Wanda Bilska
Class 5a
Primary school in Mirzec
Memories of the German crimes
1939 was the moment when the Germans crossed the borders of the Polish state. Unforgettable times began, never before recorded in the annals of our country’s history. At the beginning, the Germans were normal, but when they felt [their domination], they started to abuse the population. They hanged people like dogs for trivial offences. Mostly they took revenge because people gave shelter to the partisans. They burned down villages, threw people into the fires. Mostly it was the people in the villages who suffered under their yoke; it was from the peasants that they collected taxes and quotas. Those who disobeyed orders were sent to concentration camps. The Germans, wishing to prevent the spread of education and culture in Poland, deported the teachers, the pioneers of Polishness, to the depths of their own country. Those who were never to return home were taken to Auschwitz, where millions of people died. The second killing factory after Auschwitz was Majdanek. There, people were killed in the most elaborate ways, e.g. by electrocution, gas poisoning, etc., and not wanting to leave any trace of the torments, the Germans burned the corpses in their ovens. To arouse fear and obedience, people were hanged in public in front of hundreds of onlookers. The streets of Warsaw were flooded with blood. Hundreds of graves [in] forests and fields testified to the passing of this terrible enemy. When the hoard of Krauts had passed, only moans, weeping, misery and sadness remained.