Zygmunt Krasiński
Class 5
Public Elementary School in Lipsko
Starachowice district
Lipsko, 17 November 1946
A memory of a German crime
The Germans deported Jews from the towns and settlements in our area. Some of the young Jews, including women with children, fearing extermination in death camps and being terrified of the infamous gas chambers and furnaces for burning corpses, had fled earlier and hid in the nearby woods. Hunger and the lack of bread forced them to come to the villages in the evenings to ask for food. People helped them, and no wonder – thinking of rainy weather and autumn storms they would say to themselves: “How these poor souls can find shelter in the forest? How will they get warm and where will they lay their heads to rest?”. Every bonfire in the woods would betray their position: smoke during the day, light from the fire at night. Bad people, with neither a heart nor a conscience, reported this quickly to the gendarmes, who would drive around and hunt the Jews like wild animals, either during the day or at night.
Their culture did not forbid them from doing anything, their cruelty had no limit. These Nazi dogs shot at fleeing Jews and threw the half-dead into pits. The captured persons were questioned on who gave them bread and pork fat, then the Germans tied their hands behind their backs with grenades, and ordered them to run. The exploding grenades would send parts of their bodies and clothes high into the trees. After such a manhunt, [the Germans] would come to the village, to the people who had given the Jews bread and pork fat. They would surround the house, set it on fire, and then shoot at the fleeing people and throw children into the fire. I remember when in December they surrounded Lasota’s house in Katarzynów, set it on fire, and waited for the manhunt to begin. But God did not allow that, because everyone had fled from the house earlier. The words of a song I heard on a train while going to Warsaw were true. I remember a part of it: “In their culture it’s a feat to hunt people in the street.”