大象传媒

This story has been submitted to The People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Janina Clough and added to the site with her permission.

I was about eight or nine at the beginning of the war. We used to live on a farm between Warsaw and Cracow and we used to go to a school which served many villages. It was packed with children and we used to go in shifts - I went in the mornings. I remember one day, just after I had come home from school, I was looking out the window and saw the German planes come over and they bombed the village. My parents were still in the fields and I was very worried about my brother who was on his way to school.

The next day we went into the village. Many teachers and children had been killed and there were even bodies hanging from the telegraph poles.Our school was closed and the whole village,including our family,went into the woods for safety.

German soldiers arrived in the area. But my grandfather wanted to take his horses to the troughs for water and he was gone a long time. My father was worried and went to look for him. The Germans picked him up. He could speak German and they wanted to know why we had all left the village. They wanted us to go back.

They told us we must not shelter or hide Jews. A Jewish family had taken shelter with the local forester and the Germans poured petrol around his house, set it alight and burned the lot of them. It was supposed to be an example to all of us.

I remember four brothers who were Jewish - the Germans made them dig their own graves and then they made them stand in them and they shot them.

When I reached the age of fifteen, I received a letter from the Germans telling me I had to report for work. They were taking people to go and work in Germany. It was awful to leave my mother and father - they were to be left with only their youngest child. We thought about trying to hide but we knew the Germans would come in the night and take us away so we went into town to report to them.

There was a gang of us - all of the same age. They took us to a camp and we were very frightened - you never knew what was going to happen. They made us shower and sorted us out and I was taken to Germany and sent to a farm in a little place near Rensburg. The sons there were all away fighting the war.

I was 18 months in Germany. I was on my own. I had to work from 4 in the morning till 11 o clock at night. On Sundays we would have two hours off - otherwise we worked all the time. I was milking cows and my hands ached with the strain - they got lumps on them. I also developed frostbite in my legs because in the winter I had to hold a freezing bucket between them while I was milking. I still have pain in my legs today.

The farmer was not too bad - but he wasn't friendly. I had to do as I was told because the police were always coming round to check on us.

The Germans were not all bad - I remember one who had a little cafe. Two of his sons had been killed on the Front and he was very bitter about the War. His wife was a little lady always dressed in black and in our two hours off on Sundays he would give us lemonade and she would bring us biscuits.

I was always very pleased when I saw the British and American planes flying over on bombing missions. It was the British who came and liberated us - they took us to a camp outside Rensburg and I met my future husband there. He was from Liverpool. We got married in Kiel and then I came over to England with him.

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