We spoke Yiddish at home. But I speak it no longer. Have no one to speak it to, forgotten. I understand it when spoken to me, but I can’t speak or read it.
- Traditions 11756
- Language spoken 3019
- Identity 7808
- Description of town 2440
- Education, school 8506
- Economics 8772
- Work 11672
- Love & romance 4929
- Leisure/Social life 4159
- Antisemitism 4822
-
Major events (political and historical)
4256
- Armenian genocide 2
- Doctor's Plot (1953) 178
- Soviet invasion of Poland 31
- Siege of Leningrad 86
- The Six Day War 4
- Yom Kippur War 2
- Ataturk's death 5
- Balkan Wars (1912-1913) 35
- First Soviet-Finnish War 37
- Occupation of Czechoslovakia 1938 83
- Invasion of France 9
- Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 65
- Varlik Vergisi (Wealth Tax) 36
- First World War (1914-1918) 216
- Spanish flu (1918-1920) 14
- Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920) 4
- The Great Depression (1929-1933) 20
- Hitler comes to power (1933) 127
- 151 Hospital 1
- Fire of Thessaloniki (1917) 9
- Greek Civil War (1946-49) 12
- Thessaloniki International Trade Fair 5
- Annexation of Bukovina to Romania (1918) 7
- Annexation of Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union (1940) 19
- The German invasion of Poland (1939) 94
- Kishinev Pogrom (1903) 7
- Romanian Annexation of Bessarabia (1918) 25
- Returning of the Hungarian rule in Transylvania (1940-1944) 43
- Soviet Occupation of Bessarabia (1940) 59
- Second Vienna Dictate 27
- Estonian war of independence 3
- Warsaw Uprising 2
- Soviet occupation of the Balitc states (1940) 147
- Austrian Civil War (1934) 9
- Anschluss (1938) 71
- Collapse of Habsburg empire 3
- Dollfuß Regime 3
- Emigration to Vienna before WWII 36
- Kolkhoz 131
- KuK - Königlich und Kaiserlich 40
- Mineriade 1
- Post War Allied occupation 7
- Waldheim affair 5
- Trianon Peace Treaty 12
- NEP 56
- Russian Revolution 351
- Ukrainian Famine 199
- The Great Terror 283
- Perestroika 233
- 22nd June 1941 468
- Molotov's radio speech 115
- Victory Day 147
- Stalin's death 365
- Khrushchev's speech at 20th Congress 148
- KGB 62
- NKVD 153
- German occupation of Hungary (18-19 March 1944) 45
- Józef Pilsudski (until 1935) 33
- 1956 revolution 84
- Prague Spring (1968) 73
- 1989 change of regime 174
- Gomulka campaign (1968) 81
-
Holocaust
9685
- Holocaust (in general) 2789
- Concentration camp / Work camp 1235
- Mass shooting operations 337
- Ghetto 1183
- Death / extermination camp 647
- Deportation 1063
- Forced labor 791
- Flight 1410
- Hiding 594
- Resistance 121
- 1941 evacuations 866
- Novemberpogrom / Kristallnacht 34
- Eleftherias Square 10
- Kasztner group 1
- Pogrom in Iasi and the Death Train 21
- Sammelwohnungen 9
- Strohmann system 11
- Struma ship 17
- Life under occupation 803
- Yellow star house 72
- Protected house 15
- Arrow Cross ("nyilasok") 42
- Danube bank shots 6
- Kindertransport 26
- Schutzpass / false papers 95
- Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943) 24
- Warsaw Uprising (1944) 23
- Helpers 521
- Righteous Gentiles 269
- Returning home 1090
- Holocaust compensation 112
- Restitution 109
- Property (loss of property) 595
- Loss of loved ones 1724
- Trauma 1029
- Talking about what happened 1807
- Liberation 558
- Military 3322
- Politics 2640
-
Communism
4468
- Life in the Soviet Union/under Communism (in general) 2592
- Anti-communist resistance in general 63
- Nationalization under Communism 221
- Illegal communist movements 98
- Systematic demolitions under communism 45
- Communist holidays 311
- Sentiments about the communist rule 930
- Collectivization 94
- Experiences with state police 349
- Prison/Forced labor under communist/socialist rule 449
- Lack or violation of human and citizen rights 483
- Life after the change of the regime (1989) 493
- Israel / Palestine 2190
- Zionism 847
- Jewish Organizations 1200
Displaying 27721 - 27750 of 50826 results
Rozalia Unger
There was a workshop in the yard, the employees were Poles. A scrap dealer, the owner was a Jew. I don’t know what they did in that workshop, I wasn’t interested. Lwowska wasn’t solely a Jewish street, it ran down to Wislok, the river. Opposite [our house] stood a Polish elementary school, a single-story building.
The pre-war Rzeszow was a small town, very many people were jobless, there was a lot of poverty. Life was hard, poor, simply. I remember one [man] who had a store, on Panska Street, I think it was, selling bathtubs, water closets, obviously for those building or renovating their house. So there were people who could afford that.
There were stalls, stores, tiny ones, I remember a little store that sold a bit of everything, and next door there was a beautiful Christian store, the wooden floors were greased, whether with wood tar or some brown polish, so the peasants, when they came to do their shopping, with those cloth bundles on their backs, instead of going [to the Christian store], they preferred to go to the Jewish one, lest they spoil the floor [in the elegant one]. My mother sent me to the Jewish store to buy things on credit, whatever we needed on an everyday basis, whether flour or sugar, I paid nothing, only my mother would come after some time and pay the bill.
The pre-war Rzeszow was a small town, very many people were jobless, there was a lot of poverty. Life was hard, poor, simply. I remember one [man] who had a store, on Panska Street, I think it was, selling bathtubs, water closets, obviously for those building or renovating their house. So there were people who could afford that.
There were stalls, stores, tiny ones, I remember a little store that sold a bit of everything, and next door there was a beautiful Christian store, the wooden floors were greased, whether with wood tar or some brown polish, so the peasants, when they came to do their shopping, with those cloth bundles on their backs, instead of going [to the Christian store], they preferred to go to the Jewish one, lest they spoil the floor [in the elegant one]. My mother sent me to the Jewish store to buy things on credit, whatever we needed on an everyday basis, whether flour or sugar, I paid nothing, only my mother would come after some time and pay the bill.
We lived in Rzeszow at 5 Lwowska Street. It was a tenement house, but in the back. The owner was a Jew, and the janitor a Pole. The apartment had one room, a large one, so we divided it up in half: two beds. My brother had his own, because he had to sleep separately, and I slept either with my mother or my grandmother. And that was it: a kitchen stove, a table. There was no bathroom, no one had a bathroom, typically there was even no running water, but as far as we were concerned, I remember my mother had a deal with the next-house neighbors who had a well, and if you wanted to use the well, you had to pay, but I think my mother didn’t pay, simply because there were two kids, and the grandma, for her to provide for, so [the neighbors] didn’t charge her.
Then [my brother] went to work, he was a bag maker, he went to Bielsko-Biala [a town ca. 60 km south of Katowice]. He worked there for a German Jew who had been deported before the war back to Poland [3], he was a bag maker, had a store, had some money, set up a shop, and gave [my brother] a job there. The two of them regularly went to France to buy new things, bags, suitcases, tools.
During the summer holidays we did nothing, and what could we do, no one organized any kind of shows or activities for young people – there was nothing of the sort! There were no summer camps. Who ever spoke of a summer camp? It was good if we had enough to eat at home.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My brother was a year and half younger than me. His name was Mojzesz, a Biblical name, and I was Biblical too, my name was Rachela. There was nothing to play. He was in the cheder, he went there every day, but he wore no payes. I don’t know where he went later, certainly some elementary school.
My mother was religious, but already adapted to the modern times, because otherwise it would have been hard to survive. She lit the candles on Friday night, wore a wig on a Saturday, but not everyday, so she wore a kerchief, because you weren’t allowed to show your hair. I know she went to synagogue, but only for the high holidays, that was obviously a religious dictate, there was a separate space for women, a separate one for men. I see the synagogue in my mind’s eye, but I don’t remember the address [2]. I think I never visited the place, you didn’t take children there, I guess, and later I was a communist, so it would have even been a dishonor to go to a synagogue – we were atheists.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
I remember my mother selling a lot of things in a pawnshop to provide for us, and I no longer see those things. There was that plush tablecloth, maroon-red with golden stitching. The same thing on the beds and on the table. And on top of that was also a kind of mesh, the whole thing was obviously valuable, because she sold it. But generally what did she do for a living? It depended, but, as I understand it, she grabbed every opportunity that appeared. I remember, for instance, that she dealt in fruit: if someone had an orchard, a couple of trees or a whole orchard, she’d make a deal with them in the spring or in the autumn, I don’t remember, and when the fruit were ripe, she’d have them picked up, she didn’t do that herself, and sell them; the retailers bought from her.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
I know little [about my mother]. I don’t know whether she went to any school, I’m afraid she could neither read nor write, but I’m not sure.
My mother’s second brother was a hat maker. He was very religious too, and I remember, after I had been released from prison [ca. 1934], my mother sent me to Zawiercie [a town 270 km south-west of Warsaw] to him, his wife, my aunt, met me, but I had a sleeveless dress, and Jews aren’t allowed to bare their arms, so she gave me a scarf so that I could say hello to him, because I have bare arms so he won’t talk to me.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
The [maternal] uncle who lived in England had emigrated there a long, long time before the war, to work, most likely, he was a cap maker. He sent us English pounds to provide for the family. He was very religious, reportedly had eight children in London. I’ve never met them. I don’t even know whether his wife was Jewish. I suppose so, because it’s typical for Jews to marry only with Jews.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
grandma as an old lady, she barely walked. She was religious – always wore a kerchief! For Yom Kippur, she wore that bead thing on her head to commemorate the holiday. She died in Rzeszow, when the started transporting Jews away for liquidation [1], she couldn’t walk so the Germans shot her in the street.
Poland
My husband secured an official paper from a court, somewhere near Przemysl, confirming all those people were dead.
[Alman Intrater] went through all the camps here in Poland, and he was saved from a camp by some German nuns, he was already very weak, someone they called a ‘moslem’ [in the camp terminology, a ‘moslem’ was a prisoner on the verge of death, already so starved that he had virtually lost his will to survive], he could no longer eat anything, whatever he ate, passed through him in no time, so that was a pre-terminal stage, and then the war ended, and they took him to Sweden.
[Alman Intrater] went through all the camps here in Poland, and he was saved from a camp by some German nuns, he was already very weak, someone they called a ‘moslem’ [in the camp terminology, a ‘moslem’ was a prisoner on the verge of death, already so starved that he had virtually lost his will to survive], he could no longer eat anything, whatever he ate, passed through him in no time, so that was a pre-terminal stage, and then the war ended, and they took him to Sweden.
My husband wanted to visit the place where he came from, and in 1946 he went to Rzeszow, we had a friend there, one Tomek Wisniewski, a communist from before the war, my [husband’s] friend from the same village. [My husband] went to him, and he tells him, ‘If you go there by yourself, you won’t come back! I’ll go with you.’ The realities were such that if a Jew had come back, he obviously had something to come back for, some property, and he’d get killed [14]. And that guy [Wisniewski] went with him.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
The war ended, and the Poles organized the repatriation, Wasilewska [12] arranged for those people to go back to Poland. And we went back. We were members of the Union of Polish Patriots [13]. We arrived in Poland on 1st June 1946. We rode for two months on that train. We stayed in Szczecin!
,
After WW2
See text in interview
I don’t know whether my mother was in the ghetto, or whatever happened to her, I only know what they told me after the war, that it could have august when they took them away, and my grandmother was shot on the street by the Germans, because she couldn’t walk. My mother wrote me that. That was 1943 or 1942 [Editor’s note: it was 1942]. My mother was later taken away, but I know nothing.
[Even in Lwow] my brother wanted to go back to Rzeszow. But he had no choice, had no work, and couldn’t go with us because they didn’t take him. They deported very many people, I don’t know what those people thought, generally people were afraid, and he fled somewhere to Bessarabia and wrote us a letter he had been enlisted [I don’t know to which army], and that we’d never see each other again, that was the last we heard from him.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
Because they were giving everyone Russian passports [11] and my husband didn’t want one, he insisted he wasn’t a Russian and wanted to live in Poland once the war ended. And those people that refused to become Russian nationals they often jailed, and him they enlisted [again], to work in a tailor’s shop, a military one.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
Meanwhile, my husband had been enlisted for the ‘trudarmya’ [10], the work battalions, to work with the horses. They slept on bunk beds, and there were lice all over the place.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
[Then I worked] in a tailor’s shop and everyday I carried the baby to the day care center.
And I had to leave her [with a babysitter] because we had no place of our own yet, and of all of us from that train had been billeted all together, and then I had to go to work, because that was the only way. In fact, we were young, you had to work; we had no means of support whatsoever.
And it was like that, when I worked, I received 600 grams of bread a day, and my daughter, my baby, whether it actually ate the bread or not, received 300 grams. And I gave that 300 grams to [the babysitter] in return for changing her clothes, feeding her the food I was receiving for [my daughter], and so on.
And it was like that, when I worked, I received 600 grams of bread a day, and my daughter, my baby, whether it actually ate the bread or not, received 300 grams. And I gave that 300 grams to [the babysitter] in return for changing her clothes, feeding her the food I was receiving for [my daughter], and so on.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
Of all of us, it was the hardest for our daughter Frania, who was born there in August [1941]. Shortly before that we got married; we went to an office to sign a document, there was no ceremony of any sort. We had to register officially, arrange the formalities.
,
1941
See text in interview
But he met three Czech guys somewhere who worked with horses, and they told him to come, that they would give him oats, and he came and had his pockets full of oats and we ate it.
The three Czechs who gave him the oats also fixed him a small job with a Kazakh man. They said [the Kazakh] would give him flour. [My husband] went to the man with some crewel and fixed his ‘shuba.’ A ‘shuba’ was a kind of sheepskin, [my husband] sat there, there was no proper table, only a low round one, you don’t sit on it; it’s for eating in a squatting position.
The three Czechs who gave him the oats also fixed him a small job with a Kazakh man. They said [the Kazakh] would give him flour. [My husband] went to the man with some crewel and fixed his ‘shuba.’ A ‘shuba’ was a kind of sheepskin, [my husband] sat there, there was no proper table, only a low round one, you don’t sit on it; it’s for eating in a squatting position.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
When he got back home, two uniformed men came and told us to pack our things. And what did we have? Nothing! A moment and we left, they took us to a freight car, didn’t tell us why. Did they know themselves? They didn’t – they had their orders, and that’s it. And so they took us to Kazakhstan, to Semipalatynsk [city in eastern Kazakhstan, 80 km from today’s border with Russia], we had no money, no clothes, we were hungry, like dogs, or worse. My husband had 100 rubles in his trouser pocket.
We had a friend in Semipalatynsk, a man we knew from Rzeszow, a communist too. His name was Motek, and we needed to find a place to stay, an apartment. He found one for us, we had to pay 20 rubles, and [my husband] must have obviously been robbed of the hundred. We were left penniless. [My husband] went to the other Poles to ask for a job, for something to do. They reacted in an ugly way, laughed at him, because they earned their living there by stealing.
We had a friend in Semipalatynsk, a man we knew from Rzeszow, a communist too. His name was Motek, and we needed to find a place to stay, an apartment. He found one for us, we had to pay 20 rubles, and [my husband] must have obviously been robbed of the hundred. We were left penniless. [My husband] went to the other Poles to ask for a job, for something to do. They reacted in an ugly way, laughed at him, because they earned their living there by stealing.
, Kazakhstan
[In Lwow] we lived in a former prison, the party found us a job and the place to stay. Me and two other friends got a job at the Aida factory: tubes, filters, and paper [a cigarette factory]. Every week we received an allowance of tubes, the kind of empty cigarettes, and there was a machine for stuffing them with tobacco. I didn’t need those tubes because we didn’t smoke, but I gave it to my brother who sold the stuff on the market. In fact, he had no job, so that was a kind of support. And the man he had worked for in Bielsko found himself in Lwow too and paid [my brother] five zlotys a week as a means of support, for nothing. He obviously had money.
Then we rented a room. The landlord [gave us] a single spring bed, but there was no mattress so we slept on the bare springs. The landlord lived in the same house, in a different part of it, and he knew we slept like that. He is surely dead by now, but if he’s alive, perhaps it pricks his conscience that he was so mean to us. Then my husband got sick, he had stomach ulcers, and people at my work helped secure a place for him in a sanatorium on Kurkowa Street, in Lwow, and he spent like two weeks there, but he was still sick, an ulcer doesn’t go away easily.
Then we rented a room. The landlord [gave us] a single spring bed, but there was no mattress so we slept on the bare springs. The landlord lived in the same house, in a different part of it, and he knew we slept like that. He is surely dead by now, but if he’s alive, perhaps it pricks his conscience that he was so mean to us. Then my husband got sick, he had stomach ulcers, and people at my work helped secure a place for him in a sanatorium on Kurkowa Street, in Lwow, and he spent like two weeks there, but he was still sick, an ulcer doesn’t go away easily.
In Lwow I was joined by my brother [Mojzesz]. [He came from Bielsko Biala] because when the war broke out, the Germans announced that all young Jews, aged so and so, should report and told them to pack because they would go east to work there. And he packed everything he had into a suitcase and went east, in a normal car, not a freight one. In the meantime they were being beaten badly, he lost three teeth, and it was not the Germans who were beating them but Poles, civilians. I imagine they were young people, and they probably made a fuss because they didn’t know where they were going.
After they passed the border, they saw people working in the fields, in a forest; they guessed they were going to work. The train stopped, they got off, the Germans told them to pay 4 zlotys per piece of luggage, and peasants waited with wagons to take those suitcases. Then they lined them up in a row and the Germans started shooting, and when they started shooting, [my brother] ran away. And suddenly he found himself in one shoe on the Russian side, with nothing on himself, naked. Peasants allowed him to go into a stable, lie down. ‘After I woke up,’ he told me, ‘I got a second shoe, an odd one, and something to put on myself, some white shawl.’ He knew I was in Lwow; he wanted to get to Lwow. Only I don’t remember how he eventually found me.
After they passed the border, they saw people working in the fields, in a forest; they guessed they were going to work. The train stopped, they got off, the Germans told them to pay 4 zlotys per piece of luggage, and peasants waited with wagons to take those suitcases. Then they lined them up in a row and the Germans started shooting, and when they started shooting, [my brother] ran away. And suddenly he found himself in one shoe on the Russian side, with nothing on himself, naked. Peasants allowed him to go into a stable, lie down. ‘After I woke up,’ he told me, ‘I got a second shoe, an odd one, and something to put on myself, some white shawl.’ He knew I was in Lwow; he wanted to get to Lwow. Only I don’t remember how he eventually found me.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
And I remember that we happened upon some German troops marching down the road, and [my husband’s] brother was scared and hid in some house. We were also scared that they would take our horses away, but they didn’t, just marched past us, so he went out of that house and we kept riding up to the place where we wanted to cross to the other side, it was the river Bug, but how to cross it?
There was a manor there, and in the manor stood the NKVD [9], and there were German troops. The others were afraid to get in. It must have been my young age that I was bolder than then others, I went in and first of all I told the Ukrainian that we would pay him if he got us through. I went to the NKVD, a tall, handsome German came out, with that bird on his hat, and says to us, ‘here, on this side, are the Germans, there, opposite, are the Russians, with all the equipment, if the Germans see you, they’ll start shooting.’ [After 28th September 1939, the territories immediately west of the Bug River found themselves under joint German-Soviet occupation. Soviet troops later left the area as a result of the so called second Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, in return for transferring Lithuania to the Soviet sphere of interest.
,
1939
See text in interview
And so, walking along the Vistula, we reached Rzeszow, and in Rzeszow I moved in with my mother. And on our way, a barber went with us, a Ukrainian, and he tells [the men], ‘I know the way, let’s keep going.’ [And my husband went with them]. On the way one of those boys decided to make a detour to Mielec, I think it was [a town, 60 km north-west of Rzeszow], he told them, ‘You go, I’ll catch up with you, I’ll only drop by, I have relatives there.’ And when he caught up with them later, he told them his neighbors had chased him away. [They told him] ‘Look where your people are.’ There was a hole dug out by the road, covered with lime, blood was soaking through, the earth was moving, and he ran away. And they went as far as Lwow. And from Lwow [my husband] sent me a letter to come as soon as possible with his brother and his brother’s fiancée, and we set off all three, but this time we hired a horse wagon to get us to the Bug.
And I remember that we happened upon some German troops marching down the road, and [my husband’s] brother was scared and hid in some house. We were also scared that they would take our horses away, but they didn’t, just marched past us, so he went out of that house and we kept riding up to the place where we wanted to cross to the other side, it was the river Bug, but how to cross it? We had some money on us; especially my husband’s brother had some. We went into a house, a Ukrainian man lived there; he must have spoken German because otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to communicate. There was a manor there, and in the manor stood the NKVD [9], and there were German troops. The others were afraid to get in. It must have been my young age that I was bolder than then others, I went in and first of all I told the Ukrainian that we would pay him if he got us through. I went to the NKVD, a tall, handsome German came out, with that bird on his hat, and says to us, ‘here, on this side, are the Germans, there, opposite, are the Russians, with all the equipment, if the Germans see you, they’ll start shooting.’ [After 28th September 1939, the territories immediately west of the Bug River found themselves under joint German-Soviet occupation. Soviet troops later left the area as a result of the so called second Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, in return for transferring Lithuania to the Soviet sphere of interest.]
The German and the Ukrainian went with us to the river bank, to a ford, we paid the Ukrainian 15 zlotys, and when we were crossing the river, I lost my fountain pen and the rest of the money that I had hidden. We waded in, and there were slippery stones. Water up to here, and I cannot swim to this day. Whether the others could, I don’t know, but we pushed ahead. All wet I eventually reached the other side, we climbed up that high bank on all fours, like apes, we stood there, and no one comes to us, no one asks us anything, nothing, so well, if there’s no one, then off we go.
We went to a peasant; he gave us a place to sleep. They told us to get inside, they were Jews, and it was Friday night or Saturday, some kind of a holiday, they fed us, gave us a bed, we took a rest, but we wanted to get at least to Przemysl [a town 90 km east of Rzeszow], we knew there were friends there, because people had already been fleeing the German-occupied territories, so they told us where the town council was, to go there.
I went there, the place was swarming with young people, and I presented the facts, how things were, in fact, my looks told everything! Half-withered, and they ask, ‘what name can you give us to prove that you are indeed with the communist youth.’ I remembered there was a liaison named Karol, so I say ‘Karol,’ ‘Well, he’s here with us!’ and that saved me, saved us all, they gave us a bus to go to Przemysl, and from there, by a train, to Lwow. It was late autumn 1939. We spent about a year in Lwow.
And I remember that we happened upon some German troops marching down the road, and [my husband’s] brother was scared and hid in some house. We were also scared that they would take our horses away, but they didn’t, just marched past us, so he went out of that house and we kept riding up to the place where we wanted to cross to the other side, it was the river Bug, but how to cross it? We had some money on us; especially my husband’s brother had some. We went into a house, a Ukrainian man lived there; he must have spoken German because otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to communicate. There was a manor there, and in the manor stood the NKVD [9], and there were German troops. The others were afraid to get in. It must have been my young age that I was bolder than then others, I went in and first of all I told the Ukrainian that we would pay him if he got us through. I went to the NKVD, a tall, handsome German came out, with that bird on his hat, and says to us, ‘here, on this side, are the Germans, there, opposite, are the Russians, with all the equipment, if the Germans see you, they’ll start shooting.’ [After 28th September 1939, the territories immediately west of the Bug River found themselves under joint German-Soviet occupation. Soviet troops later left the area as a result of the so called second Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, in return for transferring Lithuania to the Soviet sphere of interest.]
The German and the Ukrainian went with us to the river bank, to a ford, we paid the Ukrainian 15 zlotys, and when we were crossing the river, I lost my fountain pen and the rest of the money that I had hidden. We waded in, and there were slippery stones. Water up to here, and I cannot swim to this day. Whether the others could, I don’t know, but we pushed ahead. All wet I eventually reached the other side, we climbed up that high bank on all fours, like apes, we stood there, and no one comes to us, no one asks us anything, nothing, so well, if there’s no one, then off we go.
We went to a peasant; he gave us a place to sleep. They told us to get inside, they were Jews, and it was Friday night or Saturday, some kind of a holiday, they fed us, gave us a bed, we took a rest, but we wanted to get at least to Przemysl [a town 90 km east of Rzeszow], we knew there were friends there, because people had already been fleeing the German-occupied territories, so they told us where the town council was, to go there.
I went there, the place was swarming with young people, and I presented the facts, how things were, in fact, my looks told everything! Half-withered, and they ask, ‘what name can you give us to prove that you are indeed with the communist youth.’ I remembered there was a liaison named Karol, so I say ‘Karol,’ ‘Well, he’s here with us!’ and that saved me, saved us all, they gave us a bus to go to Przemysl, and from there, by a train, to Lwow. It was late autumn 1939. We spent about a year in Lwow.
We fled, some people went to the station, to the trains, while we went on foot, and many people walked with us, back from Silesia, I guess, some teachers, we walked along the Vistula bank, and there was a house, and besides the house lay our Polish soldiers who had been mobilized to fight but had received no order and didn’t know where to go, what to do, and they lay in a row because they were exhausted [8].
,
1939
See text in interview