Walentyna Suryn

"We went into town to see how that German town looked like. Everything was wide open, open shops, but almost empty. Some nails, hinges, it was like that. Drawers in the shops wide open and only nails, hinges, some frames, everything scattered. Because – when the Polish troops entered, all those villagers from Pęckowo, Drawsko, Chełst, from all sides, started to pillage, there was no getting away from it, and they robbed all shops, all the shops were robbed. Only nails and those hinges were left for us, some wires. I could not see any clothes, and there must have been different shops: “Hey! There is washing powder and washing soda!” “Where?” And he says: “Near the church.” So off we went and in the yard, across from the church, we looked there, and that was true. We did not have washing powder for a long time then. It was hard, everything was dirty, because we were travelling ten days, or something like that. And we did not have any soap, or washing powder. We came in, and there was the whole yard covered with feathers: “What the hell? Where is that powder then?” “Look for it in the feathers!” So we got covered with feathers there and started to dig around in those feathers. And it turned out that the soldiers who were retreating, Soviet and German soldiers perhaps, split German feather quilts open searching for buried treasure. And those feathers covered the entire yard. And we, repatriates, all in feathers, were looking for soap. We were looking and we found sacks of soap and powder. No, there was no powder, only soda. But that was what we wanted. We searched around, where to put it? There were paper sacks, so we took them and the feathers, we took the feathers away on us, and down to the sacks of soda and soap. These were our conquests! And we dragged like that to that stopping place of ours, in the square. The hero was the one who had more feathers on."

"I remember that year, it was 1945, it was such a warm autumn that my nephew was ploughing already post-German soil in the filed. They were ploughing and sowing. We settled on that farm, we missed our life. The Germans were being displaced and the Germans whose farm we inherited were crying, saying goodbye. They said their only solace was they knew who came after them, who inherited it, that they expected those people were honest and would respect their work. The land was sown … And one interesting thing. There were sown fields and there was sugar beet. The German woman showed me a small jar and said: “We make beet syrup.” Because it was made there, not only by the Germans. And we did not do it, we sowed beet root for the cattle, it was not actually beet root but mangold, and these were sugar beets. A beautiful patch. We took out those potatoes. The German woman told me how they made it and we made that beetroot syrup. It was beautiful like molasses, so thick. I still have it, I gave it to everyone in a small bottle, because that syrup is already sixty years old."

"After half a year of our stay the Germans were displaced to the west, to Germany. There were very unpleasant moments, very unpleasant, because Soviet soldiers did not always behave morally. There were plunders, rapes. I remember, there was a young lady, a daughter who was so scared to go alone to her girlfriend who still lived in one of the houses and always asked me to take her, because she was scared. These were unpleasant moments. There was one more very unpleasant thing, when the granddad with the grandma and the young woman after that soldier with three kids just left our farm, the one we took. I do not remember how they went to the stations in Krzyż. But the following day they came back crying and said that “Soviet soldiers robbed” them and they had no shoes, nothing, and “in the attic”, they said, “we still have”, like everywhere there was always something left in the attic. So they asked us if they could go to the attic. I told them: “It is all yours. Come in and take what you need.” So they took those old shoes, put them on, found some old jackets. They got dressed as they could, with what they could find. And then they really went to the station on foot or by some wagon, I do not remember and all went to Germany by train. Later on they sent some messages, because they cared very much about how that farm of theirs was doing. So we sent messages through their soldiers, too."

"On 10 May we were already at the station in Krzyż. We went through Poznań to Krzyż. Everything seemed so strange to us here, all notices were still in German, “Kreuz” at the station. We bivouacked, we stayed the nights in a square near the station, and then we were quartered at individual large buildings in the town. From my transport, in which a majority was composed of my neighbours and family, we slept outdoors, bivouacked near the school building with the inscription Göring Schule on it. It was a German secondary school. We stayed a few nights there and when the weather was bad, we and the kids, because my daughter was already two, and I was pregnant again, we were proposed to stay overnight at school. We were also cooking meals for little children there. There was already a repatriation office in town, it was called the State Repatriation Office. And our men went there to get or possibly choose a job, or, as a matter of fact, the first settlement. My husband, even though we were teachers by profession, was not too keen to work at school because it was already the socialist, communist system. And we already experienced it while in the east, so we were not very eager or willing to work in education. So he was allotted a post-German farm and we went there together with the family of my sister and brother-in-law. "