He Understood

by Horst Reschke

Stanislaw Wojcik had been so engrossed in his chat with his buddy from Poland that he had not noticed the factory manager standing there. The two young workers had felt secure, talking in Polish, speaking their mind about their miserable lot as teenage deportees, captured by the swiftly advancing German armies in Poland at the outset of World War Two. When Stan looked up and realized by the look on the boss’s face that he had understood what the boys were saying, he felt as though the blood froze in his veins, and in his mind’s eye he pictured himself back behind barbed wire in the concentration camp where he had languished and suffered for many months.

The year was 1940. Young Stan had felt a wave of relief on the day when he had been selected to leave the camp to work in a pharmaceutical factory. He had seen many people wither away and die. What starvation did not accomplish, the harsh treatment of the camp guards did. Beatings and shootings were the order of the day. Compared with the concentration camp, the work at the Lecinwerk, which produced medical products, was heaven. Not that the work was easy. The laborers had to work hard, yet with time, Stan and his buddies became accustomed to the routine. The factory manager, a German in his early forties, was strict but fair.

The war in which young Stan had found himself embroiled at age 16, eager to serve and save his country, to fight the German invaders, seemed far away now. When he was capture by German soldiers shortly after he joined the fighting forces of Poland, Stan was interrogated and classified as a volunteer. HJis captors segregated him and some of his friends and confined them to a concentration camp. For one so young and idealistic, Stan felt that life had dealt him a hard blow.

The work detail came almost as a relief. Stan found himself in the company of other Polish laborers. The common bond of language was a balm to the ache of lonliness, homesickness, and sadness that he felt deep down.

On this particular day, Stan and buddy Tadek talked about the war, their captors, and about world affairs – reported second-hand to them by their friend Yves, a prisoner of war from Belgium. Yves owned a radio and defied the Nazi order against listening to BBC London. The news was not good. The Germans were winning everywhere.

When Stan glanced up and saw the boss standing at the doorway, something akin to an electric current ran through his body. How long had the man been standing there? How long had he watched and listened to them? Stan did not know the answer, but from the look on the boss’s face, he was sure that he understood Polish, and he came to the chilling realization that the German had not just picked up a few words, but had been a witness to the entire hostile conversation of the two slave laborers.

Max, the manager, had liked the shy young Pole. Although his position did not allow him to show favoritism or even undue familiarity, he had kept an eye on Stan. He had noticed the slender young man’s gentle nature and his willingness to learn and adapt to the involuntary environment.

What Stan could not have known was that Max spoke Polish with some fluency. He had learned it as a boy, growing up in a small town in West Prussia. The province was under then under German rule, but almost the entire population was Polish. Only Max’s father, Theodor, a wheelwright and his family, and one other family in town, were Germans. The two ethnic groups got along well then. To the Germans, the Poles were simply their neighbors, if not friends.

Yes, Max had understood the conversation. Now Stan saw him approach, and he shuddered. “Stan,” the unsmiling manager said, “come to my office, please.” Told to sit on a chair, the young man did not dare look up. His gut feeling was that he would soon be back behind barbed wire – and that just before Christmas, thought with regret. Meeting Max’s eyes at last, Stan could not believe he was seeing a smile on the German’s face. “Stanislaw,” he said in Polish, “would you like to come to my apartment tomorrow evening? It will be Christmas Eve, and I would like you to meet my wife and children.”

Stan fought back tears as he took his boss’s outstretched hand and shook it. Christmas Eve instead of a return to hell – what a wonderful turn of events. The God, of whom he had sometimes despaired, was in his heaven after all, and all seemed right.

That Christmas Eve would be forever burned into Stanislaw Wojcik’s memory. Max and his wife and children showered him with affection and love. Though his escape from Germany, his existence as a Polish partisan, his recapture and return to yet another concentration camp were all still in the future, the memory of this magic night was never far from his consciousness.

Today, Stanislaw Woczik is Stanley Blake, a proud citizen of the United States of America. Several years ago, he and his wife Jane made a sort of pilgrimage to Salt Lake City, to stand at the grave of his erstwhile manager, to pay his respects and to shed a tear or two.

Max Reschke, the manager, was my father.