21 June 1946
Stanisława Osypiuk
Class 6
Wisznice, Włodawa district, Lublin voivodeship
Memories of the German occupation
During the German occupation, the Polish nation suffered a lot, because the Germans persecuted the Poles. In 1939, one girl was grazing cows by a ditch. When she was grazing the cows, a plane flew over and dropped a bomb at the bridge. It did not hit the bridge – instead, it hit the girl’s head, which exploded into many tiny pieces. After some time, another girl went to church with her friends. Suddenly, a car appeared out of nowhere and hit her [so hard] that later her parents had to walk around and collect body parts. The nasty Germans did many more bad things to the beloved Polish nation. Many people were murdered, many people were burned in ovens and there were many atrocities that were hard to listen to.
In 1944, I was in the village of Polubicze, and many German troops passed by. There were many Germans living in the local houses in Polubicze. In every house they were firing at the Soviets from the yards, and the Soviets fired at the Germans – and so went the battle. When the front line passed, Horodyszcze was very much destroyed, but there was no great damage in Polubicze.
We sat in the basement until the Germans left. When we saw that the Soviets, our liberators, had come, we were very happy. When I came home, I was told that the Germans took our horse with a perfect harness and wagon. There was one little foal left, which [those] evil Germans wanted to take away, but they left it, because they had no time [to take it] thanks to those who liberated our whole country from German bondage.