Alicja Czarna
Class 6a
Elementary School No. 9 in Kielce
What the mass graves say
Today, every Polish city has a place where the bodies of our poor martyrs lie. We treat these places with great reverence and respect because they are soaked with the blood of people who gave their lives for our Homeland. And here, in Kielce, there is such a cemetery, and not a day goes by without someone laying a bunch of flowers there, in the assumption that the dead will be relieved by our memory.
And there are a lot of them lying in those graves. It sometimes seemed that 120 people a day were shot. Mothers watched their sons die, sisters watched their brothers [die]. Sometimes they were not even buried properly, and the dogs would carry their bodies across the fields. After such an execution, people visited the killing sites to gather up fragments of brain or to wipe away with their tears the blood that was splashed on the walls. Others brought flowers to show their sympathy. Everyone’s eyes welled up with tears and they rushed to the church to bring prayers before the throne of the Almighty for those who had loved their country and given their lives for it.
Today, when I pass by their graves, I seem to hear them whispering, as if they wanted to say: “We no longer can, so you must work for the Homeland, love it as we loved it, and forge its future as strong as granite and as beautiful as a flower”.
Oh, you poor, poor martyrs – may God grant you eternal rest.