JANINA FILIMOWICZ

Class 7
Parczew

My experiences from the war

When the war was about to break out in 1939, the radio broadcast that we would not let Germany into Poland. A moment later the radio hissed and stopped broadcasting. A few moments later we heard a siren and suddenly everyone started to run into the fields, planes started to drop bombs and shoot from machine guns. Me and my parents fled into the field then, everyone was terrified. That battle lasted all day. When the noise of the planes had died down, we all emerged happy to have survived such a terrible moment. When the Germans came to Poland, they started to persecute the youth, they didn’t let us study, educated people were transported to penal camps.

Allied forces entered Parczew on 22 July 1944 to liberate the town. The Germans started retreating and carrying off their wounded in the morning, but the distant booming of guns continued. When the evening came, tanks from a nearby village started to drive towards Parczew. When the first tank arrived, it started shooting at the houses. It didn’t know where the Germans were. It found out they were in the school. The Germans fled in great chaos. I was very happy that the allied army had liberated us from Hitler’s yoke.