CELA KOZŁOWSKA

class 5
Moszenki

My experience

The Germans persecuted Jews horribly during the occupation. It was in the winter of 1942/43. Those unfortunate people hid wherever they could: some in the woods, some with the local farmers.

They built an underground hideout in our village at our nearby neighbor’s place and stayed there for a long time. However, somebody informed on them to the German gendarmerie, who sent a few Germans to our village. They forced the farmers to take part in the manhunt for those poor Jews. They surrounded our neighbor’s farmstead and arrested him and his entire family. They also caught a dozen or so Jews and took them all with them. Before that, they had burnt all the buildings owned by our neighbor Marek with grenades. He and his family were placed in the prison in Lublin, and the Jews were forced to work. Marek’s wife and children were then released, but he himself must have been murdered, as he has not returned to the present day.