Wiktor Mostek

"When the Soviets came to Albertyn during the war, we were sent back to school. I started to attended school again and I completed the fourth year in 1941. I was a good student apart from the Russian and Belarusian languages that didn’t go well. Just because I was a good student, the language teachers graded my work more that fairly, as they used to give me a grade C but really my language tests deserved to be no more than D. The headmaster visited my mum a few times to reprimand her, she used to say: Stop speaking polish at home! Speak just Russian because the kids can’t not only read and write, but even speak Russian good enough".

"The Germans executed my dad and my sister but my life was saved by a German soldier. In 1942, I came down with typhus. It was the time of the occupation so we had no medicine, nothing. As I fell ill, I was forced to hide myself from the Germans. If they found anybody suffering from typhus they would take them into the hospital where people died. Sick people’s houses where covered with wooden boards as the Germans were scared that typhus could spread. I had a temperature of 42 degrees Celsius, I felt faint and hadsome red spots on my body. My mum didn’t know what I was suffering from. People had no idea what it was. They applied vinegar to my body vinegar because nobody knew what the illness was. Finally, they learned it typhus. My mum asked a nun for help, saying her son was dying. The nun brought a German doctor. And the German came and did not denounce! He sat on the edge of my bed (because the house was clean and neat) and administered me some new type of medicine – red Streptocyd. I got better immediately, right before their eyes".