The murderous frenzy escalates to heights that history has not seen since the time of Genghis Khan. All the streets of Bromberg are now a witch's cauldron, seething with pushing, shoving masses of many thousands. Anyone who falls into their hands during these hours breathes his last only after endless agonies, for now hardly anyone is still shot - almost every victim is now beaten and bludgeoned to death or ends his life under dozens of bayonets. They are nailed to the ground with bayonets, bayonets are used to dig out their eyes, old sabers serve to slice open their abdomens, and cutting off their private parts is the height of enjoyment. Outside every German house several dead lie on the pavement, the corn market square is littered with bodies, and even the last few forgotten houses are sought out now. Time and again gangs of teenaged students can be seen searching through the streets, but many businessmen also participate in the manhunt: the Polish baker denounces the German baker, the Polish shoemaker reports the German shoemaker - are these days not a god-sent opportunity for getting rid of the hated German competition once and for all? Even the educated elite participates in the turkey shoot: the Polish lawyer reveals to an eager pack where the German lawyer lives, the Polish bank director slips his German counterpart's address to another bloodthirsty mob. But at the vanguard of all these bloodhounds are the teachers, who personally lead their hordes into the German schools and act in every case as the most merciless executioners.

Is there no stopping any more in this city, is there no single pillar of humanity left? There is none, there is nothing. A minister's wife and her six children flee into the Catholic cloister - but the nursing sister, with whom she is well acquainted, won't even let her in the door: "Get out of here, be gone, there's no room here for damned Germans..." The minister's wife pleads with her, for behind her the raging mob is already closing in. But the Polish sister, the children's nurse, only yells at her more harshly and finally slams the door in her face... An old Catholic priest has only scorn for two old German men who beg him for help: "Why don't you pray to your god for help, pray to Adolf Hitler, our god means nothing to you..." No, everything is surrounded by this acid torrent, not the smallest island is left. And when anyone turns for help to his neighbor with whom he has been the best of friends for twenty years, then in most cases it is precisely this good neighbor who brings the henchmen himself just an hour later...

At long last the hordes leave the city - is the enemy so close already? Those civilians who participated in the monstrosities join up with the soldiers - do they suddenly sense the impending retribution?

Infantry Regiment No 63 from Thorn, which is still somewhat under its officers' control, moves out along the road to Hohensalza in several closed groups, but their path as well is marked by a long line of dead. In Hopfengarten, at the crossroads to Labischin, it comes across the Protestant church; the leading group immediately breaks down the church door and the first hundred flood into the silent house of God, howling wildly. They tear the church banners off the walls, fire their pistols at the crucifix, and one even climbs onto the altar to the cheers of his comrades, there to answer the call of nature. Finally they drag everything flammable onto a big pile, and from the door they throw hand grenades at it until tall flames suddenly shoot up. Within only a few minutes the old church is engulfed, a gruesome torch to light the countryside all that night long.

Moving out towards Eichdorf, the commander orders the regiment to set up a temporary position. The majority of the soldiers take cover and set up their machine guns in a westerly direction, while the rest of the gang gathers together into a small camp near Eichdorf. For the first few hours the regiment is busy, but when the enemy still doesn't arrive the majority of them again begin to roam through the countryside. Did one of them learn, by unhappy chance, that Eichdorf and its surrounding farms is a purely German settlement, created out of nothing by German farmers hundreds of years ago, inhabited by not so much as a single Pole until 1918? On the regiment's approach most of the men wisely took cover in the meadows, for by now the news of the Bloody Sunday of Bromberg has spread even to here - but the women and children calmly remained on the farms. For one thing, somebody has to stay there to look after all the livestock, and for another, surely the Poles would not attack women...

The first farm they come across is that of Lange, where they find only two old men aged sixty-five, and an eighty-year-old woman. They no longer even consider it necessary to hide behind the fig leaf that to date was used to justify each of the murders - they no longer accuse anyone of having fired on them from cover, and also no longer claim to be searching for weapons: without much ado they simply beat the three old people to the ground with their rifle butts, stab them with their bayonets, continue stabbing them...

As though this deed had inflamed their bloodlust anew, they now range from one farm to the next, yelling fanatically, and since there are some twenty-five farming estates in just a three kilometer stretch of this road and the regiment is positioned only a hundred meters west of this line, the first few shots also attract the other soldiers standing guard at their positions, so that just a few minutes later the entire host of them descends upon the three villages. In each of the houses several inhabitants are immediately beaten to death - and if the children manage to run away the laughing soldiers fire at them as they flee, "to teach them the meaning of running". Several women are felled by bayonet stabs in the abdomen before their faces are smashed to a pulp with the soldiers' rifle butts. In many cases the men are tied together with ropes and lined up, and only then are they beaten down, one after the other, preferably with blows from rifle butts to their faces. When one old farmer is unable to reply in Polish, a young officer taunts him: "For twenty years this land has been Polish now, but you, you son of a dog, still haven't learned it? But now you won't need to bother any more, it's no longer worth it for you..." And he personally presses his revolver against the old man's eye, and pulls the trigger to the applause of the other soldiers...

On their way to the Wollschläger farm the soldiers run across the farmer Jannot's three children. The youngest is twelve, the next fifteen, the eldest has just turned eighteen years old. The soldiers stage a little interrogation, but the fact that the children do not speak Polish well quickly reveals them to be German. At that, the soldiers, laughing, stab them down despite their pleas: "That'll get rid of you, you German dog spawn..."

Farmer Renz, though he has found a safe hiding place, leaves it when he sees his two children looking for him. Little Gisela is only four years old, his son Günther has just turned nine. Out of the sole desire to take the endangered little ones into his hiding place, he softly calls their names across the meadow. The two children hurry towards him. Joyfully he takes them into his arms, snuggles them down beside him in his hollow - but already two soldiers approach, searching. They have observed the children running and followed them like dogs on a scent. They might not even have found the threesome, if the little girl had not suddenly begun to cry - and no matter how quickly the father put his hand over her mouth, the very first sound had already given the hiding place away to the searchers.

"Out with you, you damned zwab, or we'll shoot you right there in your grave!" they shout, laughing, clearly pleased with their find, and curl their fingers around the triggers.

Renz comes out, pale as a sheet, a child at each hand. "At least let these two go," he begs hoarsely, "if you won't let me..."

"That German brood? They'll go with you! Or in ten years they'll be German men, siring more German dogs, in ten years they'll be German women, giving birth to more German dogs..." Then they quarrel for a time about which of them should die first, and to top it all the most depraved of them wins, who wants to make the father suffer even the final horror. And so he finally lifts his rifle, and with one blow from the butt he smashes the four year old girl beyond recognition; the little boy, however, they have to beat to death on the father himself, who covers his son with his own body until he himself collapses from blows to the head...

But not all of them are beaten to death right where they happen to be found on the farms. One officer orders forty-six of them driven together and lined up on an incline at the edge of a little forest. "We're going to use you for target practice," he explains cynically, "that's the best way for my soldiers to learn!"

He sends a messenger to the regiment to tell the marksmen there that live targets will soon be coming over the incline and that they should practice diligently. Then he divides his victims into three groups, orders them to line up in pairs, and with an evil laugh he tells the first pair: "Now run, up that incline there - anyone who is not hit may live!"

The forty-six Germans stand as though rooted to the ground. The first two are men, one if them is Gustav Schubert, already sixty-five years old, the second is Kurt Kempf, he's only twenty-two. "You've got a chance," says the older of the two, "but my old legs..."

"What's taking so long!" the officer yells, draws his pistol. "I'll personally shoot anyone who won't run..."

And they take off - the young one in leaps and bounds, the old man can only limp. The remaining forty-four follow them with staring eyes, but even the nimble youth does not get far - there are simply too many soldiers on the hill with guns at the ready. Gunfire rattles cheerfully across the field like at a rabbit hunt. The young fellow is even the first to fall, and then the old man drops face-first...

"The next pair!" yells the officer. "Such marksmen!" The soldiers standing close-by clap their hands, and not far off someone begins to play an accordion, he plays a lively Polish folk dance.

The next pair is a married couple, old farmer Jaensch and his wife. "All right, then, Hedwig," he whispers hoarsely, "give me your hand - we went through life together, we'll go together in death as well..."

These two also do not get even halfway up the hill before they fall into the tall grass, together as they had run.

The third pair is again a married couple, Hemmerling is their name, newly wed, both of them thirty years old. At the last moment the young woman loses her nerve and it takes blows from rifle butts to drive her away from her husband. "Be sensible, Erna," begs her spouse, "you'll see, we'll make it, we're still young, we just have to run a zig-zag course..."

"Let's go, get a move-on!" the officer yells through his teeth, between which he has a cigarette.

And they run too, but the young wife is so weak in the knees that he must virtually drag her along. And so she is hit first, but from that moment on he does not run farther, he kneels on the ground beside her and takes her in his arms and rocks her back and forth, a heart-rending sight, until he himself collapses silently above her...

And so it goes on, until the first group, six pairs, twelve people, are reduced to little heaps littering the hillside. Just as the officer tells the first pair from the second group to start running, a higher-ranking commander comes down the hill towards them. He gives the other only a brief glance and then says, in a voice that almost sounds choked: "That's enough murdering - the rest of you can go."

Else Kubatz, a courageous young girl standing in second position, steps forward and asks: "If you do wish to save us, please, give us some kind of paper, otherwise they'll just shoot us down in the end..."

The officer looks at her for an instant, pulls a pad of paper from his pocket and writes a few lines on it. "Now you can go home, and don't be afraid!" he says, and hands her the paper with a sketchy bow.

Someone in the group breaks into loud sobs, the girl takes the paper and takes the lead, and so the group of the saved return to their village. But they have barely reached the village street when the murderous soldier reappears, accompanied by a mob of howling accomplices. "Back with you!" he roars in a rage. "I'll teach you..."

The soldiers attack, and a few who resist are beaten to the ground. The girl offers the paper, pleading. "Give me that scrap!" yells the officer, snatches it from her hand, tears it into tiny pieces. And so they are returned to the previous place and soon are exactly where they were before. Standing in first position now is Johanna Schwarz, holding by the hand the three-year-old boy Erhard Prochnau, whose nanny she has been for years. The second pair is a young girl named Irma, and beside her the courageous Else Kubatz; the third pair are Frau Hanke and her foster son, a blond boy seven years old.

"Now move - like before!" the officer yells and draws his whip through the air.

Erhard Prochnau, 3 years old. One of the group murdered in Eichdorf-Netzheim. The nanny, Johanna Schwarz, 45 years old, was murdered along with the child. Bullet exit wound in the lower left clavicle. The corresponding entry wound is in the upper right shoulder blade area at the same height of 71 cm. The horizontal course of the bullet at such a low height indicates that the child was shot in the arms of his nanny. Sekt.-Nr. - Br. 76 (OKW./H.S.In.) Enlarge

With a sob the nanny makes the first move, but because the boy cannot keep up on his tiny legs she stops after a few steps and takes him in her arms. Johanna Schwarz has a deformed foot and can hardly run at all, only hop forward in odd kinds of leaps, and so it does not take long for one of the many bullets to find her - but she does not drop her little charge, she sinks to her knees still holding him, rolls over him protectively even in death, even though bullets also already plowed through the child's chest. A piercing scream comes from the group remaining; a young woman, bent far forward, watches the girl's course. She herself holds a six-month-old infant in one arm and a four-year-old girl by her left hand. These are little Erhard Prochnau's siblings, the woman herself is the mother of the three...

Now it's the girl Irma's turn, but at the last moment she flings herself backwards, scrambles trembling back through the line-up, and so Else Kubatz suddenly finds herself standing alone. For the time of a breath she looks questioningly at the line, but does not say a word. Just as she moves to start her course alone, Frau Hanke abruptly shoves in front of her: "Let me go first!" she gasps out. "I can't stand it any more, I won't do this any more..." She turns a little, pushes the boy ahead of herself, and says hollowly to the officer: "At least let this child live, he's an orphan, my foster son..."

"No exceptions!" he just says, "The nests have to be cleaned out too..."

The little one turns around, throws himself against her, buries his face in her apron and cries, muffled: "If they shoot you here then I don't want to live any more either..."

At that, the woman silently takes her foster son by the hand, and with a face of stone, stance erect, she silently begins to walk her path to death - the little body by her side trembles like a leaf, the little hand shivers in her large one like a bird, but not another word of complaint crosses this child's lips either. The howling soldiers fall silent for a moment - are even these monsters in human form touched by this woman's composure? Only the accordion's long-drawn tones continue, still played by the same soldier sitting on a box beside the nearby field kitchen. The fire under the cook pot crackles audibly, blue smoke curls peacefully out of the field kitchen's chimney, and only a hundred meters further on the soldiers' camp life takes its normal course as though nothing at all were happening here...

Now it's irrevocably Else Kubatz's turn. But in that instant the same commander as before comes over from the camp, stops in front of the other officer, lips pressed thin with rage, and says almost inaudibly through clenched teeth: "I already told you once that this is enough murdering!" He again takes out the pad of paper, again writes a note of free passage, again hands it to the big girl, Else...

Livestock watering hole in the forest of Targowisko, into which the bodies of 15 murdered ethnic German children, women and men were thrown - together with an animal cadaver.

None of the surviving thirty recall how they got away from that place of death, but all of them reached a house and none were molested further. Still that same day the soldiers dragged the bodies of the shot into Targowisko Forest, an old stand of pine trees between whose great reddish trunks many snowy birches stand in silent beauty. In the middle of this copse there is a watering hole for livestock, a deep hole in the yellow loam, into which they threw the dead bodies. But it was not deep enough to hold all of them, and so several faces remained above the water. The last to be thrown in were the little children, so that these ended up lying almost uncovered on top of the other bodies. Three-year-old Prochnau happened to come to rest beside his loyal nanny, but the seven-year-old foster son Busse lay in the arms of an old woman. As coup de grace one of the Poles had brought a dead dog and thrown it in among the bodies with a wild laugh of victory: "Let them lie there together with the dead mutt, those cursed Germans, seeing as how they're dog-blooded themselves..."

Death in Poland
The Fate of the Ethnic Germans