When the Germans came, they performed raids on the Jews. There was a manor house where Josko lived, Berko lived below. There were only 3 of them. There were more earlier but I can’t remember them. Jews lived at the top of the house but they left earlier. What I can remember is that I went to see them, I can talk about that.

There was a German campaign to round up all the Jews, there were raids. The village leader, the Sołtys, he was a Ukrainian and he gave everyone away. The Germans liked the Ukrainians better than the Poles, I don’t know why. At the time they were impounding people, not just here, but in the whole district, and there were lots of Jews around. And in Uherce, and in Lesko. Lesko was almost a Jewish town. There weren’t many Poles in it at all, almost everyone was Jewish. The Jews would take swine, cows, goats and sheep for meat production, a Jewish butcher would do the work and that’s where everyone went to buy meat. It wasn’t all that expensive, Jews would sell sausages on the street. Everyone was Jewish there. I remember, I used to go there by cart with my grandfather and we would often buy produce from them, even jelly, I remember that.

Then the German government decided that it would slay them. An order came from HQ that they had to get rid of the Jews – so they did. They came in a tank and they also had an armoured personnel vehicle, really big. But they didn’t take Jews into the vehicle. They had everything written down, all the surnames, how many here, how many there. They already had a list but I don’t know where they got it from or who had given it to them. So they read out the names and the village leader would go to the addresses. He assembled everyone, it was late afternoon, around four. He designated two or three carts to take them away. They weren’t allowed to take anything with them. If any one of them wanted to take any bundles with them it wasn’t permitted. So they didn’t take anything, and everything was just left there. Afterwards everyone just jumped on their belongings, took what they could.

The Jews owned shops, they were rich, they had cows, horses, the village was practically theirs and it was their work. A Pole or a Ukrainian would work for a zloty a day. It was all mixed up; Polish wives would have Ukrainian husbands, but he wasn’t a Ukrainian, he was a Rusyn, a kind of mix. So they took the Jews away and everything was left behind. There was a shop where the school is. This Jew had an enormous shop, but when one went to the Jew to borrow money for a First Communion outfit, he would just give the outfit, he would simply say ‘give me a penny when you can, if not, then don’t worry’. He wouldn’t tell you to pay him back. They were in fact very honest people.

So these Jews: there was Berko and Josko. Berko was a vet, Josko had a son who was a doctor. My grand-dad suffered a stroke, and he came and saved him, my grand-dad. He would keep friends with other Jews, but he was also a friend of my grand-father’s, they got on very well and he saved him. And they carted them away. I went with the Jews on the cart.

In Olszanica there is a bridge; the first people to arrive there had to dig out ditches for the second lot when they arrived. So they are digging; they stood by them and Berko arrived from over there. Berko had three sons, two daughters and a wife. Josko only had two sons. One son was married; she was called Sunia and they had two children. When these Cossacks arrived they ordered to harness the horses to the cart to take the Jews away to Olszanica over the bridge. There were some bunkers there where they were thrown into.

My grandmother said that grand-dad won’t go alone, he’s a war veteran, he fought for a long time in the Austrian war, he’s weak, you sit by him, go with him there. I was 14, we were weak, frail and undernourished. And these children screamed, and how, how they held onto me: don’t put me there, don’t hand me over. I went with grand-dad over there. How they cried. Dear God, how they were pleading with them not to kill them. The Germans just stood there and one after another they died, in line, machine-gunned down just like that – and in an instant they all just lay there. They fired from this side, from that side, they fell in like pieces of wood placed on a fire. I remembered that for quite a long time and I couldn’t sleep at night. One line would come in from that side, here was the ditch, and from the other side just here. I remember it as if it were yesterday. This line of people who were going to be shot, they would shower lime and others would fire from this side, two Cossacks would open fire with a machine gun, the ones from this side fell with their heads going this way, the others with their heads like that. I remember it as if I was there, if I wasn’t I wouldn’t have been able to make it up, such was the order.

Who did this, who gave the order to wipe them out. They were good people, they were well respected in the village and by the villagers. That’s the way it was, though…