Tadeusz Ciszek
Class 6
Ostojów, 15 July 1946
My memories of German crimes
The 12 and 13 July 1943 are sad and memorable dates for the village of Michniów. [During the night] from Sunday to Monday, the whole family went to bed as usual. In the early morning, my mother got up first, went to the yard and saw the German gendarmes. Returning home, she hurriedly woke us up, calling, “Children, get up, we are surrounded by German gendarmes! What’s going to happen?!” We all got up with fear – what will become of us? I asked my mum if I could go to school. Also, my brother asked, “Can I go to work?”
We left the house – I went to school, my brother went to work. There were no lessons because the school was occupied by the Germans. After a while, when I was returning from school, I found out that my brother had been murdered.
After some time, the Germans drove us out of the house into the yard, where we waited for the end. After 10 hours, the Germans left. We went home to rest for a few minutes. After about an hour we learned that the Germans were returning to our village. So we, frightened by the previous day, because [they had caused] the murders of our brothers and sisters, did not wait for daylight and ran to the forest. The Germans noticed our escape and set up their machine guns. So we escaped into the forest under a hail of bullets. In sadness and longing we spent about 60 hours in the forest.
After a while, we sent one person out of the forest to find out what had happened to our village. After this friend returned, we learned out that our village was completely burned down, so we had to think about the fate that would befall us.
Now three crosses stand in the middle of our village and remind us of our burnt and murdered fathers, brothers and sisters.