Page 29 - Excerpts from the diary

wrinkles.

Three of us entered her house, and the first thing we saw, hanging prominently in the middle of the wall, was a large Polish coat of arms
embroidered in gold.

“What is that?” we asked.

“The coat of arms of Poland. The Polish Commonwealth,” she answered, raising her head proudly. “I will certainly go home, to my own
region.”

“And have you lived here long?”

“I was born here, but my Poland is over there,” she said proudly, pointing. “This is not my Poland; this is foreign land.”

I found her repellent and tried to leave as quickly as possible. The captain said her thoughts and arrogant pride should not upset us; what
mattered was that she had fed us and received us properly.

In Włodawa and elsewhere Polish soldiers and officers are always the first to salute us. In their greetings one can clearly sense humiliated
dignity and obsequiousness toward us. All Poland is flooded with Polish troops. They are everywhere, in towns and villages, and
everywhere they salute first, even when junior in rank. I did not salute them first. I feel the legitimate pride of our Army and our people,
and the pettiness of these strutting cockerels—decorated soldiers and officers, young ladies, even very old women and men of every
station and rank. I despise these fools whose malice was in many ways one of the causes of this war. And now they, the Poles, armed and
prancing about in the rear, are not fighting. Only a very small proportion of them are at the front. Here they call up only young men, from
eighteen to thirty-five—perhaps the Polish military age is even narrower than that.

This part of Poland, where many Russians and Ukrainians live, still meets us fairly well, with some exceptions. But farther on there are
beasts and haters of Russians. Jews are not liked here either, and people openly call them “kikes”; that is accepted here. Poor people,
especially Russians and Ukrainians, at least sometimes sympathize with them, but the Poles speak about Jews through clenched teeth.

I was told about women who lured our soldiers and officers into their arms and, when things reached the bed, cut off their genitals with a
razor, strangled them with their hands, or scratched out their eyes. Mad, savage, hideous females! One must be careful with them and not
be carried away by their beauty. And Polish women are beautiful, the swine.

Here in the village I am alone. I spent a long time looking for Ukrainians with whom I could lodge. That too was dangerous: without a
weapon I could easily have been dealt with. Fortunately the owners are good people and speak of Russians with respect and affection. I
spent the night here, and they fed me almost to bursting. They do not live especially well, though not badly either; they have no fats. Our
soldiers come asking for milk and moonshine, steal horses and livestock, and in general the movement of the army is followed by tears
and lamentations from the population.
the inhabitants. The Germans behaved worse, but even in this respect people here are dissatisfied with our Slavs. And this is already deep
in the rear, under Polish administration, an entirely different country—Poland, where an injury is not forgotten or forgiven.

People here also speak of the partisans with hostility; they say the partisans robbed the population.

28.10.1944
Poland reminds me of an angry, capricious child over whom very grown-up and very serious people have been killing one another for a
long time. I have seen Poland and, as far as I could, studied its customs, way of life, and habits. Great attention is paid here to outward
polish.

The inhabitants ride bicycles. They seldom walk. Here a bicycle is a necessity. The roads are all paved; one sees very beautiful, large
houses. If one were to pass through Poland merely as an Intourist observer, one might come away with a very distorted impression of the
country. To an experienced observer who has seen the other side of its life and organization, a far less attractive picture opens up: people
wearing sandals and bast shoes in winter; rags—silken and sometimes elegant, but rags nonetheless; beet soup made of nothing but
beetroot and water; the plows with which they work the land; primitive methods of cultivation, much of it done by hand; industry almost
at the level of a cottage craft; small brickworks and workshops. Fat, well-fed proprietors and landowners alongside poor workers and
peasants—farm laborers whose food is barely enough to keep them alive. Huge shops owned by private traders, inaccessible to most
Poles because of the prices. The large gray wooden crosses that so bleakly greet you at the entrance and exit of every village. Wooden
houses, even in towns. Wooden Poland!

Kosów Lacki, Sokołów County. I decided to remain here although the division had gone far ahead.

This is how it happened. In the town of Kosów, Mazhenov and I stopped outside a shop and became interested in what was inside. We
had no money, and Mazhenov sighed bitterly. A local man standing nearby overheard us, came over, and invited us to his place for tea.
Mazhenov said that he would not refuse vodka, but was not interested in tea.

“Vodka is possible too,” the man said, and led us to his home.

There we were given tea and two eggs. Seeing that we still wanted a drink, they put a half-liter bottle on the table, then another, along
with onions and fried eggs, and the feast began. I drank only a little, however—four small glasses, I think, about seventy-five grams each.