Mieczysław Pomorski
Class 9
Elementary School in Kazanów
Kazanów, 6 November 1946
Memories of German crimes
I remember how the Germans tormented us during the occupation. They imposed quotas on grain, cattle, pigs and poultry: hens, geese and ducks, and [in the case of] hens that were left they demanded a hundred eggs per hen and 2 liters of milk per cow. It was hard to subsist. There were also Polish traitors who would denounce others to the Germans. Members of underground organizations or those accused of other political activities were arrested by the Germans at night. They also caught Poles and took them to prison in Germany. They beat whomever they met, burned some farm buildings and threw people into the fire. In our village, they set fire to the Hajdaks’ basement and threw a mother with two children into the fire. It was on 11 July, and on the same day they killed three more people in our village and six in the neighboring one. On 18 March 1942, the Germans killed 16 Poles and 16 Jews near Kazanów and threw them into a pit. It was a terrible sight. The same happened in the neighborhood on that day. They caught Poles and took them for labor in Germany. When the front got closer to the Vistula, they tormented us almost to death. They marched us to the trenches and bunkers. One person had to dig six meters of a rifle pit. That is how they were torturing us until the Russian army came.