Certainly, the family Finger had barricaded the door, but the soldiers break it down with their truncheons and rush into the study where Mr. and Mrs. Finger are hiding. "Down on the floor!" one of the soldiers yells at the man. The latter lies down on the floor, his wife throws herself beside him. To the howling of the crowd the soldier presses his rifle against Mr. Finger's chest. With mechanical casualness he pulls the trigger. The sound of the shot fills the small room where one could almost expect one's eardrums to burst. Then they yank the woman back to her feet and beat her to force her to stand still. They rummage through every corner of the house and throw the valuables to the civilians. In the end they also find the couple's two young sons. To constant beatings they lead them outside, where they join up with other mobs leading entire groups to the police station.

At the station the mob tries for some time to force their victims into the station with the help of beatings, but nonetheless only a few of them can still fit into the overcrowded rooms. So instead the rabble heads for the government building, but on the way there they meet up with another group, led by railroadmen from the French railway of Gdynia. "Where are you heading?" one of the civilians asks them. "We're going to hunt the Beyers!" replies one seventeen-year-old, called Gaca. Quickly the mob decides to participate in this chase, and together they march up to the Beyer property. Here too, the game begins with the same old question: Hand over the machine gun you've hidden!

Heinz Beyer, 11 years old, and the assistant gardener Thiede. Enlarge

The Beyer family consists of six members. Aside from the husband and wife there are two sons, one of them eighteen years old, the other only eleven, as well as an aged grandmother and an assistant named Thiede. "So you don't have a machine gun!" one of the railwaymen yells, reaches into his pocket, pulls out a cartridge. "So what's this, that I found in your study?" All of them howl with glee and Gaca demands the Beyers' immediate execution. But after a long back-and-forth they decide to take the family with them instead; that way they would have leisure to confess their dreadful crimes before being shot. "Not my little one?" Frau Beyer cries beseechingly. But they hit her across the mouth so that the blood spurts from her lips, tear the little boy out of her arms, and take him away along with the men.

Enlarge Kurt Beyer Shattered forearm Sekt.-Nr. - Br. 100 (OKW./H.S.In.) Enlarge

As they tramp down the street again, another squabble breaks out. "The railway police should deal with them," one of the railwaymen says, "they don't belong into the government building! We want to do our share too, the city police doesn't need to get them all..." Since the rabble cannot agree, they eventually go their separate ways. While the first group returns to the government building, meeting up along the way with several other packs each leading half a dozen Germans, the group of railwaymen head for the railroad grounds. The next morning all four of their victims were found there, shot. The eleven-year-old boy was lying underneath his father; his left forearm was shattered, he had a deep cut above his left eye as well as two bullet wounds in his chest. But while the others had already been dead for three hours, this child still clung to life until noon...

Gardener Friedrich Beyer Enlarge

As the first mob approached the government building, they could already hear from a distance the sound of screaming, those chorus-like screams of people maltreated to death. Even outside the gate some two hundred corpses litter the street. As they arrive in the long corridor with their Germans, the latter see at least forty soldiers who have lined up to form a gauntlet. They are the first to have to make their way through this line-up. Blows from truncheons hail down on their backs. Several officers sit in the interrogation room; they order the Germans to kneel down and give three cheers for Marshal Rydz-Smigly. A highly pregnant woman does not understand the order right away, so a guard stabs his bayonet into her belly. When the woman's screams do not end quickly enough, the high-ranking police functionary Roberschewsk orders one of his subordinates to crank a little hand-siren to drown her out.

Owczarzak hands his prisoners over as requested, and roams through the building a little before leaving. In one room he finds ten buck-naked Germans who are being tortured to obtain some kind of confessions. Seven of them are already dead, three are still whimpering. All of them have been dreadfully beaten. At that moment Roberschewsk returns to this room, hears the whimpering, and impatiently calls out to the policemen performing the torture: "They're still alive?" He takes up the bloody axe leaning against the wall beside those who are already dead, and gives each of the remaining victims several whacks on the head...

Owczarzak returns to the corridor, where he sees with surprise that quite a number of Germans are being released. "You can go home!" the officer says with a smile. Some twenty Germans run out as though the hounds of hell were nipping at their heels. But this too is only a game. They have barely reached the gate when a dozen soldiers from the gauntlet line-up take aim and mow them down with rapid fire, shooting them in the back. So now there are not two hundred, but two hundred and twenty corpses littering the street in front of the government building.

At that moment an acquaintance who has also just brought in a group of captured Germans calls out to Owczarzak. "I know where there are some more," he calls to him, "in Thorn Street, quite a way out! But there's a woman among them, have you had one yet today...?"

At the end of Thorn Street in Bromberg the bodies of 10 ethnic Germans were discovered, beaten to death and mutilated. Enlarge

Owczarzak joins him immediately, and soon a few soldiers also fall in with them. On the way the group almost falls victim to friendly fire, because just as they are crossing the corn-market square another troop is firing a machine gun at approximately one hundred Germans who are being herded across this square to the great police prison. Owczarzak's group flees head over heels under the nearest archway and end up having to climb over dozens of corpses to get back on their intended way. Again they have to walk quite a distance, but finally they are outside the desired house. The soldiers immediately fire through one of the windows, which prompt the inhabitants to flee into a shed. They are old Mr. and Mrs. Gannot and their daughter, a girl nineteen years of age. When they refuse to come out of the shed, a soldier throws a hand grenade in. Nobody is seriously injured by it, but now the three fugitives come out, trembling. The daughter asks the mob in Polish what they had done to deserve this.

"You're Germans - and that's enough!" the civilian yells - and one of the soldiers adds: "Down with these swine!" Simultaneously he raises his rifle and hits the man in the face with the butt, and several others immediately copy him. Old man Gannot falls to the ground, and they stab him with their bayonets and fire at him six times even after he is already down. When his daughter runs for water and returns with a bowl in order to wash the blood off her father's head, they hit her in the face, left and right, and rain truncheon blows on the old mother.

Horrified, the girl flees. Skirts flapping in the wind, she runs down to the river Brahe that flows behind their estate, and in her despair leaps into the water. But the civilian cuts her off, grabs her by her loosened braid and drags her out of the water again by her hair. Some ten men now seize her at every limb and carry her into the house, into the bedroom. "Now get changed, you're totally wet!" says the civilian, strangely friendly all of a sudden. "You'll see, we Poles aren't that bad, go ahead and get changed..."

But when none of them leave the room, the girl makes no move to change her clothes and just continues to cry quietly. And at that, their patience is already at an end. Six of them hurl themselves on her, tear the clothes off her body in tatters, and throw her, completely naked, onto the floor. While almost ten men hold her down - one gags her, a couple pin her head to the floor, four hold down her arms, and two sit on her ankles - the civilian throws himself on her like an animal...

Death in Poland
The Fate of the Ethnic Germans