wife, who had remained in Łódź, could not bear not to hear from me, which
would certainly be the case if I crossed the River Bug. After a week, I was back
in Łódź, which was already occupied by the German army. The intelligentsia
of Łódź had been greatly depleted. There were no Polish (Polish-language)
journalists left, as they had fled by car together with Voivode Józewski.⁸⁰ Only
minnows had remained from among the fellow journalists: reporters, courtand
sportscommentators, etc. I did not meet anyone. There was a rumour
every now and then that this or that journalist had been arrested. One day an
economist from one of the Łódź newspapers came to me with news that some
Volksdeutsche from Piotrków Trybunalski was to be granted permission to
publish a newspaper in Polish. I told my interlocutor not to be naive and to put
such projects out of his head. I never heard about that project again. We lived
in an atmosphere of constant strain and anxiety. I slept [. . .] a day. [2] My wife
slept badly too. Whenever she heard a car or motorcycle horn, which sounded
very frequently, she listened intently for unwelcome guests, her heart pounding.
One could not stay at home during the day because from early morning
German soldiers went from flat to flat to take Jewish men for ‘labour.’ One had
to be dressed in advance because otherwise they could take you away almost
in your underpants. My wife and I came back home at dusk before the curfew
(5 p.m.). I could not read. I paced all day long or lay on the couch, and then
came long, sleepless nights filled with anxiety and fear.
I was greatly concerned about saving my library, bookcases and shelves
of which occupied one and a half rooms. I had many valuable volumes in
Polish, Russian, French, German, and English from various fields: literature,
philosophy, history, law, sociology, economics, politics, as well as whole
sets of recent newspapers and periodicals from various periods, whole-year
runs, with the field of sociology being particularly well represented, [. . .]
international law [. . .].
[3] As I had been collecting books for almost 30 years, I had many rarities.
Without leaving my study/library, I could thoroughly research any important
issue, which was of a huge importance to me because I used to write in the
evenings and at night. I intended to store my collection in the city library, but
80 Henryk Jan Józewski (1892–1981), Polish politician, minister of the interior 1929–1930, administrator of Volhynian voivodship 1928–1929 and 1930–1938, then of Łódź voivodship 1938–1939.
