The Marian Martyrs of Rosica

152 The Marian Martyrs of Rosica It was then that the prayer for peace of Pope Pius XII reached us. We were very much impressed by this most beau- tiful prayer in which the Holy Father embraced us all with his heart. WE REMAINED ENSLAVED Finally, the front moved far away. Warsaw was destroyed. Then the armies reached Berlin and, on May 7, the war ended. I can hardly express the feelings which I experienced then. Anything I might say would be pale and bland, so it is better to say nothing. The joy was for others, not for us. We remained enslaved. In the summer, deputies of the Lublin Committee (the Polish authority sponsored by the Soviet Union) arrived, and people were able to leave for Poland. I wouldn’t even describe my miserable100-kilometer ride by horse cart to Glebokie while the rivers were flooding. Once, I got stuck in the middle of a bridge made out of loose logs. The horse was walking as if on loose piano keys, and finally he fell completely into the water. I had to take off my shoes and, up to my waist in water, unhitch the horse from the carriage and then pull it out by myself. The way to Glebokie went through Berezwecz. What a pretty baroque church it had been and what a terrible place it was now — a cemetery. The Bolsheviks had murdered their prisoners here before leaving. Then, the Germans allegedly murdered 19,000 Soviet prisoners of war. A total of about 27,000 people perished there. It was a sad, very sad place. In Braslaw a very long line of people waited for departure, including an old grandma who wanted to go to Poland. “Babushka, you, too, in your old age?” a Soviet asked her. “Yes, me, too, in my old age.” Came the reply. “Is it that bad for you here? It's always better wherever we are not.” And the old woman answered angrily: “Exactly, that is why I am going. Because you won’t be there.”