Class 7
Mołodiatycze, District of Hrubieszów, Lublin Voivodeship
27 June 1946
My experiences from 1939 until 1944
For the fourth week running we are sleeping in bushes near the marshes. We are hiding from a Ukrainian gang, so that they do not assault us and beat us up. This night was the worst. The wind was blowing from the north. Black clouds sped across the sky. The night was becoming steadily darker. It was getting colder and rain started to fall – at first only a few thick drops, but soon turning into a downpour. Our clothes and bedding were soon wet through. It got very cold. We were freezing, but there was nowhere to hide. It was impossible to remain where we were. We did not have the courage to return home, for the dogs continued to bark like mad. Then we heard the rattle of a cart and some hushed voices speaking in Ukrainian. We could not understand what they were talking about, and we had no idea what they wanted. We were certain that it was something bad. But what exactly, we did not know.
We learned only in the morning. The Ukrainian gang was rounding up Polish men. Searching for [?], they said that Poles have weapons, that they were working out the whereabouts of their outposts and informing the Germans. But this was not true. What they really wanted was to kill as much of the Polish nation as possible. And that is why they selected the time they did, for they thought that they would find everyone in their homes and kill them outright. But they were unsuccessful.
The remaining Poles consulted together about an escape. It was finally decided that the cowherds would drive the cows from pasture to pasture, thus getting closer and closer to the town. All those who stayed behind in their homes started loading their belongings on carts, however taking care not to wheel them out of the sheds. Once the sun had set, the wagons were slowly driven down to the forest. In all, eight gathered there. They waited half an hour or so for anyone else to arrive, but nobody did. All these carts were arranged in a line, one behind the other, and driven slowly in the direction of the town.
After travelling for a long, long time, they saw some red-brick barracks. Driving up to the buildings, they heard a loud voice: “Halt! Halt! Halt!”. They all stood silent. A few Germans walked up quickly to the carts. They started searching everyone and rummaging through the carts. After they finished, they took everyone to the barracks. They let us go only the next day, following an examination.
In the town we had to live outdoors, in the courtyard of an enormous mill. There was nowhere to graze the cows. So, we were forced to sell everything, leaving behind only one cow and a horse. Oh, how we suffered. You would go to sleep at night, but it would start to rain – you would then have to gather everything up and hide under a cart or lie down by the wall of some house. Food had to be cooked over a fire, but there was no fuel. Forage for the cows had to be brought in from the villages. What is more, you could not put anything down anywhere, because it would be stolen. The Ukrainians sent us letter after letter, telling us to return home and collect the harvest, saying that we had nothing to fear. But no one dared go back.
And then we received another message – that if we didn’t return that week, they would burn down our homes on Sunday. Upon learning this, the men gathered together and on Sunday morning went home in order to see what would happen. But when they were nearly halfway there, they returned. They were turned back by some people who, saving their own lives, were fleeing from a Ukrainian gang that at 6.00 a.m. had started murdering Poles.
The murders were carried out in a terrible way. Poles had their arms, legs and heads chopped off, their eyes gouged out, while others were cut in half with saws, thrown alive into wells, hanged upside down or buried alive. I even saw myself, when the Germans brought some Polish corpses to the mortuary, one woman with both her arms and legs cut off, another – headless – had had her arms lopped off at the elbows, while a third had no eyes and had been stabbed repeatedly with a pitchfork. A boy, some 20 years old, had a large nail smashed into his head, and it was bent under his chin. The rest of the people had been murdered with bayonets. How terrible it was to look at all this. At the wounds and the corpses, covered in congealed blood. You would think that your heart would leap out of your chest and burst asunder, unable to bear such ghastliness. I felt as though I myself was experiencing this frightful pain and suffering. The sight made you want to die. We all would have preferred to drop dead just not to see these things. With time, it would all calm down and people would resolve to gain revenge for what had happened, to defend themselves against the horror.
And so it was, that in order to protect ourselves from death, we Poles organized an army, the so-called partisans. Few at first, their ranks soon grew. Finally, they became a large army with more than 15,000 soldiers. The partisan movement started in the village of Bielin, and all the soldiers were quartered in neighboring settlements. Nearly all the Poles from the District of Włodzimierz came there. Everyone was comfortable there, everyone felt at home – but not for long.
In the Easter of 1944, the Fascist German Army defeated the partisans. Some managed to break through the front and join up with the Soviets, while others crossed the River Bug and went to the forests of the Lublin Voivodeship. The civilian population remained.
The first line of Germans treated the people decently, but the second line immediately separated the men from the women. These men were of various ages – some were as young as 12, and some aged 60 or so. I was among them. They herded us all to Włodzimierz. There, we were divided into two groups. One contained the young and the old, and the other the middle-aged. The latter were marched off to a train and taken to Majdanek. Whereas we were driven off to the front to perform work. Under fire, we were forced to dig trenches.
We worked only at night, for during the day we would have been seen by the enemy. Before setting off to work, each of us would be given a pickaxe and a spade, 50 grams of margarine, 200 grams of bread and 3 cigarettes. In the morning and evening we were also given half a liter of black, sugarless coffee, while for dinner we had some meagre soup with hardly any potatoes. [Under such conditions] each of has had to dig a trench 5 m long, 80 cm wide and 2 m deep – every night. The stony soil made our work difficult, for we had to smash the stones with our pickaxes and throw them up to the surface. The work was hard and the food poor, and we thought that we wouldn’t hold out, that we’d die of hunger. Each of us laborers dreamt only of freedom, of being able to walk around the village or town unfettered. This freedom came two months later, when the Soviets arrived and removed the German yoke.