Bogdan Lenart
Class 7
Elementary School in Długowola
Post office in Lipsko on the Vistula River, Iłża district
Memories of German crimes
The Germans entered Poland on 1 September 1939. Shortly afterwards they began to take people to the Reich. First they would send an order, and when [that person] did not show up, they came to arrest them. They imposed large quotas. They would come to a village and beat everyone they found at home. They forced a few age groups to join the youth labor service, where work was hard. If a man did not go to work there and the Germans caught him, they took him to prison. First they displaced the Jews. When the Jews were gone, they started to beat the Poles.
At the end of July, the Germans began to flee towards the Vistula. For the first two days they were driving like mad between Lipsko and Tarłów, because they were surrounded by the Russian troops. It was not until the Russians withdrew across the Vistula that the Germans started to displace villages along the river; they led everyone through our village. At first some people fled, but when the Germans found out about it, they surrounded the whole place; a German stood guard every hundred steps so that no one would run away. A camp was set up on the outskirts of the village. The gendarmes took everything those people had. They released only the elderly and the children. The front was on the Vistula for six months. It was not until the Russians crossed the Vistula that we were relieved. Everyone went back home, some only to see the rubble.