Selected text
I was the first to be called up into the army, not long after coming out of the camp, on 21st April 1945, while the war was still on. And I was sent at once to Cracow, to where the Polytechnic is now [Cracow University of Technology] on Warszawska Street, and where the Second Reserve Infantry Corps was stationed then. How they could take a man who had been in a camp for so many years? 'You're going to war,' this and that - an officer gave us this speech outside the Town Hall. But so what? There was no option. My friends stayed in Bielsko.
On Warszawska Street in Cracow I was in active service. I did normal training, shorter because the war was still on. I also went through an accelerated NCO [non-commissioned officers] course and became a corporal. They needed officers to train recruits - for the front, for the front, for the front. I didn't go to the front, because they needed me to train privates.
I personally wasn't with any other Jews in the platoon or the company; all I know is that our second-in-command for political affairs was a Jew. Rozen, he was called. Other officers were apparently Jews too, who had graduated from that officer training school in Cracow, or before that in Lublin. In Cracow I found out about the Kielce pogrom [36]. [Editor's note: on 4th July 1946 Mr. Glazer was already serving in Luban Slaski, in the Borderlands Protection Forces]. I don't remember who I found out from. I was on the Cracow Market Square for the end of the war, 9th May 1945. It wasn't a parade, it was a kind of march. The whole lot of us onto the Square. Without a machine gun, because I didn't have one yet then. And Victory Day was announced on the Square.
In October 1945 we were sent to the Recovered Territories [37], to the WOP, the Lusatian Brigade of the Borderlands Protection Forces. This big group of people left for Luban Slaski. Well actually first we were sent to Sulikow, 20-something kilometers from Luban, because there were still German POWs in the Luban barracks. We were billeted in various different private homes, German ones. There were still Germans living there, but they had to move out of some of their rooms. And I - didn't get friendly with - just talked quite a lot, with this one German. He had been a sergeant in the German army but had been released early because he had some sort of invalidity. He even asked me, when they were resettling them, to do something to stop them resettling him. What could I do?
In the army they persuaded me to go professional. This personnel guy, an army man. I didn't want to, but he said to me, 'You were in a camp, surely you wouldn't want a return of those times? Here we're guarding the border, hunting down Germans, and you can see how many of them there are here. Surely you don't want the Nazis to come back here, so work with us.'
I was supposed to complete my compulsory service after two years. Because there was this 'war not-a-war', battles with UPA gangs [the Ukrainian Insurrectionist Army, a Ukrainian armed independence division formed in October 1942] and the Wehrwolf [a German underground military organization set up by the Nazi authorities at the end of 1944 to conduct sabotage and diversionary campaigns], in Polish they called them the Werewolves, they kept active service on for an extra year. I had to serve out those three years and only then were they going to release me into the reserves. I didn't want to do that military career, because really after all I'd never planned to be a professional soldier. But because I'd done well, they literally wouldn't leave me in peace. And I agreed - I became a professional soldier.
On Warszawska Street in Cracow I was in active service. I did normal training, shorter because the war was still on. I also went through an accelerated NCO [non-commissioned officers] course and became a corporal. They needed officers to train recruits - for the front, for the front, for the front. I didn't go to the front, because they needed me to train privates.
I personally wasn't with any other Jews in the platoon or the company; all I know is that our second-in-command for political affairs was a Jew. Rozen, he was called. Other officers were apparently Jews too, who had graduated from that officer training school in Cracow, or before that in Lublin. In Cracow I found out about the Kielce pogrom [36]. [Editor's note: on 4th July 1946 Mr. Glazer was already serving in Luban Slaski, in the Borderlands Protection Forces]. I don't remember who I found out from. I was on the Cracow Market Square for the end of the war, 9th May 1945. It wasn't a parade, it was a kind of march. The whole lot of us onto the Square. Without a machine gun, because I didn't have one yet then. And Victory Day was announced on the Square.
In October 1945 we were sent to the Recovered Territories [37], to the WOP, the Lusatian Brigade of the Borderlands Protection Forces. This big group of people left for Luban Slaski. Well actually first we were sent to Sulikow, 20-something kilometers from Luban, because there were still German POWs in the Luban barracks. We were billeted in various different private homes, German ones. There were still Germans living there, but they had to move out of some of their rooms. And I - didn't get friendly with - just talked quite a lot, with this one German. He had been a sergeant in the German army but had been released early because he had some sort of invalidity. He even asked me, when they were resettling them, to do something to stop them resettling him. What could I do?
In the army they persuaded me to go professional. This personnel guy, an army man. I didn't want to, but he said to me, 'You were in a camp, surely you wouldn't want a return of those times? Here we're guarding the border, hunting down Germans, and you can see how many of them there are here. Surely you don't want the Nazis to come back here, so work with us.'
I was supposed to complete my compulsory service after two years. Because there was this 'war not-a-war', battles with UPA gangs [the Ukrainian Insurrectionist Army, a Ukrainian armed independence division formed in October 1942] and the Wehrwolf [a German underground military organization set up by the Nazi authorities at the end of 1944 to conduct sabotage and diversionary campaigns], in Polish they called them the Werewolves, they kept active service on for an extra year. I had to serve out those three years and only then were they going to release me into the reserves. I didn't want to do that military career, because really after all I'd never planned to be a professional soldier. But because I'd done well, they literally wouldn't leave me in peace. And I agreed - I became a professional soldier.
Period
Interview
Leon Glazer
Tag(s)