have my lunch in one of those restaurants behind the Musée Cluny where I had been with him before. I entered one of them and immediately knew that this was not the one to which he had brought me, that it was a rather expensive restaurant, Brasserie Balzar, and I also saw that it was entirely filled with people whose appearance was typical for such a place. They were devouring all kinds of sea food and châteaubriand, and they washed these down with the best burgundy, Bordeaux, and champagne. The maître d'hôtel showed me to a small table facing the large glass door, which was open as the weather was beautiful. At the very moment I ordered my lunch the sirens began to sound, and immediately the building was shaken by a terrific explosion. The maître d'hôtel and the waiters ran to the door, closed it, started to move people from the tables near the windows and me from the front to the back of the restaurant. While waiting for my meal, I was writing a letter to Mrs. B., without having any idea how I would be able to mail it to Poland. In Brussels it was different; Belgium was neutral and we could correspond. True, she used to write in German, obviously in order to placate the German censors. Now I started to tell her that Paris was being bombed, attempting to describe the bombing in such a way that my news would not be dangerous for her to receive (although I did not know how I would send it). The bombing continued, and from time to time I was looking absently around the restaurant. To my right side there was a large table occupied by a party of big, dark, brilliant-eyed Frenchmen, with red cheeks showing blue veins, and by women, some of them young and attractive and some of them old and painted. They were obviously in a state of excitement, caused not only by the bombing but also by the amount of wine they had absorbed. They talked loudly with uncontrolled gesticulations. Suddenly, one of the men began staring fiercely at me. I returned his stare, and then he shouted, "What are you writing there? It's probably pleasant for you to describe the bombing of Paris in your story?" Even before this I had noticed a growing unfriendliness to strangers in Paris. So, although I had a perfect command of French, I had never tried to imitate a Parisian accent and realized that in this case, any answer of mine would immediately reveal that I was not French. It came to my mind that these people were taking me for a journalist and,

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seeing me writing, were angered. They probably assumed that I was preparing an article about the first bombing of Paris, and I feared that if they should recognize me as a foreigner they would become more aggressive. Fortunately the maiire d'hotel was just passing between us. I stopped him and in a low voice asked him to calm them, saying that I did not know what they wanted of me, but that they were trying to create a scene. He appeased them. In a few minutes the bombing was over and everyone turned again to his meal. The expectation of an imminent French counter-offensive and, of course, the belief in the impenetrability of the French frontier, guaranteed by the Maginot Line, created in France a sort of psychological curtain which concealed the threat of the German advance. What I said before about Hitler's sagacity with respect to the Line came to my mind much later. I think this was in connection with an article which I published in the New Leader after Hitler's attack upon Russia. The thesis of that article about that "genius of confusion" was that Hitler faced two possibilities, both of which were to his advantage. One possibility was to conquer all of Russia and seize all her natural resources which would help him in the destruction of the Western democracies, his main goal. Or, in case of losing the war with Russia, there was still one great achievement, that of sending Communist Russia into the camp of the Allies and thus destroying them ideologically. Naturally, I did not realize all of this in June, 1940. One thing, however, was becoming more and more clear every day, namely, that the general attitude of France was less and less encouraging. When Hitler's Panzer divisions started to penetrate from Belgium into the French territory and when his armies broke the French defense line in AmiensReuthel and arrived at the Swiss border, the menace of his conquering Paris became more and more serious. People began to think about leaving Paris, and one could observe that many French families were not only making preparations for evacuation, but had even already left the capital. There were some other signs of precautions against the Germans' occupying Paris: the museums, art collections, and archives were being packed, and all these preparations naturally created a gloomy atmosphere in the city. As disastrous as had been the campaign in Poland, it appeared that it did not teach any lesson to France, as it had not to Belgium. When I related the horrible details of the fate of the civilian population in Poland, Frenchmen would listen with sympathy, but one felt that behind that sympathy there was the confidence that nothing similar could happen to them. I have already mentioned

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my talks with Mademoiselle Leclercq in Belgium, while we were escaping from Brussels. Only rude reality could have convinced all these people - and this came, but much too late - that Hitler had started a new kind of war, in which the civilians suffered much more than the armies. From this point of view, the First World War was completely different. It was still within the framework of old military traditions, which imposed some respect for nonfighting masses of the population. Later I shall give a very eloquent example of the thoughtless attitude of the French. I was in a sort of stupor. I realized that, having no occupation in Paris and no prospects for any work, there was no reason for me to remain there, and the sooner I could leave Paris, the better for me. But the horror of the possible seizure of Paris by Hitler was so strong in me that I still was waiting for the miracle of the awakening of the French nation and army. My feeling was that Hitler in Paris would be an unbearable defilement, something like the rape of one's mother, wife, or sister. In other words, this eventuality - because of its horror appeared to me as something impossible. But the newspapers, with their maps and arrows, tracing the movement of the German divisions, were forcing me to accept that unbearable truth. Therefore, I began to prepare for a departure from Paris. I was aware of the fact that it would not be wise to wait too long as at the very last moment no one would be able to help me. First of all, it was indispensable that I find somebody with a car, who would be willing to take me with him. And here is an example of the French unrealistic attitude towards the war to which I alluded before. Among the Polish people who, previous to the war, were living permanently in Paris, there was a lawyer, Jozef Witenberg and his wife, whom I often used to see when visiting the city. Witenberg was much younger than my father but was a good friend of his and, in the First World War, politically collaborated with him. He and his wife were wealthy people, and so in 1916 he participated financially in my father's endowment of a Polish lectureship in Kings College, London. The Witenbergs had a very nice apartment in one of the best quarters of Paris, near the Champs Elysees. I called him and asked when I could see him to discuss the situation and its implications. He invited me for lunch. When I arrived, I found that one of his juniors, a young French lawyer, was also one of the guests. It appeared that this young man had just returned from some town in the north of France not far from Lille (I do not remember its name) and during lunch he told us

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the following story: "When I had finished our business, it was just the hour of the apéritif and I went to a café which was filled with crowds of people. Suddenly, while I was drinking my apéritif, two German motorcycles stopped in front of the café and two German armed soldiers in their helmets and uniforms entered, approached the counter, ordered some drinks, and asked the owner to fill their motorcycles with petrol - the café had a pump in front. When the motorcycles had been filled and the Germans were through with their drinks, they departed." My amazement at this story had no limits. I looked at the aide in a stupor and I said, "How was that? Naturally, the café was filled with men?" He answered, "Yes, of course there were crowds of men, as I said." I asked, "But then all those men who were there did nothing? They didn't try to catch these Germans and simply let them enjoy their drinks and leave?" His reply was, "What do you mean? All the people there were civilians, and you know very well that civilians have no right to participate in military actions. Also, as you undoubtedly know, during the Prussian War of 1870, the German Lancers rode through the country villages and towns, and nobody ever resisted them. You know what the penalty would be for a civilian who was caught fighting against the army of the enemy?" I could not control myself and explained heatedly to that naive Frenchman, unfortunately so typical for those times, that they were now in a war which had nothing in common with previous wars; that this was a total war in which whole nations were involved and that everyone was under the obligation to do whatever was in his power in order to defend his country against Hitler's invasion. Naturally, as many times before, I illustrated my theory with examples from the Polish campaign and also from what I had seen in Belgium. I did not convince our companion. Many other and even more shocking instances of the same kind occurred almost everywhere in France. I heard that a whole fortress, somewhere near the Swiss frontier, had been seized by two German motorcyclists who arrived in the fortress at the apéritif time. Everyone was busy with his noon drink and some twenty French officers surrendered, as they had no arms, to those two German motorcyclists. I have been told of cases even more fantastic than this one: entire French divisions supposedly surrendered in the same way! After this, I started to discuss with Witenberg my plans for departure.

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He told me that he was preparing to leave Paris with his wife, that he haid a car and naturally would be happy to take me also, although there were some other people whom he was obliged to help, and unfortunately he would not have any space for my luggage. We agreed that I should try to find some way to ship my luggage from Paris and that, when the danger of the occupation of Paris was imminent, we should get in touch, and if I had no alternative plan I would leave with them. I continued to see the Radziwills and Inka Puslowska. The prince was in the Polish army; hence he would be evacuated with the Polish officers who were in Paris, and the princess and Inka were supposed to go to Arcachon. F. Pusiowski's parents, whom I had known since the First World War (they were in Moscow at that time) had a very large estate in eastern Poland and a villa in Arcachon, where they used to spend their summers. They also had an estate near Bordeaux. Inka, when we were discussing the problems of evacuation, suggested that the best thing I could do, as far as my numerous trunks and suitcases were concerned, was to ship them to Arcachon, to her husband's parents' villa. I thought this was a very good idea, thanked her, and the next day I shipped some six trunks and suitcases, which left me with two suitcases of clothes and a large trunk which contained all my notes, outlines for courses, manuscripts, family portraits, and some jewelry. I mentioned that Strzalko, the secretary of our legation in Brussels, was in Paris. I met him from time to time, and we agreed that when the branches of the Polish Government which were in Paris should be evacuated to Angers, he would take me in his car there, and it was understood that he might also be able to take my two suitcases and the trunk with my documents. Days and nights in Paris were becoming more and more sinister. In the evenings during the blackout I used to go to the Café de la Flore and to Deux Magots, which were always crowded with people anxiously discussing the events. One night I saw there Léon Kochnitzky, a Belgian of Russian-Jewish origin, who was completely Francicized now. He was a very brilliant man of letters, a very gifted critic in the fine arts, and formerly a very wealthy man. Somehow, just before the war, he had lost his wealth and left Brussels for South America. I was astonished to find him suddenly in Paris. As soon as he saw me, he jumped up from his chair and loudly said, "You will see, in a couple of hours the whole situation will improve for the better. There will be important changes in the French Cabinet and Mendès will certainly take control of affairs."

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I had heard a similar opinion from Miihlstein on the previous day, but with all his optimism, he had already evacuated his wife, two daughters and his wife's parents, the R. Rothschilds, from Paris. He told me that he also was ready, in case of necessity, to leave Paris in his car. I, of course, knew some Polish generals besides Sikorski - for instance, my colleague from the University of Cracow, General M. Kukiel, who was holding the post of the Polish Minister of War and, as such, was in Paris in those days. From time to time I visited him and his wife in their modest hotel, the Hôtel du Danube, on the Left Bank of Paris where I, myself, often stayed. In Cracow before the war, I used to see him almost every day at the professors' tables in the cafés. He belonged to the academic world as an outstanding military historian, held a chair of military history and was a member of the Polish Academy of Letters and Sciences. I had always been on good terms with him. But now, in Paris, perhaps because of being preoccupied with the drama which was going on, he seemed to be rather distant and never gave me any information. The Grzybowskis were in a bad situation, as Grzybowski was not attached to the Government; hence they were left to provide their own means of security. With his customary sceptical attitude and sense of humor, he continued to comment on the situation with all kinds of jokes. But naturally, both he and his wife were also alarmed. I knew many Russians in Paris, among them many historical figures, whom I used to visit after 1918, and whom I had known in my youth, as they were my father's friends - some of them had collaborated with him politically before the Bolshevik coup d'état. Among them I should like to mention P. N. Miliukov, the famous Russian historian and minister of foreign affairs in the Russian Provisional Government of Prince G. E. Lvov. Miliukov was the author of the manifesto of the Provisional Government, which, in March, 1917, declared an independent Poland. He discussed the text of the manifesto with my father, and at the same time, at my father's suggestion, created a "Commission for the Liquidation of Polish Affairs" in Russia, of which my father became the chairman (the task of this Commission was to prepare a legal divorce between Russia and Poland). I had seen Miliukov also before the war in August, 1939; at that time, I remember, he was rather optimistic. He had great confidence in Eden and considered him not only ambitious, but able and perspicacious, and he told me that Eden would undoubtedly re-assume his duties in the foreign office very soon; he had resigned

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in 1938 and indeed, he did come back in 1940. I remember that he stressed the importance of what the British were doing in Singapore. (It later happened in New York, in February, 1942, that I attended a lecture of Professor Henri Grégoire which occurred the very evening when the news that Singapore was in flames reached the audience!) As far as I remember, in May, 1940, Miliukov was less optimistic. He left Paris before its occupation and died in the South of France in 1942. Besides him I often saw V. A. Maklakov, the ambassador of the former Russian Provisional Government in Paris, with whom our family ties were always very close and whom I had known since childhood, and who had begun his law career as a junior of my father. Naturally, in 1940 he was no longer ambassador, but was considered the head of the Russian liberal-conservative emigration. At this time he was in a pessimistic mood but considered it his duty to remain in Paris, whatever might happen, and continue to fulfill his various tasks in different Russian institutions. He was one of the most brilliant orators and men I have ever met in my life. After his death in 1957,1 published in Russian a long article of personal reminiscences, in which I paid my tribute to his personal charm, outstanding intellect, and marvelous eloquence. I saw him several times in May, 1940, and he arranged some meetings with other Russian friends I knew, such as V. V. Vyrubov, a charming Russian aristocrat who also lived in Paris and whom I often saw whenever I visited France; finally there was A. F. Kerensky. All of these people, and several other Russians, were interested in hearing from me about what happened in Poland. They were deeply indignant at the German-Russian alliance and horrified by my stories about the German terror in Poland. Kerensky later left Paris for America, where I saw him very often in New York, Berkeley, and Palo Alto. I have mentioned my encounters with Belgian friends in Paris. From them I learned that Pinkus had indeed returned from La Panne to Brussels, but not alone - he brought his mother and sister and remained there under the German occupation. Only in 1948 after my lectures at the University of London and at Cambridge (I lectured also in Brussels) did I learn about his tragic fate. He continued to stay in his apartment on Avenue Louise, one of the best districts of Brussels, and therefore was closely surrounded by Germans, who were everywhere. The University was closed, but the professors were paid. Pinkus led a quiet, comfortable existence and continued to satisfy his tastes, those of a gentleman and a gourmet. He used to buy English cigarettes somewhere on the black market and some French and English canned

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appetizers. In former days he liked the fashionable Café Bristol which was not far from his apartment. H e went there every day for his cup of coffee, being surrounded there at that time almost entirely by Germans. I should also stress the fact that Pinkus was a handsome man, but his features were prominently Jewish. Some would have perhaps taken him for a Georgian or an Armenian; however, every German would have looked at him with strong suspicion. Pinkus considered himself immune because of his professorship! He heard from me all the terrible details of persecution of Polish professors in Cracow and other cities. Nevertheless, he did not change anything in his behavior and even had a secret radio in his apartment and listened to it every night, expecting to hear good news from London. His name, Aleksander Pinkus, was on his entrance door. When, towards the end of the war the situation on the Western front became alarming for the Germans and the fate of Brussels was uncertain, they started mass arrests, particularly among Jews or Belgians of Jewish origin. Jean Willems told me that he even warned Pinkus personally and told him that he should leave Brussels and settle in some remote, little town under a different name. Pinkus did not accept this advice. His personal pride and dignity were against any disguise. One day a large group of people, mostly Jewish, were arrested and put in a concentration camp in Malines. Yvonne Nevjan told me the following story: She went to that concentration camp in order to assist the arrested people and to provide some of them with documents which would be of some help. She knew Pinkus as a friend of mine. When she saw him there, she offered him some help, with the suggestion that he should give her a note addressed to the University so that the president of the University could interfere. Pinkus refused and said that in a few days, when the Germans would check the whole crowd, he would show his personal document from the University, which they would certainly take into consideration. A week or so later all of these people were put on a train and taken to Warsaw where they were assigned the task of disposing of the corpses in the Jewish ghetto established by the Germans. One has only to see the film, Mein Kampf, in order to realize what that ghetto was. There Pinkus died. His mother and sister died also - the mother in Brussels and the sister in some concentration camp. The perfect gentleman that Pinkus was throughout his life remained perfect, although unrealistic. But is a perfect gentleman a realistic conception, nowadays? Finally came the day when it became obvious to me that I could not remain in Paris any longer. I got in touch with Strzalko and we agreed

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that the next morning he would pick me and all my luggage up at my hotel, take me to Angers where he had some business, and then return the next day to Paris and later evacuate his wife and son. In connection with this, something very unpleasant and at the same time strange occurred. Strzalko was a young man whom I liked very much and who from the very beginning of our acquaintance had always shown great consideration and even respect for me. When he arrived in the morning of the day we were to leave, I saw a clerk from the Brussels Legation sitting in his car which was entirely filled with all kinds of luggage, mattresses, blankets, etc. My luggage was already downstairs in the hall and I was waiting there myself. Strzalko then told me that he would be able to take the two suitcases, but not the trunk, that the trunk would be left in the hotel and he would pick it up later when he would be leaving Paris with his family, that at that time he would use Ms trailer, and probably in a few days he would bring my trunk to Angers. I was not at all pleased with this arrangement, but, taken by surprise, I had no time for reflection. Naturally, Strzalko was in a hurry, as he had to return to Paris, and I was obliged to agree, very unwillingly, as the contents of the trunk were most valuable and important to me, particularly in view of the possibility of my finding a position in some American university where I would need all my notes for courses on Russian literature, and because all my professional documentation, accumulated during almost twenty years of my academic career, was in it.

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In Angers I found a room in a private house without any great trouble. There a new period of my existence in France began, a very short one as the reader will see. On the evening when everyone belonging to the Polish Government was leaving Angers, and just before the departure of the train evacuating them, I was in the restaurant Au Cheval Blanc where Poles used to eat; in the crowd I suddenly saw Grzybowski, who, as it appeared, had just arrived from Paris (somebody from the Government had brought the Grzybowskis from Paris at the very last moment), and while I was talking with him a man approached us and shook hands with me. I did not recognize him. He told me he was the director of the Polish Telegraph Agency in Paris, and he said that he felt obliged to inform me that Mr. Strzalko had brought my trunk to the agency building, but unfortunately he did not arrive until after all the trucks were loaded with documents and archives from the agency; they had already been packed, and the trucks were departing, so that they had to leave my trunk in the building with the concierge. He said she was a very honest woman and she certainly would take good care of it. "Don't worry!" he added. "After all, in a few weeks we shall be back in Paris." This was a shock to me. Besides being terribly depressed by what had happened, I could not understand why Strzalko had not taken the trunk with him to Angers, as he had solemnly promised, particularly since this was the condition upon which I had agreed to leave my trunk at the hotel. The optimism of the director of the agency seemed to me to be quite childish. Later, in America, after the end of the war, I learned the address of Strzalko, who was living and working somewhere in France. I wrote to him, and the most astonishing thing occurred. He answered me with a long letter in which he said that he did not remember ever having been supposed to take my trunk, and that he had never had anything to do with it. All my efforts to trace that trunk through Polish officials

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who, as émigrés, were residing in Paris, failed. It was my good French friend, Bruno Leydet (he settled with his family at St. Jean-de-Luz after the war), who went to the building in which the Polish Agency was formerly located, and learned that the concierge had left long ago for the country and that nobody in the building knew anything about my trunk. Leydet found the address of that woman and was kind enough to get in touch with her, and received the answer that when the Germans came they took everything they found in the building and probably in this way my trunk was lost. The loss of this trunk was indeed a very great one. It had a manuscript of 600 pages for a book on which I had been working for ten years in various archives: in the India Office and Record Office in London; in the French Foreign Office; in The Hague; in Vienna; even in Constantinople. It was a work about the murder of the great Russian playwright, Griboedov, who was the Russian envoy in Persia, and who was killed in Teheran in 1829 together with the entire personnel of the legation, with one exception only, by a Persian mob. I had suspicions, which were not mine only, that the British played some role in that plot; my research gave me some clues, and the various documents which I found were of great importance for my thesis. Naturally, I was not able and will not be able to return to that work. But besides this, as I mentioned before, my trunk contained also all my notes from my university studies in Moscow, and outlines for all my courses in Cracow and Brussels, in addition to the family photographs and some other precious mementoes. In America I was obliged to prepare all my courses as completely new ones, due to this ridiculous and unfortunate occurrence. And there was indeed in this story a sort of vicious paradox: when I think that I was able to get these documents out of Poland; that I was helped by Baum to avoid any search of my things by the Gestapo; that I was able to carry that trunk with me through Germany to Brussels and then ship it safely to Paris - all this in order to lose it so stupidly because of incomprehensible carelessness and thoughtlessness on the part of that Polish secretary and also on the part of the people of the Polish Telegraph Agency in Paris. Indeed, they were able to return from Angers to Paris - "in a couple of weeks!" Now, when from time to time I think of this series of events, I feel guilty. I should not have accepted Strzalko's proposal; I should have let him go with the clerk's mattresses and found another means of leaving Paris. But strangely enough, from the very beginning of the war, in all my vicis-

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situdes I acquired a sort of fatalistic attitude in the face of the enormous world events, so that all my personal belongings lost their importance, except my wardrobe! I carelessly left my apartment in Cracow with everything in it when I began my peregrinations in Poland, I suffered very little after the loss of those two hundred gold dollars, I hurriedly liquidated my home before leaving for Brussels (and how precious were all my possessions before the war - my pictures, engravings, porcelain, carpets, silver, my library of seven thousand volumes, family documents, my father's archives). Now I regret terribly those wasted treasures, just as I regret my poor trunk with my notes and manuscripts, and I cannot understand my attitude during those days. Is this proof of a return to normal conditions? In a way, my example is typically Polish - Poland was always ready to lose everything in moments of national peril. This is why we became so poor; we are consoled by the words that we are "strong in spirit". My main preoccupation in Angers was to settle the problem of the French re-entry visa with the French Embassy. I succeeded in seeing Ambassador Noël, whom I had met in Warsaw, and by whom I had been invited for a dinner in the Embassy. A s usual, he was very courteous and sent me to a secretary with whom I was to discuss the matter. T o my great astonishment, it developed that the Embassy was unable to give me the visa without a special authorization from the Foreign Office. The secretary promised to write immediately to Paris. When later I met Noël two or three times in the Polish Foreign Office, where he was visiting Minister Zaleski (who had returned from Paris and was staying permanently in Angers), he each time graciously referred to my visa, saying he remembered the matter and was awaiting an answer from Paris. Very soon all these hopes vanished as Paris was taken by the Germans and the Foreign Office, as well as the entire French Government, was evacuated, and it became obvious that no one would be able to busy himself with the correspondence concerning my visa. My days in Angers were filled with meetings with many friends whom I found there. The Polish Government dismissed numerous former officials, but employed instead a large number of people who had never served in any state institutions. Naturally, this was a way of giving financial assistance to persons who often found themselves without any means of existence. A s far as the Foreign Office was concerned, the majority of the former officials were still employed. My relations with the Foreign Office had always been close, as I had many personal friends

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among the Polish diplomats; I saw them frequently at luncheons and dinners. The larger part of the Polish group continued to eat at Au Cheval Blanc, although its cooking became less attractive. One day, it was on the 10th of June, lunching in a small restaurant, I got into a conversation with a French officer who was sitting at fee next table. Our conversation was suddenly interrupted as one of the waiters, while bringing our meals, shouted, "Mussolini declared war on France and has already attacked our frontiers!" The French officer, after the moment of stunned silence that reigned in the room, said to me, "A stab in the back! France is really finished. How can we resist Italy, as we are already in a desperate situation on the German front?" For almost a year Mussolini had been waiting for the issue of Hitler's war and, as I myself thought, had irritated Hitler with his neutrality, although the Germans used to say that he helped them in this way more than he would have by his participation in the conflict. In that case, the Germans would have had to take care of his front lines and disperse their forces. Mussolini's declaration of war on France was a step which again revealed a sort of opportunistic independence. It was obvious that he considered the war over, and he simply wanted to grab a piece of France for himself. Probably he felt sure that England would not be able to continue the war alone, and he therefore foresaw an imminent general peace. Needless to say, this action of his was not edifying. We know that, even in recent history, similar "helpful" attempts have occurred, but this did not change the fact. I felt revolted, and such should have been the feelings of the French. But the whole situation was so hopeless that French hearts were almost entirely filled with despair, and there was no place left in them even for indignation. At the beginning of my stay in Angers I visited often people simply for the pleasure of meeting old friends. Now I hurried to contact those from whom I could get some information about future prospects. I tried as often as possible to see the Zaleskis and, as General Sosnkowski had suggested- that I see him again whenever I was in Angers, I asked for an appointment and got it for ten o'clock in the morning, probably around the 20th of June. These were days when the situation at the front became definitely critical. On the eve of my appointment I was in the Foreign Office, where, in the afternoon, I had seen Noel, who was just leaving Zaleski, and I also met there one of the secretaries from the American Embassy in Warsaw, Mr. E. I did not even ask Noel about my French visa, but in a

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few rapid words I spoke to Mr. E. about my project concerning America. In the evening I went to Minister Strasburger's for dinner and as the situation was really alarming, I remained there until midnight, discussing with him only the eventualities and the further prospects of the war. Very often in those days I remembered Zaleski's statement, " Y o u will see; the Germans will sign a peace treaty on their knees in Paris." A t midnight someone rang the bell. Strasburger opened the door himself, as the servant has already retired, and returned with a large envelope in his hand. He told me that a messenger from the Council of Ministers had brought the envelope. H e opened it and read the letter and then told me a sudden emergency meeting of the Ministers had been called. He also said, "By the way, there is a message from General Sikorski, who is on the front lines, that the French counter-offensive will start at any moment, and that he has given the order to shoot all defeatists." Under the circumstances I left, as Strasburger was obliged to attend the emergency session. In the morning I went as usual to the café frequented by Poles, and found Kot, who was reading his newspapers. He didn't say a word to me about anything that was happening. I was drinking my coffee, when suddenly a car drove along the street, and in it I saw Zaleski and his wife. I said to Kot, "What is the matter - Zaleski driving in a car at 9:30?" Everyone who knew Zaleski knew that he was never in the office before 11:00 or 12:00, as he was always a very easygoing man. Kot did not answer, paid his bill, and left. I also left in order to go to see Sosnkowski. When I rang the bell at the gate of the villa in which he was staying, the door opened automatically and in the courtyard I saw the General, a woman (probably his secretary), two officers, and some trunks on the ground. Sosnkomski looked at me, and after a minute he said, "Ah, yes, yes. I remember, Professor, you were supposed to see me today at ten o'clock. Please come in." After saying a few words to the people in the yard, he took me into his study. He went behind his desk, and still standing, offered me a cigarette and lit one himself. He then asked me, "What do you think about the last speech of Reynaud which the radio broadcast?" I answered, "The one in which he said that France will not die on the highways?" (This was a time when the picture of France was exactly the same as that of Poland when all the highways were filled with cars and fleeing people.) Sosnkowski replied, "Yes. Well, don't you think that this is the end?

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Peace - France will surrender." I asked, "Do you really think so?" He said, "Yes. By the way, do you know that Angers is being evacuated?" I exclaimed, "What?" He replied, "Yes, last night the Council of Ministers was called at the request of Noël. He announced that the French Government was not able to ensure security any longer to the Polish Government in Angers, and suggested immediate evacuation. And do you know that Zaleski called Noël yesterday afternoon, asking whether the Government should not evacuate, and Noël's answer was that there was no reason for this?" To this I said, "I just saw Noël yesterday in Zaleski's office." "Yes; that was when he confirmed to Zaleski that the situation was under control. Well, and nobody told you about the evacuation?" I said, "No. I spent the evening with Strasburger who simply told me about the emergency meeting of the Ministers. I saw Kot this morning. He didn't say a word to me, and I was astonished when I saw Zaleski in his car so early. Now I understand the reason." He replied, "You can't remain here. They must take care of you. I don't know where they will evacuate all the employees of the Government, but all the ministers and top officials are supposed to go to Libourne, near Bordeaux. Do you have money? Enough? Go immediately to the Foreign Office and ask them to give you some, or you may see Byszewski in the Ministry of Finances and tell him that, at my request, he should give you some money, and in the Foreign Office get in touch with those who know when the evacuating train will be leaving. Please keep in touch with me. I don't know how long we shall be in Libourne. General Sikorski wants me to go to Washington as ambassador, and I repeat again that I should like to have you with the embassy there, as a cultural counselor." Once more General Sosnkowski, whom I knew so little, showed me that particularly attentive concern which I did not find among people whom I had known for years, and whom I considered my friends. I ran to Byszewski. I knew this very gentle and nice man quite well. He had formerly worked in the cabinet of the prime minister when W. Grabski was holding this post and the post of minister of finances. Later Byszewski served in that ministry. In 1925, I met him in Montecatini, and I would spend entire days with him during the cure. I think that our meeting in Angers was the first one since then. It appeared that

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everything had been packed, and he was not able to give me any financial support. This didn't worry me too much, as I had money enough for my immediate needs. I went to the Foreign Office, where I found Madame E. Zaleska with her sister, the Countess L. Zóltowska. Her sister was comforting her, as Madame Zaleska was in tears and in a state of nervous collapse, constantly repeating, "It's terrible; it's terrible; what will happen to all of us?" I also tried to comfort her, kissed her hands, and having learned in the office that the train was being prepared and would probably leave in the afternoon or early evening, I ran to my room, packed my suitcases, paid the proprietor, and then brought the suitcases to the Foreign Office in order to learn how they should be shipped, and where I could get tickets and an official certificate which would authorize me to take that train. In the afternoon I got all the certificates and tickets. Then, having heard that the train would not leave before the late evening and that people who ate their supper at Au Cheval Blanc would be notified of the exact hour of the departure, I went to the restaurant, and it was there that I met (as I mentioned before) the Grzybowskis and the man from the Polish Telegraph Agency. When the train was about to leave, I went to the station and I saw that this train was immense, containing some thirty or forty cars; all of them were old passenger cars, with outside doors in every compartment. These cars were so completely filled with people and luggage that it seemed there was really no possibility of finding any space for one's self and one's suitcases. Somehow I managed to find a seat; and after a couple of hours of waiting, the train finally moved. Before it left, I visited various cars. I was unable to get into them, but I talked through the windows with friends and people whom I knew. The whole staff of the Polish Government was there and I remember that among various friends I saw Count Józef Potocki with his beautiful wife, née Princess RadziwiH, who joined her husband after having escaped from Poland, and who was pregnant. I met them later in Lisbon and recently, in 1957, in Madrid, and I will always have in my memory the warmest feelings for this charming couple. No one knew what the destination of the train was. We traveled for about three days and nights, under the most horrible conditions. There was no possibility of using any toilet room for washing and shaving. As the train was terribly long, each time when it stopped or started the jolts

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between the cars were so violent that the luggage was thrown to the floor and would fall on the people in their seats - passengers were often injured. At the stations we could see nurses (for some reason there were nurses on the train) running from one car to another to aid the injured. In the stations the train frequently made long stops, and during some of them, we were able to find a little food and also to communicate and talk with one another. We knew only that the French Government had been evacuated to Bordeaux and the generals and the Council of Ministers of the Polish Government to Libourne. Finally, in the evening of the third day, the train stopped at Lourdes, and it seemed that this was its destination, but when the people started to leave their cars, suddenly they were restrained by the French officials, who informed us that the Mayor of Lourdes had announced it was impossible for Lourdes to offer hospitality to this crowd. Exasperated by this news, all of us simply disregarded it and everyone, carrying his luggage as best he could, went into the town to the hotels. Without any great difficulty I found a room in a hotel and so did all the other people. It was an accomplished fact, and the mayor had to accept it - so we remained in Lourdes. These were my last days in France. I was thinking now about how to escape from France, and my direct goal was the United States, but in order to get there, one had to travel through Spain and reach Lisbon. I was also thinking about my trunks and suitcases, which were in Arcachon with the Pustowskis. One day, when I was walking on the streets of Lourdes, it was at noon time it seems to me, I suddenly saw that the pedestrians had stopped, the traffic had come to a halt, and everyone was listening to the radio. I stopped also, and in a few minutes I understood that this was the broadcast of Marshal Petain, who was announcing the capitulation of France. Paris was seized on the 14th of June. On June 22nd Hitler accepted the French plea for peace, and on June 25th, the armistice was signed. Many of the people in the street fell on their knees, weeping and sobbing. I will never forget this terrible scene - in the light of a radiant, sunny June day. A couple of days later, as I was again walking on the streets, I came across a group in which I recognized Professor Oscar Halecki, and Manfred Kridl, accompanied by a man and woman whom I did not know. They were talking to a taxi driver. I approached them and Halecki introduced me to the couple, a Mr. and Mrs. A. Hertz. He was a journalist. I asked Halecki where they were going and he told me that he had two letters from the Polish Primate, Cardinal Hlond, who was

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in Lourdes: one was addressed to the Spanish Ambassador in Paris and the other to the Portuguese envoy there, in which Cardinal Hlond requested visas for several Polish scholars who intended to leave France and go to the United States. He said that the Cardinal, at his suggestion, listed in these letters myself, Kridl, the Hertzes, and Halecki and his wife. I had not known anything about Halecki's undertaking; naturally I thanked him. (Halecki, a famous historian and already at that time author of many works in several languages and a member of various international learned societies, was always a zealous Catholic not only in his personal religious attitude, but also in his scholarly writings; he was very popular in Catholic circles in Poland and in the Vatican, where he was highly esteemed.) I learned that they intended to see the Portuguese and Spanish consuls in Pau, as there was no possibility of finding the whereabouts of the ambassadors, and that they were going to try with the help of these letters to get the Spanish and Portuguese visas. They were just bargaining with the taxi driver for the trip to Pau, which was a long one. Halecki asked me whether I would like to join them. I accepted immediately, and we left. In Pau Halecki and I went to see the Portuguese consul first; Kridl and the Hertzes went to a café to wait there for the result of our visit. The consulate was very crowded, but the doorman, having received our cards on which we had our titles, took them to the consul, and we were both immediately admitted to his office. He was an older man, with a goatee, and greeted us very courteously. Halecki presented the letter from the Cardinal addressed to the Portuguese Minister in Paris, explaining we could not reach him and were hoping that he, the consul, would be able to give us the visas for which the Cardinal was asking. He read the letter, returned it to Halecki; and then grasped our hands almost tenderly and said, "Dear sirs, I am very sorry, but I cannot do anything for you as I have no authorization for giving visas. You must see my colleagues in Arcachon or Bayonne who are in charge of the visas." We left, and Halecki said, "Well, we can't make a trip to Arcachon now. It is much too far, and there is no sense in trying to see the Spanish consul here, because we can't ask for a Spanish transit visa without having a Portuguese sojourn visa." When we met our companions in the café, all of them agreed with Halecki, and they all thought we should return to Lourdes. I was of a different opinion and said to Halecki, "Please give me the Cardinal's letter addressed to the Spanish Ambassador, and I shall try. Who knows?

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Perhaps I may succeed in obtaining a visa from the Spanish consul." Halecki again brought to the fore his arguments; but as I insisted, saying that after all it would be a question of half an hour's wait, he finally gave me the letter and said that he himself would not go to the Spanish consul, but would let me do this alone. I went. The vestibule in the Spanish consulate was even more crowded than in the Portuguese. A doorman, wearing an imposing uniform and holding in his hand a staff topped with a golden ball, approached me and, when I gave him my card and the letter addressed to the Spanish ambassador, asked me to wait. In two or three minutes he returned and led me through the crowd to the consul. When I entered the consul's study, I found there a rather short, middle-aged man, with a black mustache, who was holding the letter in his hands. He greeted me in French and said, "I am very pleased to meet you and will be very happy to help all of you." I shook hands and thanked him immediately, asking, "You mean that you will give us visas?" To this the consul answered (and let us not forget that this was Franco's consul and that Franco, although neutral, was supposed to be closer to Hitler than to the Allies), "Naturally in these hard times men of good will should help each other. You certainly have your Portuguese visas?" I said, "That is just the question, Mr. Consul. We don't have them because your Portuguese colleague here is not authorized to give visas, and he is sending us to Bayonne, but we thought that first we might get from you the Spanish transit visas and then later go to Bayonne on our way to Spain." The consul's face expressed embarassment, and he said, "How do you expect me to give you a transit visa if you have no sojourn visa? It is impossible." Then I started to tell him my story as rapidly as I could. I explained first that I was a professor of the history of Russian literature in Cracow and of Slavic literature in Brussels. I told him that I had left Poland under the protection of the Belgian Government, and also of the Crown Princess of Piedmont, Marie José, a personal friend of my sister's; that during the war I had been arrested in Poland by the GPU; that I had arrived in Cracow after all the personnel of the University were seized by the Germans; that in Brussels I had given lectures about what the Germans were doing in Poland, and that I was not able to risk being captured in France by them, because this would mean a concentration

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camp for me, at the best. I told him that Professor Halecki was in a sense in a similar position, as rector of the Polish University which had been organized in Paris after the fall of Poland and that he was known for his anti-German propaganda; the same was true to a certain extent of the two other men who were with us. "In other words", I concluded, "all of us feel that we cannot remain in France under the present circumstances, and we must escape by any means." The consul was listening to all of this and seemed to meditate. Suddenly he asked me, "Do you know Spanish?" I answered, "I have not mentioned to you that I started my career in Romance philology, hence I studied the old Spanish and I remember one of the lines from the Poema de mio Cid: 'Espeso e el oro y toda la platd ", and I added, "This conforms approximately to my own situation as I have lost all my gold and silver." "Sir, I am asking you seriously whether you do know Spanish or not?" It would be difficult to say what possessed me, but in answer to this repeated question, I said I also remembered another text and a very beautiful one from a popular Spanish romance: Las dichas y las desdichas Son como las olas del mar Las desdichas son que se vienen Las dichas son que se van. This means: "Fortunes and misfortunes are like the waves of the sea; misfortunes are those which come to us, and fortunes are those which go away." "Sir", the consul impatiently interrupted me, "for the third time, I am asking about your knowledge of modern Spanish, because I have decided to give you your visa, and in order to get it you must fill out a questionnaire." Being greatly moved, I thanked him, excused myself, and said, "Mr. Consul, if you are so kind as to give us the visas - and I assume that you will give them to all of us - I hope you will be also kind enough to dictate the answers for the questionnaire to me. I will write them down and my colleagues will fill out their own questionnaires, following mine, making only the respective changes of places, dates of birth, etc." "All right sir, I shall do that although, as you know, there is an enormous crowd waiting for me. Also, you know you must have photographs."

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I answered that we could certainly find a photographer in the town, fill out our questionnaires, and return to him in a couple of hours. He agreed. He dictated the answers to me; I wholeheartedly pressed his hands and ran to my companions, who were still sitting in the café. It is needless to say how great was their astonishment. All of them thanked me effusively, and we decided first to go and be photographed and, in the meantime, while the pictures were being developed, work on the questionnaires. Everything was done; we all went to the consulate. There was no further difficulty; the doorman took us to the consul, the clerks did their job, and in a half hour we left the consulate with the Spanish transit visas on our passports without, of course, having the Portuguese sojourn visas. Unfortunately I do not remember the name of that wonderful man, but I shall never forget him and his moral dignity and humanity, all of which is preserved in my memory and which became even greater in my imagination when I later compared his attitude with the very different attitudes of the officials of the American Legation and of the American Consulate in Lisbon. When we triumphantly returned to Lourdes, I decided to go immediately to Arcachon in order to pick up my luggage, and Kridl, who had now become extremely nice to me, said that he would accompany me. From that moment until his departure from Lisbon for the United States, he became a sort of shadow. I continually had him on my hands. I was the one who organized everything, and he followed me almost everywhere. I bid farewell to all my friends, particularly the Grzybowskis. They had decided to remain and wait to see what would happen, assuming that they would be able to stay in the part of France which the Germans would not occupy, and that the French Government would probably protect them. Fortunately, this is what actually happened. Most of these people settled in Grenoble. However, as I learned later, many of them were obliged to hide under false names, as the Gestapo searched for Poles who had played a political role before the war. I should also say that there were very few people who had even a theoretical possibility of going to the United States. Among the few exceptions were, as I discovered later in Lisbon, Mühlstein and a few other persons in Lisbon, who were trying to reach the United States. The majority of those who did not remain in France went to England from Lisbon, but these were people who had some functions in the Polish Government. A s I have already said, the Grzybowskis did not belong to that group. When Kridl and I arrived in Arcachon, it was very late. We agreed

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that he would remain in the station while I picked up my luggage, and then we would take the first train from Arcachon to Bayonne. At the station, I asked the railway officials where and how I could find a taxi and they told me that it would be best to go to a garage near the station, the proprietor of which had a truck, and that he probably would be willing to help me. When I went to this garage, I found that the owner and his whole family were having their supper. I was very hungry myself, as I had not had anything to eat since leaving Lourdes, but I did not dare ask them for any food and simply inquired about the truck. There was a young mechanic in the garage, who said that it was too late, that he was leaving, but that he would be able to drive me the next morning. But when I told the proprietor of the establishment the address where I wished to go and gave him the Puslowskis' name, he immediately exclaimed, "Oh, I know the Count and Countess very well; I used to work for them." The owner's wife (by the way, a very attractive woman) and his two children were sitting at the table. She remarked to her husband "Well, couldn't you do that for this gentleman after supper?" Then she turned to me and asked, "Perhaps you are hungry. Would you like to share supper with us?" I was delighted and remained. While we were eating a very good meal and drinking excellent red Bordeaux, the man started to complain mournfully, saying, "You know I am a soldier from Verdun. During the whole siege I was in the fortress. What is happening to France? Where are her soldiers?" With tears in his eyes - and his wife was in the same mood - he continued to comment on the present terrible fate of his country, and said: "The French people have changed so much that I can't recognize them anymore." It was very late in the evening when I reached the Puslowskis' villa. I knocked discreedy, as the house was dark, and finally a window opened, and I heard Inka's voice asking, "Who is there?" When I answered, she said, "Oh, we are already in bed, but of course come in." When I went in, Inka greeted me in her nightgown, and in a few minutes the Countess K. Czapska (née Marie Puslowska) came, an older woman whom I knew well and liked very much, and the Princess RadziwiH joined us in the living room and we talked for a while. I was asked if I had seen Charles RadziwiH, and I told them I had not. In order not to bother them, I quickly took my suitcases, saying that I would spend the night in the garage of the man who had brought me in his truck to their house, and left. When we returned to the garage,

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the hospitable owner took me to a big building in the yard, in which he had all kinds of furniture, mattresses, sofas, etc., and there his wife prepared a bed for me. The next morning at six o'clock, I was awakened by Inka and the Princess RadziwiH, who appeared in the building and told me that they were going to Lourdes to see if they could find their husbands. They were in a hurry, and, besides, as I was still in bed, we could not talk very long. I arose, shaved, dressed, and went to the station, where I found Kridl, who had spent the night there. We decided to go to Hendaye, as it was the last stop before the Spanish border. We found a modest pension there, where we took two small rooms. The next day I rented a car to go to Bayonne to see the Portuguese Consul there. Frankly, I must say that in a way I enjoyed the drive, as pleasant old memories came back to me from the time, in 1906, when I used to come to this area with my parents and my sister. My father liked to make excursions and tours and planned them wonderfully so that in that year we really explored the countryside around Biarritz, where we were staying. But these sweet memories rapidly vanished in the face of present reality. The road from Hendaye to Bayonne was filled with cars of people fleeing from France, and on the roadsides I saw men who were angrily scolding the fugitives and even throwing stones at their cars. It is strange how in such chaotic circumstances, paradoxical encounters sometimes occur. At one point, when my car was stopped because of the traffic near Bayonne, suddenly I saw, in the line of cars going in the opposite direction, Count Krystyn Ostrowski and his wife and daughters. I had once spent a few delightful days at their estate. I tried to greet them, but being absorbed by the driving, they did not see me. As soon as the chauffeur brought me to the Portuguese consulate, I saw in front of the building an enormous crowd, which filled the street and the adjacent square. This crowd was noisy, people were milling around. After questioning some of them, I learned that the Portuguese consul, probably because of the pressure of events, had suffered a breakdown - they said he had become insane and the consulate was closed. There was nothing to do but return to Hendaye. On the way back to Hendaye, somewhere between Biarritz and St. Jean-de-Luz where the road is lined with beautiful plane trees and where between the highway and the sea there is a forest, I saw a detachment of troops, some vehicles stopped here and there, and soldiers walking on the road; some of them were going into the forest and then

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returning again. I was immediately struck by the impression that these men were waiting there for some specific action. As my car was slowly driving through the crowd, I recognized them as Polish soldiers. I stopped the chauffeur, got out of the car, with the intention of asking them what was going on and what they were doing there and, at this very moment, Charles RadziwiH approached and greeted me. This was surprising. "Where are you going?" he asked me. I said, "To Hendaye, and I am going to try to reach Lisbon. And what are all of you doing here?" He answered, "We are just waiting to be transported to England. Some of the troops are already on the boats and small ships. Come along with us." To this I replied, "No. What can I do with you? I am not in the service, as you know, and besides, I do not intend to go to England. I shall try to go to New York, where, as I told you, my sister is. All my belongings are in Hendaye and I must return there and collect them." We shook hands, wished each other good luck, and I departed. I certainly must have told him about my meeting with his wife and Inka, but I do not remember now whether they reached him or not when they left Arcachon. Inka died in New York several years ago from cancer, and the Radziwills went to Africa. A couple of years ago, when I was in Santa Barbara, my friend Leon Orlowski, our former envoy in Budapest, told me that he and his wife had visited the RadziwiHs in Africa where they had a chicken farm which apparently gave them a good deal of trouble. I remember that, even at that time, Orlowski emphasized that the relations between the natives and the whites were terribly tense and if there should be any sort of uprising, the whites would all be massacred. The Radziwifls returned to Poland and settled in Warsaw. I was happy to visit them in their nice apartment there in the summer of 1967. In 1944, when I was lecturing in Denver and at the University of Colorado, I was the guest of a charming American, Judge E. Watrous, who before the war participated in Warsaw in a Congress of the Amitiés Internationales. My father was one of the sponsors of that Congress and entertained Watrous and many other members of the group in his home. When Judge Watrous learned about my arrival in his city and about my proposed lectures, he wrote to the Polish consul in San Francisco, W. Sokoiowski, whom he knew (because Watrous was the honorary consul of France in Denver), and asked Sokoiowski whether

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I was the son of Aleksander Lednicki. When Sokoiowski confirmed this, Watrous invited me to stay at his home. There, he told me that, before the war, he and his wife often stayed in St. Jean-de-Luz, and that he was there when the Polish troops were transported to England. From the windows of their villa he saw the entire evacuation, which was, of course, very dangerous, and it was indeed a miracle that the German aircraft did not bomb the transports. He told me also that he described the whole operation in articles which were published in the New York Herald Tribune, and in which he emphasized his admiration for the courage of those Polish troops. Those who were in England at that time remember the enthusiastic reception which the English gave them. The Polish soldiers were the only allies who appeared on the shores of England at that time. I may also remind the readers that, on the 10th of June, Churchill flew to Bordeaux where he tried to urge the French Government to continue the war and received the answer from Weygand that, taking into consideration the conditions under which France found herself, an armistice was unavoidable. In the evening, after my return to Hendaye, I somehow met Halecki and his wife who were with Miss Ciechanowiecka, whom I also knew. She was a distant relative of the former husband of my sister, Wladyslaw Szczytt. They had family connections with Weygand, who had given her a letter of recommendation addressed to the Spanish authorities. That letter was, of course, a very valuable one, as Weygand always collaborated with Marshal Petain, who, before the war, as we know, was the French ambassador in Madrid. Towards the end of the short French campaign Weygand replaced the French Commander-inChief, Gamelin. Thus, in Spain, Weygand's name carried weight. When I related the story of the Portuguese consul in Bayonne to Miss Ciechanowiecka, she told me that all of us - the Haleckis, the Hertzes, Kridl and myself - could try to cross the frontier with her, under her wings, so to speak, and under the protection of Weygand's letter and, in case of any difficulties, she would say that all of us were her relatives. We did this. When the train, which we boarded in Hendaye, reached the frontier and we passed through the passport control following Miss Chiechanowiecka, she presented Weygand's letter and said that it covered our group. The Spanish officer simply saluted and did not raise any objections to the fact that we had no Portuguese sojourn visas, only a Spanish transit visas. But we were told that refugees were not supposed to go to Madrid and were directed to a provincial town, where those who were going to Portugal would find a Portuguese consul. We left

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France at the right time - three days later the Germans were in Hendaye! When we arrived in San Sebastian, we decided to spend the night there. I went to pick up all my trunks and suitcases, which were in the baggage car, and I agreed to meet my companions in front of the station, where they would be waiting for me. It took some time to get my luggage, and when I came with my porters to the spot where I was supposed to join my friends, I could not find them. Probably, being anxious to get a taxi-cab and reach a hotel as soon as possible, they had left. I went to a hotel also. I took a walk in beautiful San Sebastian, ate in some restaurant, and returned to my hotel, having decided to take the Sud Express to Madrid in the morning, despite the instructions of the Spanish officer. I found that, although the appellation remained, this was no longer the Sud Express of former times, but anyhow there were first-class cars; following my theory that one should meet adversity in the best shape, I bought a first-class ticket. I was well dressed, clean-shaven, and sat alone in my compartment. It was certainly interesting to observe all the people at the stations where the train stopped and to see normal life; true, it was a country which was supposed to be living under very hard conditions, with Franco as dictator and following that terrible period of the Spanish Civil War. I had never seen any of Spain before except San Sebastian, which I had visited in 1906 with my parents, but I always remembered that my father used to say that there was much in common between Spain and Poland. There was something very reminiscent of our old Poland in the provincial railway stations; landowners surrounded by groups of peasants; the mélange of cars, carriages and peasant carts; the squires conversing together; the peasants carrying products to market; and of course the priests and nuns. But I could also observe the poverty. One could not find anything to eat at the stations, or very little, and the people who were traveling carried their meals in baskets. My meditations and observations were interrupted by the visit of a policeman, who checked my passport. As soon as he examined it, he told me (I could understand what he meant) that I was not allowed to go to Madrid and expressed his astonishment that they let me take the train. With some French and Italian, I succeeded in explaining to him that my official passport, with a diplomatic visa, obliged me to go to Madrid in order to get a diplomatic visa at the Portuguese Legation; hence, there was no reason for me to approach any consulate. While

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talking, I offered the policeman some cigarettes and, in general I assumed a rather nonchalant attitude. Finally, he agreed to leave me in peace. I arrived in Madrid very late. Inka Pusiowska had told me, when I had seen her, that in Madrid I should contact her sister-in-law, the young Countess Marie Olizar, who had been there for some time and had connections. These were based on the fact that her mother, Countess W. Pusiowska, was née Princess Christine Pignatelli de Aragon. The Pignatellis were a very prominent aristocratic family in Spain. Not knowing at all to which hotel I should go, I thought that from the station I would telephone our legation, which still existed in Madrid, and, perhaps, also Marie Olizar. When I called our minister, M. Szumlakowski, whom I knew very well, I told him that I intended to call Mme. Olizar. He immediately objected and said, "Oh no! You can't see her. There are all kinds of unpleasant rumors concerning her." As I learned later, all that was false. The unfortunate, charming young woman, whom I subsequently met in New York, was simply using her mother's Spanish connections to help her husband, who had been taken by the Germans as a prisoner-of-war. However, the Gestapo were apparently swarming in Madrid and the Poles had to be extremely cautious. Szumlakowski suggested a hotel where he said that I might still get a supper; it was very late, and we agreed that I would come to the legation next morning. I remember that the trip from the station to that hotel was very long, and Madrid gave me the impression of being a very large city. In the hotel I found an excellent room and, although the restaurant was already finished serving meals, they were willing to give me something to eat - an excellent light meal with a bottle of Spanish red wine. The next morning I went to the legation. After a short talk, Szumlakowski called the Portuguese Legation and made an appointment for me; before noon I got my Portuguese diplomatic visa. I decided to leave Madrid in a couple of days. I remember that, while walking through the streets and even in the residential sections of the city, which delighted me, I saw small food shops, the kind which we call delicatessen stores, and there I often found excellent cheese, fruit, and very good smoked ham. Once I was so attracted by the ham that I bought several slices and some white bread and ate it all, sitting on a bench on one of the beautiful residential avenues. When I left Madrid and reached the Portugese frontier, I, of course, had to go through the customs office at the station. All of my trunks and suitcases were spread out and opened. It happened that in one of

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the suitcases I had all my jewels, several gold watches, and my decorations - the Commander's Cross of Leopold and my military awards. While the Spanish customs officer was examining my things, a young man who was on my right side said to the officers, " U n hombre ilustre." I turned to him in astonishment, and he said to me in Polish, "You are a professor from the University of Cracow and Brussels." I asked, "How do you know?" He replied, "Here is your calling card on your suitcase." Then I said, "And what are you doing here?" He answered, "I am travelling between Lisbon and Madrid on business." This was a young Polish Jew; he continued to pay tribute to me in Spanish, and the customs officer, after having satisfied his curiosity with those objects of mine, allowed me to close and lock my luggage. Now arose the problem of how to pay the porters; as Spain did not allow anyone to bring any pesetas out of the country, I had only francs with me. I went to the exchange office in order to find out whether it would be possible to buy some pesetas. I was told no. There I saw an old man, very distinguished and very well dressed, who had an enormous pile of pesetas on the counter in front of him. There were notes of thousands, five hundreds, hundreds, and so on, and he was putting all that money into envelopes and sealing them. I asked this man in French (I was sure he was French) whether he was going to Lisbon on that train. He answered "yes". Then I said, "Perhaps you would be kind enough to give me, say twenty or thirty pesetas, and once the train has left the frontier, I will return this money to you in French francs?" He looked at me and said, "Please take as much as you want. I can't take this money out, so I am sending all of it back to my bank in Madrid." I thanked him and took twenty pesetas, which were worth some one hundred francs and, when I was leaving the office, I saw an elderly woman sitting there, and then I immediately recognized both of them. They were the Edouard de Rothschilds. I had met them once at the Arthur Rubinsteins, in their charming Montmartre apartment, at a dinner which had also been attended by the Muhlsteins. (Diane Miihlstein was the daughter of Robert de Rothschild.) I remember that it was an excellent dinner, as Madame Rubinstein is a famous cook. On this occasion, all of the guests had agreed that their chefs should make the same menu, and they would give an award to the one who could beat Mme. Rubinstein. After that dinner, the Rothschilds, who were living in

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the beautiful Hotel Talleyrand on the rue St. Florentin, near the Place de la Concorde and the rue de Rivoli, took me to my hotel on their way home. Now this palace belongs to the United States - the American consulate is located there. Immediately after my encounter with them at the customs office, a thought came to my mind. The Rothschilds apparently made their great fortune after the battle of Waterloo, when one of them was the first to bring the news of Napoleon's defeat to London, which enabled them to make an enormous amount of money on the stock exchange. Now, more than a century after Waterloo, I had just met, on the Spanish frontier, a Rothschild who was obliged to send all his pesetas back to Madrid! As soon as the train left, I found the Rothschilds in their compartment and wanted to return the one hundred francs. To this Rothschild said, "Please forget about it." I then reminded them of our meeting at the Rubinsteins. There, by the way, they had had with them their very intelligent daughter who, at that time, was studying science at La Sorbortne. She was my neighbor at the dinner table. I met them again later in New York.

XIX LISBON AND THE "UGLY AMERICANS"

I arrived in Lisbon and found that it was absolutely impossible to get a room in any hotel. All the hotels were filled with refugees and visitors to the world exhibition, held at Lisbon in connection with the celebration of the three-hundredth anniversary of the Portuguese state. Lisbon was in a state of excitement because of the celebration - all kinds of fetes, parades, and other forms of entertainment were going on. This was another contrast in the kaleidoscope of changing "climates" I had lived through in so brief a period of time. After many efforts, I found a room in a horrible hotel, which was a sort of bawdy-house. At the first meal I had there, I saw a beautiful, exotic West Indian girl, with whom I became acquainted a couple of days later. She told me that she was a dancer, and was also trying to leave Lisbon for the United States. My encounter with her acquired a romantic character, but she will appear in my memoirs in some other connection, in a scene at the American consulate. Naturally, I began the organization of my stay in Lisbon by paying a visit to the Polish Legation, where I immediately met crowds of Polish refugees and found a rather mad atmosphere, caused not only by the presence of the growing crowds of "war tourists" of all kinds, but also by the temper of the Polish Minister, who perhaps was not a stupid man, but who certainly acted like a fool and frequently gave the most nonsensical advice. Despite the difficult conditions in which I found myself, I still had enough life in me to be charmed with Lisbon. I liked not only its vast and lovely avenues, the rich architecture of many old palaces and churches, the beauty of some well-proportioned squares, the elegance of the shops in the commercial districts of the city, but particularly its situation and its color. For some reason, the sunlight is more delicate and captivating there than anywhere else, and the Portuguese used beautiful colors for painting the city, colors which I did not see in

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other European towns and which admirably fit the setting, the hue of the sea, the sunlight, and the sky. The population did not give me the impression of being physically attractive, but all the people were extremely kind to the numerous refugees despite the fact that they represented an element of disharmony with the fetes and other ceremonies connected with the Portuguese historical celebration. As I mentioned, there were many Poles there, and somehow none of us was suffering from a drastic lack of money; somehow everyone had enough for that transitory period, although, of course, no one knew exactly how long it would last. The Poles who were there were considering going either to London where the Polish Government had established itself, or to Brazil; a very small minority (because of the visa difficulty) were planning on going to the United States; finally, there were some people who had decided to remain in Lisbon and wait and see. Perhaps this was a proof of health, of the powers of resistance against the vicissitudes of life, but many of us really enjoyed our stay in Lisbon. We visited the museums, old monuments of architectural art, made excursions to the surrounding countryside, to the famous Estoril, where there are luxurious beaches, with a casino and gambling, splendid hotels and excellent restaurants. Some groups of Poles even settled in Estoril, in small private houses which they rented; among these was the former Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Jan Szembek, with his wife, the sister of Marie Sobanska. I had known them quite well since 1910, first in Cracow and later in Brussels, where Szembek had been our Minister during my first year of teaching at the University there. Later I used to see them in Warsaw. Szembek was a man whom I came to care for less toward the end of his life; the opposite was true as far as his wife was concerned. In spite of her well-known capriciousness and domineering manner, I finally discovered elements of genuine generosity and dignified loyality in her, whereas he - as much as I could observe during his career under Beck - gave me the impression of a rather opportunistic personality. When I met Szembek in Brussels where he was our envoy in 1926, I learned about one of his hobbies and about one of his habits. The hobby was the Memoirs of the Due de Saint-Simon; he really knew those sixty volumes by heart, and all the people from Versailles at the time of Louis XIV and Louis XV were his closest friends. In this he was quite remarkable. The habit (which he revealed to me on the occasions of several dinners and receptions, which he organized so beautifully for the inauguration of my

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chair in Brussels) was that, after every dinner or lunch which he attended in Brussels, he would write in his diary a note, in which he simply mentioned the date of the dinner or lunch, the place, the names of the participants, the names of his neighbors at the table, and the topics of his talks with them. He used to tell me that this was very helpful. "Whenever I'm invited for a dinner or a lunch, the secretary of the legation always gets the information about who has been invited. Hence, I always know in advance whom I will meet; I check in my diary what I talked about with them previously - if I ever met them before. And this gives very happy results. You know how Belgians are infatuated with the diplomatic corps, and they feel flattered when they discover that I remember so well what they talked with me about before." I should mention a third trait of his - an absolutely fantastic appetite and powers of absorption and digestion. He was indeed une machine a manger. He was almost able to devour a whole turkey by himself (Szembek used to say, "What a strange bird a turkey is, it is a little too much for one person and certainly not enough for two"), and he always had a very good time at Vaxelaire's sumptuous receptions in Brussels. People often had to wait for the next course because Szembek was still consuming the last one, and this did not affect at all his capacity for further culinary destructions. My father, who liked good eating himself, very often would tell me, after having the Szembeks at his table in Warsaw, "You know that I am able to eat very much, but Szembek . . . ? It is inconceivable!" In Portugal that third hobby of his could be easily satisfied because the Portuguese cooking, at least in my opinion, comes first after the French, and perhaps it is even its equal. I remember that in Lisbon I used to go with Polish friends to various restaurants, and even the inexpensive ones were excellent. In Lisbon, you had not only the very fine art of cooking, but also a great variety of products - all kinds of excellent meat, fish, all kinds of shellfish, game, vegetables, fruit, and quite pleasant table wines, not to mention the ports, sherries, and liqueurs. I should mention that Szembek left a political diary, which his widow published later. This diary is valuable because he noted in it every talk, significant or insignificant, that he ever had with anybody. I became particularly friendly with a fine Polish couple, Mr. and Mrs. M. Chalupczynski; he served in the Foreign Office, and I had known and met them frequently in Warsaw. It happened that in Lisbon not

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only restaurant adventures brought us closer together, but somehow I accidently discovered that all of us were particularly fond of Krasinski, especially of his Undivine Comedy. Later, when Chahipczynski was appointed Minister of Poland in Bogota, he sponsored a Spanish translation (the first and last one) of this marvelous work of art, of which G. K. Chesterton in England was such a great admirer. This prophetic drama appeared in Bogota in 1943 - with the long preface which Chahipczynski requested me to write. Of course, I was at the Polish Legation every day, where my happiest hours were those I spent with Count Jozef Potocki and his charming wife, who were staying there. I received a suggestion from London that I should come there, but I had already definitely decided to join my sister in America. Now a continuous correspondence started between us. My sister, from our early childhood, had always been deeply attached to me, as she was to our parents, and as her marriage had not been a happy one, after the death of our father and mother, she had only two great loves: her art and myself. She was a brilliant woman, not only in her art, but also in society; and wherever she was, she always had many and interesting contacts with people. As the result of world events, her situation in America in 1940 was not the same as it had been several years before. Her first exhibitions in New York and in other cities had been very successful, and she had an income which allowed her to stay in the best hotels. Journalists and art critics constantly surrounded her. The European war in which America finally became involved changed my sister's life; sculpture was no longer able to compete with international events, which were becoming most serious and menacing, but my sister still had means and a modest apartment on 59th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, facing Central Park. She had innumerable friends in the best New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington circles. She was now making every effort to get me to New York as soon as possible. I was also doing my best in Lisbon, but all my attempts seemed to be in vain. Every day in Lisbon was always the same: first, in the morning, a visit to the Polish Legation, then to the American consulate; after lunch, calls again to the Polish Legation and the American consulate and, from time to time, meeting friends or going to museums. As soon as I arrived in Lisbon, I went to the American Legation to try to see the American Minister or any Counselor or Secretary. I gave the doorman my Fretich calling card with my two titles of Professor at the University of Cracow and at the University of Brussels. A girl

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came to the small building where the doorman had his office (I had been asked to wait there) with my card, which she returned to me, and said that none of the officials of the Legation could see me and that, if it were a question of a visa, I should go to the Consulate. So started my daily pilgrimages to the "Holy See" - the Consulate. It occupied several buildings. I was told to see Mr. D., but every day the answer was always the same, "Mr. D. is busy and cannot see you." I learned that Mr. E. and Mr. M., whom I had already met in Paris and Angers, had both been attached to the Consulate. I tried to see them. No success. I was informed that they were staying in Estoril, in one of the palatial hotels. I went to Estoril on a Saturday or a Sunday in the morning. I left my calling cards with the portier in the hotel for both of them, with a note attached saying that I would greatly appreciate their being kind enough to leave word at the desk, telling me when it would be possible to see them in the Consulate. The portier told me they were with their families and friends, swimming and driving. I replied that I would return in the evening for an answer. When I returned, I was informed that my messages had been transmitted, that both gentlemen had received them, but that there was no answer from either. In this way a couple of weeks passed. One day I met an American gentleman at Raichman's - the Pole whom I had seen at the Zaleskis during my first stay in Angers - in the large hotel in which he lived. This man was a Morgan. Which one I do not know, but I think all Morgans are always great; this one was, in addition, kind. After hearing my story, he gave me his calling card and said, "Go with this card to Mr. D. I think it will help." I went the next day. I gave the secretary Mr. Morgan's card and mine. She told me that Mr. D. was busy, but she would inquire. After a while she returned and asked me to wait. It was quite some time. People were going in and out. Suddenly, I saw our former ambassador in Rome, General Boleslaw Wieniawa-Dhigoszewski, and his wife, accompanied by some American; after shaking hands with me, they penetrated into Mr. D.'s office. After a short while, they came out, and the secretary invited me in. Mr. D. was sitting in his chair, with his feet on the desk, chewing gum. With a gesture of his hand, he asked me to take a seat. I explained to him who I was and my purpose. He asked me to show him my passport. I gave it to him. "Oh, you are a lucky man", he said. "Why?"

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"Because you were born in Moscow." "Yes, I was born in Moscow, but I never have considered this a great privilege. Why should I be so happy?" "If you had been born in Poland, you would have to wait for your American visa for some fifteen or twenty years, because of the quota. Having been born in Moscow, you may be able to get it in some two or three years." This was all. I left. There was nothing to do but wait for help from my sister in the United States. Some two or three days after this delightful talk, I met in a travel agency Count August Zamoyski, a famous Polish sculptor (he was on very good terms with my sister) and his cousin, Count A. Tarnowski. The Indian dancer was there also. Why I went to that travel agency I do not remember. Perhaps I entered it upon seeing these two Polish gentlemen. Zamoyski immediately said to me, "Come with us." "Where?" "Brazil. We are leaving tomorrow on a small warship. It won't cost anything." He pointed to the dancer. "I should like to take her with us; she is marvelous. And from Brazil you can go to the United States." "I have no Brazilian visa." "Go right now to the Embassy. You will see. They are very kind." I went. I was not thinking seriously about going to Brazil with Zamoyski; Brazil had become popular among the Polish refugees in Lisbon, and I decided that in case of emergency, it would be good to have a Brazilian visa. It was around twelve o'clock. As soon as I entered the yard and the building, I saw that some sort of special preparations were going on. There were men arranging all types of decorative plants and carpets. Zamoyski had given me the name of a counselor of the Embassy, and when I saw the doorman, I asked for him. The doorman answered me by saying this was not a proper time to see this gentleman as he was, at the moment, very busy with the arrangements for a luncheon which was to be given in half an hour for Salazar, the Portuguese dictator. Nevertheless, I insisted. After a while, the counselor came and excused himself, saying that he really did have only a couple of minutes to spare. I presented my problem, and I mentioned the fact that my father had once been the chairman of an international council of arbitration which had settled some affairs in which South American countries had been involved. The counselor immediately answered, "It would be an honor for my country to have a man

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like you as a guest." He took my passport, and in a few minutes I had a Brazilian diplomatic visa. I have not invented this parallel between the American and Brazilian foreign services. The talk in the Brazilian Embassy occurred almost immediately after my colloquy in the American Consulate; and at that time, I did not know The Ugly American. It happened that my "tourist" life in Lisbon was enlivened by several touching episodes - pleasant and colorful adventures. From Lisbon I was able to write to Poland and to Italy. I felt it to be my duty to express my gratitude to the Princess of Piedmont as I had never had the opportunity to do so before, and also to some other friends of my sister who had kindly invited me, while I was still in Poland, to join them. I explained in my letters that I had gone to Brussels and that I was now trying to reach the United States to be with my sister. One day I received a note from the honorary Hungarian Consul in Lisbon, asking me to see him. He gave me two addresses: one in the harbor, where his business office was located, and another one which was the Consulate. This note intrigued me. I decided to go to the harbor, having in mind that it would also be interesting to visit it. I arrived too late; he had just left for lunch, and I was told that I could probably see him about four o'clock in his consulate office. In Lisbon, as in Spain and Italy, the siesta is long. Around four o'clock I went to the Consulate. The man whom I met did not give me a particularly pleasant impression; he was rather dry and his tone was very businesslike. "I understand you are Professor Lednicki, and you received my note?" "Yes." "Baron and Baroness - (he mentioned an Italian name) with whom I have some business relations, have informed me of your presence in Lisbon, and the Baron has asked me to open unlimited credit for you, to be charged to his account." This naturally moved me a great deal. After a while, I said, "Thank you very much. Please express my greatest gratitude to our friends also. For the time being, I don't need anyone's assistance. I hope I shall finally be able to leave for New York so that if my stay here does not last too long, I shall not need any help." Before leaving, I asked him how he had found my address. He told me he had called the Polish Legation. Indeed, I recalled that I had been

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told by some official in the Legation that some consulate had asked for my address, but they did not remember which one. I thanked the Hungarian Consul once more and left. I did not know the people whom the consul mentioned, but I did know their daughter. In 1937, I believe, I spent a couple of weeks with my sister in Portofino. There I naturally met all of her Italian friends. Among them was a very nice girl, who lived and entertained in her parents' charming apartment, facing the bay; her parents were not in Portofino at that time. Portofino has no beach, and all the people who came there (at that time it was a very exclusive place) would take a swim by going to some rocky islands by motor or by rowboat. My sister's friend had a small rowboat and often took me swimming with her. These excursions often lasted for a couple of hours, and I generally entertained her by telling romantic stories. She was young and attractive, but somehow I treated her just as I would a pleasant companion. So, for instance, one day when she was rowing in front of me and the strap of her swimming suit broke on her shoulder, I immediately and diligently helped her to adjust it and cover what appeared before my eyes. When our stay in Portofino was over, and my sister was leaving on the Conte di Savoia for America from Genoa, her friend and I accompanied her to Genoa. The ship was sailing the next morning, and I was supposed to take the train for Warsaw the evening of the same day. We had supper, and the next morning my sister left. The departure of a ship leaves a much greater impression than that of a train or a car when you say farewell to someone who is dear to you. I still have before my eyes the tiny figure of my sister on the deck of the slowly moving ship. I left the harbor in a state of sorrow and had no idea what to do for the rest of the day in Genoa. I invited my "swimming companion" for lunch, and was feeling not only melancholy, but tired, since the air felt heavy, warm, and humid. After lunch, she offered to show me her parents' "villa". She could take the key from the manager, as the "villa" was closed. The "villa" was a beautiful palace, situated on the outskirts of Genoa, facing the sea and surrounded by a large garden. When she opened the door, we found ourselves in complete darkness and she began to put lights on, passing from the vestibule to the living rooms. As the lights were gradually lit, I saw not only magnificent furniture, but pictures by Caravaggio, da Vinci, and marvelous chandeliers. She approached the windows, drew the blinds, and opened one window

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which was set back into the very thick wall. A splendid view of the sea appeared before my eyes. I also came to the window; and we both, on either side, put our elbows on the sill and silently looked upon the sea. And then she suddenly said, "Ever since I have known you, you have always spoken about other women, but you have never looked at me as a woman." She turned her face to me, and I put my arms around her to convince her that in my eyes she was a woman. As I was leaving the Hungarian Consulate in Lisbon, I thought about her with great tenderness - she was naturally the one who had asked her wealthy father to help me. The days were passing. Letters from my sister were coming almost every second day with new details. She told me that in order to receive a visa, I needed a contract for at least one year from some American university. Stephen P. Mizwa, Director of the Kosciuszko Foundation, was bringing Halecki and Kridl to New York. But he told my sister that the Foundation was primarily concerned with American and Polish cultural and intellectual relations and was obliged, first of all, to provide for scholars working in the fields of Polish literature, history, and culture, so that it would be difficult for the Foundation to take care of me, as I was mainly a scholar of Russian and Comparative Literature. (I later became very well acquainted with Mizwa, and in 1959 received from the Kosciuszko Foundation their annual "Medal of Recognition for Distinguished Service to Polish and American Culture", with a citation, acclaiming my services in very flattering terms to the "humane art of literary scholarship in America and Poland", to which my "studies, books, essays, and lectures in Europe and America have made a lasting contribution.") Despite his reservations, Mizwa, with the help of my sister and of Professor Clarence Manning from Columbia University, worked out a plan which would provide me with a teaching income of $2,000 a year; this was the minimum sum of guaranteed earnings needed to fulfill the requirements for an entry permit on a non-quota visa. This arrangement was, of course, only a preparatory step for that so-called "non-quota visa". The main thing was, as it appeared later, to obtain some action from the State Department which would put pressure upon the American Consulate in Lisbon. Very soon I learned that Halecki was indeed leaving, and also Kridl. When I saw Kridl, I asked him to see my sister in New York and explain some technical details to her concerning my visa situation in Lisbon; he promised to do so, but did not. Halecki was invited to

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Vassar College, of which the head of the Kosciuszko Foundation, H. N. McCracken, was president; Kridl was sent to Smith College, where the Poles in Massachusetts were supposed to pay his salary; and I was invited to Harvard shortly after my arrival in the United States — the circumstances of this invitation will be explained later. But this is anticipation; I must return to Lisbon. On the eve of hi? leaving Lisbon, Halecki called me on the telephone to tell me that he had seen the Parisian representative of the Rockefeller Foundation, who was now in Lisbon. "A Jewish person, probably", he said, "and when I mentioned your name, he immediately asked whether you were the son of Aleksander Lednicki; if so, he said he would absolutely see you." Halecki added that he had not learned anything more detailed, but he suggested that I see the man. I called him and was immediately invited for lunch. He was not Jewish, but a Tartar from Russia - Khan A. Makinsky - later in New York he was known as Prince Makinsky. (He is now a representative of Coca Cola in Paris.) As soon as I saw him, he immediately declared that he had a great debt of gratitude to pay to my father, but, as my father was no longer alive, he considered it his duty to do something for me. It appeared that in 1917, when my father was chairman of the Commission for the Liquidation of Polish Affairs in Russia, or later (after the Bolshevik coup d'etait), when he became the diplomatic representative of Poland in Moscow, Makinsky's family (his parents and their children) had been introduced to my father through some friends, and my father had given all of them Polish passports, which had saved them from the Bolshevik terror and enabled them to leave Russia. There had always been some Tartars in Poland, particularly near Wilno, who had been there for centuries and had become completely Polonized; however, they still preserved their religion. Probably the Makinskys, although Russianized, had some connections with the Polish Tartars, and this became the legal basis for my father's action. I may parenthetically remark that my father also saved many outstanding Russians from the Bolsheviks by taking them under the protection of the Polish Legation, the existence and powers of which were a sort of miracle which might be partially attributed to my father's energy and perhaps to his personal prestige. Makinsky was extremely eloquent in the expression of his feelings of gratitude, and he told me he would write about me to the Rockefeller Foundation. I believe that, to a certain degree, he did help me there, as the reader will see a little later. This was again another touching story. My whole war odyssey sup-

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plied me with so many examples of human good will and feelings of gratitude, especially with regard to my father, that I became almost sure of my destiny and accepted these gifts of fate as quite natural and justified. However, I still had to wait and continue to enjoy Lisbon, its vicinity, and the company of my friends. Estoril itself was not the object of my excursions there, but the presence in it of the two American "luminaries", Mr. M. and Mr. E. Whenever I was there I visited their hotels, and each time the result was the same: "Did you give my message?" "Yes." "Is there any answer?" "No." Those inquiries became perhaps not a nightmare for both sides, but something comparable to it. Minister Zaleski once said that a fly might become a nightmare. My calling card at the hotel probably acquired the shape of such a fly for those two American gentlemen. For me they became flies which I could not catch. Estoril, with its beautiful sights, consoled me, and I tried to relax. So, one day I went to see the Countess Szembek, simply in order to get political news from her and her husband. While walking from the station to their house I suddenly heard my name called. I looked around, and I saw Prince Roman Sanguszko. He was the young heir of a still immense fortune, despite the fact that the famous Slawuta, an enormous estate which had belonged to his family in the former Polish eastern provinces, had been lost after the Russian Revolution. In addition, he had an estate in Poland and apparently large sums of money in the banks of other countries. Whether it was really true, I of course do not know, but so people said. I used to meet the young and handsome Roman Sanguszko at my father's home in Warsaw, and also in Paris, where, before the war, he had once arranged a real "night of princes" for me. He owed his fame, however, not only to his wealth and escapades, but also to his famous Arabian stables (they are still known throughout the world, and many people in the United States have descendants of his stallions), and to his motor cars and driving. He used to have on his estate in Poland, Gumniska, not only Arabian horses, but several motor cars among which there was always a special Rolls-Royce or Bentley which had been custom-made for him. Stories were told, not only about these magnificent machines, but also about his extravagant driving and his

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not quite usual sense of humor. He would, while driving in one of his convertibles at a speed of one hundred kilometers, suddenly abandon the wheel and turn to his friends, sitting behind him, to ask them for a light for his cigarette! He also liked to arrange even more spectacular performances sometimes. Once he suggested to his cousin, Zygmunt Zamoyski, that they go from Lwow to Gumniska. Zamoyski accepted, but under the condition that Sanguszko drive carefully, as his heart could not stand any excitement. Sanguszko promised to be serious. When they approached his estate at the speed of seventy kilometers an hour, they had to turn in at the gates from the road. Just at this moment, Sanguszko and Zamoyski saw that these gates were closed. Sanguszko made a desperate movement with his hands and threw the car into the gates. Nothing happened because they were made of cartons purposely to frighten Zamoyski. When I recognized him and shook hands, he asked me what I was doing in Estoril. I said that I was going to see the Szembeks. "All right. Take your tea with them, and then later I shall pick you up, and we shall go for supper to a very good French restaurant here and then on to the casino." The dinner was, indeed, excellent and, in the casino we met many Poles. It appeared that Sanguszko had arrived in Lisbon from Poland with his wife (a woman of very modest origin, whom he had recently married), their baby son, his agent, and several other officials from the administration of his estates. These people were traveling at his expense, of course. The agent and some other officials were attending the roulette table and were quite active at the other gambling tables. Sanguszko did not play himself, but, from time to time, he watched benevolently the fortunes or misfortunes of his employees. A very beautiful young woman, the Countess B., was there, obviously much attracted to Sanguszko. Toward midnight the three of us went to a night café, in which Sanguszko ordered champagne and Portuguese langoustines, which are a cross of lobster and prawn - closer to a lobster than a prawn - but better than either of them. They were served in large baskets, and we ate an enormous amount of them. Madame B. suddenly asked Sanguszko if we could go for a drive. I immediately supported her with the greatest enthusiasm, having heard so much about his mastery in this field. Finally, he agreed, but warned us that, unfortunately, he did not have his Rolls in Lisbon, only his Buick. It was a convertible. We started in the most beautiful moonlight, high above the sea, on a road that curved among the rocks and along precipices. It was fantastic.

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Madame B. and I were sitting with Sanguszko in the front seat. Each time we approached a sharp bend Sanguszko would increase his speed and at the same time throw the back of the car to the opposite side of the bend with his brakes. And as the road was practically all bends, the whole ride became an exhilarating performance, which I could compare only to some frenzied symphony. Each time I saw either the dark sea shining in the moonlight, or some wild precipice among the rocks below us, from which we were separated only by a low stony parapet; each time the car was thrown from one side of the road to the other and went flying toward unknown space, I felt ecstatic, and the game with death enthralled me. Sanguszko gave me the impression of someone who was not driving a car, but riding a horse. I felt he dominated and commanded the car not only with his hands, but with his legs and feet also. "You are a genius at driving!" I exclaimed constantly. In 1959 in Paris, where he spent a lot of time, although he lived permanently in Brazil, he gave me a similar performance in his Bentley in the Bois de Boulogne. He was waiting for a new car and complaining about the old Bentley. He tried to show me not only the wonderful acceleration of the car, but also its stability. He drove at a vertiginous speed, in heavy traffic, zig-zagging across the road and provoking all the other drivers. Sanguszko was preparing to leave Lisbon with his whole entourage for Brazil, and many other people were doing the same - the Czartoryski family; the J. Dembinski couple; two major Polish poets, Jan Lechon and Julian Tuwim with his wife; and many others. (In 1931 I published my Polish monograph on The Bronze Horseman with Tuwim's translation, as I have already mentioned in connection with Baum.) All of them were taking a Portuguese or Brazilian ship called Serpa Pinto. A large number of Poles went to the harbor to say farewell. I saw all these people on the dock. Everyone was trying to get close to the rail, in order to be able to exchange farewells with those who remained. When Tuwim saw me, he called, "I vot blazhenny mig nastal!" ("The blissful moment has come!") He was quoting from Pushkin. The generous Sanguszko was behind his people, screened by them. The ship moved away. For all of us who remained, this departure became a tangible sign of our fate - this ship was destined for another, distant continent. We felt that, sooner or later, this would be our lot also - to leave Europe - for how long? When my sister's information became more precise, I had to go

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again to the American Consulate in order to find out about some details concerning the non-quota visa which I did not understand at all. And so I found myself in that "nice" office once more. It happened that I met Mr. D. on the stairs. Two corridors led away from the stairs. On one there was a queue of people; the other one led, obviously, to a private entrance for the American officials. I had no intention of seeing him; but when I met him, it came to my mind that he might, perhaps, be able to give me some information. I greeted him and started to say, "Mr. D., you remember me perhaps -." He interrupted, "Are you an American citizen?" I answered, "No." Whereupon, with his finger he indicated the line on the stairs and added, "Then your place is there", and disappeared through the private door. Once in the office, I found the Indian dancer from my hotel. In the meantime, I had become better acquainted with her and had found that Zamoyski's adjective "marvelous" was quite justified. "What are you doing here?" I asked. "I am standing at the door to Mr. D.'s room. I can't see him, so I am waiting until he comes out. You know that I cannot remain here. I am a British subject, and if the Germans conquer Portugal, I will be lost. I should like to at least tell him what I think about his behavior." At this very moment, the door opened and our friend appeared. She jumped at him, grasped his arm, and said, "Do you have any human feelings? Do you -," He flung her away, "I have no human feelings. Leave me alone." And he vanished. Indeed, the "blessed moment" did come - the Polish Legation informed me that they had received a call from the American Consulate asking me to appear. Mr. E. was in charge of my case. He announced to me that the Consulate had received two cables from the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, asking for my visa; and he gave me an enormous questionnaire, which I was supposed to fill out under oath. Perhaps by now those innumerable questions have been reduced, but at that time I, as everyone else, was amazed at the questions we had to answer about venereal disease, bigamy, crimes, etc., and the most astonishing one: "Are you going to the United States with the intention of killing the President of the United States?" I answered all those ridiculous questions and signed the paper. In a few minutes, a small blue card with a nonquota visa, that fabulous treasure, was given to me. I treated

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Mr. E. as he deserved - not like a man, but like a machine. I did not show him any personal recognition. At the same time I received a cable from my sister. She already knew of Hull's intervention, and she told me that a first-class ticket had been paid for by her (six hundred dollars at that time, as I remember) on the Excambion, which was leaving Lisbon on the eighth of August. (The Excambion was sunk two years later by the Germans.) I had very little time - two days. I settled my reservation at an agency of the American Line, said goodbye to my friends, packed my things, and went to the ship.

XX MY MAYFLOWER

It was not a large ship, yet quite pleasant. The accommodations for my trip and that of at least thirty other men, or even more, who had first-class passage, were not particularly comfortable. We were put in the library. Each of us had a mattress on the floor, and we had to use the public bathrooms, whenever they were free, but otherwise, we had all the privileges of a first-class traveler. Where the extra women passengers were located, I do not remember. As soon as all the formalities with ticket, passport, and luggage were settled (and that took a couple of hours), I was called to the purser's office; and there I learned that the captain had invited me to his table for dinner, throughout the trip. This kind attention naturally pleased me, but I had to decline, because I had been assigned to the first service, which meant around four or five o'clock by Lisbon time; therefore, I would have to go to dinner in half an hour, and I was not hungry. I asked whether it would be possible to sit at the captain's table for the second service. The answer was that everything had already been arranged and, if the first service were not convenient, I could be seated for the second service at the purser's table. I readily agreed. I spent that couple of hours walking around the boat, exploring all its drawing rooms and bars. I don't think there were any Poles in the first class. I do not remember having found a Polish name on the passenger list, which was published very quickly. I did not discover any other name which meant anything to me, so I talked mostly to my mattress neighbors in the large library. Once in the early '30's I made a short trip on a trans-Atlantic ship from Cherbourg to Hamburg, on the beautiful, large ship, New York, which belonged to the German Hamburg-America Line. I made that trip for fun - just to have an idea about life on a trans-Atlantic ship. I have traveled on the sea several times in my life: the Black,

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the Aegean, the Adriatic, and the Mediterranean Seas, and I always adored this kind of travel. The New York gave me, during the twentyfour hours I spent on her, an unforgettable impression of luxury, wonderful cooking, and fantastic service. I traveled first-class then also, and had a cabin to myself. When, with several other passengers, I boarded the ship in Cherbourg, the captain with all his officers greeted us, and the orchestra played a fanfare, although it was six o'clock in the morning. My cabin steward suggested that I go to have my breakfast, and asked me for the keys to my suitcases, so that he might hang up my suits and press them. The steward at my dining table was such a courteous, efficient person that, when I was tipping him before leaving the boat the next morning, I could not but tell him that I had never seen such servants, except in the house of my parents and, sometimes, in a few other homes in the distant past, and I now met them only on the cinema screen. He was very pleased and remarked with pride, "I have served for thirty years on the Hamburg-America Line." The menu for lunch offered such a variety that I could not make any choice, and I told him he should bring me some salad, some fish and call the wine steward. To this he said, "Please go to the neighboring room where there is a table with hors d'oeuvres. You may make your own choice." He followed me, and I found myself in even greater perplexity. That table was at least as large as the library on the Excambion. I remember that, when I was leaving Cherbourg, I saw the Europa of the Nord Deutscher Line close to us. I became acquainted with her later under the name La Liberté, and must confess that I did not like her at all, as, in general, I do not like the present French Line. When I returned to Cracow, I told the pleasant German consul there at that time about my enthusiasm for the New York. He was not surprised and told me that, although the Europa and the Bremen were larger than the ships of the Hamburg-America Line, the latter line was known for its cooking and service. He told me the following story: "You know, the German Foreign Office always reserved cabins for diplomatic couriers. Once, I made the trip to the United States on a boat of the Hamburg-America Line. When I saw that overwhelming menu, I studied it carefully and said to my steward, 'I am amazed not to see any caviar on your list.' Immediately the steward brought me an enormous portion, and I ordered it every day. At the end of the trip, when I was paying for my wines and liquors, I asked for my bill for the caviar. The steward answered that the company had taken care of it. I insisted, saying that, after all, it had been a joke, that I did not

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usually have that much caviar every day. Then the steward told me, 'We always have such a reserve of everything that, at the end of the trip a lot remains, because, although the passengers at the beginning of the voyage eat a large amount, they start to eat much less after a few days. Besides, there are usually many who are sea-sick. It is very seldom that a passenger has such a steady and immense appetite as you. The company is happy to celebrate such a unique case'." The Excambion could not, of course, be compared to those ships, but the America of the United States Lines, on which I made my first voyage back to Europe in 1948, was certainly no less luxurious, pleasant, and hospitable. The Excambion was nice, and, as the weather was constantly beautiful, a sort of swimming pool was arranged; but the ship, independent of her size, did not offer the same type of excellently disciplined attention to the passengers which characterized the New York or, nowadays, the Italian Line. Let us not forget, however, that this was in 1940; and in spite of the fact that America was not in the war, all the passengers of the Excambion consisted either of European refugees or Americans who were fleeing from Europe. Although I felt rather happy in general, as I was going to join my sister, independent of that, the trip itself was a pleasant one. The main pleasure the Excambion provided me was quite a special one. When I went for dinner, and the maitre d'hotel directed me to the purser's table, I saw that all the seats except mine were already occupied by some eight or ten people. My seat, with a name card on the plate, was between a short, rather fat man on my left, and a stout woman on my right; beyond her was a plump, nice-looking girl. There were also two other ladies, two gentlemen, and the purser. As soon as I approached my seat, my fat neighbor on the left stood up and whistled the charming melody of the Hejnal (Bugle Call) of St. Mary's Cathedral in Cracow. Every hour for centuries the "Trumpeter of Cracow" has played that interrupted melody. The legend says that, in the Middle Ages, during an invasion, an arrow of a Tartar killed the "Trumpeter" when he was sounding his call. Since then, the same old melody is played and interrupted; every citizen of Cracow knows it by heart. (Later on I became acquainted with E. P. Kelly's book, The Trumpeter of Krakow.) I was overcome and, I must confess, in tears. My neighbor embraced me, and when I sat down, told me his story. He was Mr. Reginald Orcutt, with his wife Penelope and their daughter Alice -

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originally they were from Boston, but were now living in New York in a charming hotel on Washington Square, where I visited them later. Naturally, there was no possibility of entering into our mutual biographical details at the dinner table, as we were involved in a general conversation with the other guests of the purser. We became better acquainted when the Orcutts invited me for a highball after dinner. It so happened that I had never had any occasion in my life to come to know Americans intimately. I had met some casually at my father's house, but those meetings were extremely brief and of no consequence. As the reader knows, the young American diplomats whom I met in Paris, Angers, and Lisbon, did not give me any opportunity to become acquainted with the real American type - they created such a wall between themselves and the European refugees that I was able to discern only vague features of the American diplomat, and they were not attractive at all. I must confess that, in general, before my trip to America, I had never been really interested in this country, contrary to my father, who had always planned to visit America. My sister had spoken about America with great enthusiasm since 1933; I had listened to her eulogies with a sceptical indifference. As a matter of fact, I was very limited in my curiosities - the Mediterranean countries, including the Near East, had always captured my imagination. When thinking about the new continent, it was South America which tempted me; never the United States. My sister, in her American stories, emphasized, among other things, the fact that each time she traveled from America to Europe, she always went to Europe with nostalgia and pleasure, but she also used to feel a sort of satisfaction when she returned to America. She told me that Americans were very much like children, in the sense that, if you displease them, they might be revengeful and even cruel, as children are. I remember, too, that she stressed the importance of success in this country, that people in general do not like those who complain, and that they avoid people upon whom fate does not smile. On the other hand, she praised many of her American friends very much as people who were extremely kind, generous, direct, and unconventional. How happy I was that, after the shadow of my encounters with the diplomatic representatives of this country, I met the charming family of the Orcutts. They were like a sun which burns the fog away. Mr. Orcutt explained to me the enigma of his whistling. He had traveled a lot alone, with his wife, and later with his daughter. He knew every country in Europe. Ke was connected with a large linotype firm, and it appeared that in Cracow he had sold his machines to the Anczyc

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Printing Company, which had printed several of my books. While in Cracow, he had admired our beautiful old city and had become acquainted with the "Trumpeter's call". For several afternoons the Orcutts listened to my stories of the war. It seemed that the girl was very much interested in literature, and I tried, as well as I could in my bad English, to "lecture" on my favorite writers and poets. One day, the Orcutts told me that they would like to invite me to a cocktail party with Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Tuck and their daughter, a very attractive young girl. Mr. Tuck was an important officer of the Belgian-American Educational Foundation. For years he had lived in Brussels, and he was married to a Belgian. The offices of the BelgianAmerican Foundation were in the building of the Fondation Universitaire, which for years was my headquarters in Brussels. Strangely enough, however, I had never met him there. True, I represented the Slavic world, while he represented the American, so I had nothing in common with the activities of the Belgian-American Foundation. This meeting, arranged by the Orcutts, turned out to be very important for me. After that I saw the Tucks on the ship every day and swam with the girl in the swimming pool. They invited me for cocktails; and before our arrival in America, Mr. Tuck suggested that I come to see him and his friend, Mr. P. C. Galpin, at the Belgian-American Foundation in New York.

XXI NEW LIFE

I do not remember at all the impression which New York made on me upon my arrival. The gigantic Statue of Liberty and all the skyscrapers have been effaced from my memory by the vision of my small sister, standing on the pier, anxiously waiting to discover me among the passengers. That day, the sixteenth of August, was radiant. I remember that someone from the Polish Consulate came with my sister to the pier to help me with all the formalities and luggage. It would be difficult to describe our talk in the taxi and then in my sister's apartment. Only after some time was I able to tell her and the many Polish friends who immediately started to visit us my long story which I have described in this book. After a couple of days, my sister insisted that Dr. J. Jachimowicz, an extremely talented, brilliant Polish physician, visit me at her apartment, as I apparently did not look very well. He found nothing special other than general fatigue and nervous exhaustion. New York City, that first evening, overwhelmed me. I went from 59th Street to the Waldorf-Astoria, where Miihlstein was staying, just to learn some political news from him. My sister explained the way to me, and when I found myself on Fifth Avenue and then reached Park Avenue, the illuminated buildings, the tumult in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria all depressed me terribly. I felt so small, so weak, defenseless among those illuminated Rocky Mountains, among those crowds of people, that when I returned home, I told my sister that I did not feel able to exist in this city, that I hated it, and that I should like to jump out of the window. Such was, in reality, my first impression; it did not last too long. After a couple of weeks I found it possible to adapt myself and to acquire some control over that fantastic reality. Later, New York became my favorite city in this country, and I always go there with great pleasure and excitement. In a few days, I went to the Kosciuszko Foundation to see Mizwa

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and to Columbia to see Professor Clarence C. Manning. Mizwa asked me to accept one hundred dollars from the Foundation, for my first expenses, but he had no suggestions as far as the finding of any job was concerned. I asked him for one favor: to have someone in the Foundation office type and mimeograph my bibliography and curriculum vitae, so that I could send it to various universities. My meeting with Manning resulted in a sort of contract, which I was supposed to present to the administrative office of Columbia. There I had a talk with an official, who refused to use my title of "university professor"; he let me know that the only position available was that of an instructor of Polish language, somewhere in the suburbs of New York. I knew already that my salary would be about five hundred Jollars a year. I left Columbia with the understanding that I should be grateful for what Manning had done, since it had facilitated the obtaining of the visa, but, as far as my future was concerned, I could not depend upon that University. Besides these visits, I also went, following Mr. Tuck's suggestion, to see the Belgian-American Foundation, after first calling Mr. Tuck there. When I arrived, he introduced me to Mr. P. C. Galpin, who at that time was, I believe, the director of the Foundation and later became its president. Mr. Galpin charmed me at once. I still consider him one of the finest men I have met in this country. The talk was not long. After a while, both Mr. Galpin and Mr. Tuck asked me to wait in the reception room, and then, very soon, I was called back and learned that, taking into consideration my work at the University of Brussels and my title of Professeur Agréé at that University, the Foundation had decided to offer me a grant of one thousand dollars for the coming academic year. It is needless to say how grateful I was and how happy both my sister and I were. A few days later, I received a letter from the Rockefeller Foundation signed by Mr. John Marshall in the Humanities Division, asking me when it would be possible for me to see him. Both my sister and I became extremely excited; and, because of my promising encounter with Makinsky in Lisbon, we were almost sure that something good would happen. Once there, I was taken to the office of Mr. J. Marshall, and I saw a rail dark man with a mustache, who was extremely handsome; he amazingly resembled the late Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Aleksander Skrzyâski. After a few words of general courtesy and questions, Mr. Marshall informed me that the Foundation had troubled me in

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order to ask my opinion about Professor Roman Jakobson; namely, to find out whether it would be worthwhile bringing him from Europe to this country. At that moment, Mr. Stevens, the Director of Humanities, entered the room and, after some few words of introduction, took a seat behind me and silently listened. I asked where Jakobson was. I knew that before the war he had been living in Prague and that just before the seizure of Czechoslovakia by Hitler, he had received a chair in Brno. "Oh, he escaped from Czechoslovakia and is now in Norway. He is very anxious to reach this country. What do you think about his scholarship?" I explained that I did not know Jakobson personally and that his field was not exactly the same as mine; he was mostly in Slavic linguistics. I knew, however, particularly well his works in literary theory, and had used them myself. For instance, I said, I had quoted from his studies on versification in my book on Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Because of his Jewish origin, he was in more than ordinary danger and needed protection, and, taking into consideration his distinguished scholarship, unquestionably deserved to be brought into this country. "Your opinion contradicts that of Professor S. H. Cross, from Harvard. And if you wish", said Marshall, "we will read it to you." Then he opened the drawer, took out Cross's letter, and read it to me. In this letter, Cross said that, after a search, he had not found any important work by Jakobson; he had seen a few minor articles and reviews, but that Jakobson had not published anything in Slavia, and so on. He concluded by saying that there was no reason to be particularly interested in Jakobson. This greatly astounded me. "I do not know Professor Cross personally", I said. "I only read his and E. J. Simmons's booklet which was published for the Pushkin Centennial. Professor Cross might have his opinion and I mine. The fact that Jakobson has not published anything in Slavia is not particularly striking or significant to me, as I have not published anything there either." "Yes, but you were in Poland, whereas Jakobson was in Czechoslovakia." "I am sure that there are other similar cases. Slavia publishes articles very slowly, and Jakobson may not have wished to wait so long." "Would you allow us to make a record of your statement about Jakobson?"

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"Please do so, if it will be of some help. I have no objections." Marshall then called a stenographer in, and I dictated as well as I could in English, what I had said. The conference ended, and I left with the feeling that I had done my duty; however, I also felt deceived, as my first reaction to that Rockefeller invitation had been that of personal hope. Now, when I recall that talk and the events which followed it, I have come to the conclusion that Mr. Marshall and Mr. Stevens used the Jakobson case as a pretext - they probably wanted to form an opinion about me, since their interest was most likely aroused by Makinsky's letter. But, at that time, I did not interpret that meeting in this way at all. (Ironically enough, title postscript to this affair - after the death of Cross - was that Jakobson became a professor at Harvard, and, finally, held a chair endowed by one of Cross' friends, under the title of the "S. H. Cross Chair".) A few days later, I received a note from Professor Cross, who invited me for a lunch at the Harvard Club in New York. He invited me for Tuesday, but I read Thursday; therefore, on Tuesday at lunchtime I was in the Slavonic room at the New York Public Library. I can't remember at all now what kind of work I was doing there I was probably trying to introduce some kind of more or less regular occupation into my new life, which, by the way, had become very social, as my sister was most eager to introduce me to all her American friends, particularly to those who had helped her in all her efforts to get my American visa. So, almost every day, I was invited for either lunch or dinner, and I spent my weekends in beautiful mansions in New Jersey and on Long Island. These parties generally fatigued me, as I was not at all in a mood to accept the nonchalant, easy-going American life after all my European experiences, but I understood my sister's desire to fulfill those social duties and also suspected the ambitions that she had for me through her great devotion. This generous, highly talented, and brilliant woman, who, after having spoken about her brother with the greatest enthusiasm innumerable times, was anxious to finally show him to her friends. I am sure that I often disappointed her, as well as her friends; but later, I owed very much to many of them, especially in New England, where I very soon found myself. Thus, on that Tuesday, I was in the library when suddenly my sister appeared before me and said, "Professor Cross just called, saying he is waiting for you at the Harvard Club. The lunch hour is over, but he said he still has an hour or so before leaving for Boston."

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1 ran to the club, which is not fax from the library, and saw a short, rather heavy, blond man there, smiling gaily. He greeted me in English and then started to talk fluently in French. He offered me a highball and very promptly announced his desire to invite me to Harvard. In a few words he explained that E. J. Simmons, who taught at Harvard, partly in the English Department and partly in the Slavic Department, had had some political troubles in Cambridge, and was obliged to leave the University, although he was very popular among the students. Because of Simmons's departure, Cross needed someone for Russian literature, and suggested that I take Simmons's courses. This suggestion was followed by a remark, made with a sorrowful expression, that he was able to offer me only two thousand dollars a year, a circumstance which embarrassed him "as a man like you should have six hundred or even eight hundred dollars a month. But unfortunately there are no appropriations in the budget of the Slavic Department, as Simmons was paid partly by the English Department and partly by the Rockefeller Foundation, and only the two thousand dollars from the Rockefeller Foundation are still available." He also expressed the hope that I would remain at Harvard until the end of the war, and said that he would try, with the help of summer sessions, to improve my financial situation. Naturally, although I did not know at that time that Cross' salary was twelve thousand dollars, as he himself told me later, the material aspect of this invitation did not appear to be very brilliant; but I had no choice, and therefore I promptly accepted. Cross took a piece of Harvard Club stationery and wrote a sort of official letter to me, which I was supposed to consider a contract. He asked me to come to Cambridge as soon as possible, although I was supposed to start my lectures at the beginning or the middle of October; he wanted me to have time enough to acclimatize myself, to prepare my courses, and also to improve my English. He suggested his secretary to me for this purpose, a girl who would certainly be happy to spend two hours a day talking and reading with me, and who would be very reasonable in her charges. We separated and agreed that, in a week or ten days, I would move from New York to Cambridge, where he would reserve a room at the Faculty Club for me. It appeared that Cross knew about me, not only from my bibliography and curriculum vitae which he had received, but also from The Pushkin Centennial Essays which he had published with Simmons; that booklet contains an article by A. P. Coleman on Pushkin and Mickiewicz, which

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was based on several books and essays of mine, all of which had been mentioned in this article. Naturally, I was happy; it was an obvious success against the background of what had occurred before, particularly in Lisbon, at Columbia, and at the Kosciuszko Foundation. On the other hand, I was a little bit sorry to be obliged to leave New York, my sister, several old Polish friends whom the war had brought to New York, and several American friends of my sister whom I had just begun to know. Besides, I had great fears; I was constantly asking myself how I would be able to prepare all my courses on Russian language and literature and Polish language, without a single note from my previous teaching in Cracow and Brussels, and how I would manage to write and deliver them in English. The only sources which I had preserved, were a set of books and essays which I myself had written in Polish and French. The unknown Cambridge frightened me, the more so because I did not know anyone there. In addition, I felt tired after my dreadful year of adventures and experiences; the life which I had begun in New York, under my sister's wing, because of its material and spiritual comfort, interrupted the constant tension which I had been under before and, as a result, made me feel exhausted. In the beginning of my stay in New York, I had visited my sister's friends without great enthusiasm; however, my attitude towards those social activities had changed - it was certainly pleasant to return to normal human relations and a comfortable life; to have good cocktails and splendid dinners and to be introduced to charming, attractive men and women, whose friendliness was born of my sister's stories about me. It was relaxing to hold a drink in your hand and have noncommittal talks with people, to admire the beautiful homes, and to walk in luxurious gardens in the country, or to have lunch and dinner in the New York houses of those Americans who had traveled in European circles and who now continually entertained French, Italian, British, Polish, and Russian people. But I also remember that each time, when I participated in those charming outdoor cocktail parties in the country and admired the delightful and peaceful landscapes in the light of the setting sun of the flamboyant Eastern autumn, whenever a plane flew overhead, I was seized by fear and pain as I involuntarily associated its distant murmur with the German planes from which I had hid myself in Poland's potato fields. I should also mention that, almost immediately after my arrival in New York, I introduced my sister to the Orcutts, and they began to invite us to their Washington Square hotel. The people in the Polish

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Consulate, several old Polish friends who had worked in various prewar Polish institutions and delegations, and several refugees who also reached New York - all these circles also absorbed me, and my life in New York became very full and pleasant. Hence, to abandon this existence and uproot myself once more, to leave for the unknown and mysterious Massachusetts, was not easy. The only consolation was that Cambridge was not too distant from New York, and that I would be able to spend weekends there from time to time; also, some of my new American friends were from New England families, and promised to introduce me to the closed world of Boston and the North Shore. After my talk with Cross, one of the first things I felt obliged to do was to inform the Belgian-American Foundation of this new event. I went to see Mr. Galpin and Mr. Tuck and told them that I considered it my duty to let them know about the ohange in my material condition. When I saw them, I said that the sum of one thousand dollars which they had promised me had been promised at a moment when I had nothing, and that the circumstances were now changed, as I had received an invitation from Harvard with a salary of two thousand dollars. They both appreciated my attitude very much in this, and decided to continue paying me five hundred dollars a year. And they did so until 1944, when the University of California offered me a permanent full professorship. I think it was some time in the middle of September that I went to Cambridge. Cross and his wife were waiting for me to have dinner at the Faculty Club. I took a train which arrived too late, so that when my taxi brought me with all my innumerable suitcases to the Club, the dinner there was over, but the Crosses provided one for me. The next morning was Monday. Cross took me from the Faculty Club to his office in the Widener Library, and when I asked him whether I should visit President J. B. Conant and the Dean of Letters and Sciences, his answer was that there was no need to do so, that I would meet them some time later. So began my academic life in the United States. All kinds of political activities invaded this life very soon, and the four years which I spent in Cambridge became filled not only with courses and meetings with people of the University, but also with public lectures in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, etc., and Canada; trips to Washington; a summer session at Harvard; lectures in French institutes and at the French-Belgian University in New York; work in the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in New York; and an extremely rich social life in New England as well as

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in New York. Within the frame of these four years I received the great honor of being invited to lecture at the Lowell Institute in Boston in 1943, under whose auspices I delivered eight lectures on Polish culture. My first American book, Life and Culture of Poland, published in 1944, originated from these lectures. This book was a desperate effort to fight the absolute ignorance of Poland and her history which reigned in this country, along with similar ignorance and lack of understanding of Eastern and Central Europe, of those historical battlefields on which a fateful, century-old conflict between the East and the West took place. We suffer now from the "fall-out" of this ignorance. These four years of teaching and lecturing, of political and social activities, as well as the following years spent in California will be described in the next volume of my memoirs1. I shall try to give an ample and objective report of the impressions and reminiscences, particularly in the academic world, of a European scholar in America, Canada, Cuba, and post-war Europe, which I visited often.

1

Unfortunately, Lednicki's sudden death put an end to this project. (C. H. v. S.)

XXII POSTSCRIPT: MY SISTER

Since I have mentioned my sister so many times, her worries about me and the help which she gave me in the materialization of my American plans, I feel that I should not leave her as an almost anonymous person in the eyes of the reader. In writing about my war adventures in Poland and in Western Europe, I have tried to depict even the most casual companions in those events so that they would become real personalities in the mind of the reader. Upon re-reading my manuscript, I suddenly realized that my sister, who was far away from me at the time of my European ordeals, but who finally played such an important role in my ultimate destiny, remained far away from the reader as a kind of fairy, who with her magic wand, here and there saved me from various threats and finally opened before me the golden gate to the happy kingdom. It is therefore necessary to explain these things to the reader, which were not at all an enchanting fairy tale to me but a very dear reality in which the decisive force was not at all surprising or strange. In other words, I must bring that person closer to the reader and at least explain her personality and tell the essentials of her life and artistic career. She died in New York in 1947. Now when I think about her, I have two American images of Maryla. One, which I have already mentioned, when I saw her, radiant and so happy, on the wharf on my arrival small but over-shadowing the Statue of Liberty in my eyes, and the other much later, still small and thin, walking quickly in her high heels down 59th Street, a worried expression of deep pain and sorrow on her face. But what a sudden change as soon as she saw a friend, as if the light of hope flickered once again. The voice was gay, the smile warm, and the eyes betrayed her witty comprehension. In other, happier days she might have been occasionally tired, annoyed, bored and angry, but the main traits of her personality were gaiety, wittiness and an effervescent animation.

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Art was the power which seized her even in childhood and held her until the end. There was something of magic in the sudden revelation of her great talent. When, as a small girl, she made a sculpture of our poodle, Gamin - the experts immediately recognized the "divine spark" in the child. And from this moment, as if really possessed by some mysterious deity, she fought with childish and later with young, obstinate, unbreakable energy to reach the temple of that summoning goddess. In her imagination it was in Paris that she would be able to find her temple. She studied sculpture in Moscow and Warsaw, but she was not satisfied with her teachers. Bourdelle was the master of her dreams. As soon as she graduated from the school that she attended in Warsaw, she compelled our parents to take her to Paris. Once there she quickly reached her beloved Bourdelle, and in some six months became one of his favorite pupils. This was one year before the First World War. How desperately did she long, during the war years spent in Moscow, to return to work in Paris. The tumult of that catastrophe could not suppress in her that passionate thirst of the soul. When the waves of the Russian chaos arose, our father sent her with her husband to England for security. But for her it was a way to the temple, and she did not have long to wait to reach it again. Then her great French successes started. Her studio on the Rue de Sèvres was a favorite meeting place of sculptors, painters, poets, journalists and society people. The young Polish artist became a member of the jury of the Salon d'automnel Her sculptures were discussed in the foremost art reviews and magazines. In France she devoted herself mainly to religious art. This was the time of her first madonnas and angels carved in wood - for example, the Black Angel and the Madonna on our parents' grave in Warsaw, which seemed inspired by the style of early French Gothic. Maryla's great preoccupation at that time was to find a solution for two problems: the expression of rhythm in plastic arts and the revelation of spirituality. Alchemy of art - marriage of space and time - marriage of spirit and stone! In Paris Maryla started her portraits - with time she became a passionate portraitist, deeply devoted to the discovery of personal charm and elusive beauty in the human face. Paris was followed in some six years by her brilliant Italian period. Italy gave a classic touch and a baroque richness to her sculptures. Interest in and devotion to religious themes and portraits remained with her, but in Italy Maryla went through a kind of Renaissance: her sculpture became more earthy, more ample and vigorous in its physical

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expression; the revelation of truth, of happiness, of love and sorrow became more human. Such are her beautiful Italian portraits, such is her St. Francis of Assisi. The Italian period was the culmination of her fame. Then Maryla made portraits of celebrities, royalty, statesmen, artists, distinguished women; her statues and fountains were bought by Italian and Polish cities, by museums and galleries; she was awarded prizes and medals; enthusiastic articles and pamphlets about her appeared - Maryla's presence at crowded exhibitions, in theatres, at big receptions was a sensation. She knew everybody important in Italy, and everybody knew her. In high Italian society she was surrounded by exceptional respect, admiration, and love. The Crown Prince Umberto opened with her the ball on the maiden voyage of the S. S. Conte di Savoia. The Crown Princess Marie-José called her a personal friend. The Polish ambassadors in Rome looked for her help and guidance: Maryla was very influential, she had great prestige - everybody liked her. These triumphs finally brought her to America. Short were the years of her pre-war American success. As in Paris and in Italy, Maryla quickly found her place in the center of American artistic and social life, and in this new foreign country, so large and complex, she was again able to create around herself an atmosphere of unanimous recognition and admiration. Again exhibitions, laudatory reviews, commissions, and material prosperity. The war interrupted Maryla's happy American life . . . It gradually eliminated art from her life. It became difficult for her to pursue her art. Sculpture is an expensive art; everything about it is expensive: material - marble, bronze, wood - and the work. Sculpture demands spacious surroundings: either a palace or a gallery. Maryla, in order to be able to continue her artistic work, had been obliged to look for other earnings, to work in some offices, to take a secretarial job. Her health was becoming weaker and weaker. This last troubled period of her life, a period of worries and sufferings, is not reflected by any decadence in her art - on the contrary, her religious statues show a deeper and more determined religious inspiration, her portraits a search for human beauty purer and more accomplished. A new trait appears in her art. Maryla now strives to express in it her philosophical meditations about men and the world, about the enigma of human existence. And all this is rendered by an artist who during her whole life was a fanatic of form, of the classic sculptural form, by an artist who never accepted any syncretism, any borrowings from other arts. Sculpture was always

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the unique language of her soul and heart. In this last period her sculpture was guided by a new inspiration - the spirit of silent and wise irony. Sculpture is hard work; it demands great physical efforts and power. Everyone who knew her marvelled how that small delicate woman could carve with such strength in wood, in stone, in marble. This was indeed a miracle in which the spirit entirely dominated the flesh. Even here in America in those somber last years of her life, I could witness and observe the amazing manifestation of this latent enthusiasm and devotion. I shall never forget the fascinating transfiguration which I beheld when once she unveiled a sculpture which she was finishing and which she particularly liked. She started to correct some lines on the beautiful head. The tired, exhausted, troubled Maryla, frighteningly thin and pale, changed before my eyes as in a dream: her face became young, serene, with an expression which appears on the face of a woman who loves and is happy. At that moment, I was deeply moved in my silent admiration. Her art was a true expression of her philosophy: who can resist the captivating smile of tender irony which emanates from the adorable faces of her madonnas and saints like a mysterious message to the world? True artists may often appear to common people irresponsible and capricious. But, as in nature, in particularly beautiful landscapes, or as in life, in great tragedies, there is in the character of a true artist a secret and unbreakable consistency. Maryla carved marble and the creative powers of fate carved her personality. She was a child of her parents, both highly talented and uncommon people. Her father, Aleksander Lednicki, one of the outstanding figures in both Russian and Polish societies in the first decades of the present century, gave her his brilliance and spiritual energy. Her mother, Maria, a fine musician - her artistic talent, unswerving loyalty to friends and the severest morality. It so happened that love as such never became a real power in Maryla's life. But affection for her parents and myself filled her heart. When her mother became sick Maryla devoted herself entirely to caring for and comforting her - for more than a year she never left her mother's side, although this happened just at the time of her first successes in Paris, after the war. No less strongly was she attached to her father. From her very childhood she was my faithful shadow in fortune and misfortune. While still a small girl, she imitated me in everything and did not want to be separated from me. Later, rich and brilliant as her own life was, she shared all my ambitions and lived all

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my passions. And, when the Second World War came, she was the one who did everything to save me from disaster and to bring me here. Her attachment to her friends was no less intense than to her family, and friendship had almost the same importance for her as her art. Her devotion to friends was almost limitless; perhaps because of this she was highly demanding. Indeed, her expectations in this field of life were great. She was very cautious in her selection of friends. She could easily pardon and forget small deviations and escapes from her high standards, but a real deception was almost unbearable torture to her. Friendship as well as art revealed her superior humanity. The more exclusive her attachments, the more deep and generous they were. Her irritability and vexations were only the other side of her devotion to what is genuinely beautiful and true. She was an essentially aristocratic being. The great German classical scholar, Ulrich von WilamowitzMoellendorff, always spoke about the Poles as real aristocrats of the spirit. Maryla was, in this respect, a true daughter of her nation. From both of her parents Maryla inherited her wonderful mind. She always had an astonishingly sound opinion about everything. She was quick, perceptive, and wise. She had a strength and integrity rare among women. There was not the slightest pettiness in her character. She was never concerned about belongings, material things as such, even her everyday necessities. I shall never forget how deeply moved I was when almost immediately after her death I found in Tolstoy's Resurrection the following passage: We may deal with things without love - we cut down trees, make bricks, hammer iron without love - but we cannot deal with men without it, just as one cannot deal with bees without being careful. If one deals carelessly with bees, one will injure them and will oneself be injured. And so it is with men. It cannot be otherwise, because mutual love is the fundamental law of human life. It is true that a man cannot force another to love him as he can force him to work for him, but it does not follow that one may deal with men without love, especially if one demands or expects anything from them. If you feel no love, sit still... occupy yourself with things, with yourself, with anything you like, only not with men. Just as you can only eat without injuring yourself when you are hungry, so you can only usefully and without injury deal with men when you love. How true this was for Maryla. Indeed, she was never concerned with things but only with people, and she was one who could deal with people; her soul's resources were rich enough. People were the great element in her life. This was also the basis of her sociability. There was

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nothing which she liked so much and which could give her so great a pleasure as a rich social life. Maryla adored grand dinners, beautiful evening dresses, jewels, in other words, everything which creates the special charm of a sumptuous fête. And there sparkled not only her diamonds but her wit and intelligence. At such moments she was often the center of conversation, with her excellent gift of narration, her subtle sense of humor, and her delicate and polite irony. She was full of charm and very attractive. One could not but admire that perfectly dressed woman with her exquisitely beautiful hands, which at those moments were the sole reminder of the sculptress in the brilliant woman of the world. Several faithful and intimate friends of hers constantly repeated after her death that she was such a little and immensely courageous woman. They were right. Her life was a hard and painful one. She had been through terrible material and moral tragedies by herself. Nor was her purely private life happy. And, in the last years, personal mourning was overwhelmed by national sorrows. She suffered deeply for her country and experienced disheartening humiliations when she tried to defend the cause of Poland against insolent accusations based on ignorance and indifference. Her constitution was frail and more and more exhausted by the desperate fight for her art, for her beliefs, and for her attachments. Death came exactly at the moment when fate was beginning to smile on her once more. But it was too late. A friend of mine who never met Maryla but only knew and admired her sculpture wrote after her death that Maryla's soul took from the gods their greatest prize - peace, and tried to give it to men through her art. Her madonnas, Saint Anthony, Saint Francis, poor, humble and tired as they are, have on their faces a peace which we do not know here on earth. Maryla had stolen this peace, said my friend, and she preserved it in her sculptures.