Krystyna Góral
Class 6
My memories of German crimes
There is no such person in Poland who does not have some memory of the times of cruel German crimes. Every small child knows the German and his deeds well. I have a lot of memories from the times of the occupation, and if I wanted to describe it all, I wouldn’t have so much paper. I can only mention a few of these incidents.
While still in Volhynia, I watched various crimes there and was exposed to them myself. The Germans, wanting to destroy the Poles as much as possible, allowed the Ukrainians to murder innocent Poles as well. The Ukrainians were happy about it, because they hated the Poles. After some time, it turned out that it would not end with the Poles, because the Ukrainians also wanted to murder the Germans. Then the Germans, cowardly, gave the Poles weapons so that the Poles would start dealing with the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians tormented the Poles in an indescribable way: they gouged out the eyes, cut off the noses, tore off the nails, broke the bones and inflicted cuts on the half-dead man with a knife. There was one small five-year-old boy who had 70 knife cuts on his face alone – you can imagine how much he had to agonize before he died.
One day, on Saturday afternoon, while going to my aunt’s, I saw three wagons full of murdered people, loaded like herrings. This was the first information about the murder.
In Volhynia we lived with a Ukrainian farmer; his wife, who never knew anything about any murders, always said: “Just wait, let the fields and forests turn green, then you’ll see what will happen [illegible]”.
[Illegible] the yard was green, Polish blood began to spill.
I have a lot of resentment towards the Germans, because it was at their hands that I lost three uncles and my grandfather. But I am not the only one who has a grudge against the Germans, because every Pole has a grudge against our occupier and will not forget it until their death.