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Authors: Graham Masterton
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and dented and the lid didn’t fit properly. Although a small brass padlock still dangled from the hasp, it was thickly corroded and somebody had sawed right through the shackle – recently, by the look of it, because the cut was still bright.
‘This box was sent to me last week by a friend of mine. Her name is Krystyna Zawadka and she is an assistant professor at the Institute of History at Warsaw University.
Jack said nothing, but watched as Maria opened the lid of the box and took out a bundle of yellowed paper and a small book bound in maroon leather.
‘The box was found about a year ago by a team of historical archeologists who were combing through the Kampinos Forest. They were looking for any traces of human remains that earlier exhumation parties might have missed.’
Jack knew all about the Kampinos Forest. It lay about fourteen kilometers northwest of Warsaw. In the spring and summer of 1940, a special squad of German soldiers known as AB-Aktion had arrested at least seven thousand Polish aristocrats, politicians, journalists, teachers, judges, priests and social workers – anybody who might be capable of organizing resistance to German rule. They had been interned, tortured, and then driven out blindfold to a clearing at Palmiry, most of them thinking that they were being transported to another camp. They had then been lined up and machine-gunned. Over two thousand of them, maybe more.
Jack said, ‘There’s a museum there, isn’t there, as well as a cemetery? My mother and father went there once, but I never had the time.’
‘You should make time, on your next visit to Poland,’ said Maria. ‘It is a very moving place. All of those crosses … and the tall trees … and the wind blowing through the forest.’
‘So what did they find in this box?’ asked Jack, nodding toward it. ‘Something about my great-grandfather?’
‘Yes, Mr Wallace, they did. They found my great-uncle Andrzej’s diary, with many mentions of his friend Grzegorz Walach, your great-grandfather, and it explains how both of them died. It was not the Germans who killed them, according to him. Your great-grandfather was never captured by the Germans, and as far as we know the Germans did not have him on their list for what they called their
Intelligenzaktion
– eliminating all of the Polish intelligentsia. It appears that they were not aware that your great-grandfather was in Poland at all, otherwise he certainly would have been.’
‘Go on,’ said Jack, frowning. ‘If the Germans didn’t kill him, who did?
Maria leaned forward and offered Jack a gingerbread cookie. ‘No – no thanks,’ he told her. That was so Polish – never letting your guests go hungry.
‘You probably know that it was not only the Germans who used the Kampinos Forest,’ said Maria. ‘Many refugees fled from Warsaw to hide there, and the guerrillas of the Home Army went into the forest to regroup.
‘My great-uncle Andrzej and your great-grandfather were two of those guerrillas. They went deep into the forest with maybe thirty or forty other men. That was in August of 1940. They had a very daring plan to assassinate Hans Frank, the German commander of the General Government.’
‘So what happened? How did they die?’
‘The Germans of course were hunting through the forest for them, but several times they managed to escape and once they ambushed a German patrol and killed at least twelve of them.
She turned the pages of the little diary. Jack could see that the pages were crowded with tiny, crabbed writing, some of it blotchy with damp.
‘How is your Polish?’ she asked him.
‘Pretty rusty, to tell you the truth.’
‘OK. In that case, I translate for you. “Now we have been in the forest for nearly two months, we are beginning to become aware that there is something else here which is much more frightening than the Germans. It appears that even the Germans are frightened of it, too, because we have heard them shouting to each
‘This box was sent to me last week by a friend of mine. Her name is Krystyna Zawadka and she is an assistant professor at the Institute of History at Warsaw University.
Jack said nothing, but watched as Maria opened the lid of the box and took out a bundle of yellowed paper and a small book bound in maroon leather.
‘The box was found about a year ago by a team of historical archeologists who were combing through the Kampinos Forest. They were looking for any traces of human remains that earlier exhumation parties might have missed.’
Jack knew all about the Kampinos Forest. It lay about fourteen kilometers northwest of Warsaw. In the spring and summer of 1940, a special squad of German soldiers known as AB-Aktion had arrested at least seven thousand Polish aristocrats, politicians, journalists, teachers, judges, priests and social workers – anybody who might be capable of organizing resistance to German rule. They had been interned, tortured, and then driven out blindfold to a clearing at Palmiry, most of them thinking that they were being transported to another camp. They had then been lined up and machine-gunned. Over two thousand of them, maybe more.
Jack said, ‘There’s a museum there, isn’t there, as well as a cemetery? My mother and father went there once, but I never had the time.’
‘You should make time, on your next visit to Poland,’ said Maria. ‘It is a very moving place. All of those crosses … and the tall trees … and the wind blowing through the forest.’
‘So what did they find in this box?’ asked Jack, nodding toward it. ‘Something about my great-grandfather?’
‘Yes, Mr Wallace, they did. They found my great-uncle Andrzej’s diary, with many mentions of his friend Grzegorz Walach, your great-grandfather, and it explains how both of them died. It was not the Germans who killed them, according to him. Your great-grandfather was never captured by the Germans, and as far as we know the Germans did not have him on their list for what they called their
Intelligenzaktion
– eliminating all of the Polish intelligentsia. It appears that they were not aware that your great-grandfather was in Poland at all, otherwise he certainly would have been.’
‘Go on,’ said Jack, frowning. ‘If the Germans didn’t kill him, who did?
Maria leaned forward and offered Jack a gingerbread cookie. ‘No – no thanks,’ he told her. That was so Polish – never letting your guests go hungry.
‘You probably know that it was not only the Germans who used the Kampinos Forest,’ said Maria. ‘Many refugees fled from Warsaw to hide there, and the guerrillas of the Home Army went into the forest to regroup.
‘My great-uncle Andrzej and your great-grandfather were two of those guerrillas. They went deep into the forest with maybe thirty or forty other men. That was in August of 1940. They had a very daring plan to assassinate Hans Frank, the German commander of the General Government.’
‘So what happened? How did they die?’
‘The Germans of course were hunting through the forest for them, but several times they managed to escape and once they ambushed a German patrol and killed at least twelve of them.
She turned the pages of the little diary. Jack could see that the pages were crowded with tiny, crabbed writing, some of it blotchy with damp.
‘How is your Polish?’ she asked him.
‘Pretty rusty, to tell you the truth.’
‘OK. In that case, I translate for you. “Now we have been in the forest for nearly two months, we are beginning to become aware that there is something else here which is much more frightening than the Germans. It appears that even the Germans are frightened of it, too, because we have heard them shouting to each
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