The Miracle Typist: The powerful true story of one soldier's long journey home

Prologue

Bóbrki, Poland

5 March 1935

Standing under a chuppah decorated with early spring flowers, Tolek Naftali Klings sucks in his breath as his bride Klara is led into the room. Tolek grins to himself. The first time he saw Klara he knew she was the one. She is wearing a long white wedding dress, the lengthy veil covering her face. Earlier that morning, in a room at the back of the wedding hall, Tolek had drawn the veil over her face in the traditional bedeken – the covering of the bride ceremony, a symbol that soul and character surpass physical beauty. Klara had crinkled her nose and smiled at her groom, an even more essential part of their private ceremony.

Now, Klara enters the packed room with her mother, Jutta, her sisters Henie and Sime, and Tolek’s mother, Lieba. Klara is all excited smiles and Tolek knows it amuses her that she’s moving from a family of five women and one man to a family of four men and one woman. Joel, Klara’s father, died of a heart attack a few months earlier. Tolek will make sure that his daughter is fully embraced by her new family.

Beaming, Klara transmits her love to him through the thin gauze veil. Black eyes, exquisitely made up, tender and yearning for him. ‘Soon we will be one,’ she whispers.

Tolek hums the Russian love song he used to sing to Klara while they were courting. ‘Óči Čjórnye’ – ‘Dark Eyes’ – written by Ukrainian poet Yevhen Hrebinka in the mid-nineteenth century.

Black eyes, passionate eyes,

Burning and beautiful eyes!

Rabbi Zvi exchanges looks with Tolek then nods to start proceedings. ‘Blessed are thou, oh Lord, King of the Universe, who created mirth and joy, bridegroom and bride, gladness, jubilation, dancing, and delight, love and brotherhood, peace and fellowship –’

The ceremony is interrupted by Eliezer, a red-eyed, long-haired, crazy-looking ‘holy man’, who stands up to announce that this union will be blessed with a male child after one year of marriage. That sounds promising to Tolek.

The wedding ceremony continues. A ring is slipped on twenty-four-year-old Klara’s finger. She and Tolek exchange kisses. Tolek stomps his foot to break the glass. Mazel tov!

Then the celebration begins.

A violin, piano accordion and male singer play raucous Klezmer music. The crowd claps and sings, and the wedding feast is served. Rabbi Zvi jumps down from the small stage and, laughing joyfully, engulfs the groom with a lavish bear hug. ‘Mazel tov – mazel tov!’

Among all that joyful celebration, Eliezer jerks up to his feet again and points at the groom. ‘Anyone who will ever plan you harm, Tolek Naftali, will have that harm bestowed upon their own head.’ He stares intensely at the groom and nods slowly to accentuate his words. ‘Mazldik nshmh.’

Lucky soul.

1

Thus the war begins

Lwów, Poland

20 August 1939

Tolek Naftali Klings stood at the Lwów railway station, surrounded by his fussing family. They had travelled thirty kilometres by train from Bóbrki, where they’d lived for generations. In two weeks, Tolek would turn twenty-nine. He had been called up to the Polish Army under what was supposed to be a secret mobilisation, though deployment had been as ripe and scorching in the air as the hot summer sun for weeks, and the patrons in his father’s hotel-restaurant had toasted with shots of vodka, speculating when they’d be drafted. They raised glasses and clicked them with forced smiles. Would they return alive after killing the soon-to-invade Germans? ‘Time to take off that fancy suit and roll up your sleeves for the fatherland,’ the drinkers teased Tolek when he returned home late from work.

Tolek worked as a law clerk and had developed an efficient and courteous business manner. He set up his lawyer’s legal schedules and assisted him in general property and domestic legal cases in the courtroom. He offered a broad smile when welcomed in the courts, where he searched archives for documents and files. And he was proud of his typing skills – he was the only one in the office who could touch type and was legendary for being the fastest. His boss, advocate Schrenzel, sometimes asked Tolek to demonstrate his typing skills for future clients. They were impressed – a modern office, good for business. Schrenzel had even promised Tolek that soon he would be promoted to a junior solicitor and, a few years later, join a full partnership.

Tolek, his wife Klara and their son Juliusz lived upstairs over the restaurant, as did his two brothers. Mamme and Tatte lived in rooms downstairs. For months, Tolek had felt that conscription and war were just a matter of time, so when Klara held out the letter with a trembling hand, family surrounding her in a supporting huddle, he knew his time had come.

Tolek’s father, Mendel, had fought in the Great War and now it was his eldest son’s turn. During peacetime, although there’d been compulsory two-year military service, educated Jews were not wanted as officers and very few were recruited, except as doctors. But the coming war had changed all that. Lwów and Bóbrki had large Jewish populations and many local men were now being conscripted; suddenly Jews had become worthy. The young Jewish men were anxious to do their duty and fight against Hitler to protect their families.

The Nuremberg Laws had been proclaimed in Germany in 1935, declaring the Jews second-class citizens and separating them from the Germans. In 1937, the Aryanisation Policy barred Jews from business. Then came the terrifying Kristallnacht – Jewish shops and houses were smashed and people killed in the street. By August 1939, Hitler had reoccupied the Rhineland, and annexed Austria and the Sudetenland without bloodshed. Poland, with the largest Jewish population in Europe, was next on Hitler’s list.

The station was wallpapered with noise and desperation, and Tolek was bumped and jostled by soldiers, some already in uniform, others still in civilian clothes. The train blasted off a head of steam then belched out what sounded like a warning whistle to Tolek: Soon – very soon – you will be separated from your family. He hugged his two brothers, Ijio, three years younger, and Lonek, nine years younger. So far they had been spared conscription. They clutched him right back and cried on his shoulder.

Tolek looked everywhere but in Klara’s face – perhaps the next look would be his last. Could he delay that forever? Their closeness – they were almost one person – made him wonder how he could leave. Their courting song, ‘Óči čjórnye’, circled in his head. How would Tolek ever do without her?

The mobilisation letter was weighing down the pocket of his suit jacket. Juliusz, his two-year-old son, smiled up at him and shoved something into his hand: a drawing of himself with his tatte and mamme. Tolek held back tears at the three stick figures with sticking-up hair, round eyes and smiley lips like kisses. He swept Juliusz up for a bear hug, and a lonely tear escaped, dropping on the boy’s peter-pan collar. His son looked just like him. Juliusz’s white-cuffed sleeves encircled his neck in a grip that promised to never let go.

Klara smoothed down Juliusz’s hair with one hand and Tolek’s with the other. Tolek smiled at her. How could he not? Black Marcel wave, small nose and fine red lips, elegant navy dress and white collar. When they were courting, Klara told Tolek that he had a sharp profile, like Gary Cooper.

Tolek’s parents and two brothers again embraced them in a family hug. That’s it, thought Tolek, that’s the answer, cling together and never let go.

As he scanned the platform, he nodded to the familiar Jewish faces that would be leaving with him, including one of their best friends, Esig Hertzcovitch, who nodded back. He wondered how many of these men would not be coming home. How many would return on stretchers? In wheelchairs?

As the train whistle sounded again, Tolek locked eyes with his mother. Lieba whimpered softly, recalling, Tolek knew, sending Tatte off to the Great War from this very platform.

Tolek pulled Klara closer with his free arm and her tears wet his neck. With the gentlest butterfly touch, she kissed his skin. ‘I will live for the day you come back to me,’ she murmured.

It was a warm summer day; the disquiet of the platform rose around them. Since Hitler had come to power, anti-Semitism had been on the rise across Europe and very much so in Poland. Hitler blamed the Jews for Europe’s economic crisis, inflation, the vicious increase in underdevelopment, unemployment and abject poverty, which he declared created massive social problems. The German Jews – 500,000 of them, among a population of 67 million – were responsible for all of Germany’s woes. Hitler had broadcast his intentions of segregating and suppressing the Jews in all Europe, and a lot of Poles had publicly adopted his plans, including the Polish Government. Tolek had heard stories of Jews being beaten up in the streets of the big cities like Warsaw and Danzig.

An older soldier in a worn brown uniform locked eyes with Tolek. His hand crept to the top of the long bayonet hanging from his belt and he edged the blade out of its sheath. Two fingers pointed at his own eyes, then turned and, like daggers, pointed at Tolek’s: This is for you, Jew…

Too quickly, Tolek found himself fighting for a few inches of space in the open carriage window. As the train lurched forward, he caught a last glimpse of his family merging back into the crowd. Tolek’s head sank to his chest. He was alone, a soldier in the coming machine of war. A fog of hopeless desperation descended on him and he fought it with a vision of alighting at this same railway station in the near future as a victorious Polish soldier. Did he remember Klara’s last look? He could still feel her fingers gripping his neck; they’d trembled. She had pulled him down for a long kiss, hurry-home drops glistening on her face.

After two days of interrupted travel the conscripts arrived at the Kraków training camp for new recruits. Tolek and the others, about eighty men, were told to strip and line up for uniforms. Tolek, in his new white army long johns, was shoved and pushed back until he was one of the last in line. He was not very surprised. He was a patriotic Pole willing to fight, but a Jew.

The supply sergeant scanned Tolek from head to toe and told him that they’d run out of his size. Tolek stared at the man for a moment then made his way back to the arrival hall to scrimmage for his original clothes in the assorted piles. It was hard for Tolek to feel like a soldier in his white shirt, grey suit pants and polished shoes.

Over the next two weeks, Tolek and the other fresh soldiers received basic training. They learned how to salute, studied pamphlets on military procedure and occasionally had rifle practice, as there wasn’t enough live ammunition for much shooting. Tolek gave a cynical chuckle. If he’d been in charge of this army he’d at least have more bullets.

Because of his educational level, Tolek was given the non-commissioned rank of corporal. Tolek’s duties included making sure that his group of soldiers kept up military appearances, performed their allocated duties and maintained physical fitness. Tolek could see in many faces their reluctance to be monitored by a Jew, eyes looking up and away instead of at him. Talking to their friends instead of listening. Not much he could do, so Tolek just ignored it.

Everyone was ready and eager to fight the Nazis – in theory. In reality, the army was in a panicked state. New recruits showed up at the wrong infantry division. Officers were changed or rotated without notice. Training procedures were interrupted or repeated. The disorganised army bumbled away under the fear of the approaching war. Manoeuvres were scheduled then cancelled, marches and inspections called off as they were being performed. Bullets rationed like precious diamonds. It was just all so wrong.

Fresh in Tolek’s mind were the pub patrons boasting and toasting to the Polish Army’s readiness for war. They quoted speeches by politicians and newspaper headlines about the stores the army had in reserve. Secret warehouses of rifles, machine guns, ammunition and artillery. But Tolek saw only empty supply stores. Was bureaucracy holding supplies up? Or were the boasts wishful thinking? Tolek was sure that, should these supplies actually exist, the soon-to-invade Germans would find most of the arms and provisions intact, including Tolek Klings’ rightful uniform.

There wasn’t much around to make Tolek smile. Halls with rows of cots; public showers and toilets; endless lines for cafeteria food on trays. The only camps he’d ever been on (also his only time away from the family fold) were the Zionist youth camps, Hashomer Hatzair – the Young Guards – where teenagers slept on cots six to a tent and ate freshly cooked food. Tolek remembered being encouraged to leave home and make aliyah – ascension to the Holy Land of Palestine. The day lectures on the marvels of immigrating to Palestine, where Jews worked the land, free from the Polish yoke. In camp they exercised every day, and were woken for night hikes by torchlight. The campers joked and laughed and did their best to be paired off with the right person for night-watch duty. At the end of the week they could go home for a decent bath and feed and boast to friends about their rough pioneering adventure. Some of Tolek’s friends did leave home and immigrate. Klara’s older sister, Neche, had immigrated to a kibbutz in Palestine and had written back with enthusiasm about the wonderful freedom of being out from underneath the Polish anti-Semitic yoke. But most Polish Jews, including the Klings family, believed Hitler would not dare take on all of Europe, that the anti-Semitic danger would pass, as it had in previous generations, and they could return to normal life in Poland.

There were only two other Jews in Tolek’s group: Singer and Hertzcovitch. Singer was a merchant, tall and strong of body. Even with the little ammunition available he had already distinguished himself as a sharpshooter, a skill he’d honed growing up on a farm. Hertzcovitch, a skinny and stooped upmarket men’s tailor, was from Bóbrki, too. He had made the Klings family’s wedding suits. He and his wife Batya and son Itskhok were close friends with Tolek, Klara and Juliusz.

Tolek and his two friends were loudly accused of antagonising Hitler, making him set his military sights on Poland to invade and control the Jews. The patriotic Jewish soldiers were shoved and abused, continuously pushed back in line with their empty trays at the canteen and tripped over when carrying their trays back to the bench to a background of cheers and laughter. Tolek took a little comfort in the fact that not all of the Polish soldiers were hostile. Some looked away with embarrassment, while some even helped pick up the spilled food.

The Germans invaded on Friday, 1 September 1939, Tolek’s twenty-ninth birthday. Early in the morning, having breakfast in the barracks, Tolek heard the droning aircraft approaching and ran out with his new companions, rushing to wave support to the Polish Air Force. Better late than never, Tolek thought. Except it wasn’t the Polish Air Force, it was the German Luftwaffe. Planes with black crosses on the wings and swastikas on the tails fell into screaming dives as bombs exploded all around. Tolek rushed back inside, where the floor was littered with food and metal plates. He locked terrified eyes with Singer and Hertzcovitch as they cowered under the heavy tables, the three of them quaking at every bang. The barracks shook as though about to tumble down.

Tolek stole out from under the dining table and ran outside. The ground shook and exploded, and panicked soldiers ran around the barracks, diving under trucks and even pushcarts, sometimes shoving each other out of the way. Tolek took refuge around the corner of a concrete building. German planes dived so low that he could see the pilots staring at him.

The first few moments of shock passed. Some soldiers, lucky enough to have loaded rifles, got on one knee, took aim and shot – uselessly – at the planes. Among the blown-up vehicles, wounded soldiers screamed in pain. Though their cries were terrifying, even worse were the silent bodies, scattered like torn rag dolls. Tolek watched as blood trickled from the crushed skull of a body nearby.

Across the road were the stables for the Polish army’s proud horses. The Polish cavalry was famous for its past glories and formed about ten per cent of the army. Go fight tanks and planes with horses. Some horses lay dead, others screamed and kicked when the soldiers came near to restrain them. Heart beating in his throat, Tolek couldn’t decide on the safest place to wait out the attack. With a dozen of his colleagues, he ran from one hiding place to another, then he suddenly realised that he had more immediate problems than being hit by falling bombs: he was in civilian clothes and could easily be shot by a Polish solider as a spy. He needed to act quickly.

Head spinning, stomach churning, he worked his way to the supply stores. Soldiers ran out carrying guns and ammunition – the rumours were correct, these war supplies had been locked up. He pushed his way into the store against the traffic, bumping shoulders with stone-faced armed soldiers, until he reached the abandoned uniform shelves. There he found stacks of neatly folded uniforms: shirts, jackets, trousers, socks and boots. So they didn’t have a uniform his size? They had stacks of them. With shaking hands, he quickly stripped to his underwear and grabbed whatever he could find. The brown shirt, jacket and boots were too small and the pants were too big, but they would do. At least now he looked like a kosher Polish soldier. With a longing glance at his shirt, tailored pants and polished shoes, Tolek turned and entered the war.

Within days, Tolek’s infantry regiment had retreated from Kraków. News was they were headed back to Lwów. Along the old road near Swoszowice, he stared with stunned silence at the bombed-out houses and throngs of civilian refugees. Bodies had been dragged off the road and tossed in piles, and crushed cardboard suitcases overflowing with clothing, bed sheets, kitchen utensils and children’s toys lay discarded everywhere he looked. Among a constant stream of soldiers moving east, Tolek was one of the lucky ones, having found a seat in a column of five crowded trucks retreating from the front lines.

At some of the stops, Tolek, Singer and Hertzcovitch listened to loudly shouted army radio updates and glimpsed front-page headlines in newspapers. They didn’t believe the reports of Polish Army victories; they hadn’t seen a single Polish plane overhead nor a tank chugging along the road. Broadcasters were careful to not yet call the conflict a ‘war’. But some reports stated that the Germans were using young Polish men as human shields, or else were shipping them straight to the Reich for slave labour. Singer told Tolek that he’d heard an official radio bulletin say the Germans were shooting Jewish men of all ages, but that women and children were spared. Tolek didn’t know whether to believe it, but he gripped hope tightly to his heart. Would Bóbrki be spared from the bombing? It was a small town of no significance. He promised himself that, one way or another, he would find out if his family were all right.

On Sunday, 3 September, the trucks stopped for a break and the soldiers took lunch in a civilian camping ground. An officer approached the group, yelling and waving frantically: France and Britain had declared war on Germany. For the first time in three days, genuine smiles spread across the soldiers’ weary faces and they clashed their tin mugs in cheers. Their powerful allies had called Germany’s bluff. The general opinion of the Polish press had been that Hitler was confident the Allies would never declare war if he invaded Poland. Chamberlain had allowed Hitler to annex part of Czechoslovakia without censure or proclaimed warnings. Now that England and France had stood up to the bullying dictator, a ceasefire was surely just around the corner.

Tolek’s regiment stopped in Lwów to await fresh orders. Tolek knew the town well – he’d received his legal training at the Lwów University and had worked in the city as a senior law clerk for so many happy years, before he was put in charge of an office in Bóbrki. At the first opportunity, when the troops were resting, Tolek slipped out and, with full pack, helmet and rifle, jogged all the way to advocate Schrenzel’s office, where he’d worked as a law clerk – the best place to telephone Klara to see how his family were doing. Were they safe? Had they escaped the bombing? How was his little Juliusz coping? He longed to embrace his son.

But, this wasn’t his Lwów. The Lwów he trained and worked in was a bustling city full of elegant shops, restaurants and coffee houses. This town’s main streets were blocked by a crush of overloaded cars, trucks, pushcarts, horse buggies and pedestrians. Columns of troops marching and on trucks and horses moved east, away from the war front. All around was honking, shouting, crying, arguing, pushing and shoving. Houses and shops were boarded up, restaurants empty. Tolek knew from the army’s scuttlebutt that Lwów was on the attacking Germans’ radar. He jogged past the chic Svobody Boulevard and Promenade Alley in the park, where he had met Klara when she visited her married sister who lived in Lwów. They strolled there often while they were courting, getting to know each other. Next came the grand Rynok Square café. In their courting days, the café had stood opposite a fountain featuring a semi-clad Greek warrior, one arm raised in victory. Now the fountain was dry and listless, and a waiter in a long white apron stood like a statue in front of the deserted café, watching this mass exodus. The other coffee houses were closed. None of these refugees had the time or inclination for a coffee break – it could cost them their lives. The bored waiter yawned, not giving Tolek even a second look.

Tolek barged into his old legal office in full uniform and with frantic eyes, startling the staff.

‘I should have listened to you!’ Pan Schrenzel cried, jumping up from his desk and running towards Tolek with extended arms, his eyes flooded with tears. Weeks earlier, Tolek had tried to persuade his boss to close the practice and go for a holiday to London with the two families, as he felt that war was imminent. His boss had laughed, telling him not to be such a pessimist. Schrenzel passed on Tolek’s right, arms still stretched out. He reached the wall of his office, flattened his hands on the white plaster and started banging his head against it, repeating, ‘I should have listened to you, Tolek.’

Tolek was caught by surprise; his empty arms had been ready to receive Schrenzel. By the time he took off his helmet, unhooked his equipment and restrained his hysterical boss, there was a small dent in the white wall and blood on Schrenzel’s face.

Without asking for permission, Tolek grabbed the black telephone and rang his family. His finger trembled while he dialled, each number taking ages. He continued trying to pull Schrenzel away from the wall while talking to Klara.

‘Happy birthday, my darling, my kochanie – happy twenty-ninth! So sorry I wasn’t with you to celebrate.’ Klara, breathless, sounded so happy that Tolek was sure she was smiling ear to ear. The connection severed at the railway station was back instantly and Tolek felt her quivering touch on his neck. ‘We made a cake for you. Juliusz blew out the candles – all twenty-nine of them.’ She laughed.

Tolek could hear Juliusz in the background and imagined him clutching at his mother’s knee to wish his tatte a happy birthday. He had a flashback of his parents and brothers setting up the tables for dinner at the restaurant, and Juliusz, knowing his tatte would soon be home from the office, waiting at the door like a puppy, dressed neatly, hair parted. Klara always stayed back to let Juliusz have time with his tatte before she greeted Tolek.

‘How are you all, everything okay?’

‘Yes, no bombs here. We’re all doing well. Collar laundry is quiet. Not too many businessmen worrying about starched and pressed business-shirt collars right now. But I go there every day.’

Tolek laughed in return; Klara deserved to hear it. They had set up the collar laundrette before Juliusz was born and Klara was totally