9 - Last Phases of German Occupation

Summary

After the destruction of the ghetto and the continuing oppression of the remaining Warsaw population, in our state of despair and weakening defiance, it would have seemed that nothing could shock us any further.

But then the Germans informed us, through their Polish-language press, that their army had discovered the bodies of many thousands of Polish prisoners buried side by side in Katyń Forest in Soviet Russia. These young men, the cream of the Polish intelligentsia, who had been trying to defend us against our enemies, had been interned by the Soviet Army. They had been forced to dig their own huge long trench of a grave before being shot one by one in the neck so that they fell into it. Many of the corpses also showed the marks of bestial torture.

The German finger of blame was pointed at the Russians. We were told that this appalling mass murder had taken place in 1940, over a year before the Germans had invaded Soviet Russia – a fact confirmed, they said, by documents and letters found in the uniforms of the dead Polish officers.

It was hard to know whether to believe in Russian guilt, or whether the story was a German lie to cover up their own crime. At that time we knew the Nazis as merciless mass-killers but had yet to experience directly the similar propensities in the Russians.

The Germans, in need now of more manpower, exploited the Katyń discovery as part of their sudden campaign to tempt us to work with them against the Russians. They also tried to find Poles with some German antecedents to collaborate with them in administration, or even to be sent to the Eastern front. I myself was once summoned and told by the Kommandant that I was ‘partly German’ and could have the ‘privilege’ of working for them! Fortunately it was only guesswork on their part, and I was able to talk my way out of the situation, laying heavy emphasis on my English antecedents, without giving away the fact that one great-grandmother, Henrietta Mey, came from Hannover.

The Nazis’ increasingly urgent requirement for human resources was underlined by the daily sight of German soldiers back from the front.