3.
THE POLISH PRINCE
JANÓW PODLASKI,
EASTERN POLAND, 1938
Four hundred and thirty-five miles due east of the plotters at Berlin’s Army High Command, the staff of Janów Podlaski Stud Farm had no idea that the Germans had designs on their purebred Arabians. The horses here at Poland’s only national stud farm lived in lush meadows that bordered the sparkling Bug River. Galloping across the farm’s grassy fields, they seemed to float on an ethereal plane—their silken tails caught the wind like unfurled banners; their tread was light enough to dance a Chopin polonaise.
Inside one of the stud farm’s roomy box stalls, at four-thirty A.M. on April 30, 1938, a gray mare delivered a colt onto a thick bed of clean straw. From the moment he struggled upright on long, awkward legs and his luminous dark brown eyes gazed out upon the world, he attracted notice, his perfect proportions immediately marking him as one of the most promising foals of the year. On his wide forehead, he had a large white star that looked remarkably like an outline of his native Poland, and his feet were white up to his fetlocks—a marking known as socks. These would add extra flash each time he lifted his hooves. Between his two nostrils, he had one more bright spot of white—a snip—which accentuated his delicate flaring nostrils, coal black on the outside, pink as a conch on the inside. His grand name, Witez, was fitting for such a fine foal. It was an old Polish word meaning “warrior, chieftain, knight,” and wrapped up in the name were the concepts of honor, courage, and loyalty.
Established in 1817, the white brick stables at Janów Podlaski formed a U around a large courtyard; its central stable was named Zegarowa—the Clock Stable—for the square clock tower that crowned its center. The buildings’ gray slate roofs reflected the spring sunshine. Flanked on all sides by ample pastures, the breeding stables at Janów followed traditional precepts.
The first mentions of Arabian horses bred in Poland date back to the late seventeenth century. Introduced into Poland by the Ottoman Turks, they became so sought after that in the nineteenth century, a handful of wealthy Polish noblemen traveled to Arabia in search of purebreds, bringing them home to create breeding stables on their large estates. Bolshevik marauders in 1917 raided most of the large Polish stud farms and slaughtered the horses, which they viewed as playthings of princes. Horses hung from the barn rafters, their throats slit. Stable courtyards turned into lakes of blood. Of the five hundred registered purebred Arabians in Poland prior to 1917, only fifty survived the raids. In 1918, at the close of World War I, the count of purebred horses at Janów was zero. Painstakingly, the farm’s director, Stanislaw Pohoski, had rebuilt this stud farm from the ground up. It had taken almost twenty years to recover, but now, in the spring of 1938, Poland’s national breeding program was in full swing, with thirty-three broodmares producing a bumper crop of promising foals.
The stud farm’s assistant director, Andrzej Kristalovich, was a quiet young man with a serious angular face. Born in Vienna, Andrzej had grown up around horses, as his father worked on some of Poland’s greatest horse estates. As a boy, fascinated with machines and flight, Andrzej first wanted to become an aviator, but his love for horses won out. (Still, he indulged his fondness for machines by tooling around in a shiny new American Ford car.)
In December 1938, Kristalovich arrived at Janów to take up his position as assistant director of the stud farm. Witez was not yet a year old. The young Pole quickly decided that the bay colt with the white star was the cream of that year’s crop and that Janów Podlaski would soon regain the stature it had enjoyed before the Great War. This year, the best stallion, Ofir, had produced three magnificent colts: Witez and his two half brothers, Witraz (Stained Glass) and Wielki Szjlam (Grand Slam). The farm’s director, forty-three-year-old Stanislaw Pohoski, was twenty years his senior and would eventually retire. Kristalovich hoped that he would one day succeed him as director of Poland’s national stud farm, and that together, he and the three colts of 1938 and those to come would build up Polish Arabian horse breeding to new heights. Kristalovich lingered next to the pasture fence as Witez cavorted alongside his mother, Federajca. The dam, a gray mare, had a rare marking called “the bloody shoulder.” According to Arabian lore, a mare with this distinctive patch of reddish hair would give birth to horses that would win glory in battle.
At the beginning of 1939, though everything at Janów appeared prosperous and serene, dark clouds of trouble were massing all around the peaceful stables. Within just six months, by the last week in August, the Germans and Russians would sign a non-aggression pact, secretly agreeing that they would not fight over Poland but, rather, divide the country into two spheres of influence. One week later, on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland from the west. Witez and his brothers were just a year old.
Janów Podlaski was situated five miles from the Bug River, which formed the border with its eastern neighbor, Russia. Any thought that the Germans would be slow to venture so far east was soon dispelled. In just five days, the German blitzkrieg had broken across the Vistula River, which roughly parallels the Bug, running through Poland’s center. It had seemed like an impenetrable barrier. The Germans were 150 miles from Janów and advancing rapidly.
As the situation grew more threatening, the stud farm’s small staff huddled together, discussing their plans in worried whispers. Kristalovich listened carefully as Pohoski weighed their options. The stud farm’s director was old enough to remember the depredations visited upon them the last time the horses of Janów Podlaski had been trapped in a war zone. As they talked, the men surveyed the fruits of their labor: the dappled mares with foals at their sides, the regal stallion Ofir, the three glorious yearling colts. The thought of them being slaughtered was devastating. To embark on a long overland trip with the horses would be fraught with difficulty, but the director feared staying put even more. No good solution presented itself. After days of wavering, Pohoski made a final decision. They would evacuate the entire staff and all of the horses. Their route would take them east over the Bug River, then south toward Romania, where they hoped to find refuge—a trek of more than five hundred overland miles.
On the morning of September 11, 1939, the unlikely group set off on the highway: Pohoski took the lead, driving a carriage containing their belongings, pulled by two horses; next came the stallion manager on foot, leading the boisterous group of more than a dozen stallions. A young groom had hold of Witez’s lead rope. As the prince waltzed out of the stable, eyes bright and tail held high, he looked as if he were embarking on a joyful promenade instead of the flight of his life. Kristalovich led the last group—the most vulnerable, the mares with frolicking foals at their sides.
The long line of 250 fine-boned Arabians snaked down the narrow, rutted country roads; the percussive sound of their hoofbeats filled the air as they passed humble farms and simple dwellings whose inhabitants startled at the sight of the prancing equine princes and princesses, as out of place as a royal entourage driving through a peasant village. But when they reached the main east-west highway, the group from Janów joined a flood of desperate people—some on foot, others with horse-drawn carts overloaded with their possessions. The roads were filled with refugees streaming east from the German advance. Their fellow travelers shared terrifying tales—the German Luftwaffe had been strafing refugee columns and attacking civilians. The roads were not safe. The group from Janów decided to travel only at night.
Witez’s groom watched him with a worried eye. The colt was high-spirited, but after hours of trekking, his fatigue was evident. Soon Witez and his two half brothers were having trouble keeping pace with the older stallions. On the crowded roadways, the horses were difficult to control. Kristalovich tried to keep a head count, but the grooms handling the horses could only look on helplessly if one started and broke away. Soon some of the youngest foals were dragging behind as their mares nudged and pushed them along. Before long, a few started to stumble and fall, unable to take another step.
Then, as they crested a hill, disaster struck. The group came upon an enormous Polish military convoy blocking the center of the road. The horses in front panicked at the unexpected sight and started to rear and bolt. A moment later, in a chain reaction, the roadway became a battlefield of horses with flailing hooves turning and spinning in all directions. It was complete pandemonium. Grooms tried desperately to hold on to their charges, but in the confusion, a large group of horses broke away. Kristalovich watched helplessly as Witez tore off, heading toward the deepest reaches of the forest. By the time the Janów men gained control, more than eighty horses had fled—including the three most precious, Witez, Stained Glass, and Grand Slam.
Unable to leave the main road or abandon their horses in order to search the woods, the diminished group from Janów had no choice but to keep moving forward. Kristalovich vowed that when they had reached a safe place, he would return to search out the left-behind horses. As they moved on, the air sounded with the whinnies of the remaining horses, crying for their lost comrades. Somewhere in the forest, Witez wandered alone. Devastated, Stanislaw Pohoski pulled out his pistol and pointed it at his temple, determined to kill himself as a matter of honor. Kristalovich spoke to him softly but urgently. His duty was to save the remaining horses. They could not give up now. After a pause that seemed to last forever, Pohoski lowered his pistol and returned it to his holster.
The group forged on, watching as the younger foals continued to struggle, their tender hooves deteriorating from the long journey. After a while they noticed that refugees were now moving in both directions—some fleeing east, others moving west. Everyone seemed confused about which way might lead to safety. The roads were cluttered with people and blockades hastily thrown up by the outgunned Polish forces. The low visibility at night posed its own dangers. One night, they stumbled into barbed wire strung across the road. Before they realized what had happened, eight of the horses were so badly entangled that no one could extricate them. Shrill cries rent the air, their terror only serving to bind the wires more tightly around them. Silently, Kristalovich pulled out his pistol. Eight single well-placed shots rang out in the night. The screams ceased, but the night became heavier, blacker, and more desperate for the refugees from Janów.
There was no promise of relief. Word soon reached the group that the Russians had crossed Poland’s eastern border on September 17 and were heading toward them. After three exhausting days of trekking, the riders, grooms, and remaining horses finally made it to a small wooden bridge that led over the Bug River. Safety from the Germans lay on the other side. When the last of the horses safely crossed the bridge, the men of Janów thought their worst troubles were behind them. With renewed hope, they headed toward the village of Kovol, a couple of miles down the road, hoping to find a place to rest and shelter the horses. But as they neared the village, they saw that something was terribly wrong. Orange flames stood out against the sky: The village was on fire. The sound of artillery boomed deafeningly close and was getting closer. After days of exhausting and dangerous travel, no safer than when they started off, the group could advance no farther.
Not seeing any alternative, Pohoski made an agonizing decision: They would return to Janów, collecting the left-behind horses as they went. Footsore, hungry, the dwindling group headed back along the same crowded road. As they began to retrace their steps, they felt as if the road were under a shadow. The entire journey, the loss of the young horses—it had all been for nothing. After a few miles, they were back at the place where they had crossed the Bug, but now the bridge lay in rubble. The river was impassable. Heartsick, they turned south. They would not even have the chance to retrieve the horses left along the road. A few miles downstream, unable to find an intact bridge, the men forced the tired horses to ford the river.
Thin, lame, and exhausted, the decimated group arrived at Janów a few days later, hobbled through the gates of their home, and started a period of tense waiting, knowing that the invading army would soon arrive. The white buildings and green fields appeared unchanged. The tall clock tower over the stable measured out the slow tick of time. On September 25, the waiting ended: Six Russian tanks appeared on the horizon. Janów Podlaski was under Russian occupation.
At first, the Russian troops showed little interest in the horses. Kristalovich and Pohoski and the rest of the staff tried to stay out of sight, emerging only to feed and care for their animals. Warily, they watched, wondering what would happen next. On the morning of October 5, the Polish inhabitants of Janów noted with some relief that the Russians appeared to be getting ready to leave. But their relief soon turned to terror: The soldiers were preparing to take the horses with them—no matter that the animals were in no condition to travel. But the Poles’ protests were fruitless. The small staff of the stud farm was no match for a regiment of Russian soldiers.
Kristalovich watched in horror as a brutish Russian soldier tramped into the stall of a small gray mare named Nejada. As he attempted to put on her halter, the mare, seeming to understand the danger, lashed out—striking the Russian and injuring him so severely that he decided to leave her alone. The troops torched the stables as they left, destroying everything they could before leaving. They even wrenched the windows from the frames.
By the afternoon of October 5, Nejada was the only remaining equine inhabitant of Janów. The wrecked white stables, badly scorched from the fires, stood empty. The rest of the farm was eerily peaceful. Swans floated on a pond that lazily lapped the edges of the verdant pastures. Janów’s inhabitants had watched the horses’ hindquarters, their high-carried tails and springy powerful hocks, head east in the company of Russian tanks and disappear. (Only after the war would the Poles learn that their final destination was the Tersk stud farm in Russia, almost a thousand miles away.) Kristalovich and his staff had done everything they could to protect the horses. Now, just five short weeks since the invasion had started, they were left with nothing but empty stables. Where just a few weeks ago Poland’s most beautiful living treasures had galloped across the meadows, their coats shining in the sunlight, now barn cats wandered through the stable aisles, past lifeless stalls where half-eaten rations of oats lay untouched in the mangers and water buckets remained half full.
Just a few weeks after the Russian departure, a different enemy approached from the opposite direction. A shiny black chauffeur-driven limousine rolled up the drive and into the eerily quiet stable yard. As the car braked in front of Janów’s tall clock tower, out stepped the newly appointed commissioner for horse breeding and stud farming in the former Poland. Gustav Rau, dressed in his Sumatra greatcoat, rolling a cigar between his fingers, had arrived at the scorched and looted stables of Janów Podlaski ready to take charge. His task was to reassemble the Polish horse-breeding industry for the glory of the Third Reich.
It was a quirk of Nazi philosophy, so inhumane to humans, that animals were treated with the utmost care and kindness. Nazi Germany was the first government to outlaw vivisection, the practice of experimenting on animals while they were still alive. The Nazis also reformed the definitions of humane treatment of animals and put into place safeguards for animal welfare that predated reforms adopted by other countries. Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and while he was not a horseman and did not appear to take a direct interest in the horse-breeding operations, he supported rebuilding the Polish breeding programs, as they went directly along with his greater reprehensible aims for the Polish territories. In a cruel and ironic twist of fate, the German invaders, whose express aim was to relocate, enslave, massacre, and eventually annihilate Poland’s human inhabitants, prized the well-bred Polish horses. The goal for the Polish horse industry under German rule was twofold: first, to breed horses to keep up with the insatiable need for horses used for transport and logistics; and second, to provide workhorses to help cultivate the seized Polish lands.
Gustav Rau, Olympic organizer, connoisseur of fine horses, had a rapacious appetite for the world’s most elegant specimens. The Arabian was known by horse breeders as “the great improver.” Breeding Arabian stallions with the mares of other breeds tended to improve conformation, temperament, and rideability—all characteristics prized in the military horse. In the convoluted logic that ruled the concept of pure-bloodedness, Arabian horses were deemed to have pure blood, so they could be paired with other breeds without affecting the breed’s integrity. In the words of Hans Fellgiebel, Janów’s new Rau-appointed director, Janów had been, before the war, “the continued source of the cleanest and purest blood which made the domestic country horse what it is today.” Rau immediately set to work restoring Poland’s premier stud farm. With the organizational skills that had allowed him to put together the equestrian competitions at the Olympics, he set out to find the horses lost along the route when the Poles had tried to flee, and bring them back to German-run Janów.
All along the escape route, patriotic Poles, recognizing that these horses were Polish treasure, had found and stashed the runaways in barns and sheds, daubing them with mud to disguise their beauty and hide their distinctive brands. But the Polish peasants were afraid of the new German overlords and handed over the horses when asked. Even so, eighty percent of the Arabians from Janów were never recovered. Among those lost forever was Witez’s dam, Federajca. Witez, thin, bedraggled, and pitiably weak, limped back into Janów Podlaski along with his two half brothers, lucky to be among the thirty-odd young horses that were found scattered about the Polish countryside. The son of Federajca, the mare with the bloody shoulder, had survived his first battle.
The Polish employees of Janów hung back at first, unsure of their welcome and afraid of the German intruders. But Kristalovich’s passion for his horses was too great for him to stay away long. Seeing that Hans Fellgiebel, Rau’s appointee to run Janów, appeared fair-minded, he stepped forward and volunteered his services as a humble groom—a huge step down from his previous position as assistant director, but the best he could do if he wanted to stay with the horses. After a while the farm returned to a topsy-turvy kind of normal. At least the horses were no longer in direct danger.
Janów Podlaski was not the only stud farm taken over by Rau. All over Poland, carefully tended equestrian stud farms were coming under siege, some invaded by Russian forces, others seized by Germans. Neither fared uniformly well. Still, as a general rule, the Germans looked after the horses, which they considered to be valuable assets, whereas those horses in the pathway of Russian troops were more likely to be lost or killed. The Arabians seized at Janów and transported to the Tersk stud farm in Russia (and then eventually moved again, on foot, all the way to Kazakhstan) fared poorly. Of the twenty-seven mares seized by the Russians at Janów, only nine lived longer than three years. All in all, the horses and the staff of the Polish stud farms suffered greatly during the war years. Relative to the other farms, those in Gustav Rau’s dominion fared better than most. The native Poles worked tirelessly, cooperating with those who had come as conquerors, and made tremendous personal sacrifice on behalf of the horses.
Rau watched over an expanding network of German-controlled horse-breeding establishments in Poland. His sumptuous lodgings, seized from a wealthy Jewish textile merchant in Lodz, were within view of the barbed-wire fences of the city’s ghetto. He bragged to those in his dominion that he had “a direct line to the führer.” The high-handed chief of horse breeding was described by one who knew him as “a man in love with power” as he made the rounds of his new dominion, carefully documenting the details of all the horses in the territories seized by Germany. Since Rau had first observed the top equine specimens of all nations at the 1912 Olympic Games, he had dreamed of being able to breed the perfect horse for Germany. Now, with all of Poland’s 3.9 million horses under his jurisdiction, he had an unparalleled opportunity to try to do so. At Janów Podlaski, the luminous, intelligent, light-footed Witez had not escaped his notice. Those who knew Rau said he never forgot a horse, and indeed, he would not forget the Polish prince, Witez.
To gaze upon the blood bay Arabian Witez was to imagine how nobility made flesh would appear. But what did the stallion see as he gazed at the chaotic world around him? His country of birth was under siege, scene of more death, willful destruction, mayhem, and darkness than any other country in Europe. His father had been carried off like looted treasure; his mother had been lost in the turmoil and would never be found. Every morning, he whickered when he saw his groom coming to feed him. He needed what all horses need—care and kindness, fresh oats, clean straw, exercise, a loving word, and a gentle pat. Around him swirled the dark forces of war: men driven by a lust for power. Of this, Witez, now two years old, knew nothing. Squeezed between Russia and Germany, two great powers, Polish citizens, both equine and human, were caught in the middle. Gustav Rau had imposed an artificial peace on the stables of Janów Podlaski, but their war was not yet over. It had only just begun.
WITEZ IN GERMANY.