Defying the Fates
The Remarkable Story of a Jew Who Survived in Nazi Europe
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Knowing the German character, disposition, instincts, and prejudices, I kept a ramrod straight posture, my hands stiffly at my sides, and I spoke as a recruit would to his sergeant. Beside the German Gestapo man at a smaller table was a Ukrainian in a non-descript German army uniform. He acted as a translator and spoke Polish with me. After routine questions about my name, birthplace, address, employment and so forth, he asked me whether I knew a fellow by the name of Janek X. "Of course I know him! He’s my roommate," I answered. "What do you know about him," he snapped. "Not much," I replied. "He comes from Lwow, at least that is where his family comes from." I explained that Firma Stronski had advised me about the possibility of sharing room rent with another worker, and had put me in touch with him. I had shared a room with him for only a few weeks, and we hardly saw one another, since we worked on different crews. All this time I tried to keep a sincere, dull expression on my face. In the midst of the interrogation, however, I cheekily demanded to know what had happened to him, why he had been taken away and when he would be coming back. "I need him to pay his half of the rent. Is he going to come back and pay his share? Or do I have to go out and find someone to pay half? I can’t afford to pay it all myself." I kept this whining and complaining up for quite a long time. The Gestapo man was at first stupefied, and then infuriated at my self-absorption and imbecility. Rising in a rage from behind his desk, he screamed "RAUS!!" and motioned for me to get the hell out of his office. I hastened to obey! I suppose I was the only Jew ever to be thrown out of a Gestapo interrogation instead of being arrested. It wasn’t very long before I established connections and began helping these partisans at night to blow up the exit ramps for the airplanes that were hidden in holes in the mountains. The planes needed these ramps to get to the runways, and by blowing holes in the access strips, we prevented their getting out. They were locked in their holes in the mountains until the damage was repaired, in about 2 or 3 days. Some nights I was awakened by detonations. Although my little room with an Italian family was about 2 Km. away from the Osoppo airfield, I knew that our dynamite (stolen from our Italian building contractors) had destroyed the approaches to the runways. Frightened people often ran out of their houses, thinking a bombing raid was occurring. I played my part, but laughed inwardly, rejoicing. The German airport command never let anything be known about the damage --- but we, "the Partisani" and I knew! Although it was quite risky, I constantly removed dynamite and other explosive materiel -- blasting caps, and other paraphernalia, such as lightening wires -- from the magazines and put them into my little Fiat car. Then on my way back to the home base, I would drive very slowly and stop somewhere on the side of the road where there were bushes, where I had little hide-outs dug and covered with stones. Here I put all the materiel, then pretended to relieve myself. Afterwards I just kept on going. As we pulled out of the railway station and slowed down to cross the railroad line, two men in civilian clothes jumped onto the running boards of our truck, one on each side. The driver had enough presence of mind to push the man on his side away immediately. He fell off, and the driver stepped on the gas. The other guy hung on and produced an automatic pistol, which he started firing. As he fired, I opened my door and pushed him off. It was one of the partisans trying to kill us. The four fired bullets zipped by me and by my driver, chipping the steering wheel as well as some of the instruments of the truck; but we were spared serious injury save for a few scratches from the bakelite that flew around from the steering wheel. It was an irony that I so narrowly escaped death from the hands of an Ally.
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About the Book
There are many Holocaust survivor stories and eyewitness accounts of Nazi horror. This the compelling story of a young Jewish man who manages to elude detection at the center of the German occupied world, and with ingenuity and daring challenges the odds the fates normally provide. In his travels through war torn Poland, Austria, Ukraine, Crimea, Italy and Germany, he deals with family, friends, bureaucrats, sadists and partisans with resourcefulness and courage, constantly aware that discovery of his identity would mean certain death. He was an eyewitness that the German army and its officers were accomplices of the murder squads in the destruction of Polish and Russian Jewry. It is an extraordinary story of pluck, pathos, defiance and compassion, told with political acumen and sometimes with humor. You take a tour through the best, and the worst inhuman behavior, but come through it with understanding and hope that through education at least some of the mistakes and horrors of the past can be avoided.
About the Author
Henry Gleisner was born in 1924 in Vienna, Austria where he attended primary and high school. His father worked in the central offices of Austria’s largest bank as the executive assistant to Director Kiesler, the father of Hedy Kiesler, who became the famous Hedy Lammar (Henry’s first "crush"). The family moved in 1936 to Warsaw Poland, where his father became CEO of one of Poland’s premier motion picture production and distribution companies, MUZA-FILM. Because of the extensive spy network the Nazis maintained in Poland before the outbreak of World War II, his father was on a list of Nazi enemies with the German secret police (Gestapo). He ultimately was murdered in one of the most brutal concentration camps in Poland. Henry’s exceptional language proficiency in German, Polish, French, Italian, English, Russian, Ukrainian, etc., ultimately saved his life. To elude Nazi detection under German occupation, he maintained the false identity of a Catholic Pole by the name of Tadeusz Chwistek. He slowly worked himself up from a Polish slave laborer to assistant to a building site manager. Because the building firm received various government-military contracts all over occupied Europe, "Chwistek" was sent, transferred and shifted from Poland to the Crimea and the Caucasus to the Ukraine, and, in the middle of the War to heavily bombed Berlin, and to Italy. At the end of the War, he found himself where he started – in Austria. In 1944 in Italy he worked with the Italian underground to sabotage a German military airfield near Udine. He depicts his difficulties in regaining his true identity; and eventually worked for the American Military Government and the United Nations Refugee Relief Organization (UNRRA). After entering the United States he became a U. S. Citizen in 1952. He founded and operated an import/export company of sports equipment for over thirty years. In 1989, he received the coveted "E" Award for excellence in exporting from President Bush. Now semi-retired, he lectures at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington, Michigan. He prefers to converse with high school students, to explain through his experiences why past history is important to today, and imbue them with the sense of character and community, and that their voices do count.