European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Beginning of WWII, Soviet occupation

When the war broke out, the second one,

And there were different connections than in the Warsaw areas.

Fish ponds were nationalized, forests were nationalized, only thirty hectares of land were left.

Horses were given to the war,

we – me and my mum were left, there were no men, my parents separated much earlier,

we were the only ones at the farmhouse.

During the whole autumn in 1939 I was ploughing, only I worked with the plough.

There was one horse left and three colts which were still too small to work.

Then the Lithuanians theoretically got power over a big part of Wileńszczyzna from the Soviet Union.

We were quite near Vilnius.

And the Lithuanians were very bad to the Poles,

they were oppressing us, we worked without wages.

Before the outbreak of war, I was an employee of the National Agricutural Bank.

If I had agreed to become Lithuanian then I would have worked longer,

but because I did not agree to do so, I was fired in October and came back to Orwidów,

then I took up working at the farmstead.

On the whole, it was a male job. There were no men. And I was the main worker then.

Those were very, very hard times.