I soon realized that being afraid of explosions makes no sense
- when you hear the explosion that means that the bomb already exploded nearby -
the bomb that is falling upon you, you don't hear. However, this realization
didn't help much. Therefore, I built an antiaircraft shelter in the garden. It
was very simple: I dug a trench, covered it with timber and put some soil on
top. It did not protect me much, but I felt much better than being locked in the
basement. I looked at the sky and when the airplanes were near, I would go
inside my shelter. The famous "Stuka" bombers were attacking the bridge
and with their sirens making a terrible screaming noise.
The battlefront was nearing Warsaw. In a family meeting, we
decided, or rather, my uncle decided, that we should go to the centre of Warsaw.
He reasoned that the Germans would never attack the civilian population.
However, how wrong he turned out to be!
Personally, I did not like the decision, but I was only 15
years old and nobody listened to my opinion. Therefore, one morning, my entire
family; my two grandmothers, my uncle with my aunt and their one-year old baby,
my mother and myself left, walking to downtown. (My father was an artillery
officer and was already in the army) Of course, public transport was not running
any more and some friends of my parents "borrowed" our car: after many, months,
somebody found the car at the border with Rumania, about 700 kilometers away.
What happened to them? we never knew!
