The Horse Adjutant moved eastward towards the Russian front. We never saw them again. What replaced them was a nightmare: three distinct police forces. First was the Blue police (Polish po- lice). One of our local police officers became its commandant. His name was Kubala. I remember him well. His son, Bolek, went to school with me. I remember when I was young, he condescendingly asked me to clean his boots as he stood in them. The thought of doing anything for him was disgusting, so I turned my nose and ran away. The rest of the staff for the Blue police did not come from my hometown, but from other territories within Poland that were already Germanized. They adopted Nazism with zeal. After the war, all of these men would be considered collaborators and treated harshly, but as the occupation was just beginning, they were extremely dangerous, es- pecially Kubala because he knew many of the Jews by name as well as where they lived. The second police force was German. It began with foot soldiers but was later aug- mented, and then replaced by the SS Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei or Protection Squadron), the official secret police of Nazi Germany, wearing their signature tall black leather jackboots. Those boots were common back then, but today they are associated with totalitarianism. This police force was considered the internal police or enforcers of the Nazi ideology. The Gestapo characterized themselves as the hammer of Nazi ideology. It did not take a long time before I realized that if they were the hammer, it also meant that we, the Jews, must have been the nails. These troops always worked side-by-side with the Blue police. If this was not enough, the new regime also created a Jewish committee to oversee a 3rd police force, the Jewish police. In this way, the Nazis made the Jews themselves responsible for carrying out the harsh laws imposed upon themselves. The war was just beginning. Poland was conquered, and Germany was at the throat of Russia. The British and the French declared war on Germany and, thinking the Rus- sians would follow, they were surprised when they learned Russia had made a treaty instead. The Russians marched into Poland and took sizable amounts of territory.
These years were marked by deprivation and hun- ger bordering upon starvation for my family and our community. My father and the rest of the Jewish men toiled with backbreaking menial work. The Germans celebrated their victory. The only good news was that we were all still living together at home, and as long as we were home, we could take care of each other and pray. So, we all prayed the same thing, God, please
Three Man Motorcycle
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