Watching the Newsreels

By Leni Riefenstahl

Riefenstahl, 87, who served the Nazi cause by filming such propaganda masterpieces as Triumph of the Will, attended one of Hitler's regular movie nights at his Berchtesgaden retreat in late August 1939.

Before the main feature, as usual, the weekly newsreel was shown. The camera showed Moscow. A troop parade on Red Square. Stalin appeared in close-up. I watched Hitler intently looking at Stalin's face. Hitler interrupted, asking the projectionist to repeat the sequence two or three times. Visibly excited, he commented, "I rather like the way this man looks. I believe one could come to terms with him." Then he rose and retired to his room.

"Little Boxes of Ashes"

By Simone Veil

President of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982, Veil, now 62, was shipped to Auschwitz in 1944, where most of her family perished.

I was scared all the time. I was always aware that, after all, we could lose this war. As Jews, we felt more threatened. With the Anschluss, girls at our school who were refugees told of humiliation, of Jews being forced to scrub the sidewalks with toothbrushes in Vienna. When some told of receiving little boxes of ashes from Dachau, we had great difficulty believing that people were actually being killed. Nobody imagined that there could be a plan for extermination.

"I Thought the Heavens Had Fallen"

By Wojciech Jaruzelski

Poland's President, now 66, fled with his family to Lithuania and then Siberia three weeks after the Nazi invasion.

I still remember that sunny September day, the whizzing sound of German planes strafing defenseless refugees, exploding bombs, the stench of burning and dead horses at the roadside. I thought the heavens had fallen in on me. Relations between Lithuania and Poland were not very good, and we were held up at the border, adding to our sense of alarm and fear. We were convinced that we would return home soon, that a British-French offensive would enable the Polish army to go on fighting against the overwhelming forces of the enemy. Not for a moment did I think I would not return to Poland for more than four years.

"Waiting for Death"

By Ryszard Kapuscinski

The Polish journalist and author (The Emperor and Shah of Shahs) was seven when he and his family fled the Nazis.

I remember walking with my sister next to a horse-drawn cart. High up on the hay my grandfather was lying on a linen sheet. He was paralyzed. When the air raid started, the whole patiently marching crowd was suddenly filled with panic. People sought safety in ditches, in bushes, in the potato fields. On the now empty road there was only the cart on which my grandfather was lying. He could see the planes coming at him, how suddenly they dived down. When the planes disappeared, we returned to the cart and my mother wiped the sweat off Grandfather's face. After each raid sweat rolled down Grandfather's tired, emaciated face.

We encountered the corpses of horses everywhere. Poor horses, big defenseless animals that don't know how to hide. They stand motionless, waiting for death. It was always the corpses of horses -- black, bay, pied, chestnut -- lying upside down with the legs pointing into the air, their hooves admonishing the world. It was as if it were a war not between people but between horses, as if they were the only victims of the strife.

"We Could Do Nothing"

By Rafael Loc

Now 79, Loc (pronounced lotz) was a Polish lieutenant when the invasion began.

The stillness was shattered by the howling and screeching and booming of German bombers and artillery. The Messerschmitts came at us in waves. We could do nothing. We had no antiaircraft guns. We had nothing to return fire at their long-range artillery. Two hours after it began we were panic stricken, and our entire battalion jumped out of the trenches and ran toward our regimental headquarters.

Only half the battalion made it. We continued running and walking, but wherever we turned we met German artillery and tank fire. They were in back of us and in front of us. To the right was automatic fire; to the left we were shot at by artillery. One shell hit a mine 300 yards from us and set off a long line of Polish-laid mines; they exploded in domino fashion. We ran, we lay on the ground, we ran. We didn't know which way to go.

Captured after four days, Loc later became Poland's first Consul-General in Israel. Back in Warsaw, he was fired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during a wave of anti-Semitism in 1953 and immigrated to Israel in 1956.

"There Was No Enthusiasm for War"

By Richard Von Weizsacker

Now President of West Germany, he was a 19-year-old private with the Ninth Infantry Regiment in Potsdam when war came. In 1949, Von Weizsacker's father was convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg and sentenced to seven years in jail; his sentence was commuted in 1951.

We knew nothing of the secret protocol between Hitler and Stalin that contained provisions for the attack on Poland. German newspapers were full of reports of Polish violence and provocations against the German minority. Who knew whether the reports were correct? Most were believed.

Despite the influence of Hitler's propaganda on German public opinion, there was no enthusiasm for war. Thus the mobilization of the Wehrmacht was conducted as quietly as possible. About Aug. 25, after being hospitalized with appendicitis, I received orders to rejoin my unit at Potsdam immediately. I was told not to talk about it.

That very same day, I later discovered, my father -- a state secretary in the Foreign Ministry -- had taken part in a last-ditch attempt to dissuade Hitler from issuing the invasion order. In his notes my father remarked, "This afternoon is the most depressing of my life. Apart from the unforeseeable consequences for the existence of Germany and of my family, it is appalling that my name should be connected with this event."

Two or three days before Sept. 1, our battalion departed -- but not, as in August 1914, with brass bands and in broad daylight. We set off in pitch darkness, taking side streets to the freightyards. Early on the morning of Sept. 1, we crossed into Poland. We soon saw action. Just a few hundred yards from me, my older brother Heinrich fell. We barely had time to bury him and the other dead before we had to hurry on. The suffering had begun.

We were no better and no worse than our fathers, who 25 years earlier had been drawn into the First World War. And we were no better or worse than our children, who today pass judgment upon us. We, like the soldiers of other countries, were trained to obedience. We had not been brought up free to demonstrate our opposition under the protection of a liberal constitution. We had the same sensitivities that all humans have, but during a time of difficult decisions, we lacked political vision.