Jan Barwin
Class 7
Public Primary School in Mirzec
District of Iłża
Mirzec, 18 November 1946
What do the burial mounds say?
Everywhere in the fields and forests along the length and breadth of Poland, there are the graves of our defenders, who gave their lives for the [freedom of our] homeland.
The graves of our brothers and sons say that the Polish land fed with their blood will bear fruit a hundredfold. They died in defence of the country’s borders, in defence of Polish villages and towns, in defence of their families and the whole nation, for a better tomorrow. This is what we must remember. But we also have other mass graves into which our brutally murdered brothers were thrown. What do they say?
The mass graves speak of heinous German crimes against the Polish nation. The public carrying out of sentences by hanging or the clandestine mass deportation of prisoners and the shootings in the forests and in various secret places testify to the fact that the Germans wanted to exterminate the Poles. They know that the spirit of the Pole is unyielding, so they sought to destroy us.
But we are all aware that we live for Poland, and for Poland we are ready to give our lives at any time. The enemy is not terrible when our love of our homeland is great. Avengers shall always sprout from bloodshed.