popularity with the public, amongst whom were many of his fans from Warsaw. He composed comic parodies of many Russian and well-known songs and inserted into them the newly created folklore, referring often to the Russians as “the beggars”. Taken as a whole, the folklore demonstrated a positive attitude towards the regime, but there were nevertheless a considerable number of “counter-revolutionary” jokes and anecdotes, such as the following one about Molotov’s mission:
While Molotov was in Berlin at the Reichskanzlei,166 an air-raid siren suddenly went off. The entire Soviet team went down into the air-raid shelter along with Hitler, von Ribbentrop, and other Germans. They stayed there for a long time, because this air raid on Berlin was very heavy. Everyone was getting bored so the Russians, as they usually do, started singing. Molotov struck up with the well-known [17a] Soviet song Yesli zavtra voyna.167 Hitler immediately joined in loudly with the no less well-known song Moskva moya.168
The anecdote reflected the general mistrust of Russian military intentions, and of Soviet organisation in particular. As is now clear, this mistrustwas not entirely justified.
The treatment of Jewish prisoners of war was decidedly different from that of other peoples. Poles were interned, Ukrainians and Belorussians were freed gradually, as they came from the occupied territories. Jewish prisoners of war, with the exception of officers, were released irrespective of where they lived.
Mutual relations between Jews and Poles were a little strained at first. Gradually a normal and even friendly relationship developed between them. Salomea L. did not know of any special persecution of Poles by Jews. One day she bumped into a young woman who had been a fellow student at Warsaw University, a leading ONR169 activist. The woman was flustered and apparently somewhat frightened by the encounter. Salomea deduced from this that the Poles had a general fear of revenge, but she knew of no concrete instances.
