The author was the son of a Polish officer. He lived in Warsaw with his family before the wear. He was arrested during a round up. He was taken to the transit camp in ul. Skaryszewska and from there sent to forced labour in Austria. He was then 14.

Round ups started in Warsaw in 1940. These round ups were done by specially prepared German gendarmes. Those they captured were segregated and their identities were checked. Those that the Germans considered to be dangerous were sent to a concentration camp, some were shot immediately and the young, healthy men and women were sent to forced labour in Germany and Austria.

At the beginning of 1942, I was in the Praga district in ul. Targowa and fell into a trap. They caught several hundred people, most of which were loaded immediately into cars called kennels and taken away. I was one of those for whom there was no transport and so we were taken to the Wilenski station by guards with dogs. After around four hours the kennel arrived and people were taken to a former school in ul. Skaryszewska. I was dazed by what had happened but realised that my life was in danger. The older said that we were lucky as those sent to Skaryszewska are not sent to a concentration camp but to work in Germany.

It was a very hard stay in the school. For two weeks we slept on bunks made from fence wiring and nothing else. We got fed a bowl of soup once per day and a small amount of bread with artificial honey. That went on every day for two weeks. My parents’ attempts to free me had no effect. They also could not send me any food.

After two weeks we were sent to ul. Kawęczyńska which is around 2km from where we had been held. Here there was an Arbeitsamt, an employment office or to be more precise in this case a slave labour office.

I remember the long hall with many little windows with the names of various German towns. I was sent to one of the windows by a German civil servant. The translator came in and tried to tell the civil servant that a 14 year old was not going to be capable of performing heavy manual labour. The German shouted at her and told her to register me. He said that I would be able to look after the cows. The translator managed to tell me to go to the window for Vienna which I did. I was registered at the window and got a document called a Transportschein. After this they took us back under guard to ul. Skaryszewska. A few days later they started to take people to their destinations.