JANÓW PODLASKI, POLAND,
MAY 1944
In the spring of 1944, while Podhajsky struggled to keep his stallions safe in occupied Vienna, the war was creeping closer to the German-controlled Arabian stud at Janów Podlaski. Once again, Janów’s location, just a few miles from Russia, put the farm in close proximity to the fighting. In this eastern part of the country, the Polish resistance was making a ruckus—bombing trains, disrupting German activities in the area. Adding to the danger, the enormous Red Army was on the march from the east. The Polish staff of Janów waited anxiously. Their safety was dependent on the decisions of their German occupiers. In early May, they received orders from Gustav Rau. Nine of Janów’s best Arabians would be shipped to Hostau, where, with the careful movements of a chess master, Rau had been strategically moving the very finest horses. Among those chosen by Rau was the most valuable of all of the young stallions—Witez.
In the stable under the tall clock tower, one of Janów’s most devoted grooms, Jan Ziniewicz, moved with slow, saddened steps and a heavy heart. He walked from stall to stall, speaking a soft word to each horse as he passed. When he approached Witez, the Polish prince greeted him with a soft nudge. Ziniewicz slipped a halter on four-year-old Witez, then gave his nose an affectionate stroke, tracing a finger over the small white marking on his muzzle. The stallion’s thin fluted nostrils quivered and he reached his head forward, pricking his small ears toward the groom. Ziniewicz was just over five feet tall, with the craggy, well-lined face of a man who had spent much of his life outdoors. He had a quiet, sympathetic manner that the horses all responded to. Witez was no exception. Realizing that he had no choice but to follow German orders, Ziniewicz clipped a lead rope to the halter’s brass ring, and the stallion willingly followed him out of the stable. Today was the day when Witez would board a train bound for Czechoslovakia.
On the station platform in the nearby village, grooms circled their sleek charges, waiting their turn to board the train. Each Arabian was cosseted in a soft blanket and had all four legs swathed in cotton batting, neatly held in place by flannel bandages. The train’s interior had been specially fitted out with plush padding to protect the precious horses on their journey. One by one, each of the nine selected Arabians walked up the ramp. Ziniewicz had been assigned to accompany the horses on their journey. One of the stud farm assistants, a young woman named Liselotte, lingered next to Witez as he was preparing to board. She wondered if she would ever see him again. As the train lurched and started to pull away, Liselotte whispered, “Goodbye, Witez, go with God.” The train whistle hooted twice and Witez departed on the Prague-bound train, not knowing that this would be the last time he would ever see his homeland.
Ziniewicz watched out for Witez’s well-being during the nine-day train ride, which took them west through Warsaw and Lodz, then south toward Prague. When they finally arrived at Hostau, the groom found familiar faces from Poland—the stud master Rudofsky and the kindly young veterinarian Lessing, both of whom had been frequent visitors at Janów. Still, the familiar faces offered only fleeting comfort: Ziniewicz had to say a hurried goodbye to his horses, then, following orders, turned around to return to Janów, leaving the pride of Poland behind on foreign soil. Back at Janów, Ziniewicz missed the bright eyes that shone from Witez’s noble face, which was lit up by the uneven white star splashed across his forehead. The Polish staff of Janów Podlaski could not believe that their treasured horse had slipped from their grasp. Even as conditions in Poland had become more dangerous, at least they could protect and care for their beloved charges in their own home. Now Witez was far away, on a farm in a foreign country controlled by Germans. Nobody knew if Witez would ever return. Now, of Ofir’s three greatest sons of 1938, only two remained—Stained Glass and Grand Slam.
SETTLED AT HOSTAU, WITEZ fared well. Hay and grain were plentiful, and the stable was roomy and comfortable. Witez and his stablemates, though far from Poland, were well cared for and no longer in immediate danger. The remainder of Rau’s thousands of valuable horses, flung across the vast territory of Poland and the Ukraine, including those left behind at Janów, were directly in the path of an oncoming tsunami of warfare. As the Russian Army pushed westward through the Ukraine and Belorussia and into eastern Poland, routing the German Army and recapturing territories it had held, Rau’s horse farms fell directly in their path. Already the newly established Lipizzaner stud farm at Debica had been overrun, the horses relocated just in time. All over Rau’s empire, anxious horsemen worried and wondered, awaiting any word of instruction. At the stallion depot in Drogomyśl, which sat on the eastern bank of Poland’s Vistula River near the Czechoslovakian border, the station master, Brandt, made his wife and children practice harnessing the stallions and loading the carriages. If the Russians approached, he drilled his family, they would need to drive the horses across the Vistula, fording the river if the bridges were blown out. Their destination would be Hostau, over more than 250 miles to the west.
Back at Janów Podlaski, the staff of the stud continued to wait for orders from the occupiers. Frequent skirmishes occurred between the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet partisans operating in the area. In May 1944, a German bomb landed on Janów, partially destroying one of the stallion barns. Fortunately, the horses were out at pasture and none was hurt. Only five years after the near destruction of the stud farm at the hands of the Russians, the staff of Janów stood dazed in front of the smoking ruins of one of their newly rebuilt stables.
In late June, Rau finally announced that the entire farm and all of its livestock would be evacuated. At least this time the horses would not have to flee on foot: Rau had arranged train transport to Sohland, a small city several hundred miles to the west, inside Germany proper. Rau persuaded a retired cavalry officer in Sohland, Colonel von Bonnet, to open his stables to the refugees and take over responsibility for the horses. With any luck, they could ride out the remainder of the war without having to move again. Even aboard trains, the horses would be undertaking a dangerous journey. Polish partisans were operating in strength in the area around Janów and might very well try to blow up the trains as they fled.
Late at night, in the quiet of his home, Andrzej Kristalovich and his wife discussed the plan in anxious whispers. Traveling with their young daughter would be dangerous, and venturing west toward Germany was marching into the jaws of the enemy. But ending up in the hands of the Russians was also terrifying. Hans Fellgiebel, the farm’s German director since 1940, had established a good relationship with the Polish staff at Janów. He had protected the many craftsmen, such as farriers and saddle makers, who worked on the farm. In spite of his German uniform, he had earned their trust concerning the horses. In the end, Kristalovich and his wife agreed—his primary duty was to stick with the horses. He had been entrusted to safeguard Poland’s national treasure—especially when Stanislaw Pohoski, the farm’s former director, suddenly fell ill and died. Kristalovich was now the highest-ranking Pole at Janów.
On July 1, ninety-six of Janów’s remaining horses were boarded onto trains. Witez’s two half brothers, Stained Glass and Grand Slam, pranced up the gangplanks, and the doors were bolted shut behind them. Trucks loaded with sandbags raced alongside the tracks to protect the trains from those who would try to fire upon them as they fled. In spite of the great risks, the horses left Janów without incident.
Nineteen days later, a second shipment of horses left Janów, also headed for Germany. Just one day later, on July 20, 1944, a dramatic event in the Third Reich had an outsize impact on the fleeing men and horses from Janów: A group of conspirators attempted to assassinate Hitler inside his Wolf’s Lair bunker in East Prussia. The purpose of the plot was to assassinate Hitler, seize control of the government, and negotiate more favorable peace terms with the Allies. A bomb exploded, but due to it being slightly misplaced, Hitler suffered only minor injuries.
The July 20 plot had hit close to home for the escapees from Janów. One of the co-conspirators in the plot was Hans Fellgiebel’s brother Erich, who was swiftly caught and executed. A few days later, Hans was arrested and imprisoned in Berlin.
Though Rau’s empire was slipping away from him, he struggled to maintain control. The horses he had shipped to Sohland were out of immediate danger, but all was not well. The crowded conditions, the lack of staff, and the scarcity of good-quality food in these borrowed stables had left the beautiful Arabians in pitiful condition. To make matters worse, von Bonnet got daily demands from the German Army to release his men to join the fight, yet he had scarcely enough men to tend to the horses. Conditions kept deteriorating. In January 1945, a bedraggled herd of hundreds of horses with their grooms and handlers appeared at von Bonnet’s estate, pleading for shelter. The horses and men had trekked hundreds of miles through ice and snow, abandoning two of Rau’s stud farms, Boguslawice and Kozienice, farther to the east. They crowded into the stables where Witez’s brothers were kept.
The conditions, already difficult, became deplorable. Colonel von Bonnet was torn apart by demands—he had barely enough men to care for the Arabians, and both space and fodder were growing short. Kristalovich and Ziniewicz did everything they could to help, but von Bonnet’s estate had been pushed beyond its capacity. There were too many horses crowded into one place. Just twelve months earlier, these horses had been the best kept in all of Europe, and now their condition was pitiful—cramped stabling, untended hooves, respiratory infection, dull coats. The horses looked like feedlot rejects, not equine royalty.
Finally, Gustav Rau arrived in Sohland to take charge. He decided to whittle down the herd until only the very best remained. With pleading eyes, the bedraggled horses seemed to watch warily as Rau made his rounds. Kristalovich and Ziniewicz had tended to Witez’s brothers carefully, currying them until they shone and eking out extra rations of grain: Among the worn-down lot, they looked better than most.
After a ruthless triage, only Rau’s selections were allowed to stay at von Bonnet’s estate. He instructed the staff to give the rejected horses to locals. As a motley assortment of local farmers and low-ranking soldiers led the formerly magnificent Arabians away, Gustav Rau took great pains to tell the new owners that the horses were being given “as a loan to fighting troops and soldiers, to be returned after the war.” One by one, some of Poland’s most priceless horses were led down the country lane and disappeared out of sight. None of these Arabians would ever be recovered for Poland. Once again, the two Polish horsemen could only watch as the number of purebreds from Janów diminished.
By February 1945, six months after fleeing Janów, the men began to realize that Sohland was no longer safe. In spite of the lack of sufficient staff and the remaining horses’ poor condition, they had no choice but to keep moving west. This time, their destination was a large army remounting station at Torgau, about ninety miles away. Trains could no longer be spared, so just as they had done five years earlier in the opposite direction, they would have to flee on foot. The plan was to head first to Dresden, covering fifteen miles a day, with one night to break the journey, then continue to Torgau after a few days of rest. The stallions would set off first. Kristalovich would follow with the most vulnerable group—the mares and foals.
As they made their way along the narrow, hilly country lanes, an icy rain soaked through their wool coats and blankets and froze in treacherous ruts on the ground. Wind whipped through the men’s drenched outer garments, through the horses’ manes, and through their dull, heavy winter coats. Mares with swollen bellies trudged along, heavy-footed, their heads hanging and eyes dull. Kristalovich watched the broodmares anxiously; the harsh conditions would affect them first. Soon enough, his worst fears were realized—the stress put some of the mares into labor. Their tiny newborns could not keep up. The men banged on doors, trying to requisition wagons to transport the newborn foals, but the area was so stripped that four-wheeled conveyances were almost impossible to find. By this point, millions of people in the eastern part of Germany’s realm were trying to flee in advance of the Russian Army’s arrival. Wagons, cars, trucks, gasoline—all were scarce. Most had been seized for the war effort, and whatever was left had been hoarded by civilians to enable their escape.
In this time of misery, no one had sympathy to spare for this downtrodden group of horses and humans from Poland. Kristalovich cradled the wobbly newborns in his arms, sheltering them with his own overcoat; he watched helplessly as the light flickered from their eyes. Still, they had no choice but to keep moving.
When night fell following that bitter first day, they were unable to find shelter. They knocked on doors, beseeching farmers to spare an empty pasture, but found no offers. Finally, von Bonnet and Kristalovich decided they had no choice but to continue riding through the dark of night, hoping to reach Dresden before morning.
Defying their own exhaustion, the lead group of about fifty stallions, including Stained Glass and Grand Slam, covered thirty-five miles in twenty-four hours. They had joined the ranks of more than half a million other refugees fleeing west, toward Dresden—which everyone believed would not be a target of Allied bombs because of its magnificent architecture and significance as a center of art and culture. In Dresden, the train stations were jammed; the Grosser Garten, a spacious garden in the city’s center, was crowded with the tents of almost two hundred thousand refugees, and endless columns of wagons, horse-drawn carts, cars, and trucks lumbered toward the city. Bedraggled families, footsore and weary, marched along the roadsides, nursing infants and lending an arm to the elderly. Among this mass, the stallions of Janów marched until they reached the outskirts of the city.
Their timing could not have been worse. As they approached the city on the night of February 13, a Dresden radio announcer interrupted the program: “Achtung! Achtung! An attack is coming! Go to your cellars at once!” In the center of Dresden, people hurried underground, but on the city’s outskirts, where masses of refugees, including the group from Janów, were milling around, most never received the message. Besides, there was nowhere to hide. Green tracers, called Christmas trees, lit up the sky over the old city. A few moments later, a crushing roar rumbled above.
The stallions squealed in panic, but soon the high-pitched sounds were drowned out by the unceasing roar of planes overhead. In the words of an eyewitness, “It was as if a huge noisy conveyor belt was rolling over us, a noise punctuated with detonations and tremors.” Unwittingly, the men had ridden the horses directly into one of the biggest air attacks of the war: the Allied bombing of Dresden, during which 722 heavy bombers from the RAF and 527 from the United States Army Air Forces dropped 3,900 tons of explosives in two waves about three hours apart, resulting in a firestorm that destroyed most of central Dresden.
The entire bowl of the sky turned a violent crimson orange. As flames engulfed the city, the horizon turned fiery orange-white, and a thick cloud of black smoke obscured the sky. The stallions panicked, rearing and lashing out, crazily trying to escape the cacophony and intense heat. People lost their bearings, and the horses, too, wheeling as they pawed and reared, the whites of their eyes flashing and picking up the orange and crimson colors of the bone-shattering explosions. Men and animals fled in all directions, but the hellfire rained down everywhere—there was nowhere to run.
Jan Ziniewicz, strong and wiry but weighing barely 140 pounds, focused every bit of his strength on the two stallions in his charge. Strobing flashes of light revealed a terrifying picture—craters and flames, people on fire, horses rearing and running in all directions, and still the terrifying sound, like a freight train running through the sky. Stained Glass and Grand Slam strained hard against their halters. Their eyes whitened in fear, and their nostrils trumpeted like the gills on a landed fish. Ziniewicz braced himself, holding tight to the two lead lines as the ropes burned painfully through his palms. He wrapped the leads several times around his hands for better traction. In spite of his gloves, the ropes finally stripped the skin off his palms. Sweat beaded up on his brow, but he clenched his teeth and held on. A flash of fire and a singe of burning hair almost blinded him—Grand Slam’s tail was on fire. Unable to reach it, Ziniewicz blinked and simply held his breath, waiting for the fire to engulf them, but the flame sputtered out.
Then, all of a sudden, the unholy roar ended. Aside from Grand Slam’s singed tail, Ziniewicz and his two horses had made it through the bombing unscathed. But he could not even see half of the group—all around him was a mass of wailing people, charred bodies, and smoking craters.
Kristalovich, traveling with the mares and foals, was half a day behind. When his group arrived along the road just at the city’s outskirts, he came upon the charred corpses of seventeen of his beloved stallions and began to weep. At last, he came upon Jan Ziniewicz, whose palms were lacerated with deep rope wounds. Stained Glass and Grand Slam had survived. The two men embraced. Together, they tried to round up the survivors.
The group congregated in the Weisser Hirsch forest just outside the city limits, now flooded with refugees and stricken animals. Some of the surviving animals were too tired and injured to continue on. Von Bonnet and Kristalovich handed over the wounded horses to an equestrian field hospital, itself on the run, and after only two days of rest, what was left of the group limped on toward the final destination in Torgau, about forty-five miles farther northwest, a journey of three additional days.
When they finally arrived, they found the stables overflowing—not a single stall was available. Eventually, they found refuge in an empty riding hall, and the exhausted men bedded down on the sand right next to their charges.
The next day, Colonel von Bonnet returned to Sohland to evacuate the rest of the horses and personnel from his estate. By then, the Russians were so close to his farm that he could hear them in the distance. Just as he prepared to leave, the local Nazi authority told him that he must stay and fight or “be lined up against the wall and shot.” Von Bonnet ignored the Kreisleiter’s orders and hurried away, hoping to evacuate some of the horses left behind on the initial trip. But von Bonnet never made it back to the group from Janów. He was captured by the Russians and would die of dysentery in one of their prison camps.
Among the crowded and wretched refugees in Torgau, Kristalovich and Ziniewicz did what they could to care for the remaining horses. They had no time to focus on the heartbreak of their losses, as every waking moment was taken up by caring for the surviving Arabians. In March, the group moved once again, by train, and found shelter still farther west, in Nettlelau, Germany, where they were able to ride out the war. More than two hundred purebred Arabians had fled Janów in January 1944. There were fewer than fifty remaining. Kristalovich and Ziniewicz had no idea what fate had befallen the few prized stallions and mares selected to be sent to Hostau—they could only hope for the best.