Wisznice, 19 June 1946
Eugenia Witkowska
Class 7
My most important wartime experience
One of the wartime experiences that moved me the most was the bombing of the colony where I live. It happened three years ago, in March. I do not know the exact date, I only remember that it was one day in the afternoon and lasted until the evening.
When the planes first arrived in the afternoon, they started shooting at the forest, which is not far from us. They were only circling over the forest and shooting. We didn’t know what was going on and had no idea what to do. We watched their doings with bated breath and listened to the terrifying growling of the Krauts’ planes. Shortly after everything calmed down for a while. We were surprised, we didn’t know what it all meant.
After some time, more planes arrived and then horrible moments began. The planes were circling over the colony as if they wanted to devour everything. Then we noticed smoke; it got thicker and thicker, and it looked as if everything started to burn at once. The buildings caught fire in the blink of an eye. Bullets and bombs dropped on us like hail. You couldn’t hear anything, just moans, cries and gunfire. Rescuing anyone was out of the question, because we couldn’t move from our shelters. Then the planes flew away and there was a moment of silence. The air was filled with smoke and dust, we couldn’t see anything.
When the sun came down and evening came, it started getting foggy. Only then people went out to see the results of such a terrible bombing. When it grew darker, the dogs started yowling, and the wind howled. Everything looked like a faraway, deserted land. That’s [how we spent] the night. On the following morning we started wondering whether anyone got killed. Fortunately, no one was killed or wounded.
This is how the bombing ended; it was my most horrible wartime experience.