better-known Poles, owners of major storehouses and shops, and people of
various occupations. They had been kept at the railway station for an entire
day [. . .] The little children were not dressed, as the people had not managed
to take anything with [. . .]. That [. . .] we met [. . .] [23] had been forbidden
to take. I often visited her mother and sister. They wept uncontrollably,
while recalling how the children had been dragged out of beds, undressed
and sleepy. The people had not even been allowed to take any food. They left
home empty-handed. “But let the time come…” they said.
The next day, that is on Friday morning, I set out in a carriage, burdened
by heavy rucksacks. I left my mother with thousands of detailed instructions.
The journey was tiring, not to mention the fact that I was cold in the
miserable chaise and that there were several searches conducted by random
Volksdeutsche we encountered on our way in German colonies. They simply
appropriated all valuable items, including even leather straps.
The atmosphere in Łódź had undergone a complete change. The people
were frightened and disoriented. For that was the night when the first
resettlements of a dozen families living in the Old Town took place. So far
nobody knew where they were sent to. People had lost their heads and did
not know what to do. They began to leave in haste for Warsaw. The streets
of Łódź looked horrible: troops at every step, carts piled up with possessions
and people. People were leaving in indescribable panic, by bus, by train,
into the unknown, in the freezing cold. In such conditions my cousin from
Warsaw tried to return home, also from the Łódź Fabryczna railway station.
She returned though. The stories she told sounded incredible but they were
true. The crowd was enormous. The local gendarmerie (Germans from Łódź)
were pushing, shoving, and hitting people with rifles. A young Pole, who was
standing in line, objected, starting a real fight. The Pole snatched a revolver
from a gendarme’s hand and opened fire, killing one of the Germans. That was
when the ‘real’ gendarmes opened fire at the crowd from the windows of the
station hall. A woman collapsed dead right next to my cousin. In the meantime
the man who started the brawl was moving about, calling on “his brothers
not to give up.” In the end he was apprehended. My cousin returned that
day, shocked. She managed to depart the next day after a whole day of waiting.
On Sunday I went to the railway station to welcome my mother and my
siblings. The train from Zduńska Wola had arrived and it was about to depart
for Warsaw. I kept looking out for them but to no avail. I could not understand
