Sławatycze, 17 June 1946
Maria Pietruczak
Class 5b
My memory of the war
When the war started, I was seven years old. We lived in Brześć on the Bug River. Since the draft, which took place in March 1939, daddy wasn’t home. He was on the German border. On 1 September, the war broke out. German planes came over Brześć and started an air raid. The Germans came to Brześć just a few days later, but stayed only for a week.
On 22 September 1939, the Soviets also invaded. When we were under the Soviet rule, we were doing fairly well, because we could go to school and mum worked. There was no news from dad. There were rumors that he had been killed by a bomb. On 2 February 1940, during the feast of Our Lady, we received news that dad was in German captivity.
In 1941 we lived through the second German-Soviet front. During the German occupation, we were worse off, because my mum, sister and brother, who had not yet finished elementary school, had to work. I almost didn’t go to school because the Germans were taking over school buildings to build hospitals for the army. In June 1944, the almost continuous raids on Brześć started. There was a third evacuation of the population during which we left the city. A week after our arrival to the Mościce Dolne colony, the Soviet troops crossed the Bug. This was the third front I’ve been through.