Agata paints the town red.

Warsaw, Poland September 21, 1940 – “I put my hand on her chest to stop the streaming blood. She told me that she could not breathe, her body trembled and she closed her eyes,” said Szymon Porchinzy of his 12-year-old daughter Agata’s last moments after she was shot by an German sniper last Saturday.

Anna was shot in the left side of her chest while she was inside her home in Warsaw, in the northern part of the ghetto. An ambulance tried to reach her but German soldiers opened fire at it, wounding a paramedic and causing the tires to lose air, and so she bled to death three hours after she was wounded.

Her 39-year-old father Teodor, 37-year-old mother Róza, and the rest of Agata’s family surrounded her, praying for her safety. Her father pressed on the wound while her brother Szymon held her hands as her body was severely trembling. She asked her father to help her to breathe.

“Dad, I cannot breathe, all of you leave me please, let me breathe, enough, enough,” were Agata’s last words, according to her father.

Teodor tried CPR, but he failed. No more pulse and no more breath.

Agata had gone to fetch some clothes from the second floor when, according to Teodor, “the German sniper on a nearby building shot her in her chest.”

The gunshot penetrated both her chest and the door of the room, and blood poured from her chest and back.

“I heard a gunshot and soon her scream filled the house. I went upstairs, [and saw] her knees gave in and slowly she fell down while calling for her mother,” said her 17-year-old brother Teofil.

Her father carried his wounded daughter and tried to evacuate her to the hospital but when he reached the door of the house, his brothers prevented him from leaving as German snipers were shooting anything moving.

Several phone calls later, the ambulance center told the family to evacuate the girl. Her mother Róza carried Agata but as soon as she left the house, the German soldiers opened fire at her and the wounded girl fell to the ground. Teofil dragged her into the house.

While Agata laid dying, the family waited as explosions, gunshots, tanks and artillery sounded all around them. German forces cut the electricity and shot the water tanks on the roof. The radio and phone lost their power.

“We used water only for drinking; the smell of the toilet filled our home and we used [flags for communication] to conserve power,” said her brother Szymon.

“My uncle Wawrzyniec, 28, crawled from our house to his house and brought a kerosene lamp, but it went out the same night,” Szymon added.

“Near the door of our house there were dead bodies; the German soldiers prevented paramedics from carrying them away,” Szymon said.

Szymon began to cry as he recalled his “clever sister,” who shared many of his interests. “She likes sport like me; she is also a good volleyball player and used to participate in school championships.”

The family could not afford paints for Agata to practice her favorite hobby. “She used to [draw] landscapes with a pencil, [there was] no money for colors,” Szymon said.

The following Saturday morning, thousands of Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto participated in Agata’s funeral procession.



Read more about this story here:



http://www.nationalexpositor.c…

18 comments

Skip to comment form

  1. you seem to be looking to add another notch on your banning belt. I am not touching this with a ten foot pole. While it’s undoubtedly true, publishing this IP flamer here does what. I already allowed myself to get tweaked around emotionally about the ‘assault on boomer women’. This issue deserves to not be flung out like more red meat for barbecuing on your TX flame pit. So Adios see you in your next reincarnation.    

  2. was a tell and it was telegraphing the next step in your pinche subversion campaign.

    Relieved to find out even though I am middle aged and drenched in sin and beyond redemption apparently I am not a total moron.

    We generally don’t do I/P which you already know. If we could without verbal arterial spray and harsh condemnation that leaves deep foot prints we probably would have tried.

  3. Yes. I did click the link.

    • RiaD on March 12, 2008 at 13:56

    & have been thoroughly dissappointed by this essay. i seem to remember another essay, much like this one, several months ago.

    why must you agitate so?

    if it was done with the purpose of instructing, with some idea of ‘what next’, some type of solution… i would be able to see a spark of value in it. i do realize that there are many paths to the same goal. however, the goal of this piece is just to agitate. just as your last essay was.

    please reconsider how you are using your talents. i know you are intelligent enough to write with purpose, to show your side, present your arguement in a more meaningful way than this.

    i believe you do have some valid points, but your essay makes me believe you only want attention. and that it doesn’t matter to you if it is good or bad attention.

    please refrain from posting this type of essay here. have you looked into that new site~ political flesh feast? i bet they’d eat this up!

Comments have been disabled.