A little ten-year-old girl came running up and stood transfixed by what she saw. Her sister lay dead in a field. The child had never before seen death and couldn’t understand why her sister would not speak to her…
When a German pilot shoots from the air and slaughters a fourteen-year-old child without any fear of retaliation from the ground, he will never know what he did, but we know.
American photographer Julien Bryan happened to be there.
“The child looked at us in bewilderment. I threw my arm about her and held her tightly, trying to comfort her. She cried. So did I, it was not my finest moment, and the two Polish officers who were with me cried too”.
The Warsaw girl.
The love this child felt for her sister, the innocence of not knowing death, and the horrible way it was forced upon her left a profound effect on both of them. That little girl, Kazimiera Mika, survived the war and passed away on August 28th, 2020.
At last, she will have been able to reunite with her sister Andzia after so many years, the sister she last saw lying dead in a field on September 13th 1939.