Halina Grot
Class 7
Memories of clandestine teaching
It happened [during] the German occupation. We went to a school where we were taught very few subjects. In early 1939, I couldn’t attend school [like] many other children. Then, wanting to make up for that year, I went to lessons with other children. [I attended them] not only [to] make up for a wasted year, but [also] to learn the things that couldn’t be learned at school.
Once, [during] the lesson, we heard the rumble of a car engine and at that moment the teacher’s son burst into the room, saying that the gendarmes had arrived. Then we packed up our books and the teacher hid them away.
We ran through the back door, through the garden next to the houses, and into the street. As we passed through the street, we saw people running in all directions. This is how we ended up in the fields. While running away across the fields, we heard gunshots; first single shots, then more and more. My friend, who was running with me, looked back and saw Germans running across the field in the distance with rifles. There was just the river ahead of us and then we’d be home. We crossed the river successfully. We saw a lot of Germans near my house, but we didn’t know what they were doing; they were behaving so noisily.
The next day, we didn’t go to lessons. The Germans were still close to the teacher’s house. We had heard that the Germans had brought people and shot [them] near the church, near the teacher’s house. When we went to class on the third day, we learned terrible things. German gendarmes had killed a lot of Poles and buried them. It was in 1944. After this incident, we skipped lessons. In the end, we stopped going [to classes] because the front was drawing near.
In 1945, Poland was liberated. Now we go to a school where we can study all subjects.