Zuzanna Orzechowska
Class 7
Wisznice, 19 June 1946
My most important wartime experience
A few days before the front line arrived, we found out that there would be a battle in Wisznice. We started to bury food and clothes, we dug a trench. One morning we got up, there was a loud commotion, and I told mum that there was going to be a battle that day and that we had to get [out?] from home. They did not believe me at all.
In a couple of hours the Germans started setting fire to the houses, my brother and I started to cry and ran away to the fields. Mum told us to go to the trench. The Germans started to set up their machine guns near the trench, while we went and hid in the ditch with some other families. There were many Germans in the ditch too and they told us to go away, so we went back home and hid in the barn. When evening came, it was already dark, we could hear the gunfire. When I got up in the morning, I saw the Soviet army marching through the colony and we saw a Polish soldier. We started to greet him with joy.
That [was] my wartime experience.