IN DUBIOUS EXILE
By Sidney Du Broff

The phone rang. It was the guy from the press section at the Polish Embassy. He wanted me to meet him. He needed some information. And did I have the report for him that he’d asked for? I did. No doubt he was also plugged into MI5. How could it be otherwise? They would of course have a file on me, a big one, which they would pass on to the American Embassy, where they’d have an even bigger one.

He thanks me for the report. I find it hard not to laugh. What does the report say? In effect, that the Polish Government consists of a bunch of anti-Semitic bastards, that the rioting population generally regards the government as fascist, and that they support Israel unequivocally. To the extent that they march down the street carrying the Israeli flag, the Star of David. They take particular pride in Israel’s victories, claiming. “It’s our Polish Jews who did it.”

Gomulka said Poles should have just one motherland. But why, the Poles asked, should it be Egypt? In response, the government threw out most of its remaining Jews, about 25,000 in total, many of whom occupied very high positions, also including membership in the Communist Party. Thousands wound up as refugees in Sweden, and Denmark, and even congenitally anti-Semitic Norway took in twelve (to which they refused me access.) Most were not able to go to the US, as communists were excluded, even if they were victims of communism.

‘St Peter in Poland. At least he caught some fish’

They got Jewish groups pounding on the door of the Polish Embassy, trying to present letters protesting the mistreatment of Polish Jews. But they got their letters rejected, and the door slammed in their faces; while I am saying the same thing, in a slightly different way, they’re prepared to pay me. Now what else do they want? The verbatim report of the recent meeting of the World Jewish Congress? And don’t tell them it’s for the Poles.

But is it for the Poles? It doesn’t sound like their domain. Maybe the Russians, and to them, the World Jewish Congress sounds mighty. Why disabuse them? And why are the Poles asking on behalf of the Russians? To cover up, I suppose, the fact that they want it. For someone who is informing, I seem to be getting more information than I am giving.

As I walk slowly to the underground, I consider my new assignment. It shouldn’t be a problem. Also I begin to think, handing this stuff over to the Poles, the Americans could take a dim view – accuse me of providing aid and comfort to a country not friendly to the United States -- though what I have had to say gives the Poles very little by way of either aid or comfort. However, that isn’t the point; it isn’t necessarily the content that might worry them, but the act of doing it, and more specifically, of me doing it. I don’t have a lot of friends in US Government circles, mainly non-friends; I’m a thorn. They would no doubt like to remove it.

‘Paris – beware of pickpockets’

That in fact is why we were here. America had become a country where you were free to agree, but if you disagreed, you were making a problem for yourself. And so my wife Nedra and I sailed away, aboard the good ship Masdam. By a circuitous route that took us nine months to get here – more about this later perhaps - we arrived in England. The air reeked of dissent, and we breathed in deeply. It was great. Not that it changed anything. I wasn’t really intending to walk in the foot-steps of Karl Marx, buried in the Catholic cemetery in Highgate. Though we did stop by and leave some flowers on his grave.

Three quarters of a life-time later we are still here. For the most part, enjoying our exile. We never made the decision to stay, we just haven’t left yet. It seems a funny place, at least to us, for exile. The last place I would have chosen, though many before us have taken this route.

No, we’re not putting flowers on Marx’s grave any more. Currently, I’m a paid-up member of Republicans Abroad. I voted for George Bush, and regret that I won’t have the opportunity to do so again. Have I betrayed my Left-wing principles? I don’t think so, though I have shed some outmoded concepts (look at the Chinese). It is the Left who has betrayed the Left, reformed themselves into Left-wing Fascists.

‘Holy Russia’

For some reason, Britain showed no reluctance to have us, aware as they had to be concerning our subversive activities and intent. We had to report periodically to what was then called the Alien Office, and to the local police station. And then, without asking, and long before what is usual, the Home Office stamped our passports: “Given leave to enter the United Kingdom for an indefinite period,” which means we can stay forever, and almost already have. You should see the faces of the immigration officers light up when we return from abroad, upon hearing how long we have been here. “Welcome home.” They say. It is home. Home away from home. We retain our American passports, and always will, because that is what we are. We like being Americans abroad. I wonder why the British Government was so good to us – was it so that MI5 could keep tabs on us, in order to justify their existence?

Our lives have been rich beyond imagination. I would do it all over again. Every bit of it.

I rewrote the material I had given the Poles into a series of articles, and sent them off to the various publications for whom I had been writing. So at least it was in the public domain, available to all, making it apparent that I wasn’t handing state secrets to the “communist enemy”.

‘’The Fen District – where England goes flat’

I phoned up the man from the World Jewish Congress and told him what I wanted. It’s for the Poles, I explain. They told me not to tell you it’s for them. But I think its the Russians who are behind it all. He agrees. He’ll send me the report. By the way, he asks, do I know any East Germans? I do. Can I arrange a meeting? Possibly.

That’s another story. Worth hearing. I’ll tell you about it later. Meanwhile, let’s stay with the Poles. They are the only ones who have ever tried to recruit me. Neither, to my knowledge, have I ever been followed in any Socialist country. It was hard to make common cause with the Poles because of their outbursts of anti-Semitism. This was supposed to be an event of the past; but for them, like many another, when things got bad, because of their own incompetence, it was obviously all the fault of the Jews.

As a reward, or was it retribution? for my (dubious) contribution, the Poles invited me to go fishing there. They no doubt hoped that my reporting on the subject, an area, along with hunting, that I cover, might be good for their tourism.

Our first stop was at a collective farm with access to the Baltic, where salmon were alleged to appear. If they ever did, we were six months late. Or if you’re an optimist, six months early. Here, as you would expect on a Polish collective farm, nothing worked. Here, in the dining room, also a bar, we encountered a drunken Polish soldier, who was not so drunk, he had the good taste to find Nedra attractive. Making little headway, he thought I might be second best.

‘Tunisia, right off the wall – with a suede jacket thrown in’

On our next stop we were given a car, a driver, and a translator, an older lady who said she spoke seven languages, all of them badly. Here we made our way to a near-by river. Cloudy and slow moving, it was not my idea of a trout stream. But sceptic that I am, in spite of my serious doubts, there were fish rising. I cast my fly in their general direction. Nothing happened for a while. I gave them a choice of numerous flies. Eventually one of them worked. I dragged in a fish, which I expected to be a trout , but instead turned out to be a small roach or similar, a member of the carp family that all good Americans view with deepest antipathy. Simply put, we call them “garbage fish.” While such fish are held in (sometimes) high regard by the people who fish for them throughout much of Europe, I failed to see carp or its cousins, as a quarry to move me greatly.

While thus pondering my plight. the military suddenly appeared, all the men highly agitated, running about without apparent design, completely ignoring me. Obviously I wasn’t involved; I hadn’t broken any fishing regulations, and wasn’t to be apprehended as a western spy deceiving the trusting Poles by pretending to be a fisherman.

Our driver came running over. We had to get out of here. An unexploded bomb had been discovered in the field on whose bank I was fishing.

Ultimately we did get to that trout river, a pretty place nestling in the mountains. The director declined to meet me; usually we are received with great cordiality, the director of the enterprise in question eager to talk about his achievements, often very considerable. But now, with the Polish administration in a permanent state of decline, the director was probably out selling his allotment of trout, meant for restocking the river. This was perfectly logical, at least by a Polish evaluation, since most of the fish would disappear one way or another – getting eaten by other fish, by birds, and, unlikely though this might seem, caught by fisherpersons.

That is not to say I didn’t catch any fish. I did. Just one. It was two inches long, or perhaps I am boasting and it was really two and a half inches long. It took a fly not much smaller than itself. It was a perfectly-formed, beautifully marked brown trout. It expired before it could be returned to the water.

‘America forever – let the star and stripes reign.’

One of my articles vis-a-vis Poland that appeared in the American B’nai B’rith’s National Jewish Monthly, did not go down too well in Poland (nor did any of the others) where it was said to be responsible for having originated the anti-Polish campaign in the US. To quote the Party paper: “The periodical of American Jews had dared to allege that anti-Semitism is an integral part of Polish life, accepted, sanctioned and encouraged by the Church and State.”
 

©  Sidney Du Broff 2009