The author was born in 1932. He was left by his mother in a birth clinic in Poznań. In 1937 he was moved to the Catholic orphanage in Pleszew where he was when the war broke out.

On 7 May 1941 I was taken to the Germanisation camp for Polish children in Kobylin, near Leszno. It was called the ‘Jugendlager für polnische Kinder’. The conditions were bad. Many children got ill. The German personnel did not give us what we needed. In the worst cases the children were sent to a hospital in Krotoszyń. The cure for everything was herbs and play which consisted of making bubbles with soap. The most common ailments were stomach complaints and colds. We were hungry all the time. When children went to a nearby Polish greengrocer, the result was diarrhoea.

The main food was grits, soup with dried bread, vegetable soup made with green beets, potato pancakes made with linseed oil, sometimes something similar to what are breakfast cereals today but made with equal portions of milk and water, flour, fried onions, old potato pieces, ersatz coffee flavoured with sugar beet syrop, bread sometimes with lard, cabbage soup and occasionally jelly. There were no sweets.

We slept in big rooms with mattresses filled with straw under the blankets. Insects were a big problem. There were two ways of fighting them – by shaving the head and through oil in a handkerchief. Mainly the little girls had their heads shaved. We were washed once a week in tubs, and lysol was used in the water. The toilets were disinfected with chlorine.

There was a roll call in the morning and in the evening. When it was warm it was outside and when cold in the corridors or in the dining room near the kitchens which were located in the cloister refectory.

I decided to escape with some others who had come from Krotoszyn. After a month or two the police at Krotoszyn found us and sent us back. We were giving a good caning – and it could have been worse.

Children were inspected in groups either by a doctor or a nurse. Racial inspection began with the naked body. Inspections concerned diseases, height, weight, physical ability, balance, eyesight and hearing. There were also tests of urine, blood, X rays, skull shape, genitals as well as those involving resolving questions about logic. The final tests were done by Dr Hildegarde Hetzer who was a Lebensborn specialist from Łódź and who decided whether or not a child could be Germanised.

Those who failed the Germanisation test were sent to other camps, mainly in Kalisz, where the SS main office for race and settlement was located.

I was in the Jugendlager Kobylin from May 1941 to June 1942. I then found myself with a group of children who had passed the tests and my name was called out at roll call.

In the summer of 1942 in a group of 30 I found myself as a Ostland Kind in the Hitler Youth camp in Niederalteich in Lower Bavaria in what they called a Lebensborn fatherland school I stayed there from June 1942 until July 1943 learning German and assimilating myself in my new environment and waiting for my nationality to be changed.

The camp was in the hands of Lebensborn and uniformed staff under the control of SS men who would visit us. The komendant was Sturmbannführer SS Hartmann.

The school was in a part of a Benedictine cloister. Its existence was secret although I don’t doubt that the locals knew about it.

Our education was mainly culture, films, sport in the Arbeitsdienst (conscripted work service) camp and taking part in the Youth Gold event in the autumn of 1942 in Regensburg. At the end there was an exam organised by the Lebensborn staff and uniformed SS. At the end I received a new surname. I was no longer Henryk Wojciechowski, I was now Heinrich Wochinger. I became a Reichsdeutsches Kind which would mean I would become a German citizen when I came of age. Then I was sent to Lager Partsch near Salzburg in Austria.

Thanks to the Lebensborn staff confirming that I was of German origin, I had the same rights as citizens of the Third Reich. I was given to the care of the family of Engelbert Berger in Dorfgastein.

I was assigned a social worker from Lebensborn, who would see that everything was all right in my new environment. I could complain at any time to this person.

The family looked after me. I could learn and there was everything I needed. I could feel their attachment and care. After school I tried to help them around the farm with the sheep, goats, horses and around the house too. I could do whatever I wanted. My new parents asked me to tell the social worker what I thought at Christmas 1943 and I asked for some skis. Unexpectedly my social worker gave me skis and various other presents. I should have been happy but I was not. I did not contact the social worker again, I had no need to and had nothing to complain about.

I reminded myself of Polish songs in order not to forget the language and tried to translate them into German.

The farmer often told me that he would adopt me as his son. His only child had been killed on the eastern front in Hungary.

When this part of Austria was liberated by the Americans, it was not easy for me to say goodbye to my adopted family.

Through the Polish military mission and Polish Red Cross I returned to Poland in the autumn of 1945. I travelled from Salzburg to Poznań via Czechoslovakia, Międzylesie and Wrocław in the care of someone whose name I did not know from Poznań.

In the repatriation camp in Salzburg I was amongst older people, I cannot remember anyone of my age. I still have the wooden case I made in the camp. Before the journey, I received identity documents and my fingerprints and photograph were taken for the Repatriation Card. Each one of use was disinfected and put on a goods wagon. We received a food parcel for two days.

After 1945 it was not easy for me. I registered with the Repatriation Office in Poznań located in a temporary barrack in the main railway station. I received 100 złoty and a repatriation card which was to be my identity card and I was told to go to the social services office in ulica Dąbrowska.

Thanks to the Red Cross and social services I was placed in the orphanage in ul. Mariacka and then I was taken to the orphanage run by the Dominican nuns in Broniszewice near Pleszew as it was not possible to find the family of Zofia and Michał Ślusarek who were my pre‐war foster parents.