MARIA NOWAK

Class 6
Horodło
17.06.1946

Dad’s arrest

It happened on 21 January 1946 [sic!]. Dad came into the house with a German at 11 p.m., which had never happened before. Mum and my sister and I were already asleep. Dad went to mum’s bed and said: “I’m being arrested.” Mum and my sister started to cry terribly. The German let dad eat his dinner. Later, dad said goodbye to us and said these words: “don’t give up and take care!” We didn’t sleep the whole night after he left.

Some gendarmes from Lublin came in the morning on the second day and they started to toss the house. God knows what they were looking for. Later on they locked me, my sister and my cousin in one room and left. Mum had gone to Hrubieszów to save dad somehow. When she got back from Hrubieszów, they arrested her.

Evening came. We three, young, naive girls are thinking what’s going to happen next. Suddenly the bell – we are afraid to open, but my sister goes to open. It’s mum! What joy, and at the same time sadness, because mum is here, and dad is not.

We slept through the night happily. On the second day, the Germans let mum take some food and a change of underwear to the border guards for dad. Dad was yellow like a lemon. He couldn’t talk, he only said that my uncle should take me in, then it would be easier on mum.

They transferred dad to Lublin that same day. I don’t know what for, maybe because he’s Polish. I was with my uncle and the news coming in about dad was getting worse and worse. Finally, I travelled to Lublin to see some of my friends. We were able to see dad twice when mum came to Lublin with packages for him.

In the end, we were dealt a terrible blow. The prison guard said that dad had been taken to Germany, to a beautiful and mountainous place in Bavaria. But then it was said that he might be gone. We received a few more letters, but that was it – he was gone and that was that. But we are still praying, trusting in God that He might be able to undo this misery somehow.

And the Russians have already crossed the border. Time flies, it seems like a moment from that disaster, but it’s not, because it’s four years already. I come home from school one day and dad is there – he dropped in like a bomb.

And life is running normally again, like it once did before the war.