Class 7
Zwierzyniec, 19 June 1946
My experiences of the German occupation
31 March 1943. In the morning, the Germans surrounded the village of Wywłoczka and the road leading to the village. The houses of the factory workers and employees at other institutes stood on either side of the road. The Gestapo left their cars so as not to disturb peacefully sleeping residents and quietly surrounded the whole village. Later, they violently burst into the houses, and hounded everyone out to the shrine in Wywłoczka.
My father went to work in the morning, mother was cooking breakfast and I was still asleep. Suddenly a Gestapo officer came in and ordered us to leave the house. I dressed and went outside where I saw that the Germans were driving people towards Wywłoczka. A few seconds [later] another ran into the yard and ordered us to start moving for Wywłoczka. Mother was still at home, gathering clothes and taking the cow. A crowd of people moved towards the village. But I had left the house first and I wanted to wait for mom, so I followed the crowd more and more slowly. Suddenly a Gestapo officer noticed me and shouted at me to go faster.
By the time I reached Wywłoczka, everyone was already in the square by the shrine. Machine guns had been set up on the little hill and there were Germans all around. Some people in the crowd were saying that Germans had already killed some people in the village and fear gripped my heart more and more strongly. After some time I met my mom and I found out that my father had escaped from the Gestapo officers when he was on his way to work that morning.
We stood for several hours in the cold March air, [after which] they separated the men from the women and children and marched them in the direction of Zwierzyniec, behind the barbed wire. The children started wailing with grief. Then the machine gun fire rang out.
A little while later the Germans put the rest of the people on the road and ordered them to follow the men. When the people had gone, almost the entire village went up in flames. On the way [we saw] several dead men who had been killed earlier by the wayside.
The Germans had relaxed their supervision and when we reached the factory lots of women and children managed to escape beyond the gate and hide in the houses and barns. I escaped too. Suddenly we were warned that the Gestapo was coming and we all tried to hide. I quickly ran into one of the houses and pretended to be brushing my hair even though I was shaking like a leaf.
Sometime after the Germans left I noticed that my mom was nowhere to be seen. I later found out that mom was in the camp in Zwierzyniec, behind the barbed wire, but the German in charge of Zwierzyniec was trying to have the workers with families released. In the evening nearly everyone was released from the camp, including my mom. We returned home, because our house had not been burned, but there were lots of things missing. Dad came back later and we were all at home together.