Mother was gassed in 1944 in Auschwitz. She was 56 years old then.
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Displaying 31321 - 31350 of 50826 results
Irena Wojdyslawska
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Just like her siblings, she was not a religious person.
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Before WW2
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Until she got married, she worked in her father’s brother’s factory, that is my grandfather’s brother’s.
,
Before WW2
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She knew Yiddish, because although Polish was spoken at home, parents sometimes spoke Jewish to each other.
,
Before WW2
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My mother never went to school. She had a teacher. She studied, what did she study?
Well, anyway she could spell correctly. She could also count, because she helped father in his business.
Well, anyway she could spell correctly. She could also count, because she helped father in his business.
,
Before WW2
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His language was Yiddish. Grandmother used only Yiddish too. She could only say the basic phrases in Polish, for example ‘good morning’, ‘how are you.
,
Before WW2
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Mother’s parents, as I remember, lived on Wieckowskiego Street in Lodz. They were very religious. Grandmother was at home and she raised the children. Grandfather didn’t work, he was supported by wealthy Jews. All his life he studied the Talmud and the Torah. As I remember him, he was a man who lay in bed, with a waist-length beard.
,
Before WW2
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Later, this I remember myself, there was a ladies’ coats workshop at home. 3 or 4 apprentices would sit down and sew. You could say that Father was running a kind of cottage industry then. I don’t think he was very successful, because there weren’t too many customers.
In the 1930s, but I think closer to the year 1930, he started his own business. He had 2 partners. The company was first located on Piotrkowska 56, with an entrance from the backyard. After 3, maybe 4 years he moved it to Zawadzka Street.
In the 1930s, but I think closer to the year 1930, he started his own business. He had 2 partners. The company was first located on Piotrkowska 56, with an entrance from the backyard. After 3, maybe 4 years he moved it to Zawadzka Street.
,
Before WW2
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He fought in World War I, but he was dismissed from the army, because he fell ill with the ‘Spanish flu’.
,
Before WW2
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He came back from Berlin to Lodz and got a job in a company on Wolnosci Square.
I don’t know what company it was, but it must have had something to do with tailoring, because he worked there as a cutter.
I don’t know what company it was, but it must have had something to do with tailoring, because he worked there as a cutter.
,
Before WW2
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He later went to Berlin, where he studied in some vocational school, a tailoring one, I think. He studied to be a cutter.
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Before WW2
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He graduated from elementary school there.
,
Before WW2
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Father was 65 years old when he died in the ghetto, in 1944. I don’t remember his funeral. I only know that it was very cold, Mother fainted and I took care of her.
Aunt Bela was gassed in the camp in Majdanek.
We were, however, close with Father’s second sister, the youngest of the siblings, Aunt Bela. Before she got married, she lived with us. She later opened a ladies dress shop, where I worked for some time.
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Before WW2
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Pavel Werner
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After university I was in the army from 1959 to 1960, I went through basic training, where in the north, in Bor u Tachova, I crawled through mud with younger guys, which was tough, but then they transferred me to the position of translator, so I had a relatively tranquil army service.
I was lucky that in the fourth year they picked me and one of my classmates to do translations abroad. We left with some military groups for Egypt. That helped me get some experience, and I also made a bit of money. We had a large baggage allowance coming back from Egypt, so I brought back some wool and textiles, clothing, a leather briefcase. My wife and daughter were able to dress nicely. So in this fashion I actually finished university.
We had one miniature bachelor apartment, the washroom, toilet and gas cooker were in one room – so there you would cook, a person if need be showered there and then went to the toilet. It was hard, anyways these were the conditions in which I finished my studies. I had to work part-time and at the same time study.
One time I had a summer job on a construction site, where the University of Economics was building new dorms – afterwards they allocated me a room there, which my wife and I moved into.
The selection was in July 1944, when they were liquidating the family camp. I went to the selection with my father, because for some reason I was with my father the entire time, I wasn’t like most of the other boys in the children’s block. I didn’t know anything about my mother; naturally the women’s selection took place separately. We all stood naked in a horribly long queue in front of Dr. Mengele, who organized it all. While we were still standing in the queue, my father, who probably sensed that we won’t be together, told me what I should do in case I should by chance return home earlier than he. By the way he said it, I know that he hoped that he’ll return too, he didn’t want to believe that he wouldn’t return. He said to me, ‘Listen, whoever returns home first, if you get there first, you know where in the shed our tomcat Mourek used to sleep, dig in that corner there, you’ll find some things there, OK.’ So that I naturally remembered.
We saw the flames from the crematoriums and the smoke, we smelled the stench of burned corpses, but in the beginning I didn’t perceive it as mortal danger, I was eleven, twelve years old, so I didn’t grasp that in the end I could also one day end up there. But for my parents, for the older ones in general, that must have been something terrible, the knowledge that next time it could be our turn – because it was known that the March transport, which had been in the family camp before us, went complete into the gas.
In Auschwitz my mother carried barrels of soup. Now when I picture it, it seems unbelievable to me, because our mother had a somewhat weaker constitution – she had scoliosis of the spine – but in the concentration camp did such heavy physical labor. She, who had never before worked physically; before the war she had been a housewife and took care of the children.
We arrived in Auschwitz at night, and that was some experience, I can still see it before my eyes. For one, there were lights everywhere, because everything had to be horribly lit up, then there were electrical wire fences everywhere that separated the individual camps. I remember the horrible light and bellowing on the ramp. The prisoners from the commando that was disembarking us were bellowing, the Germans were bellowing, a person felt like he had landed in a different world.
One day in March 1944 we received a definitive summons for the trip to Auschwitz. We had been summoned to the transport once already, but at the time I had a middle ear infection, so we were exempted from the transport, because acutely ill people weren’t transported to the East. Of course, the second time we didn’t manage to again avoid the transport. I remember the trip very well; this time it was quite cruel, they transported us in these cattle wagons.
We used to attend various concerts, there was activity, interests were enlarged upon. I, for example, collected razor blade wrappers. I walked around those huge army washrooms, where the men would shave, and collected razor blade wrappers. I had a whole large collection, and I and the others that also collected them would trade amongst ourselves. That also remained in Terezin when we left.
Terezin also had a cultural life. There were performances of the children’s opera Brundibar.
In Terezin I lived with my sister and mother, my father lived separately in the ‘Hannover’ barracks. We lived on Nadrazni Avenue in one of the buildings that had been adapted for the arrivals. There were ten women and three children living there in one room. When I later considered it, life in Terezin wasn’t again that cruel for me. Though my sister died there, but at the time, as a child, I didn’t feel it as much, as opposed to my parents, for whom it must have been a horribly cruel blow, to have a young child die. Lenka was eight years old when she died of tuberculous meningitis.
So we had to get off at Bohusovice, which was still about three or four kilometers from Terezin. That doesn’t seem like much, but I was wearing a lot of clothing, I had a winter coat on, so I was sweating a lot, I was dragging a bag – I can’t exactly remember what I had in it. It was too much for me; I was sweating and crying that I can’t go any further. At that time my father started in on me, told me to look at Lenka, how brave she is, that she’s not crying and is walking on, and at the same time she was younger than me. So I have a vivid memory of this experience, that I was this weakling boy. In the end we somehow crawled our way to Terezin.
In the fall, 3rd November 1942, we got on the CG transport to Terezin. The whole Pardubice region one day got a summons; we got a summons to gather in the Pardubice Commerce Academy, which was conveniently located, as it was right beside the train station.
Our family associated with about six Jewish families – the Klacers, Klaubaufs, Seiners, but I don’t remember the other names. My parents weren’t particularly religious, my father, nevertheless, was a little closer to faith, as he was from Poland. But at home they didn’t pray, neither did they go to the synagogue on Saturday, only during the high holidays, when he took me there a couple of times.