Zenon Pałka
Class 8
Elementary School in Długowola, Iłża district
Memories of German crimes
The Germans entered Poland on 9 [sic] September 1939. When they entered, they immediately began to deal harshly with us. They took our teachers away, so there was no one to teach us. The schools were occupied by the military. They took people to camps, murdered as many as they could. Then they rounded up the young men. They gave them hard work on the railroad tracks. These youth laborers lived in barracks fenced in with wire. They could not go anywhere, because there was a guard patrolling the barracks. I did not believe when people used to say that the Germans were so cruel, but now I have seen with my own eyes what the Germans did to the Polish people. They took young people to trenches and bunkers; they also took them to Germany. One time, a German came to us and wanted to take my brother, but he escaped. The soldier came back again on the same day and asked where he was, but luckily my brother was not there, because then the German would probably have killed him. He had a revolver in his hand and said he would kill [my brother] or burn the buildings. The youth had to hide at the time. The Germans even deported whole families to the Reich. They imposed large quotas. Everyone had to give up what they had, and if they didn’t, then a punitive expedition would come and take them to the camp.
The gendarmes were brought to Lipsko by the Germans, and they treated people very badly. They always conducted round-ups on market days. They would encircle the entire city and take innocent people. A peasant and a woman were taken from my village of Maruszów. The woman was killed at once at the cemetery in Lipsko, and the man was taken to Auschwitz and died there. They wrote a letter to his wife that he was dead. When the frontline reached the Vistula River, the Germans began to evict the villages. They chased people like cattle. They took their cows, horses and pigs. They let them go with nothing. Only the crying of toddlers and mothers could be heard.