Tell The West

By Jerzy G. Gliksman

Born 1902 in Warsaw and a law student in Warsaw and Paris, author Jerzy Gliksman became active in the Bund’s youth organization and in its political party in 1917, eventually becoming a member of the Bund’s Central Committee. He was voted in as one of the Bund’s councilmen in Warsaw during the elections for city council. His brother Viktor, also a Bundist, was arrested and executed by the Soviet authorities and, in 1939 and 1940, Gliksman was also arrested and imprisoned by the Soviet authorities. In 1943, following the Warsaw ghetto uprising and the suicide of Shmuel Arthur Zygelbojm, Gliksman initiated a large demonstration on behalf of the millions of Jews who had already been murdered. He emigrated to the United States in 1946, where he died in 1958.

This fascinating book, one of the first of its kind, tells of the awful, inhuman Gulag system in the USSR which was widely unknown beyond the “Iron Curtain”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Normanby Press
• Release date: Nov 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781786257192

Jerzy G. Gliksman

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Text originally published in 1948 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

TELL THE WEST

BY

JERZY GLIKSMAN

An account of his experiences as a slave laborer in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE 6

ARREST 13

1 13

2 17

3 21

4 26

5 31

6 34

PRISON 39

7 39

8 46

9 52

10 58

11 61

12 65

13 70

14 73

15 78

16 84

17 89

18 93

TRANSPORT TO FORCED LABOUR 98

19 98

20 103

21 108

INTERLUDE 113

22 113

23 119

TRANSFER CAMP KOTLAS 124

24 124

25 130

26 135

27 141

28 146

29 152

LAGER 159

30 159

31 164

32 169

33 174

34 179

35 185

36 191

37 194

38 200

39 205

40 210

41 216

42 219

43 224

44 229

45 233

46 238

47 244

POSTSCRIPT 249

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 252

DEDICATION

To the memories of my brother, Victor Alter, and his comrade in life and death, Henryk Erlich.

All persons in this book are real. The names of all those who are now beyond danger, whether through death, distance, or safety of family, are real. The rest have been changed.

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

THE PUBLISHERS believe it is good to tell the truth. They believe this book to be true and written without hatred.

The author treats only of what he himself has seen and experienced, giving conjecture and speculation a wide berth.

Although Soviet Corrective Labor Camps (lagers) are not places of calculated atrocity like the former concentration camps of Germany, they are—as this book and camp death rates show—institutions where men and women are ruthlessly and mercilessly exploited beyond the limits of human endurance.

In point of fact, lagers are frankly admitted in the Soviet Union. Pride is even taken in their achievements. The only apology for them, if one were offered, is that they have opened new frontiers in Siberia and the Arctic where free men might not have ventured of their own accord. But can this be justification for enslavement?

The author does not believe that the end justifies the means, though he does not delve into moral considerations. He merely gives an eye-witness account, for he was himself a slave.

ON November 29, 1941, I found myself in Tashkent, the capital of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic.

It was in the station of this Asiatic city that I jumped off a train bearing a crowd of former inmates of Soviet labor camps. Although nominally freed we were still subject to police orders and supervision and just now were being taken to an unknown destination and an unknown fate. I left the train stealthily, prompted by hunger and fear. For two years I had passively accepted the dictates of an adverse fate against which I was powerless; now, at last, there woke in me the wish to resist and to fight—to attempt to escape the vicious circle of misery.

My torn bag of worn clothing weighed heavily upon my shoulders as I walked along the unfamiliar streets in the direction of the city proper. A wide, tree-adorned boulevard led me to the center of the town. The houses here were low and widely spaced. The wind blew in my face; the cold and a fine drizzle penetrated to the very marrow of my bones.

I did not know what to do; I did not know where to go. This strange, large city and the whole wide world appeared to me equally empty—with not a single friendly soul in it.

It was only with difficulty that I realized that I did, after all, have friends and relatives somewhere, far away—in Poland, in Belgium. I smiled. Those were only names just then, only sounds. There was no amount of treasure for which I could get in touch with one of those distant countries. There was no way of learning whether those whom I loved and who might be concerned about my wandering lot were at least all still alive—my parents, my wife, my daughter, my family.

But even here, in this tremendous country, there should be one of these who were dearest to me—my brother Victor. He had been arrested before me; he must have undergone even more trying experiences than I in the land of the Soviets. Had he now been released, as I had been? Was he still alive?

A feeling of anxiety remained at the bottom of all my thoughts and emotions, a sensation which could not be stilled even by all the countless immediate and real troubles besetting me. I was hungry, grimy, practically penniless and without identification papers. My only document—the priceless certificate of release from the concentration camp—had been recently stolen from me. I walked with a heavy step; my swollen legs hurt me. White lice crawled on the worn navy-blue fabric of my prisoner’s wadded fufayka.

I trudged along as far as the center of the city. Long queues in several places showed me where one could find something to eat. Almost without thinking I placed myself at the end of one of the lines. Pressed into the crowd, I moved closer and closer towards the doors, whence emanated the strong and warm smell of food. With almost my last few rubles I paid for a plate of cabbage soup, which I ate quickly and eagerly. At last I experienced a moment of relaxation—for a short while I even felt good.

The winter night was rapidly approaching. The streets were becoming empty, and I did not know where I could find shelter. Tashkent was overcrowded with war refugees from all parts of Russia and with thousands of Poles released from prisons, camps, and deportation areas, and the city simply could not accommodate these tremendous throngs. The permanent residents of the town closed their homes to these vagrants who brought disease, filth, misery, and crime with them.

I returned to the railway station and found the structure overflowing with homeless people. Waves of foul air and the sound of crying babies came from the Mothers’ and Children’s Room. Men, women, and children besieged all waiting rooms, corridors, and passageway. I simply could not find space for myself and for my bag among the cluttered bundles and the human figures sprawling on the floor.

I plodded outside, to the small square in front of the station—a place I had previously noticed while passing by. But even here—among the trees, on the benches, on small jelled trunks, or simply on the bare ground—there were spread thousands of sleeping people. Dark shadows glided among them; I saw somebody moving quickly, confusedly; I heard murmurs, somebody’s stifled shouting, struggling. Not in vain, apparently, did the Tashkent railway station square have such a bad reputation, of which I had already learned during my journey. It was commonly considered a place of crime and iniquity, where bands of swindlers, thieves, and brigands plied their infamous trades.

Fearfully I circled the square and turned towards the city once again. I wandered around for a long time. Then I saw the lights of a chay-khane, an oriental tearoom, twinkling in one of the side streets, and I decided to enter.

At the door an old Uzbek, in traditional folk dress, collected the entrance fee. In a large samovar the boiling water bubbled noisily. The Uzbek poured the water into multicolored teapots containing a few green tea leaves and handed a pot and a china cup to each of the guests. Other Uzbeks, their legs crossed, sat on the worn-out, dark-red rugs which covered the floor. They were finishing their seemingly interminable chats before going home, their oriental tongue sounding like the cooing of pigeons. They drank the pale, bitter tea and ate the dried fruit of the uryuk, inhaling smoke from long pipes at the same time. The water in the narghiles gurgled rhythmically.

In the interior of the large, smoke-filled room I recognized the sprawling shapes of released deportees like myself. I recognized them by their camp-style clothing, their tattered bags, and their profuse, long-unshaven whiskers.

I sought refuge among them. I propped my head on my bundle and dozed off, my eyes half-open. The dim light of the red lanterns and the colorful figures of the orientals kept twinkling in my weary eyes.

A neighbor lying nearby addressed me. He, too, recognized me as a fellow sufferer, a former camp inmate. He had come to Tashkent a week ago, and he confirmed that it was utterly impossible to find a lodging place in the city—not even the poorest corner to sleep in. The only refuge, he said, were these very same chay-khane and their clay floors covered with rugs, and teeming with dust, filth, and lice. As to many cities in the Soviet republics of Central Asia, typhus had also come here in the wake of the refugee crowds.

But there was yet another danger, my chance companion warned me. After midnight the police checked every chay-khane, seeking suspected criminals, of whom there were so many here. They asked for everybody’s credentials.

But I had no credentials. I felt sure that I would never be able satisfactorily to explain my predicament to the suspicious local militia. I would never be able to unravel myself from the net of mistrust and questioning-Thoroughly frightened, I left the tearoom before the patrols had a chance to arrive, and walked out into the blackness of the night once again.

The following morning I registered with the Polish Embassy Post charged with providing care for Polish citizens in the region. Its offices were in the Hotel National. After a wait of many hours I finally came face to face with the official in charge, from whom I received a small amount of money arid a helpless explanation that, so far, they could not aid me in any other way. They had neither the right to issue official documents nor the necessary funds to provide real help. The crowds of despairing people pressing into the building from all sides explained the matter sufficiently well. There were too many of us to receive adequate help.

Our release from the prisons and camps had occurred at the time of the victorious march of the German armies into Soviet territory, and we had become engulfed by the immense masses of refugees escaping confusedly to the east and to the south across the enormous areas of the country. We were in the very midst of the bleeding and struggling nation’s tragic fight. Thousands of kilometers away, somewhere near Moscow and Leningrad, heavy fighting was going on. The dreadful hurricane of history was carrying us along. We felt weak, puny, and helpless to resist it.

And then, as I was thus standing among the mass of people in front of the Hotel National, pondering my helplessness and my ruin, somebody called my name. The sound of my own name seemed strange here in the crowd of unknown people, in this exotic city. But a moment later—and most unexpectedly—I found myself among friends, among comrades of long ago. I could hardly believe it. Through my tears I saw their changed, pale faces, their shapeless figures in tattered rags. I shook their outstretched hands.

They, too, had gone through the abyss of prisons and of camps. But now question upon question followed each other; exclamations, names of common friends sounded in the street. I was afraid to ask the one question which was burning on my lips. And then I heard, elated:

"Do you know that your brother is in Kuibyshev?"

Tense and excited, I listened to one of my friends tell the story of Victor Alter, whom I had left in a Soviet prison in the city of Kovel more than two years ago. My brother and the other renowned Jewish Socialist leader, Henryk Erlich, had been tried and condemned to die. But later their sentences had been commuted to ten years’ imprisonment. After the amnesty which had freed us all, the Commissar for Internal Affairs (NKVD) Beria had apologized to them for all the unpleasantness they had experienced and called upon them to collaborate in the fight against the Nazi onslaught. Then, with Moscow endangered by the Germans, Erlich and Alter were evacuated with the diplomatic staffs and government offices to Kuibyshev, where they were now organizing a Jewish Anti-fascist Committee in collaboration with the Soviet authorities, They were also providing care for the masses of Jewish exiles.

I immediately ran to the telephone office, on Pushkin Street, where I was informed that non-official persons were not allowed to make calls over such long distances during daytime. There was a war on, I was told, and telephone lines were overloaded. But at night I would be able to obtain service—and at half the daytime rate.

The rate was an important consideration, for I had very little money. I sold my gold wedding ring, hitherto kept for a time of emergency, and returned to the telephone office in the evening.

That night I had no worries about a place to sleep. I sat waiting on the small bench in the telephone office for a connection with Kuibyshev until 4 a.m. I dozed in the warmth of the office—it felt good...

I do not recall Victor’s first words, and neither do I recall my replies. I heard my brother’s voice—and the years of separation, the times of suffering and of our imprisonment seemed to float off. How happy we were to find one another! Even as I had searched for him, so had Victor sought me. He had no inkling whether I had lived through my imprisonment.

He told me about our family. He had news—by way of the United States—good news, by cable. All were alive.

Then he talked about himself. There was no bitterness in his voice as he spoke of his past experiences. During his stay in prison, he said, he had written a book on the subject of theoretical physics—a field which had always held a passionate interest for him. Then he spoke about the present, about his work. As in days gone by he was full of energy, life, initiative. He had hope—a great deal of hope.

Now he solicitously inquired about me. He bade me come to Kuibyshev as soon as possible—there was work for me there.

In a few words I told him about my predicament. I listed the names of the comrades I had met the previous day. He promised help for all of us, and he assured me that he would immediately send us money and identification papers. At the end he asked me to remain in touch with him by telephone during the next few days.

Even though I still had neither lodging place, money, nor papers, I no longer felt lost and unhappy. On the contrary, I was very hopeful indeed. I knew that everything took time in these days of war, that I had to be patient, very patient.

I called Victor again the following night. I also talked to Henryk Erlich for a while. We greeted one another cordially. Erlich told me that he had news from his family, who were safe in the United States.

It felt nice to slumber in the telephone office waiting room. Here I found a safe and warm shelter for the night, and I experienced moments of joy in anticipation of the priceless minutes of talking over the telephone.

On the third night Victor told me happily that money for us was already under way and that the business of my transfer to Kuibyshev was also developing very satisfactorily. As a matter of fact, he said, I would have a definite reply the following night.

The fourth night—the night between December 3 and 4—I was told that Victor was not in his hotel. This seemed unlikely. I asked for Henryk—he was not in, either. Another friend of ours, Lucjan Blit, who shared the room with Henryk and Victor at the Hotel Grand, was on the telephone.

"Why" I told him, disappointed, "Victor explicitly asked me to call tonight. And anyway, where can they be at this hour of the night? Are they at some important conference outside the hotel?"

"No" said Lucjan curtly.

"Did they leave town?"

"No"

"When will they be back?"

"I don’t know"

I called two more nights in succession, and Lucjan’s replies were always equally curt, dry, and meaningless. I could not understand it at all.

Then, one day—perhaps a week after my last talk with Victor—I participated in a sort of meeting with my friends. I did not know what to do—continue calling Victor, or wait. My money was already almost gone again, but I still wanted to try once more—perhaps this very night I would be more fortunate and my brother would be home, after all.

One of our friends joined us at about that time. We all immediately noticed how pale he was. He came near us—and at first said nothing. Apprehensive, we looked into his eyes.

"I’ve just learned something..." he then said. "You need not call. Victor and Henryk have been arrested by the NKVD."

The words came to me as if from a great distance, and it took me quite a while fully to understand their meaning. I was alone once again.

Almost two years later I was to learn that both had been executed.

ARREST

1

IT was an exceptionally beautiful day, warm and sunny. The fragrance of pines and blooming heather clusters filled the mild air. It was Sunday afternoon, September 3, 1939. My brother Victor and I were walking across the vast, wooded plains and hills of a resort town near Warsaw. The war was in its third day, and we had both come here to visit our parents.

We frequently stopped to observe the formations of airplanes moving high in the cloudless sky. It was no longer possible to tell whether these were Polish craft flying reconnaissance missions or hostile German planes.

We discussed the war. The events of the last few days had succeeded one another with lightning speed: The Ribbentrop-Molotov friendship pact, Hitler’s ultimatum to Poland with regard to Danzig, the German crossing of the border at dawn on September 1, their unexpectedly rapid military successes, and their swift pace of penetration into the interior of the country. And then a fortunate turn had taken place that very day. On September 3 both Great Britain and France had declared war on Germany. Warsaw—whence we had just come—was seized with joyful enthusiasm upon learning the news. The solemn notes of God Save the King and the martial tune of the Marseillaise sung by the crowds and played by bands still rang in our ears.

But how would the war situation develop from here on? Victor was not optimistic regarding the possibility of halting the Nazi steamroller on the Polish front, and even though he did not foresee a catastrophe in the near future, he thought that I ought to prepare my wife Wanda and my daughter Anne Marie, not much more than a year old, for the eventuality of an evacuation.

Victor’s family—his wife Mila and their thirteen year-old son Jean—had gone to Belgium to spend their vacation, and were thus cut off from him now. I consoled Victor with the thought that they were safe enough there and that they would certainly find shelter and care in that friendly and cultured country, particularly since Mila was Belgian by birth and we had two sisters living there.

Even though general mobilization orders had been in effect for some days neither Victor nor myself had yet been called. For the time being we therefore both worked in civilian defense organizations, in addition to our attempts to continue working at our customary duties despite the air attacks. I was as usual busy with my professional work as well as with my civic and party tasks. Victor had been claimed exclusively by his public and political activities for many years. He had had to renounce completely his engineering profession and his research work as a physicist a long time ago. He was one of the leaders of the Jewish Socialist Party Bund in Poland, and occupied a leading position in the trade union movement. He was also an alderman of long standing in the Warsaw city council, of which I, too, was a member.

We found our parents very anxious about us. They told us that they themselves did not intend to leave their home even in the event of a German approach. What danger was there for them, old people as they were? But they insisted that we prepare to flee eastward. At the time this still seemed a distant contingency. We took our leave—not knowing that this was to be the last time we were to see them.

The events of the next two or three days were catastrophic. The mighty military machine of Germany was crushing heroic Polish attempts to resist it. The enemy swept larger and larger areas of Polish territory into his grasp, and converged upon Warsaw from the west, from the south, and from the north. One could already hear the rumble of the big guns, while the aerial bombardment was becoming more and more violent.

Despair and panic seized the city. The population watched the dreaded day of defeat creep closer and closer. The army authorities issued instructions by radio advising all men of military age who had not yet been inducted to proceed eastward before the anticipated occupation of Warsaw. There was still hope of reorganizing resistance against the Germans in the eastern territories. Tens of thousands who wished to fight in their country’s defense followed these instructions and prepared to leave.

Those who felt particularly endangered were also leaving the city, for it was notorious that the Nazi invader would be merciless and cruel to all avowed enemies of fascism—Socialists and other members of left-wing parties, higher public officials, the leading members of the intelligentsia, and, of course, the Jews.

As late as September 5 I appeared before the Warsaw Circuit Court on behalf of one of the trade unions for which I was legal counsel. After the proceedings, which were interrupted several times by aerial bombings, the judges told me that they had received an order to evacuate the court. Many friends and comrades telephoned me to say good-bye.

It was hard for me to leave the city where I had fought and worked for so many years.

I approached the party leaders, Henryk Erlich and my brother Victor. They were both extremely busy, since an important meeting of the Central Executive Committee was just then in progress. Both Erlich and Victor intended to remain in Warsaw to the very last moment, and they were unable to tell when they would be ready to leave.

But don’t postpone your own departure, Victor told me. You have a small child, and you should therefore leave immediately. Our sister will remain with our parents. We shall meet somewhere...

We embraced affectionately, and I bade him farewell. Within an hour my family and I were ready to go. We set out eastward in a hired horse-drawn carriage, sitting on our trunks and bundles.

My journey with my wife and child was not an easy one. Like hundreds of thousands of others, we had no idea where to go. I simply selected on the map one locality after the other, farther and farther to the east, and we moved from place to place on peasants’ carts, with frequent changes from one vehicle to another along the way. We usually spent the nights in peasants’ huts, but for several nights we had to remain on the move. All roads leading eastward were overcrowded—we were just one small part of an immense human throng moving on foot, by carriage, or in automobiles. The sight of these disoriented, despondent, and utterly exhausted crowds was ghastly. Many a time we felt that we would not be fast enough, that the Germans would overtake and engulf us. Many a time we brushed against death on the road. German fliers repeatedly flew down low above the highways and mowed down civilians, sweeping the roads with their machine guns. Corpses littered the roadside ditches. We often had to circle past flaming villages and towns.

There were times when we thought of returning to Warsaw, particularly after we learned that the population of the capital had refused to give up the city without a fight. But it was already too late to return. Stopping in some town along the road, we could only listen with bleeding hearts to the accounts of the heroic fight waged by the Warsaw citizens and their brave mayor.

We were continually moving towards the Soviet border. One night, east of the Bug River, we found hospitality in the hut of a Byelorussian peasant who was exceedingly helpful and understanding. His wife pitied our little daughter and tried to make it as easy as possible for us. When we were about to leave him the following morning, the peasant remonstrated with us about moving further to the east.

Why do you have to go on from here? he asked us. After all, you are fleeing from the Germans, and they will not penetrate as far as here. The Bolsheviks will come here...

This seemed silly at the time, but I was astonished to learn that many peasants in the vicinity shared this view.

The Bug River will be the border, they repeated over and over again. West of the river will be Germany, east of it, Russia...

We remained unconvinced and continued along. But soon these predictions were proved correct. On September 17, when Polish resistance against the Germans was weakening by the hour, Red Army detachments began moving into Polish territory simultaneously along the entire eastern border of the country. Only weakly opposed by scattered Polish forces, the Red Army units occupied almost one half of Poland from her northern to her southern boundaries.

In the Soviet-occupied territories the blackout was ordered immediately lifted. All airborne attacks ceased and danger from the part of the Germans vanished. A new feeling of apprehension, however, arose. It was not clear what the Red Army’s intentions were. Were the Soviet soldiers friends or foes? How were they going to behave in the occupied territories?

The uncertainty was quickly dispelled. The operation was a full-fledged partition of Poland carried out according to a secret Russo-German understanding. In the Red Army’s wake, Soviet civilian administrative officials and the political police of the NKVD (former OGPU) were moving into the occupied Polish areas.

I stopped with my family in the small Polish borderland town of Rovno, and here I did everything in my power to try and normalize our makeshift refugee life. I managed to find a room, and I tried to insure quietness and comfort as best I could for our little girl, whose health was seriously impaired due to our wanderings of the last few weeks.

2

I ENDEAVORED to learn in every possible way how Victor was getting on. I finally managed to find a few friends who knew something of Victor’s fate. I learned with relief that following party instructions he had quit the capital and, after long wanderings, had arrived in Kovel a few days before the occupation of that city by the Red Army. I now hoped for a chance to communicate with him soon.

And then, towards the end of September, we were suddenly startled by the news that Victor had been arrested by the Soviet authorities. We felt completely helpless in the face of this news. Gut off from the outside world, strangers in the territory, with no means of approaching the new authorities, we were unable even to obtain more detailed information about him.

At first we thought that we might engage the services of a group of Polish Communist leaders who, like ourselves, were in Rovno as refugees. We hoped that they would find means to intervene with the new administration. We believed that these people, who had clamored for a common front and for co-operation of all labor parties in Poland only a few weeks ago, would be willing to help a Socialist leader. But we were mistaken. Those to whom we addressed ourselves in the matter refused their help.

After a short time, I decided that under the circumstances it was best to go to Kovel and examine the matter on the spot. At that time, in October, 1939, this was not an easy undertaking. The trains had only just begun to run again, but no timetable actually existed. A passenger simply went to the railway station and waited there for a train. Sometimes he had to wait a few hours, sometimes a full day, and sometimes even longer.

The Rovno railway station, like stations in all other cities and towns at that time, was besieged by immense crowds day and night. Closely crowded, people lay stretched on the muddy cement floors of the unheated rooms. These were refugees who had lost their homes and had no idea what to do and where to turn with their wives, their children, and their wretched bundles. Nobody cared about them.

But waiting for the train was child’s play compared with the difficulties of obtaining a ticket. And then came the worst of all—the brutal fighting to get inside the overcrowded cars.

At last I managed to get inside the train. Instead of the usual two hours, it dragged along from Rovno to Kovel for no less than fourteen. The car windows were broken. At night it was dark inside. Finally I arrived.

I got in touch with a group of Socialist leaders, mostly railway workers, who knew the details of Victor’s arrest. After the Red Army had occupied the city, they told me, Victor’s friends advised him to remain in hiding until the new authorities’ attitude to non-Communist parties became clarified. But Victor spurned the suggestion, maintaining that it lacked dignity.

A few days after the occupation of the city a meeting of Socialist leaders took place, during which a political declaration proposed by Victor was formulated. This document stated, among others, that the Red Army had saved the population of the eastern Polish borderlands from Nazi occupation, but gave vent to the hope that the future fate of the territories would ultimately be determined by the free will of their population, and that in the meantime the authorities would preserve the freedom of the individual, as well as such democratic measures as giving the existing labor and peasant parties an opportunity to continue their activities. It was decided to submit the declaration to the Soviet authorities the following morning.

But at dawn cars filled with Soviet police appeared at the doors of almost all participants in the meeting. An informer had been present at the meeting, and he had contacted the NKVD the very same night.

Among those arrested were Victor and Mieczyslaw Mastek, long a member of the Polish Parliament and leader of the Polish Railway Workers Union.

After talking to the above-mentioned group of Polish Socialists I decided to see the local NKVD commander. My friends advised me against this course.

I don’t want to discourage you, said the secretary of a Warsaw trade union, but I am deeply convinced that your intervention will be entirely fruitless. What has happened to him will soon be the lot of every political personality refusing to play along with the new authorities.

But I refused to be convinced. It seems to me, I said, "that the Soviet authorities will certainly not refuse asylum rights to a refugee who escaped from the racial and political persecutions of Nazi Germany. And if they don’t want Alter in their country because he is a Socialist, they can deport him abroad. As a member of the Executive Committee of the Second Socialist