A Polish Woman's Experience in World War II by Irena Protassewicz;Hubert Zawadzki;Meg Knott;

Author:Irena Protassewicz;Hubert Zawadzki;Meg Knott;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

When harvest time arrived we were sent out to distant meadows. Raking hay the whole day was hard work. In the evenings a large cauldron of appetizing soup was prepared for us. But I never ate this food, for to my horror I realized that it was served in the place where all the boys and girls slept together in the hay. Fearing the sexual amorality of these people, I could well imagine what took place there at night. Summoning what was left of my strength and feeling hungry, with only a piece of dry bread on my person, I had to cover a couple of miles in order to return to our house for the night. During one of these solitary walks I was spotted by a bull grazing with a herd of cows; it raised its tail and started to charge in my direction. I was terrified, but noticing a small copse nearby, managed to climb on to one of the slender little trees just in time. The furious animal then began to circle the trees; I was in danger of having to spend a night in this desolate place. Eventually, I spotted a cart passing nearby and, because the bull had moved away, I rushed towards the vehicle and begged the driver to take me home.

I usually returned to the house in a state of total exhaustion. For the work I did I only received a few hundred grams of dark stale bread which contained impurities.11 It was fortunate that the same portion of bread was also given to the Tomaszewskis’s small children; and since they could not bear eating it, I was able to consume their share of this rock-like substance.

One could buy milk for children and old people at a lower price directly from a centrifuge, and for other adults only if they worked. […] Families with menfolk fared better, especially if some of the men also possessed a trade such as carpentry, for they earned more. Sometimes one had to work several days to earn one ‘workday’. We lived in constant fear that we might not get any bread the next day, but we did not suffer from starvation because we had all brought with us some food or some items of clothing from home; so for the time being we lived off our supplies from Poland.12

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