Eleonora Przewłocka
Class 5b
Zwierzyniec, 13 June 1946
My memories from the German occupation
The beautiful autumn brought Poles many misfortunes and disasters. All of Poland was in German hands. I also experienced many difficult moments. One of those moments stuck in my mind, and that was the displacement of people from the districts of Biłgoraj, Zamość, Tomaszów, and Janów.
The Germans set up a camp in Zwierzyniec surrounded with barbed wire. The Germans brought people in huge trucks or forced them to go on foot. There were men, women, children, and the elderly. Some people were sent to Germany, while others were interrogated – mainly young men, who stumbled out the door after such interrogations – or were cruelly killed. Children died behind the wires in large numbers.
I saw all this with my own eyes, standing at the wire with my mommy, with whom I walked everywhere. Mommy brought people underwear and food, and I, fearing for mommy, never left her side. Sometimes we stood at the wire for hours.
I was in despair when I found out that my aunt had been taken behind the wire with her entire family. If I wanted to see my aunt, I had to stay by the wire. I didn’t care about anything else; not the rain or the pain in my legs. Despair gave me strength. I couldn’t look at the German criminals. Standing by the wire, I began to hate that crime-stained nation.
I will never forget the things I experienced there. One very difficult for me was the moment of the retreat of the German army, when I sat in the shelter and looked on as Zwierzyniec was burned.