The author was born in 1922 in Ciążen in Wielkopolska province. On 13 May 1941, the German occupation authorities expelled a large number of Polish families from the village of Ciążeń in order to hand their property over to German settlers. Kazimierz Bączkiewicz and his family was amongst those expelled. After a selection at Koło, the Bączkiewicz family was taken to a transit camp in Łódż and then taken to a large landed property in Wollstein in Hessen, Germany. The author recalls how he was employed in taking care of the animals and forestry. After being liberated by the American army, he spent six months in Kassel and then returned home with his parents.

On 13 May 1941, before dawn we heard the banging on our doors with rifle butts and the orders to ‘Aufmachen!’ (Open up!). This was the beginning of our life as expulsees from our own home. I was 19. I had finished school and was attending a private business school in Słupca when the war started. I realised that I could be taken for forced labour to Germany even though I had twice been put to slave labour in 1940 and 1941. This had involved work in preparing a local road for improvement. It was then a dirt track and the plan was to lay down a permanent covering.

I lived with my parents in Ciążen. That year the weather was still unseasonally cold and because of this I was sleeping at home. During the previous summer, like other people of my age, I had slept in the barn in order to be able to escape easily should there be any round ups for forced labour. That day my father opened the door and there were two German gendarmes who in broken Polish told us that we were going to be expelled and that we had half an hour to get ready. These gendarmes were locals of German descent who had been conscripted by the Third Reich. They could speak Polish but made it worse deliberately so that they would stand out as being more important. We did not know what to do – what should we take with us, what would be necessary in a voyage into the unknown. Only hand luggage was allowed so we needed underwear and documents. The choice was difficult and time was short. When our time ran out one of the gendarmes escorted us to the collection point whilst the other guarded the property we had left. It was a terrible experience to abandon our family home. No‐one was crying. My family had a farm with 5.6 hectares including two cows and a fully equipped workshop where my father had a registered blacksmith’s business and my mother was a tailor. All of our property was confiscated without any written confirmation. That day a German family from Estonia was due to move in. That day, they expelled 48 Polish families from Ciążeń who were mainly farmers.

The expelled families were taken by coach to Koło and there they were placed in the ruined synagogue. Two German civil servants separated us into three groups. The largest was to go directly to Saxony to forced agricultural work and would be escorted by the SS. The smallest group which included my family was sent to a refugee camp in Łódź. The other group of people were those that were not suited to physical work. They were placed with Polish families who lived near Rzgów.

We were taken to Łodź by train under SS guard. Our clothes were steamed and we underwent various hygienic controls after removing our clothes. Our luggage was checked and they confiscated most of our food and sharp instruments. They controlled our identity and looked at our private areas to make sure we were not hiding anything there. They took our fingerprint and photographs whilst we held to our necks identification numbers. During the day we had to work in the garden which was part of the camp.

All the staff at the camp in Łódź wore SS uniforms. They behaved very badly with us. I saw how two higher officials walked through a room full of deportees and one said to the other ‘Leute, wie das Volk stinkt’ (How these people stink!) Their arrogance hurt us. After a week in this camp in Łódź, eight families including us were put on a train and sent to Germany via Breslau and Leipzig. During the journey we were told the place where we were to stay.

Our guard did not let anyone else enter our compartment during the journey. At Witzenhausen our new employer was waiting for us and he took us by horse and car to Wollstein which was about 30km from there. During the journey we found out what would happen next. We got our first meal after 36 hours travelling and given somewhere to sleep. It was an old, two storey building for farm workers. We got one room with a kitchen on the second floor. It was not well equipped. There was one mattress.