Categories: Wartime, Cheslava Gomonchuk

I heard the sounds, voices, cries.

The people filled up with ground, the Germans stopped those who were going along the road, with the shovel… later they let them go, and they even kicked their toes against them. These fascists were like this, God forbid! They arrested 8 persons, including my two brothers, on the Polish Annunciation day. They came at night, came into our house, chatting their own language. He pointed a gun at my mother and ordered to lie down, they had a list. There was a partisan woman with a nickname Kapusta (transl. «Cabbage»). Her leader came here by horse. Everybody was talking about Kapusta, and I was young and thought «Ask me where is cabbage because I know where we plant it with my mother». It was a nickname «cabbage». Because of that they took 8 persons. My elder brother was burnt at the crematorium, he was very weak, and he left two children. Executions had never repeated at that time. People told that those whose children or husbands went to serve as partisans were burnt, but not in Putrishky, further away, near Shchuchyn. But they brought them here. They dug such a trench. The ground was moving, my brother-in-law told me and cried. But sometimes you could meet some Germans who were polite and nice. But the people told that those who were the fascists were coming from Ukraine, they were their lieges, they called them «hahly», they told that the German nationals didn’t do that, those were their dependents, the scoundrels.

Images

Download

Researcher: Alexei Zagidulin, PhD (Historical Sciences), associated professor at Yanka Kupala State University of Grodno