Reinhold Wittek from Hohensalza in the Wartheland recounts:

When it became clear that the conflict between the Reich and Poland was escalating more and more inevitably towards war, the Germans in my homeland frequently debated whether it would be better to hold out here or to cross the border into Germany. It was obvious to all of us that anyone whom the Poles found in their country after the outbreak of war would have a hard time of it. But the farmers couldn't just leave their land, their farms, their livestock. So it was really only the city dwellers who could have closed up their homes and left to spend a few months in the Reich. The owners of the large estates could have fled as well; they had reliable and loyal German managers to whom they could have entrusted their property. But – if anyone had even really entertained the notion at all – it was clear that it would be impossible to act in such a manner. The Germans in the cities were the leaders of the German ethnic group in political, intellectual and economic respects. They had stated often enough, both publicly and among their friends, that it was important to remain in the country and thus to preserve the Reich's just claim to these large territories that had been stolen from it while it had been powerless, after the war. And when conversations or even thoughts ever got to this point, the matter was decided for the city folk as well.

We witnessed the daily escalation of anti-German incitement in the newspapers and in public gatherings. The process seemed never-ending. Already it was dangerous to speak German on the streets or in public establishments. In 1919 many of the leading Germans here had already had to spend months in the large internment camp Szczypiorno; we knew that as soon as war broke out we would be locked up again; all of us sensed that it would be a harder trial for us this time than it had been in 1919, and those days had truly been hard enough. The hatred harbored by these people, this nation, who had never in their entire history been capable of any truly great achievements in intellectual matters, be they art or science, culture or statesmanship – who rather had spent their entire time of nationhood constantly faced with German superiority in all such matters – the hatred harbored by these people, this nation, grew from the awareness of their inferiority and was fuelled by the realization that some members of the superior foreign nation were now in their power.

We Germans, in so far as we worried about the future, knew this, or at least we sensed it. And our experiences of the last twenty years had trained us to worry about the future, even if one or the other might have been more inclined by nature to let time and events bring what that might. But time and events had already brought everyone enough these past twenty years, and now they were to bring us the final test as well.

And even though we knew all this, all conversations in the time prior to the Polish Conflict concluded with the realization that we must remain. Nevertheless, when the danger became ever more immediate there were a few who left the country after all, for what people are completely without weak members!

But for the rest, our attitude was decided by the sense that we were a bastion – soldiers, as it were, of our nation: and the German soldier does not leave his post until he is recalled.

So we got ready. We packed our bags. We hid whatever valuables we may have had, and we got a tough pair of shoes ready for when we might need them. –

On September 1, 1939, shortly before noon, I was arrested in Hohensalza, which the Poles called Inowraclaw. Some Germans in the city had heard the broadcast of the Führer's speech in the Reichstag; the news that war had begun had spread incredibly quickly, as such news tend to do. We felt like soldiers in whose vicinity a heavy grenade with a time fuse had just hit: when will it explode? whom will the shrapnel kill?

I didn't have to wait long. Just before noon, with not a word of greeting, a police officer entered the modest office of the small German bank whose director I was; he had a rifle hanging by its strap over his shoulder, and a revolver in his belt. He was red in the face and sweating, excited and screaming at me, and the sight of the angry Pole quickly helped me to regain my composure. Even though I had fully expected to be arrested: now that the moment had arrived, I admit I had needed to lean slightly against the edge of my desk for a few seconds for support. But the Pole standing in front of me acted as though he were the one about to be dragged off, not his prisoner. Oh yes, this policeman knew very well what they all knew and just wouldn't admit to themselves; he knew what the entire Polish nation knew and what it had sought with its insane chauvinism to cover up against its own sight, namely that any resistance against the German Reich would be futile if ever war actually broke out. That's why this man was screaming the way he was, that's why he was so agitated, that's why he had barged in here with a rifle, revolver and threatening scowls – because he, like all the common folk of this nation, would have felt much safer kissing the seam of the Germans' coats than he felt in his present role.

So I talked to him as calmly as I could and tried not to let him break my composure, and even though my heart was pounding wildly enough, externally I became calmer by the second, and eventually the Pole agreed to accompany me to my home so I could pack a suitcase, since the red warrant he had handed to me stated that I had to come prepared with a change of clothes, a second pair of shoes, underwear, various personal items, and food enough for four days. It all seemed like a standard arrest on proper bureaucratic order. Maybe all our fears had been too pessimistic after all?

There was an uneasy parting at home. My wife stood in the doorway, suppressing tears as she watched me carry my heavy suitcase down the stairs; at the threshold I looked back up at her, tried to smile reassuringly, waved to her with my left hand and called, "So long, Bertele!"

It wasn't far to the police station. The bare rooms of the station already held a few of my acquaintances. We said hello, we shook hands – it was a different handshake than usual; we set our suitcases down and moved closer together, our faces towards the Polish officials, our backs towards the wall or to a fellow German.

As the hours went by the rooms filled up more and more. We stood silently. It was rare that someone whispered a word to his neighbor, it was rare that someone even shifted from one foot to the other. We all knew that this war wouldn't last long; we knew the Polish state too well. Our faith in the power of the Reich and in the Führer's determination knew no bounds. But we also sensed what was in store for us. We were defenseless in the hands of an enemy whose lack of mercy we thought we knew – just as we thought we knew the extent of his hatred. And yet: none of us had an inkling of what was really to come.

Every new arrival was greeted solemnly; every handshake, silently given, strengthened both him and us. Our psychological reserves grew stronger.

Late in the afternoon we were led under heavy guard around the outskirts of the town to the sports field belonging to a Polish club. Here we had to wait outdoors. It was a sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. On the trees the foliage had just begun to take on fall colors. The air was motionless, and it was hot.

The hours went by painfully slowly. At random intervals, more prisoners arrived, individually and in groups. Many of them were being driven in from neighboring towns, on wagons that stopped at the gates of the sports field. From those gates the new arrivals walked over on foot to join the rest of us.

One was a man who had to be carried by four others. He was unconscious. We saw that he was bleeding from his head, face and hands; his other injuries were hidden under his clothes. We found out later that he had been beaten at the city gates by a gang of teenagers with sticks and fence slats until he collapsed. The policeman standing guard over us sent for a medic.

A woman who was clearly just a few months from giving birth came up to us, eyes fixed blankly ahead. She was leading a nine-year-old boy, who walked alongside her hesitantly and silently and stared up at his mother in horror, never looking elsewhere. The woman walked stiffly, did not look to the right or left, staring straight ahead, her movements were lifeless. She joined the other women already waiting on the sports field. They did not pity the newcomer with loud and emotional words as women are normally wont to do; all of them here shared the same suffering and the same fear, and the words that one may otherwise speak so easily and quickly, were inadequate.

It was growing dark. I saw a man sitting on a small wooden crate. He rested his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees; there was something about his posture that made one's heart contract. I learned that the Poles had shot one of his sons, before his very eyes – a son who had protested against his father's arrest and had offered himself to the Poles in his stead. The man's daughter had jumped in to try to avert the disaster – the Poles had stabbed her with their bayonets. Then they had dragged the father away; he had had to leave his daughter lying on the floor where she had fallen with a scream, the way we do not even leave an injured animal behind; the father did not know if she was still alive or if she had died of her injuries.

Darkness fell. Noise and shouting carried over from the town. The sports field was silent. We had joined groups of others we happened to know. There was the seventy-two year old manor owner Stübner from Grossendorf, the farmer Mutschler from Ostwehr, and the young, strong, blond estate owner Meister, there was the aged superintendent Diestelkamp from Hohensalza, the editor Kuss from our German newspaper, there were the manor owners Vollrath Eberlein and Otto Naue – we stood together, sat on our luggage; it was getting colder. Hardly anyone spoke. We resolved to try to stay together through what might come.

About an hour before midnight we were marched off to the train station; guards walked to the right and left of us. Many of us, believing at the time of our arrest that we would be treated properly like prisoners, had packed large suitcases; the walk to the train station was several kilometers long, and not a few almost succumbed to the strain of just this very first march. When we entered the city the streets were relatively deserted, but they quickly filled. It began with loud shouting from individuals and grew within minutes to an inhuman howl from all the windows and doors, side streets and alleys. The guards pushed back the first ones who tried to attack the marching prisoners, but they did not have the power, nor the will, to prevent the curses and insults that the crowds constantly shouted at us while accompanying our marching rows on either side like packs of slavering dogs. Whenever there was a few seconds' silence, we heard a distant roar that arose in the side streets and quickly neared, we heard the pounding of many feet and the yelling and shouting of those asking about the source of the noise, and of those answering. But then it was all drowned out again in the bedlam of those who had already reached our procession and accompanied us. The city was quite dark, there was no moon, and the first rocks came flying out of the darkness, to be followed immediately by the first cries of pain. As yet there were not many who threw stones or tried to beat the prisoners; it wasn't easy in the darkness to find rocks or cudgels. Also, the guards still tried to hold back the surging crowds, but it was already clear that they were not happy to do so.

For the first time we now heard those words that were to accompany us on our trek through Poland; it was always the same words, and even though we soon became apathetic to all the insults, our sense of honor always reared up again at these accusations: we had always been loyal-to-a-fault citizens of the Polish state!

"Traitors! Spies!" the crowds howled. "They want to send signals to the Germans! What are you marching them off for? Shoot them, give them to us, we'll finish them off, the sons of whores, the Hitler-pigs!"

The insults soon escalated to the point that I cannot repeat them, and more than any other there was always one word that was repeated over and over, which many of us did not know or understand, until one who spoke Polish told us it meant something like "rotting, decomposing dog corpse".

That was our first march through a city. With the exception of those who had been injured, we were still all strong, and we knew how far away the destination of our march, the train station, was. When we finally arrived there, the rabble had to stay back behind the stiles. They were not even allowed in the waiting hall. The platforms were almost empty; cattle cars stood ready, and we boarded them without being harassed further.

Boards were stacked up against one of the end walls of the wagon. The guards ordered us to lay these boards across strong beams running along the side walls. In this way we built a row of benches, where we were told to sit. The policemen took up position at the wagon doors.

As I sat down, someone called to me in happy recognition. I recognized manor owner Lehmann-Nitsche, a man of over sixty, lame on one leg. He too had been deemed a danger to the Polish state and been arrested for it. But as we had seen, even pregnant women were not excepted; in fact, on the sports field I had seen an old hunchbacked woman, half paralyzed on one side and mentally not quite right. She too was a danger to the Polish state, and had been dragged from her home. Lehmann-Nitsche wore only a light linen jacket over his shirt; he had not been given time to dress more warmly. One of our women who had taken an extra coat along had lent him one, which naturally was far too short and tight for him. But it did warm him a little.

Along with Otto Naue, Vollrath Eberlein, old man Stübner and the others, I had been in the first group to leave the sports field. Half an hour later the second group arrived; they had fared much worse than we had. Between our group and theirs, the city had had time to wake up, and the rabble had descended on our comrades with cudgels and rocks, they forced their way onto the train platforms after them, and here, where the group of prisoners separated in order to board the cattle cars, their pursuers escalated to downright madness. They beat the Germans with anything and everything they had. The meager lighting on the platforms shone down on screaming, running figures trying to defend themselves; children sobbed; Polish men and women, out of their minds with hatred and animal rage, beat and kicked, spat and scratched, pounded with bars and sticks against the wagons in which some Germans already sat, and it was probably lucky that the Poles had lost all self-control to the point where they were insane in their raging passions while the Germans gathered together, helped each other, regrouped, and pulled each other into the cattle cars.

Pale and trembling with outrage, I watched the bedlam beyond the open door of our wagon; suddenly I saw the pregnant farmer's wife who had joined us on the sports field that afternoon with her little boy. She ran painfully along the row of cars, pursued by two shrieking Polish women. "Pay attention!" I cried to Otto Naue. "Get ready!" I jumped down onto the platform, pulled the woman closer, suddenly her husband and boy were there too, we pushed the woman up into our car, two men grabbed her from above and pulled her in, we handed the child up, the farmer, bleeding from head wounds and his mouth, staggered in after, and then they pulled me back up inside as well.

Inside, one of the policemen suddenly stood up. "This is too much," he said, trembling with anger, "this is too much." He gave a few orders, the others jumped up – there were seven guards in the car – took up their weapons, got down onto the platform where a strong band of Poles were just approaching, evidently brought over by the two shrieking Polish women who had beaten the German farmer's wife. Rocks flew in the doorway and crashed against the wooden walls, but then a policeman roared some orders and the doors were closed. Through the small opening that remained, barely a hand's breadth, we heard a wild exchange of words; we heard again the commanding voice of the sergeant, but the masses raged and screamed on.

A short distance away, a dim lamp was lit under the platform ceiling. From the dark of our wagon we could thus see some of what was taking place outside. As always, it was a few ringleaders who distinguished themselves in particular and whom the cheering of the crowd incited to ever more insults. None of them were too insane or offensive, too low, too obscene to be taken up and repeated by the howling mob. And once again the crowd demanded the guards to "give them to us, the Hitler-pigs, we'll slit their guts open, we'll scratch their eyes out, we'll punch their noses in!" What I am recounting here is only the mildest of all the invective. The rest is unrepeatable. But we heard and understood it all. The mob responded to each such threat with animalistic howls of approval. Someone wrote with white chalk on the outside walls of the wagons: "Twenty hundredweight of pig meat for Warsaw!" and similar epithets, insults of our Führer and our nation – one shrieked with delight as he read the various inscriptions to the others, and more howls of approval followed. All this was accompanied by the thunder of rocks being thrown and bars and sticks being slammed against the wagon walls.

Inside the wagon, we were silent. We sat mute, trying to deal with the nightmare resting on us all. It was like a surreal dream.

Was it over? Was it still continuing?

Suddenly, the little boy's high-pitched voice pierced the oppressive darkness: "Mommy, why are those people so mad at us? It's just because we're Germans, right, mommy?" We heard the nine-year-old speak for the first time, and we remembered that we had seen other children on the sports field too. Some of us suddenly felt tears of anger and helplessness burn in our eyes. The mother answered, in an absent-minded voice, "Yes, my boy, just because we're Germans."

The silence in the wagon seemed to grow even more stifling after these words; but suddenly the farmer's wife began to cry, everyone heard how she sobbed and how a terrible fear shook her. For the men it was almost a relief to hear the woman cry. Her husband tried to console her, hoarsely: "Now, now, Else, hush, it'll pass, they won't abandon us, surely, now don't cry, Else..."

It was clear to us all whom the farmer meant when he said "they". The policemen stood outside the wagon, we were amongst ourselves inside, and old man Stübner said in a clear, firm voice that held no tremor but an unshakeable faith: "No, they won't, Else; no, boy, they won't. They will get us out of this mess, our boys will, and it won't take more than a few days."

The farmer's wife, hearing herself addressed by her first name by a strange man speaking from out of the dark, left off sobbing. It seemed to me that I could feel how she lifted her head in surprise and began to think about the words that had just been spoken. Suddenly, faith stood palpably amongst us in this shabby cattle car in the train station of Hohensalza in Poland. No-one spoke the name, but everyone now thought of him whose voice they had listened to so often with hope and trust as it came to them through the ether. Like a mother, faith stood among us and wrapped her cloak around us all. Suddenly we felt how very much we all belonged together... From that moment on, we all said "du" to each other; formalities were no longer needed or appropriate.

Another voice, also clear and strong, came from a different corner:

"Men, those of you who have something to eat, you must eat now. Eat as much as you can; we don't know if they will take our supplies from us. Those of you who have nothing, speak up, so we can share with you. We will need our strength, so eat!"

We distributed our supplies, which were still plenty, and began to eat. Then we chose a place to spend the night. Almost all of us had blankets and coats. Things were still bearable.

Finally the policemen got back in, and the train began to move. The raging, howling, shrieking on the platform rose once more to a satanic roar, then it slowly dropped off, the train rolled out of the station, and we were on the open countryside. One of the policemen said that we were headed to Thorn.

The train drove slowly, the rumble of the wheels was soothing, and all of us felt the sudden silence like a blessing. Our overstimulated nerves relaxed, and one after the other we fell asleep.

Long Night's Journey Into Day.
The Death March of Lowicz.
Erhard Wittek