On September 1, 1939, World War II broke out. The German army, with an estimated 1.7 million troops, mechanized and mobilized, with an abundance of tanks and aerial superiority, invaded Poland. Advancing with swift ease, the Germans overwhelmed the Polish army, which was inferior in numbers and equipment.
Many of the people in Pruzany fled eastwards. But the east provided its own menace. The Soviet Union, having concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany on August 23, 1939, invaded the eastern part of Poland on September 17 — due in part to the alarm that had stirred in the hearts of the Kremlin’s rulers at the prospect of German forces deployed along the Soviet western border. On September 19, the Red Army and the German army joined up at Brest-Litovsk (Brisk). That same day, a Soviet advance unit reached our town.
The victors promptly set about dividing Poland between them. On September 28, the foreign ministers of Germany and the Soviet Union, von Ribbentrop and Molotov, convened to amend the prewar Moscow accord.
During the twenty-one months of the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, the war took on the character of a world war.
During the night between June 21 and 22, the Red Army held a practice alert in Pruzany. Schoolchildren took part in the exercise alongside the grownups. It was a rather mild spring night, and many of the youngsters enjoyed the nocturnal drill — as though it were a night game in the youth movement. While we were dispersed in the fields outside the town, planes appeared overhead and launched a bombing raid.
"It’s part of the exercise," the Soviet soldiers supervising the drill reassured us. "They want to make it realistic."
We returned home in the early morning to hear on the radio that war had broken out between Germany and the Soviet Union. It was later said that German spies in our area had instigated the exercise as a cover for the invasion.