troops and asked him where they were heading. He replied, “It’s bad, we’ve
had it.” The captain, who was riding on horseback, called him by name and
ordered him to get back in line. He replied angrily, “I’ll be right there.” I could
see there was no longer any discipline. The soldiers were walking with their
heads hanging, all of them tired, broken and hopeless. We kissed each other
goodbye and I went on my way. I didn’t walk, just ran.
Outside Uniejów, we saw that the bridges were mined. They rushed us
on, “Quicker! Quicker!” as if the bridges were about to be blown up at any
moment. It was 7 o’clock on Sunday morning. We entered the shtetl. There
were many damaged houses, and not a soul around. We couldn’t get a drop of
water. I decided to keep going. My companions wept with pain from the blisters
on their feet. We were near Poddębice and went into a peasant’s house.
We had him boil us a set of fifteen eggs and make us some coffee. In 15 minutes
we were ready to go, but we couldn’t stand up because of the pain in our
feet. We gritted our teeth and moved on. Outside Poddębice the scene was
the same: thousands upon thousands of people walking along the road. We
entered Poddębice at noon on Sunday. We had a wash and a bite to eat and
continued on our way. There were aeroplanes overhead and we had to stop.
There were two brothers walking with us, and one of them fell three metres
away from us. [4] The other brother wept bitterly, then went on with us.
At midnight we arrived in Aleksandrów Łódzki. There I knocked on the
door of a relative of mine, whom I’d never visited before. He and his wife and
children got up, gave us something to wash with, and put us to bed. Utterly
exhausted, we soon fell asleep. We were woken suddenly by a quiet bustling.
At half past one my relative came in and said, “Children, get dressed, we’re
leaving.” Everyone packed and got ready to go. We decided not to go as we all
had blisters on our feet and couldn’t move. But we couldn’t get back to sleep
either, and at half past four we all got up. I went into town, bought a horse and
cart for 120 zlotys, and we drove to Zgierz.¹¹⁸⁷ We flew along, because bombs
were dropping all the time and the road was strewn with dead bodies. On
the way we encountered some people we knew and took them on our cart.
At 11 o’clock on Friday morning, we reached Pruszków,¹¹⁸⁸ near Warsaw.
The horse was tired to the point of collapse. At 12 we decided to move on.
1187 Zgierz (Łódź County).
1188 Pruszków (Warsaw County).
