A few days after the events on Jesuit Lake, the estate of Friedrich Elgert, master smith of the town of Slonsk, is visited by a cavalry sergeant and several auxiliary policemen wearing white-and-red armbands with blue imprints. Elgert and his three sons are just sitting at the table having lunch when the sergeant kicks the door open with his heavy riding boots. "What kind of gathering is this?" he barks grimly at the Germans.

"We're having lunch," the master smith says calmly.

"Do you have a radio, do you have weapons?" the sergeant asks.

"Neither," the master smith replies, and opens the adjoining door so the police may search the house.

The auxiliary policemen rummage through everything, and finally the sergeant says in German: "Tell your sons to dress warmly, I have to take them with me, they're to shoe some horses for the squadron..." And they take the three sons in their middle and lead them away in the direction of Chiechozinek.

That same evening a cavalry patrol rides into the town and searches all the houses for publications from Germany. The ulans pull out each and every drawer, scattering the contents through the rooms. The patrol leader pockets a fountain pen, while the soldiers help themselves to the silverware. A civilian auxiliary policeman who happened to have gone to school with one of the young farmers manages to tip his acquaintance off that he should flee as quickly as he possibly can, since General Bortnowski had ordered that all Germans are to be exterminated. Bortnowski is the leader of the so-called Corridor Army that is posted in the ancient German provinces. Since the young farmer takes this advice immediately, he is one of the few men to survive the massacre of Slonsk.

On the estate of farmer Koerber the same patrol demands oats, and the farmer's son must deliver sixty kilos of it to Chiechozinek. Some time later the son actually returns to the town unharmed. But that same afternoon the patrol returns and demands another sixty kilos of oats, and this time the farmer goes along with his son, urged to do so by a vague fear. After they have unloaded the oats, both the son and the cart are detained further. "You can go," the old man is told.

"But I already have two sons in the war, he's my last, how am I supposed to do the fall tilling without him?" the farmer asks.

"If you want you can stay yourself!" is the reply.

So he returns home alone, without the beautiful horses, without the cart, without his son.

The farmer Gläsmann is visited by an officer from a mounted patrol who also demands a two-horse cart full of oats. Before leaving the officer examines the farmer's papers as well as those of his son, and then returns the farmer's passport with the comment that since he had served in the Polish army he was probably innocent. "So your son will drive the oat cart!" he adds unexpectedly.

"But my son's innocent too!" the farmer cries, in dread.

"Maybe he is," the officer replies, smiling, "but he's a young German..." And so this son as well drives away, looking back for a long time.

This patrol also makes the rounds on all the five neighboring estates and fetches all the old men, marches them to the oat-laden cart of a farmer who had already given up all his horses to earlier patrols, and forces the men to pull the heavy cart four kilometers to Chiechozinek, at a run. The ulans, that respected mounted troop from Polish days of old, ride to either side of the procession, striking the men's heads with their swords so that soon all the faces are streaked with blood. Whenever any of them fall down in exhaustion - there are several eighty-year-olds among them - the ulans strike down from their horses, splitting the aged victim's skull. Only a few of them reach their destination; most of them meet their end prematurely on the dusty road...

The same day a cavalry patrol, accompanied by three civilians evidently familiar with the town, pass and then stop at the school estate belonging to the teacher Daase. Only the teacher's wife and her two adult daughters are home. The Daase estate includes a sizable house comprising not only the teacher's home but also a school. There is also a large adjoining prayer room almost resembling a small church. On the other side is the cemetery, shadowed by ancient pine trees. In the orchard, lining the street, stand sixty bee hives - are these the reason why the riders suddenly stopped here?

Example: after a house search. The home of Raiffeisen Bank manager Symosek in Gnesen after 20 Polish soldiers ransacked and looted it. Enlarge

They come crashing into the house and ask first about the radio, second about German books and third about hidden weapons. The radio is immediately smashed with their rifle butts. Some few German books are thrown onto a pile. The search for weapons is in vain, as always. After the search the interior of the house looks like a battle field; in the bedroom the riders stomped around on the bed in their boots, while in the kitchen they threw all the food and supplies on the floor. They also helped themselves to whatever took their fancy: all the zloty they could find, a pocket knife, a lady's gold watch.

When they enter the prayer room, a touchingly plain and simple affair, the patrol leader contemptuously spits on the floor in front of the altar table. "Protestant heretics!" he says grimly. "Your husband is a minister...?"

"My husband is a teacher!" Frau Daase says quietly.

He whips around and grabs her by the arms. "Where is he?" he hisses.

"He was already taken away the second day of the war," Frau Daase replies, "to be imprisoned somewhere in the east."

"Psyakrew!" the officer curses. "That's really too bad, but they'll get him, even there they'll get him..."

The last room he searches is the school room, a bright airy room, almost charming to look at, with its little bench seats. "And he taught German - of course - in this devil's den?" he forces out through clenched teeth, and spits again, in a wide arc over the benches. "Well, that's over forever now - you won't teach another German word - in our holy Polish nation! Just a few more days and we'll be in Berlin, and then we'll dictate you our terms..." He turns on his heel and goes back into the kitchen. "And now, hand over the honey - at least sixty pounds!"

Frau Daase bows her head and fetches all the jars. Close to sixty pounds, that's all she has in the house... But she hands it over almost gladly. What does any of it mean, in light of the blessed fact that her husband isn't here, that he did not fall into their hands! And it seems that they will leave her daughters alone too, apparently these fellows are not interested in harming them...

The riders stuff the honey jars into their saddle bags and ride back up the road to Chiechozinek. As they pass the beautiful bell tower that stands on the left near the Daase estate - a marvelous old timber-frame construction dating from an earlier century which now in a sense provides the church tower to match the Daase prayer room - the patrol leader spits at it too.

Frau Daase and her daughters are almost cheerful that evening - but their relief at the harmless end to these events is premature. Shortly before midnight there is again a resounding knocking at their door, and when Frau Daase opens, the three civilians from that afternoon enter. One of them immediately leads Frau Daase into the kitchen, orders her to stand in a corner, and sits down to guard her with his bayonet at the ready. The two other civilians, of which one carries an old saber and the other a Browning, each take one of the daughters. The first takes the older sister into the bedroom, the second leads the younger into a smaller chamber.

"I have to body-search you!" says the one in the bedroom. He orders the girl to sit down on the sofa, sits down awkwardly beside her, and begins to grope her all over her body. Drool runs from the corners of his lips. The girl sits still, trembling, and begins to cry softly. Suddenly he throws her on her back and yanks her skirt off. She fights him off with all her strength and shrieks for help. For some time they fight each other, but in her desperation her strength is a match for his. Then he angrily draws his Browning and holds it to her temple: "Give it up, you dog-blood, or I'll shoot you..." But she does not give up even now, and bravely fends off each new attack. Finally he backs off and puts the revolver away. "If I shoot you, what good would you be to me then, do you think I want a corpse..." he sneers.

He goes into the smaller chamber, where he finds the second girl sobbing on the bed while the civilian is rolling himself a cigarette. "You've got to help me," he says darkly. "Seems you've had better luck than me..."

The second civilian laughs hoarsely and follows him back into the bedroom. The girl has fled into the farthest corner of the room, but now all her fighting no longer does any good. The two men leap at her and knock her to the floor - and while one of them chokes her by the throat so that she grows weak from lack of oxygen, the other furiously throws himself on her and has his way with her with inhuman brutality...

The following morning, more patrol appear. They are all coming from Chiechozinek, where a higher cavalry commando is based. Once again some farmers are conscripted, along with horses and carts. So far not a single shot has been fired in the town, and yet fewer and ever fewer men are left with each passing hour. This goes on for several more days, and finally there is hardly a man left in all of Slonsk. Where, for heaven's sake, did they all get to - are they never going to come back to their town?

No, they are not coming back, and they are never going to come back. One day, by accident, a mass grave was discovered, containing the corpses of fifty-eight men from the town of Slonsk. In this grave were found the master smith Elgert's three proud sons, with their faces so horribly mangled that their father was able to recognize them only by their clothing. One had been relieved of his new shoes, and all of them were without their warm winter coats. Young Koerber was also found in this grave; they had not let him go again. They must have shot him in the face while he was holding his hands before his eyes, for both his hands were shot through. The grave was also found to contain the young farmer Gläsmann, whom the officer had pronounced guilty for the sake of his German ethnicity, and it was also found to contain all the sons of Gläsmann's neighbors; some of them had had their bellies cut open; others were found to have been blinded, their eyes stabbed out. One man's tongue had been cut out, another's heart torn out of his chest.

And finally the grave also contained the old men who had been forced to drag the oats cart out of town. One ninety-year-old was among them, and many an octogenarian. Not one was under seventy.

So it was only as corpses that the men of Slonsk returned home - to their cemetery under the pines.

Death in Poland
The Fate of the Ethnic Germans