Lamar Howell's Weblog

This is a true story. In 1970 in the Polish village of Mszonow (pronounced M’show-noof) two trains made a fateful passing. One was a German train on route from Berlin to Moscow; the other was a Russian train heading to Berlin from Moscow.

Inside the German train, commuters in one section of the long train were singing a song. In a boxcar of the Russian train, some soldiers were sitting, smoking and polishing their rifles.  As the trains passed other, the Russian soldiers heard the sound of singing in German. They jumped up and quickly unloaded several rounds of ammunition into the passing train.  Three German citizens were killed.

The conductors of both trains stopped and backed up. A Russian general was also on the train and he had all the soldiers disembark. He questioned the soldiers until he found out who had fired into the German train. He then had them executed on the spot.

This incident was kept quiet and never publicized. Zdzislaw (Za-gee-swaf) Majka heard this story in 1975 from an eyewitness friend who was living in Mszonow when this happened.