The silver sword - The unbelieveable journey

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This is a text written by me about the book "The silver sword"



The unbelieveable journey


Never in my life I have heard such an incredible story about children.
I met her at Zurich university many years ago, in 1947. She sat, staring with her shining eyes toward the window and looked as if she was stucked in her thoughts. I approached her but she seemed not to take any notice. ”Bad memories can always disappear”, she suddenly said with a weakness in her voice and smiled. ”But good memories stay for an eternity”.
”I don’t really get it”, I stuttered. ”How can you have good memories from what has been?”
”My name’s Ruth Balicki. Do you want to hear a history?”

”As oldest sister I always had a responsibillity, and when my mother, Margrit, was taken by the Nazis an evening I had to take all responsibillity. When she was taken away, my younger brother lost his mind, took a rifle and shot one of them. Then we couldn’t stay any longer, it was too dangerous”.
”What would I do?”, she continued. ”We had to find a temporary haven. Otherwise, we’d have no chance to survive. It was winter and a cellar would do. We lived there during the winter and the spring.
We had no idea where our mum could be, the Polish Council only knew that she was taken to Germany. ”
”How did you get food? That was a problem, right?” I asked her cautiously.
”The food was constantly a problem. Mostly we stole from the Nazis. When we at the summer moved out to the forest outside Warsaw, the farmers gave us food. But when my brother Edek, who was eleven, one night was going to get food he was caught by the Nazis.
Now it was only me and my little sister Bronia, three years old, left.
I had earlier started a little school for children but it had to be quit because I and Bronia had to look after ourselves.”, she said a bit shaky.
”But what did you do then?” , I asked interrupting.
”We stayed in Warsaw for furtherly two years without a sight of Edek. In 1945 all Nazis were gone and the Soviets controled the town. One day, we found a boy in our cellar carrying a small wooden box. We soon became close friends, but one day I saw a silver sword in it. And I knew which one it belonged to.
It was my mother who got it from my father a Christmas once. The boy, Jan, told us that our father Joseph, who had been working in a camp for a long time, had met him and given him the sword. Then he had went to Switzerland to find our mother. We immediately started our journey to Switzerland, where we hopefully could reunite with our family again…”
She heaved a deep sigh. Ruth did not seem to notice all stundents around us. She was just caught in her memories, the memories that felt unreal to me.

”With Jan in the lead carrying his wooden box with the silver sword, we traveled days and nights, sometimes we got on a lorry so we could rest a bit. When we came to a town called Posen we found him, Edek. I was elated by joy. My tears flowed.” Ruth smiled a bit.
”After many weeks we reached the edge of the Soviet zone. Edek was tired and sick after his time in the Nazi camp. It was in the middle of June and we decided to rest a week. That week Jan did something idiotic, something I today, afterwards, could laugh at.
”What did Jan do, then?” I asked her inquisitively.
”It was Edek who told me this. One day he came back with tins of meat and fish, saying the farmer gave him that. Edek started getting suspicious and followed him one day.
Jan went along the railway and toward a signal ramp. Somehow he managed to stop the train. While it was still, some other boys stole food from the train. But this time they were caught and Jan had to spend seven days in prison. I remember I was very upset with this, I couldn’t stand that he had taken food from the good Americans that saved the world from the Nazis.”
Obviously, that was an uncomfortable thought for her, she turned her body a bit and for a while she said nothing. She held a few tears away and made an excuse for that with a grimace. Then we just looked at each other.

”Our journey contuined later on and we slept where we could in the nights. Once, we found a very nice haven nearby the border of Czechoslovakia. We stayed with a famlily a couple of days, and the Wolffs, as their name was, treated us well. But it was also not safe. Refugees would immidiately be sent back to their home country by soldiers if they were seen, and they controled and supervised the villages. Anyway, they found out that we were hidden there and we had to escape.”
”You must have been frightened. When you’d managed to come so far, you couldn’t let them catch you, I guess?” I asked Ruth and at the same time I felt very stupid.
”Of course not. A night we left. The Wolffs lend us canoes and we canoed down the rivers and finally we had almost reached the border of Switzerland. Then Jan found out that the silver sword was lost. He was very anxious to have it back. He thought it gave us luck. And it probably did. I never ever had so much luck as I had during our journey. Nevertheless, against my will, Jan went back for the sword.
Simultaneously, Edek’s health was worse. He could hardly walk any longer. We three that were left, traveled the last kilometres by lorry. To our suprise, we found Jan tied up in the back of the lorry – without the sword. He had tried to sleep there, and when the American soldier, that drove the lorry, had found him Jan got mad. So he had to be tied up.”
Ruth giggled cautiously.
”We reached a refugee camp next to the Lake Constance. On the other side of the lake was Switzerland. But the camp official didn''''t let refugees go to Switzerland without proof that a relative or a family member lived there. I wrote to the Wolffs asking for the silver sword and the Internation Tracing Service helped us to find out where our dad and mum were. They said mum and dad were alive and lived at Appenzell, which was situated on the other side of Lake Constance. He would collect all of us the next and so he did. I was so happy. And so were they.
After that, Edek became well again and Jan gave the silver sword to our mother, Margrit, for one condition: that she’d became mother to him. She did so too, our kind-hearted mother.”
”Tell me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t an international children’s village built after your reunion?”
”Yes, it was, in Appenzell. Today...