Class VIb
Łopuszno, 21 October 1946
On a beautiful, sunny day in 1939, the Polish lands were invaded by German armies. They entered our cities and villages, among them Łopuszno. Everyone was afraid of the fearsome looking soldiers. Their faces were stern. They wore green uniforms and had swastikas on their caps. Polish soldiers, many of them wounded, tried to flee to the forests, however many died along the way. The first thing that the Germans did was to tear down the Polish eagles from government offices and schools. They defiled them. They also tore down our flag and hung up their own with the swastika.
The fearsome looking gendarmes were stationed in a large stone building in the marketplace. They treated us Poles with contempt, while at the same time acting with cruelty, like butchers. Day after day shabbily dressed Poles would be driven in on trucks, handcuffed and shivering in the winter cold. All were taken to the underground dungeon, where they would be kept in water through the night. In the morning, they were beaten with leather whips and wooden staffs. Then, half-dead, they would be executed by firing squad in the park. Everyone saw that the Germans had dogs, and they would set two of them upon Jews in the street. They rounded up Poles and sent them to Germany for forced labor.
One day, trucks carrying German soldiers arrived in Łopuszno in the night. From there, they drove to the village of Skałka. We saw only fire and smoke. Later we learned that they had burned down the village of Skałka and shot the residents. Some had hid in the ponds, but later they fell ill and died [of cold].
Towards the end of August 1944, local partisans entered the empty building that had once housed the German gendarmerie. They shot the German swastika clean through.
Russian armies entered the area in mid-January 1945. They crushed the German swastika. They caught the Germans who were hiding in the forests and shot many units to death, while the majority of the enemy’s troops were taken prisoner. Poles helped them. I cannot even think or write about how the German criminals tortured us Poles.