Remembrance "We Could Do Nothing"

By RAFAEL LOC

Now 79, Loc (pronounced lotz) was a Polish lieutenant when the invasion began.

The stillness was shattered by the howling and screeching and booming of German bombers and artillery. The Messerschmitts came at us in waves. We could do nothing. We had no antiaircraft guns. We had nothing to return fire at their long-range artillery. Two hours after it began we were panic stricken, and our entire battalion jumped out of the trenches and ran toward our regimental headquarters.

Only half the battalion made it. We continued running and walking, but wherever we turned we met German artillery and tank fire. They were in back of us and in front of us. To the right was automatic fire; to the left we were shot at by artillery. One shell hit a mine 300 yards from us and set off a long line of Polish-laid mines; they exploded in domino fashion. We ran, we lay on the ground, we ran. We didn't know which way to go.

Captured after four days, Loc later became Poland's first Consul-General in Israel. Back in Warsaw, he was fired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during a wave of anti-Semitism in 1953 and immigrated to Israel in 1956.