Irena Wiśniewska

"The owners were still there. There were no German men, only old men, over fifty up to sixty, but there were no young Germans. They were all at war. There were only widows and women only, old ladies or women whose husbands were still alive at the front, they received some news. There were many of them. The Poles were already taking them away to Wieleń. There was a day when the village leader organized some lifts, and they had what they had stuffed into their sacks. There was one man who did not give anything away. He gave only a couple of such … There were three German women there, the mother and two daughters, those daughters, their husbands were at the front. So those German women could carry something on their backs in those sacks, but no, he took everything away from them. And such things happened in many houses here. There was a German woman who came to my mum and said that she had a machine, this sewing machine. She said: “Take this, Madam”, a bit in Polish, a bit in German “Take this machine, Madam, because that house where we live will be knocked down.” And it was true. It was such a poor house. And she said: It would be a pity. It’s my machine, I used to sew with it.” And my mum said: What do you want for that machine? – Just a piece of bread for my journey. And I remember our mum gave her a loaf of bread and perhaps two and a half kilo of pork fat. And she said: - Take it, you can put even thin slices on that bread. Good, that German woman wanted to kiss my mummy on her hands! So we took that sewing machine. My mummy did not want it for free. And this machine [is with me] until today, I still sew with this machine."

"In Kuźnica my sister worked at school, she was a cleaner there. At one point they ordered to remove the crosses. And the teachers talked themselves out of it, they burdened my sister with it, the other sister, because two of them worked there, and there was a stoker, and they, the cleaning ladies … My sister said: – No, you cant’s fire me; I won’t touch the cross. I didn’t put it up and I won’t take it down. The other the same. The stoker took it down. And for some time there were no crosses, they were put away somewhere. Because the new headmaster was a religious man, but he cared about his job, because he was teaching here and his wife was teaching here, so he did what he was told. And then to hang those crosses – I think the teachers were hanging them when the permission was given to hang the crosses, I think the teachers hanged them themselves. Because I know that the stoker removed them, he was a young man. Then, unfortunately, I don’t know, I don’t believe in superstitions, but then he went down with cancer and died, so some nasties said: – Well, he raised his hand, took the cross down."

"We were given extra meals at school. Even though I took bread from home but I liked bread and margarine at school better, because we were getting it from America, they called it UNRRA, they were helping. Milk powder and then cooking fat made from copra, there was margarine in 10-kilo boxes. There was one lady who baked bread, very tasty; it was certainly better than the one my mummy baked, because we could even eat it when it was dry, and she also cooked soups. In the morning we were given a mug of chicory coffee with milk and a loaf of bread with that cooking fat, it was cooking fat made from copra, such margarine. And I had a sandwich in my bag, also buttered baked bread, and there was ham or sausage or cucumber, tomato, whatever. But I didn’t like it as much as I did that at school. And I ate it! Every one of us had to have a half-a-litre mug and you would come up to that lady, she was cooking there, there was such a small room, such a kitchenette, and she was cooking there, and she would ladle out soup, barley soup usually, grits, because the school was given groats. She was such a good cook that we ate it with pleasure, even the poor eaters ate it. Children were given such extra meals for a long time. Later they stopped giving the soup, and the bread, but we were given coffee almost to the classroom. Three pupils from the class made it. The teacher would always take better school kids, the stronger ones, they lit the fire for that pot, boiled the water, and put coffee into it. Then, at the lunch break, the monitor would pour that coffee. And we drank it, but bread was ours, everybody had one’s own bread. It was great, we would go out, the school was in the village; that building over there was burnt later on, the other one was destroyed, so those bricks, that rubble, stones, we would sit there like some little frogs and everybody was eating, God! You would wash your mug under the pump and it was good."

"My daddy was a forester, we had forester’s lodge by the forest. It was such an old building but very well maintained. We lived there; it was a small village some two kilometres away from the road, nothing but forests. Only members of the Orthodox Church lived there; there were very few Poles; only five Polish families. What an ordeal! (…) It was an ordeal for us, because they used to come to us across the Bug River, the Bandera men they were called, but they were simply bandits. They were supposedly Russki guerrillas, but they were no guerrillas. Because they used to kill people terribly. They slaughtered people. They made our life such a misery that we had to run away from that place. It was 18 kilometres away from Piszczce, such a small place with a railway station, so we were carried on wagons, by horses, our entire property. Later on at that station we got into a wagon and for a week we were going to this place here. Of course, it was 1946, so the trains were going as they wanted to, and we were transported in passenger wagons and in freight wagons. Still later my brother got lost, because he sunk a bucket in a railway well, so my mummy said: - Pop out to the town for a while, you will buy a bucket. My brother dashed to fetch the bucket, and they attached us to the train and we went! But my brother was already a bachelor and he came to Siedlce, to our family, and we stayed there, because it was such an interchange, and my brother joined us there. So, there were such strange things happening. But to travel a whole week; it was the Lublin area, from the Lublin area here to the West! But it was nice for us, the young people, it was nice to look around, tour around Poland. Because we were going throughout entire Poland, we went through Warsaw, across the Vistula River, and it was nice. But it was awful there, awful."

"We, the young people, could reach some sort of agreement, but there were a few families from the Poznań area, for example. And we could never come to terms with them… They had their life, their clothing, they dressed differently and kept some kind of tradition of theirs. But later on, when young people started to grow and they started to get married with one another …It was different then."