Reminiscences of German crimes and persecution of Polish villagers in 1943. Selected issues

The text deals with the functioning of Polish villages during the German occupation, with particular emphasis on the year 1943. In the years 1939-1945, the Germans carried out as many as 817 comprehensively documented pacifications of Polish villages. The applied terror and persecution, as well as the enforcement of the introduced German occupation law, particularly affected the inhabitants of Polish villages. Contributions and quotas imposed by the Germans on the Polish nation, as well as displacements, deportations to German concentration camps and forced labour in the Reich were practised throughout the entire duration of the German and Soviet occupation. The Germans displayed brutality and arrogance. The more they demonstrated their ‘power’, the more strenuously the people, especially those living in the villages of Poles, resisted actively and passively. Persecution by the Germans intensified, especially against villagers who helped the independence underground and the Jewish population.