Master Schmiede bites his lips and silences his apprentice with a quick glance. But his wife has already noticed it, and asks from out of the midst of her children: "Surely they're not hatching some devilry...?"

"What should they do to us? We're all civilians! We've always done our duty, paid our taxes more conscientiously than the Poles themselves, served as good soldiers in their army... And that we don't have any weapons, well, everyone knows that too - for one thing they've searched every house ten times over, and for another, the borders have been closed for months to the point that one couldn't smuggle even a pocket knife through! It's already been a long time since they took away whatever guns were still around, and none of us could have got new ones, so what on earth could we possibly do against them? Maybe they'll drive us out of the city if they have to surrender Bromberg to the Germans, that's something we have to expect, of course..."

"Shouldn't we better flee after all?" asks Frau Schmiede in sudden fear.

"Only yesterday," says young Frau Ristau, the wife of an employee who has helped in Schmiede's nursery for years, "Pinczewski said to us, as soon as war breaks out we're going to take you Hitlers and tear you apart by the legs so that your entrails wipe up the dirt..."

"Calm yourselves!" Master Schmiede cuts them off. "Besides, it's too late, the troops are already retreating - anyone who gets between them now is in more danger than in his own house..."

He was right, it was too late. For at that same hour the Poles were already setting out on their evil deed, and suddenly thousands of them advanced through the streets of Bromberg - like a scorching flow of molten lava they filled every path and alley, penetrated every German house like in a fever. The core of these mobs were soldiers, accompanied by rabble, and students often showed them the way to their targets.

One of the first houses they reached was the Schmiede Nursery. Didn't its size and importance make it particularly hated in that part of the city? The arrivals are a group of soldiers with fixed bayonets - but what wild faces they have, are they perhaps drunk beyond all measure? Schmiede greets them with cautious politeness, but in his agitation he forgets his Polish. "You can't speak Polish, you son of a whore, but you've got weapons!" yells one of the soldiers.

"I've never had a weapon, but feel free to search the house!" Schmiede replies accommodatingly.

"What house search - three steps back!" the soldier screams in reply, lifts his gun with a jerk...

Schmiede is mortally wounded right away. His wife throws herself beside him in horror and now they fire three rounds at her, but oddly enough none of them find their mark any more. She leaps to her feet again, cries like a madwoman for her children, yanks them out the door with her and flees down into the basement with them all.

This general flight happens so suddenly that the Poles do not have the opportunity for further shooting. And so all of them reach the basement safely - six little children and their mother, her aged father, Adam by name, the nursery employee with his wife, the young apprentice, and the maid. The basement is set up as an air raid shelter, there are two water barrels there as well as several bottles full of vinegar, and a basket of towels in the corner. The escapees can only just barricade the basement door before the next shots ring out, punch through the thick boards, and shatter the window. They throw themselves on the ground for shelter, the mother lies close by the brick wall, she has pulled all her children down to her and huddles over them like a mother hen over her chicks.

For a while they lie there like that and try to calm the screaming children, while boots pound past the windows above. They appear to be looting the entire house; drapes drag past the windows next to the soldiers' boots, furniture tumbles with a crash down from the first storey, and a pile of wreckage forms in front one of the basement windows but is eventually dragged off as well. But suddenly the apprentice raises his head, his young face turns yet another shade paler, and finally he forces the words through trembling lips: "It's burning upstairs..."

Now they all hear it. It's indeed burning, the flames crackle quite audibly, the window panes above them burst explosively, and right away the draft carries the smoke downstairs. "They want to burn us all!" cries the panicked apprentice and climbs out the window in insane fear, but he has barely stood up outside before a bullet hits him in the head and slams him to the cobblestones. "Out with all of you," screech some women, "so we can do you like we did him..."

But the mother takes up the battle, the battle against the heat and the ever more choking smoke. She crawls over to the basket, takes towels out, dips them into the water barrel, pours a little vinegar on them and places one over each child's mouth and nose. Some of the children are so little that they don't understand, time and again they throw off the towels and then threaten to suffocate in an instant. With each passing minute the air grows hotter - the iron girders above them are already glowing red, and aren't some of them already sagging noticeably?

"I don't want to burn, I don't want to be buried alive!" young Frau Ristau suddenly cries, takes her husband by the hand and bolts out the basement door. Curiously they make it all the way to the street now - but there the raging mob is everywhere. The two are immediately recognized as Germans, and the civilians shout provocatively to the soldiers: "You have to shoot them down, they're real Hitlerowzi!"

Before the wife can even beg for her husband's life a bullet tears into his head from close range. A soldier throws himself over the body, pulls the new pair of shoes that Herr Ristau has only worn three times since his wedding off the corpse's feet and throws them to those who had denounced the victim as German, as a reward for their denunciation. Then he drags the wedding ring off his finger, but when the wife begs him, sobbing, to leave her the ring as a memento he beats her over the back with his rifle butt so that she collapses unconscious on her husband's body. But right away the mob yank her back to her feet by the hair, beat her to force her hands over her head, and then chase her at a run through the streets, accompanying her with shrill howls. But she is no longer the only one by any means, all the streets are scenes of such hunts, every ten steps or so there is another staggering German, most of them are covered in blood from repeated blows, some also have severe bullet wounds. Any that collapse out of weakness while running are immediately clubbed to death.

Mrs. Frieda Ristau, 31 years old, one of the group murdered in Eichdorf-Netzheim; mother of 3 children who were fortunate enough to escape being murdered. Skull blasted by gunshot fired at the back of her head. Sekt.-Nr. - Br. 88 (OKW./H.S.In.) Enlarge

But Frau Ristau makes it - she doesn't collapse completely, she reaches the police headquarters with her last strength. An officer sits at a table. His hair is neatly parted, his fingernails are buffed, and he looks bored as he gazes at her ravaged face. "Why don't you just shoot me too," the woman cries, "I don't want to go on..."

But the officer waves dismissively, they chase her back outside, and a soldier yells after her: "A bullet is too good for you, you ugly Hitler, but no doubt someone will beat you to death!"

The young woman gets out of the building in one piece. Does she look so dreadful in her pain, with her hair falling wildly over her face, covered all over with her husband's blood, that even the most rabid of the mob shrink back from her? She washes the blood off her face in a ditch and hurries back to the Schmiede estate. Her husband's body still lies there not far from the garden gate, a howling mob dances around him, the burning house casts gruesome shadows on him, and these shadows make his shattered face seem to smile a little. "You damned Hitler are still laughing?" yells one of the soldiers mockingly, runs to a garbage can, returns with a double handful. Half a dozen rioters seize the trash from his hands and throw it at the corpse's head. But for one young marksman even that is not enough, and yelling hysterically, he stuffs the filth into the corpse's open mouth...

Ground floor and exposed basement rooms in the Schmiede house, totally gutted by deliberately set fire. 16 people had to endure the heat for 8 hours in the basement because the windows were being shot at. Not until later could the ethnic Germans crawl into a different basement room, whose ceiling was of concrete.

Even despite the hellish noise of the fire this dance of death carries all the way into the basement, where Frau Schmiede still huddles with her children. The room is gradually getting so torrid that her clothes cling to her body soaking wet, and the stone walls are so scorching hot that one can hardly still touch them. The children scream incessantly. Time and again she places fresh vinegar towels over their mouths, but she still has to do it all while crawling on her stomach, otherwise more bullets whip in through the windows again right away. Night is falling outside, and the spine-chilling howling around the house now sends almost all the children into outright convulsions. Shortly before midnight there is a deafening cracking sound above their heads, the iron girders bend almost in half, but ultimately they do hold. The house collapsed over top of them, but they were not all buried alive under it.

With the collapse of the burning house the crowd disperses, but it is not until morning that the woman dares creep out. She hopes to fetch some food for the children from some acquaintances, but only a short distance out she falls into the hands of a patrol. They immediately drag her to the police station. Only young civilians are there, and one sixteen-year-old is busy signing the death sentences. She is shoved into one of the many rooms where hundreds of Germans are already crowded together. She falls unconscious into an acquaintance's arms, but a terrible screaming wakes her again the very next moment. A Polish soldier has yelled in the door that they would all be gassed to death now. And in fact a pipe is pushed in through a window, and a strange blowing sound comes in from outside. Already they believe they smell the almond scent of mustard gas. A mindless chaos breaks out, many fall to their knees in prayer, a minister's ringing voice recites the Lord's Prayer - but none of them sink to the floor from this gas. No gas is kept in this station at all, their tormentors only wanted to revel in their agonies and have some fun with them...

Death in Poland
The Fate of the Ethnic Germans