Fritz, a nineteen-year-old recent high school graduate, steps forward with calm dignity. "Where shall I stand?" he asks proudly. "You're just going to shoot me anyway." Oh, my boy, his mother thinks, I always thought highly of you, but even so I never knew you're such a noble person.

"How did you guess?" the leader of the gang laughs. "Over there by the garden fence..."

Fritz wants to shake his parents' hands farewell, but the soldiers drive them all back with their bayonets. So he walks outside with a disdainful toss of his head, stands tall by the garden gate along the street. The next instant the shot already rings out, but now, when the father runs outside despite the bayonets and throws himself on the ground beside his dying son, one of the Polish officers launches himself at him in rage and hits him over the head with his riding crop. "Back into the house with you, you Hitler bandit, or I'll shoot you too!" he screams over and over again, and drives Fritz's father back inside.

Fritz Radler, 19 years old, member of the murdered Radler family. Blow from bayonet or sword to chin and near right eyebrow. Fritz Radler was killed by a shot to his chest with a Nagan revolver; the bullet remained lodged in his chest. Sekt.-Nr. - Br. 48 (OKW./H.S.In.) Enlarge

Oddly enough the afternoon passes quietly, and even in the night there are no more incidents. The family sits indoors by their daughter's sick-bed. All of them think of the oldest boy. He had been an extraordinarily bright boy, hadn't he gone through his entire schooling as the best in his class? Hadn't they scrimped and saved all their life in order to be able to send the boy to college? They recall his many nature hikes, on which he had always drawn sketches since his great plan was to publish a hand-drawn travel book, a guide to their entire home region, the West Prussian region he had loved so much. The book was also to include charming little caricatures; hadn't he made them laugh many a time with his drawing talent?

"Mother," says Heinz, who is only sixteen, but with such a nobly sculpted face that he looks like a model of his race, "if the Poles should come again, I won't be able to just stand there like Fritz..." He breaks off suddenly, embarrassed, and whispers fervently to himself: "I want to live to see the new Germany, I must live to see the new Germany!"

At seven o'clock the next morning a cavalry unit suddenly stops outside the house, and a few riders fetch the father to water their horses at the pump. "Don't you have any milk?" one of the riders asks.

"I'll get you some," says young Heinz, runs to get a cup, and gives them milk from a pitcher.

They slurp it greedily, but one of them says: "I guess that's one of you, lying there in front of the house - served him right, the young Hitlerowzi! Now he's gaping like a fish out of water..."

"My brother was innocent," says Heinz, sobbing, "he was just brutally murdered..."

And with that, it is suddenly as though they had just waited for their cue - three at once raise their fists, rain blows on him. Heinz lifts his hands over his head, tries the get away from the blows by fleeing into the back yard garden. Two of them fire after him right away, but they do not hit him until he is in mid-jump over the last fence. Heinz gives a terrible scream - and in that scream there lies his entire youth, all his burning disbelief. He kicks out desperately, but it all does him no good, he will not live to see the new Germany...

When his father hears the shots, he wants to leave the horses at the water trough, but the soldiers point their bayonets at his chest and mock him: "It's none of your business what's going on, you just stay here and finish your job..."

He continues with trembling hands to water the horses, until he hears a hand grenade explode inside the house - then he drops the water bucket and rushes into the house despite all threats. He finds the living room door shattered, but his wife and daughter are unharmed. "They hunted Heinz..." his wife can just call out to him, before they hear the soldiers roar for him in such fury that he rushes back to the pump. But this time he has barely stepped outside the door before a bullet smashes into his throat, exiting through the shoulder in such a way that it tears a large chunk of pink lung out with it.

Arthur Radler, 42 years old, member of the murdered Radler family. Bullet entry hole in throat at the left. The corresponding exit wound is at the back of the neck, at left. The injury was not immediately fatal and Mr. Radler suffered for more than 7 hours. His wife and 14-year-old daughter were prevented from helping the badly wounded man. He was eventually killed by a shot to the head. Sekt.-Nr. - Br. 46 (OKW./H.S.In.) Enlarge

He falls to the step outside the door, but he won't be dead for a long time yet. Foamy bubbles form at his mouth, he rolls down off the step, and suddenly cries, half-sobbing, "Shoot me dead, why don't you finish me off..." But the soldiers only laugh at his pleas, and whenever one of them is tempted to give him the mercy shot he is always stopped by one of the civilians who have been crowding into the garden for some time already. "Let him croak slowly so that he'll enjoy it," they call out to every newcomer arriving from the street.

When the mother sees her husband suffering like that, she asks her daughter to try to give her father at least a sip of water. But the soldiers knock the cup out of the girl's hand, this pretty, slender girl that looks so much like her younger brother, and kick her to drive her back into the house. "Where have you buried your valuables?" one who followed her in asks them. "Tell us this instant, or we'll butcher you!" They drag the mother across the body of her dying husband, into the garden, make her show them the spot, and quickly dig it up with their trench-digging spades.

The hiding place is only a few meters from the dying man. He constantly begs his wife for water, but again they prevent both mother and daughter from going to him. When they finally unearth the buried suitcase they howl with glee as they distribute the contents. The civilians are the greediest as they help themselves.

While they're still busy with their spoils, an officer of higher rank gallops into the yard, spurs his horse right up to the dying man, spits down onto his face several times from above, and yells down at him mockingly: "No doubt you feel better now, you Hitler bandit, why don't you scream for him..." Only after this gentleman has ridden off again, a soldier finally takes his rifle and kills Herr Radler with a shot to the head at close range, fully five hours after the first shot...

Now they drag the three corpses together, dump them outside the living room where the two women have fainted on the floor, and yell in through the window: "Now dig a hole, but make it three meters deep..."

The two women stumble outside. Their three dead are lying together in wild disarray, at the bottom is the father with his head shattered, half on top of him Heinz, with wide staring eyes, and beside them, the eldest son, his face calm and composed.

"But what shall we use to dig?" Mother cries.

"Your fingers," the soldiers laugh, "scratch like cats if you have no tools..."

Foreign doctors listen to the eyewitness report of 14-year-old Dora Radler from Kl. Bartelsee near Bromberg about the murder of her father and both her brothers. Left to right: Dr. Espionsa (Chile), Dr. Karellas (Greece), Dipl. Ing. Santoro (Italy), Dr.Faroqhi (India), Dr. Ohanian (Persia).

The daughter fetches a rake, it's all she can find. They use it to scrape out a hollow, but how on earth should they make it nine feet deep...? The sick young girl is so weak that she can hardly stand, she helps her mother by scooping with her hands, while the soldiers revel in the sight of them: what a job for these dog-blooded Germans! But when the hole is three feet deep they are suddenly bored with it all, shove the two women back from the pit, and yell at them, satisfied: "Now throw them in, your three Hitler cadavers..." The two women are too weak, they can barely drag the lightest of the three, young Heinz, from his place. The soldiers pitch in and roll the corpses towards the hole with their feet... "And now cover them up!" their leader orders.

Frau Radler bends over the grave. The body on top happens to be her husband. "And now I should even... throw dirt on your face?" she whispers soundlessly, and suddenly shrieks like a madwoman: "No - no - no! Now it's enough, now I won't go on, just shoot me now, my daughter too..."

"Well, listen to that," the soldiers chortle, "all of a sudden! And after she's been so obedient so far! But give us twenty zloty, woman, and we'll throw the first dirt on them, and all you have to do is finish up..."

And Frau Radler drags herself into the house, to look for her last twenty zloty...

Death in Poland
The Fate of the Ethnic Germans