My father Wacław Szymanek had contacts with Polish police in the service of the Germans in Włodzimierz Wołyński. due to the fact that there was hunger in the city, my father and another Poles frequently left under the cover of the German army in order to get the food needed to survive. I remember quite a few trips like this. 1 time in the beginning of September 1943, me and my father Wacław besides went, due to the fact that the Germans were looking for individual from Kohyln's area as a guide. When we arrived in a large column of cars to a tiny barbarovka colony, people spread through homes, gardens, and fields. My brother Tadeusz and I started digging potatoes in the field by respective years. At 1 point individual started shooting with Kohylna, most likely from a tower of wooden church that stood in the mediate of this old and large Ukrainian village. I nearly got hurt erstwhile the bullet bounced off the metallic railing of the car and fell right next to me while inactive hesitating and smoking. I hid with Tadek under a wooden car.
The Baronówka Colony counted about 20 to 30 wooden houses, there was besides a primary school, it was inhabited by erstwhile Polish military settlers. In the winter of 1940, the Soviets took them to Siberia, which I had already written about. However, abandoned homes were rapidly occupied by families who had no place to live. They were visitors from different directions. Our cousin Jan Roch lived in Barbarówka, who married a widow after 1 of those settlers named Bieliniak. I remember him coming to our home during the war and talking to his parents. He told my mom that he works at the judaic Ghetto in Włodzimierz Wołyński, works as a watchman, guarding things after Jews. He showed the money he received from the Jews. present it is hard for me to justice him, and even more so his activity as a warehouse in the service of the Germans and the nature of his work. However, I am aware that he was murdered in Barbarówka during the August 1943 pogrom, but I do not know the exact date.
Now the Barbarka colony was abandoned, the houses stood empty, not a single surviving soul. I don't know what the houses inside looked like, due to the fact that my brother and I didn't go in, there were others. However, I heard from another people that fewer Poles were beaten by Ukrainians here. Meanwhile, after the first shots from Kohylna, Germany took a car column, military “Vilis” to the village through the Zastawa u Rochów. Our father Wacław besides went with them. As they were on their way, respective armed Ukrainians rushed out of their facility in Zastawy and began to flee by fields to further distant from the road. The Germans were about to ask their father, who is that? Then he said, “Bandit!” to these words the Germans opened a strong fire with rifles and put the body of all those fleeing.
That's how they shot 3 of them at Zastawy and at the village of the next three. After reaching Kohylna, however, the Germans did not enter the village, but collected rifles after the killed and converted back to Barbarówka. erstwhile they were coming back, they saw a man kneeling by the road and they wanted to shoot him reasoning he was 1 of the bandits. Then Father Wacław stood up for him and said he was a Pole, that he needed help. My father's words worked. The Germans carefully missed it and went on. But as they passed him, his father told him to run after them. As they were passing through the Zastawa and turning into Barbarówka, they saw a female with 2 children on her hands. She was besides kneeling and carrying a image of Our Lady. The Germans and this time they did not halt at all, only the father could yell at her to follow them. After arriving in Barbarówka, the Germans ordered us to return to the city.
After any time, the father met this man, whose life he saved in Kohylina, at the police station. I think his name was Tailor, erstwhile he asked his father for help, for safe sleepover, Dad invited him to our temporary, first place of detention, in the train shed. After a small rest, he started telling us all what he had been through. Kawiec was a Pole, he lived somewhere further east, present I do not remember where he came from. However, as I realized, he was on his way to Włodzimierz Wołyński for a week. He told that he had a wife and 2 children, lived in a Polish village where he was a shoemaker. Ukrainian guerrillas commissioned him during the war to make fresh shoes for himself, for Ukrainian officers. He had quite a few work to do with it, so he was needed and erstwhile all Poles around him were already murdered, only his household Ukrainians spared so far. They didn't hide it from him, they said, “You are innocent, those we beat were guilty due to the fact that they had guns and were associated with guerrillas, so they had to die. You will live, work and make us shoes.”
After a fewer days, they came back to choice up that batch of shoes he already made. At the same time, they ordered him to kill his wife, who was Polish due to the fact that they abruptly found her guilty. They urged him to join them to become 1 of them. The tailor turned out to be a man and refused to kill his wife, insisted that he could not do so. Then they themselves murdered in the home in front of his eyes his wife and his children, chopped them all with axes. Then they told him to clean the bodies and wash the blood pool off the floor. After the order, he buried the bodies.. Then he started making shoes again for his torturers, all the time planning his escape. He had almost no uncertainty that as shortly as he did his job, they would take him out.
The day before the announced visit, despite being watched, he managed to flee the house. Going to Włodzimierz Wołyński for a week, he got lost and hit the Ukrainians in Kohilno, who took him under defender and kept him at the station. Actually, he was expecting the worst, and that's erstwhile the Germans and my father arrived. The Ukrainians were frightened, threw themselves away, and he was released and went out to meet the returning German column from Kohylna. The tailor lived with us for about 3 months and then went somewhere and I don't know what happened to him after.
In Włodzimierz we lived in the home of Łoniuk until March 1944, erstwhile the front approached the city our benefactor began to persuade us to leave for Central Poland. He besides gave us a freight wagon that we drove all the way to Dęblin on the Vistula River. However, the journey had its very dramatic moments erstwhile we travelled through Lublin. The Germans directed our car to Majdanek, where 1 of the scariest death camps of planet War II was known to be. However, since our father Wacław knew the German language, he managed to communicate with the Germans who let us go further to Dęblin, where Dad’s close household lived.
In exile
Jan Belina was my grandmother's brother, Anela, and we stayed at his place almost until the end of the war. Immediately after our arrival, the Germans took Father and Brother Tadeusz to a dangerous work in the powder room, without paying a penny for it. I remember that the day before the raid on Dęblin, the Germans drove all the people out of town. Our father, on the another hand, was taken with them by the Vistula River as a cartman, carrying their various rolling stock. Meanwhile, at night, the Soviets razed the city of Dęblin, peculiarly by bombing the airport itself. Fortunately for us, we were already in 1 of the villages under Dęblin.
During the bombing our father, despite the large danger, managed to cross the bridge on the Vistula River and returned to the right bank. The front stopped just in time on the river. The father from the meadows watched everything around him groping around with russian bombs, then he started looking for us around. He found us only 3 weeks later under Dęblin, close the powder room, we stopped in the first village east of Dęblin. erstwhile Dad found us, we began to search for the horse he left in the meadows close Dęblin, and we found happily on the fort. However, we had to present witnesses that the horse truly belonged to us earlier. Meanwhile, the Soviets were already in town. After uncovering our horse, we loaded our household on a cart and set off to the southeast, we were going to return to our household village to Kohylna at this point.
We drove to Zamość for 3 days, on the way to Majdanek and for the first time in my life I saw something similar, a camp and what was left of it. I remember most of all a large mountain of shoes. In Zamość we stopped for a short time, at first Dad met his friend from Volyn, most likely Zygmunt Zawadzki, who came from Włodzimierz Wołyżski. Dad confided in him that he was going to go after Bug, then he advised against this thought due to the fact that the border on the river was closed for good. As a good friend, he suggested that we stay at his home for now. However, Dad did not want to stay in the city and diligently sought out his brother-in-law Alexander Roch, whom he learned was working in a farm in Zawada, close Zamość.
So we went to Zawada, and there we found Oleśka Roch, who lived with his wife Agnieszka's household from the home of Cichosz in the village of Sunday. He was very happy erstwhile he saw us and helped him, we moved to the village of Sunday in the attic, but the conditions were very difficult. Thus we lived through June 1944, and in autumn we moved to the close village of Wielecz and there we lived with the State of Parcła.
In the guerrilla ward “Kozak” in the village of Priestostana
A hard conflict for endurance began, this time with hunger. Dad worked on home repairs, and Brother Tadeusz was doing horseing in the field at the time. At this time I went to the village of the Priestess in the municipality of Komarów and stayed there at my uncle Michał Roch. After a fewer days, we moved to the town of Krzywiystok and lived there for respective months until winter. It was there that my uncle Bolesław Roch visited us, who inactive served in the guerrilla “Kosaka”, which was stationed in the village of the Priestess. I remember very well that my uncle Bolek came to us armed with a short gun, if I remember correctly it was a “VIS” gun.
I'm certain he told me about it himself, and besides, he had a 10-gun hidden, I think he was German. However, he did not carry a weapon on top, as NKVD was already after them. Partisans from his ward slept at night in barns and farmyards, yet there were about 30 of them. I besides know the condition of their wards from Uncle Bolesław, from what I realize it was 1 company, and the another was accommodated in the another village.
Because the Soviets knew about the presence of guerrillas in the field, what time they were doing in the area. On 1 occasion they arrived in the village of Krzywystok by car, there were 4 of them, they entered an flat where Michael Roch and I temporarily lived, so I could perceive to this conversation. At the beginning of the day, erstwhile my uncle offered after a cup of samogon, the guests gladly agreed and started drinking. As with the Soviets, they looked sharp, and as they drank, they gladly revealed the intent of their visit today, saying: “We are looking in the area of guerrillas!”. After the libation, they went outside and in broad daylight they began to shoot into the sky and across the barns until the plaster flew to the ground. After any time individual came to choice them up, they got on the car and drove off, saying naively: “If the guerrillas show up, let us know!”
On 1 occasion, uncle Bolesław went to the city of Zamość, and the militia created by the communists threw a catch due to the fact that he had no papers on him, he was detained for reconnaissance. They temporarily put him in prison on Okrzei Street, but where he managed to get out. Since then, however, he has tried not to show much due to the fact that he has given false information about himself.
From Krzybistok I left somewhere around December 1944 to the village of Siedliska close Zamość, where many Ukrainians lived, and who were now leaving their farms and leaving as part of the population exchange behind the border river Bug. The abandoned houses and economical buildings were assigned by a peculiar state commission to specified indiscretionists as our family. The land that lay in the area was a wasteland, everyone occupied where they wanted, what whoever took it became his. However, the biggest problem at the time was the tools for working on the field, just there was nothing to do in the field. 3 brothers yet settled in the village of Siedliska: Alexander Roch and his family. Michał Roch with his household and Bolesław Roch, who was inactive a bachelor and temporarily lived with Michael at home, close today's railway viaduct and their 2 natural sisters, Michalina Szymanek, my parent and our family, and Anastasia Roch, who married Władysław Garbate. Vladek's household is besides from Volyn from Smolarania village, Werba municipality in Włodzimierz Wołyński district.
Bolesław Roch acted actively in the guerrilla until the fall of 1944, and then settled like us in the village of Siedliska close Zamość. However, I am aware that he kept in constant contact with his colleagues from the branch for the next fewer years, at least until 1952-3, and later also. I remember, for example, that many of his colleagues came to his home and then had the chance to reminisce about any of the adventures of the past. Shortly thereafter, he married Wenceslas Albingier, whose household besides came from Volyn. As a young couple, they received a tiny condition in our village and lived there building their home at number 88 and establishing a large family. The above written evidence was read to me after the writing and the truthfulness of the father - in - law contained in it I confirm with my own handwritten signature. Roman Szymanek [a fragment of the memories of Roman Szymanek from the village of Kohilno in Volyn, the account listened, wrote, and developed 29 September 2003 in Zamość S. T. Roch]
