At 5 a.m. on September 3, motorized and infantry units of the Wehrmacht entered Czestochowa. The next day, chaotic shootings broke out at several points in the city. The Germans blamed the residents of Czestochowa for them and immediately launched a large-scale repressive action.
- They were banging on doors with their butts, looking for men,” Zofia Stępień recounted. - They came to us and led everyone out, father, brother, the men who failed to escape and us women. The evening was so bright. I had my son in my arms, who was about to turn a year old on September 21. All the women were standing by the wall, and I reached my father and asked: “Dad, and where will you go?”. And he answered: “And I know?”
Sophia Stępień lost both her father and her 15-year-old brother at the time. We had to bury them ourselves, with our own hands, because there were no gravediggers in the cemetery.
Zofia Stępień witnessed the tragic events that took place in Częstochowa on September 4, 1939. The mass executions carried out by the Germans on the civilian population went down in history under the name of “Bloody Monday.”
- Here at this wall the Germans lined up all the men. They had a machine gun and started shooting. My father was not wounded, only fell, but my brother and all those other men were killed. At the end, one of the soldiers still threw a grenade. I lost my father then, too,” recalled Zofia Strozik.
Krystyna Strozik reached out to survivors of the crime in 1979. One of the participants was Jan Pietrzykowski, a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland.
- The city fell into the hands of the Germans without a shot being fired, Jan Pietrzykowski said. - The population of Czestochowa in the first days of September left their homes and apartments en masse in fear of the Wehrmacht. These were fears, as it turned out, fully justified.
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“Tragic Days of Czestochowa” - Recollections of witnesses to mass executions committed by the Germans on September 4, 1939. Broadcast by Krystyna Strozik. (PR, 5.09.1979)
