Janina Pastuszak
Class 6
Elementary School in Zwierzyniec
My memories of the German occupation
During the first years of my childhood I often heard about the period of our enslavement, when we were forbidden to speak Polish, pray in churches, learn at schools, sing Polish songs, not to mention work for our Homeland in any other way. Carts carrying Polish prisoners who disobeyed these rules travelled amongst the snow to Siberia, where the prisoners died laboring in the mines, chained to wheelbarrows. It all seemed like a bad dream. I didn’t suspect that I would soon be deprived of something that we Poles consider so significant, sacred, and worthy of sacrificing our blood and life – our most precious freedom.
The terrifying year of 1939 came. The predatory German troops stretched their bloodthirsty paws over Europe to take it as their own, since only the Germans had the right to live – in the opinion of Hitler, world’s most infamous murderer. Shortly afterwards, many European countries began to suffer under the German rule. My dearest Homeland also shared such a cruel fate.
Arrests, executions, round-ups and deportations for labor to Germany and to death camps happened on a daily basis. Such things occurred even in our neighborhood and in Zwierzyniec. I will always remember the burned villages of Wywłoczka and Sochy, and hundreds of people who had been brutally murdered.
As for Zwierzyniec, the year 1943 was the worst. This was the period of pacification of the Biłgoraj, Janów, and Tomaszów districts. Tens of thousands of people, including women, children and the elderly, were being herded from the station and past the windows of my house. The German soldiers directed this entire funeral procession with bayonets towards the barbed wire in Zwierzyniec, where people either died or were sent to another camp. Not even the sick were spared – they were transported on carts and put behind the barbed wire. From there, they were marched to a nearby building for interrogations during which their bones were broken and they were tormented and beaten without mercy. The corpses of those who died for their country were often carried out of that place. Amongst them were some of my friends.
We felt desperate and powerless because we couldn’t help these poor souls. We knew that soon we would end up behind the barbed wire too. We sympathized with the thousands of people who were starving behind the barbed wire, so for several weeks the residents of Zwierzyniec shared as much food with them as they could.
Later on, once the camp was liquidated, the Germans let Zwierzyniec take in 250 children whom they had previously torn away from their mothers. At the Zwierzyniec cemetery, there are dozens of tiny graves of these abandoned orphans who died of dysentery.
I am very glad that this is over. I thank God for saving me, my family and the rest of the Zwierzyniec residents. In the evenings I say a prayer for the deceased – for all those who gave their lives for the Homeland.