They sent my husband to Majdanek [32]. He managed to hide a sledgehammer, and when the train moved off, he opened the door of the wagon and jumped out. He got to some farmer, and he put him in touch with a friend from Warsaw, Zbyszek Paszkowski, to come and get him with some clothes, because Edward only had his prison stripes.
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Anna Lanota
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So when on 22nd July 1942 the Germans and Latvians surrounded the ghetto and the deportations began [see Great Action] [27], I knew for certain that it was to death. The next evening, when things had calmed down a little, I ran to my parents.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
The PPR had contacts with the ghetto, but I personally had none. While the uprising in the ghetto [see Warsaw Ghetto Uprising] [34] was in progress I had to be very careful; I was afraid to leave the house.
I saw the ghetto burning, I saw the merry-go-round outside the ghetto, and people behaved appallingly. I’m sure there were some who found it horrendous, but the Warsaw street, the great unwashed, joked about it.
They thought that Jews were escaping from that hell, so if someone looked slightly different, or they thought so, they would either demand a ransom or denounce them to the police. It didn’t happen to me once.
I saw the ghetto burning, I saw the merry-go-round outside the ghetto, and people behaved appallingly. I’m sure there were some who found it horrendous, but the Warsaw street, the great unwashed, joked about it.
They thought that Jews were escaping from that hell, so if someone looked slightly different, or they thought so, they would either demand a ransom or denounce them to the police. It didn’t happen to me once.
In the evening Szczesny went with me up to the fence surrounding the ghetto. It was a high, wooden fence guarded by a Polish policeman. Szczesny went up to him and said, ‘Please let this lady in, because her mother’s in there.’ The policeman didn’t want any money – he slipped a plank aside and I went into the ghetto.
I remember that terrible impression; that was how you might have imagined hell, pitch black on the streets, you couldn’t see anything, the streets full of people, some of them were sitting on the sidewalks and stretching out their hands. I had my parents’ address; Leszno [Street] was very close by, but I completely lost my sense of direction.
All the time I was in the ghetto I was dazed – I think it was necessary to defend myself from it. In the end I made it to my parents. They lived with several other families in one apartment.
Mama opened the door to me. I didn’t recognize her. She had had typhus and become a tiny, very thin old woman; she had never looked like that. It was only when she said ‘Hania’ and I heard her voice that I realized it was Mama. My parents and my middle brother Mietek were there; the elder Rysiek lived with his wife separately.
My parents had a tiny room; in the corner there was a stove that they cooked on. There was nothing to eat in the house. I took out my money and the Weigl vaccine to sell. Mietek went down and bought some food.
My family was living off the parcels that they got every week from Mama’s sister Pola, who had been very rich and had managed to salvage the remnants of her fortune. That was all they had. Rysiek had sold lilac on the street in the spring. After that he worked at the brushmakers’.
The very next day somebody got me a job in the ghetto. A rich man with a kind heart had set up a small orphanage in an apartment on Leszno Street, close to Bankowy Square, and took children off the streets there.
He had equipped it with beds and bed-linen, and had food, clothes and simple drugs such as aspirin and ointments brought in. I don’t remember his name. He took me and another woman on [as carers]; we lived there, and got food.
We didn’t earn anything. There were no more than 20 children. The man collected children that he found on the streets and brought them to us. Many of them died at once; it was already too late to save them.
That was the worst for me, when they died. They thought they were in heaven – washed, bathed, in bed, in the warm – but it lasted a day or a few hours. There were a few orphans that weren’t so emaciated yet, and they stayed with us.
I remember that terrible impression; that was how you might have imagined hell, pitch black on the streets, you couldn’t see anything, the streets full of people, some of them were sitting on the sidewalks and stretching out their hands. I had my parents’ address; Leszno [Street] was very close by, but I completely lost my sense of direction.
All the time I was in the ghetto I was dazed – I think it was necessary to defend myself from it. In the end I made it to my parents. They lived with several other families in one apartment.
Mama opened the door to me. I didn’t recognize her. She had had typhus and become a tiny, very thin old woman; she had never looked like that. It was only when she said ‘Hania’ and I heard her voice that I realized it was Mama. My parents and my middle brother Mietek were there; the elder Rysiek lived with his wife separately.
My parents had a tiny room; in the corner there was a stove that they cooked on. There was nothing to eat in the house. I took out my money and the Weigl vaccine to sell. Mietek went down and bought some food.
My family was living off the parcels that they got every week from Mama’s sister Pola, who had been very rich and had managed to salvage the remnants of her fortune. That was all they had. Rysiek had sold lilac on the street in the spring. After that he worked at the brushmakers’.
The very next day somebody got me a job in the ghetto. A rich man with a kind heart had set up a small orphanage in an apartment on Leszno Street, close to Bankowy Square, and took children off the streets there.
He had equipped it with beds and bed-linen, and had food, clothes and simple drugs such as aspirin and ointments brought in. I don’t remember his name. He took me and another woman on [as carers]; we lived there, and got food.
We didn’t earn anything. There were no more than 20 children. The man collected children that he found on the streets and brought them to us. Many of them died at once; it was already too late to save them.
That was the worst for me, when they died. They thought they were in heaven – washed, bathed, in bed, in the warm – but it lasted a day or a few hours. There were a few orphans that weren’t so emaciated yet, and they stayed with us.
My parents were in the Warsaw ghetto [4], so when he came out of prison he went, with his wife, to the ghetto. He started work in a co-operative that made brushes.
I saw him for the last time in that co-operative in August 1942 during the first deportation from the Warsaw ghetto. I got out of the ghetto then, you see, and it was only afterwards that I found out that when they rounded Tusia up for deportation, he went with her into the wagon.
I saw him for the last time in that co-operative in August 1942 during the first deportation from the Warsaw ghetto. I got out of the ghetto then, you see, and it was only afterwards that I found out that when they rounded Tusia up for deportation, he went with her into the wagon.
When the war broke out [see Invasion of Poland] [20], I was in Otwock. On 5th or 6th September, with my cousin Ida Merzan and her husband, I set off for Skryhiczyn. We went on foot. The road was full of evacuees, the fires could be seen from far off, every five minutes there were bombardments, the Germans were shooting at people from airplanes, people were trying to escape... We lost each other right away. That was a problem, because we had given Ida all our money.
,
During WW2
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The Jewish community in Poland knew about the persecution of the Jews in Germany. When Hitler came to power [on 30th January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany], the Germans began to resettle all the Jews that had Polish citizenship.
,
Before WW2
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We would go to Skryhiczyn on vacation, sometimes the whole family and sometimes just me. The trip was difficult because [railroad] tickets were expensive, but most of all it was hard to transport my youngest brother, who walked so poorly, so Mama would often stay in Lodz with him and we would go to the country alone.
At that time the boys and girls that studied there were the most sociable, fun, intelligent that you can imagine. Once or twice a large group of us went to Kazimierz [a little town and famous health resort near Lublin, about 180km from Warsaw] on the Vistula with Prof. Pruszkowski. [Pruszkowski, Tadeusz (1888-1942): portrait painter, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, pedagogue.] We used to organize get-togethers, talks, sometimes we would dance, but they weren’t noisy parties, definitely without any alcoholic drinks.
We used to go to the theater, to the opera and to the philharmonic a lot – the very cheap tickets; we had to stand. In Lodz there wasn’t an opera house, and it was in Warsaw that I went to the opera for the first time in my life. I went with friends to see ‘Faust.’
It amused me greatly that Mephisto lay there and sang: ‘I die, I die.’ I started laughing, and the usher came up to me and said, ‘Please do not laugh, it’s too loud.’ I couldn’t stop, and he took me out. I also went to the philharmonic frequently, because I simply can’t live without music.
The tickets to ‘Qui pro quo’ [well-known Warsaw cabaret, 1919-1931] were very expensive, but even so we got in often. That was a first-class cabaret. Jarosy [Jarosy, Fryderyk (1890-1960): director and master of ceremony in cabarets in inter-war Warsaw] was the master of ceremony, very witty; Ordonka sang [Ordonowna, Hanka (1904-1950): popular singer of the inter-war period]; sketches were put on.
They were often by Tuwim [18]. I remember his ‘Queen of Madagascar.’ We also used to go to avant-garde plays that Jaracz put on at the Ateneum. [Stefan Jaracz, Stefan (1883-1945): actor and theater director, founder of the Ateneum Theater in Warsaw.]
Perzanowska acted in them [Perzanowska, Stanislawa (1898-1982): actress and director]. We went to every new play; it was a social duty. I used to go to the cinema, but to my taste today the films then were terrible, like Harlequins [cheap romantic novels, similar to Mills & Boon]. I don’t remember any films that I was especially taken with.
We used to go to the theater, to the opera and to the philharmonic a lot – the very cheap tickets; we had to stand. In Lodz there wasn’t an opera house, and it was in Warsaw that I went to the opera for the first time in my life. I went with friends to see ‘Faust.’
It amused me greatly that Mephisto lay there and sang: ‘I die, I die.’ I started laughing, and the usher came up to me and said, ‘Please do not laugh, it’s too loud.’ I couldn’t stop, and he took me out. I also went to the philharmonic frequently, because I simply can’t live without music.
The tickets to ‘Qui pro quo’ [well-known Warsaw cabaret, 1919-1931] were very expensive, but even so we got in often. That was a first-class cabaret. Jarosy [Jarosy, Fryderyk (1890-1960): director and master of ceremony in cabarets in inter-war Warsaw] was the master of ceremony, very witty; Ordonka sang [Ordonowna, Hanka (1904-1950): popular singer of the inter-war period]; sketches were put on.
They were often by Tuwim [18]. I remember his ‘Queen of Madagascar.’ We also used to go to avant-garde plays that Jaracz put on at the Ateneum. [Stefan Jaracz, Stefan (1883-1945): actor and theater director, founder of the Ateneum Theater in Warsaw.]
Perzanowska acted in them [Perzanowska, Stanislawa (1898-1982): actress and director]. We went to every new play; it was a social duty. I used to go to the cinema, but to my taste today the films then were terrible, like Harlequins [cheap romantic novels, similar to Mills & Boon]. I don’t remember any films that I was especially taken with.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Mama often took me and my brother to the Philharmonic. When the ‘Habima’ Hebrew theater from Vilnius [9] came to Lodz, I went to their performances. It was very high standard. To this day I remember the extraordinary performance of An-ski’s [10] The Dybbuk [11], as if I had those scenes before my eyes. But in our family we didn’t tend to go to the theater much.
,
Before WW2
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After that I read books, went to friends’ houses, or they came round to me. After supper I quickly did my homework. On Saturdays I would arrange to meet my friends and we would go to the park.
,
Before WW2
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The Ukrainian peasants were Father’s friends; they swam together, dived, watered their horses, raced on horseback; they were quite close.
,
Before WW2
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The Kielce pogrom [39] was a terrible shock. I always knew that I lived in a society that on the whole believes in all kind of anti-Jewish rubbish, but to do something like what was done in Kielce... I found it terrible. And all those lies that surrounded it...
,
After WW2
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It was not only the Germans, you see, but the Lwow hooligans also tormented the Jews, even children.
,
During WW2
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I wrote my Master’s thesis on memory in children. I was studying at a time when the Endek [13] and ONR [14] hit squads were harassing Jewish students and enforcing the so-called ‘bench ghetto’ [15] at the university.
,
Before WW2
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Polish anti-Semitism today is a comedy – why, there aren’t any Jews in Poland. But there are so many anti-Semitic publications that you’d think there were mad armies of Jews here.
,
After WW2
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After the war there were Jews in the authorities: Berman, Minc, Zambrowski [see Jews in the PZPR] [40]. But in the Party itself there were an awful lot of anti-Semites. My friend, a Jew, told me that just after the war, in 1945, he was at a reception in the Soviet embassy in Warsaw, and some big guy had come from Ukraine.
At the reception he proposed the toast, ‘I hope that in a year’s time you will have no Jews left in Poland.’ That was a communist, a member of the very top level of authority in Ukraine. My friend told me about that in complete shock; he couldn’t explain it, and I can’t either.
At the reception he proposed the toast, ‘I hope that in a year’s time you will have no Jews left in Poland.’ That was a communist, a member of the very top level of authority in Ukraine. My friend told me about that in complete shock; he couldn’t explain it, and I can’t either.
,
After WW2
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But in our department, in Prof. Baley’s seminar class, when a classmate stood up once and said that Jews should sit separately because they were a worse race, Baley said this, ‘Sir, please leave the room, and I am warning you that you will not pass my class, please enroll somewhere else, because you are not doing your Master’s with me.’ And indeed, in spite of interventions, he was not accepted after that into the seminar class. That was the only such incident in our department.
,
Before WW2
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The numerus clausus [see Anti-Jewish Legislation in Poland] [16] was not in force in psychology.
,
Before WW2
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I know Jews who are afraid to tell their neighbors in Warsaw that they are Jewish because they know that they are anti-Semitic. I don’t know what they’re scared of, because they don’t have any social relations with them anyway.
,
After WW2
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In Lwow I met Edward Lanota, my future husband. He was born in 1905 in Stryj in Eastern Galicia [25]. He came from a family of Jews who converted to Catholicism a long time ago. He himself was a non-believer.
,
Before WW2
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I didn’t bring my daughter up religiously, because I am a non-believer, but I brought her up to be aware that she is Jewish, and that that is something good, something to be proud of. My grandsons, Piotr and Jan, whose father is a Pole, consider themselves Jews.
,
After WW2
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Before the end of 1942 I married Edward Lanota. The way we did it was that somebody in the Warsaw office who forged documents wrote us out a certificate that we were married. My husband’s data were true. We simply registered as a married couple.
,
During WW2
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He married when he was 15. His wife Ryfka [Pilicer] was two years younger than him. Her wedding was a shock to her.
She told me that during her wedding she went out onto the threshold of the house and played with her doll, and when her father saw it, he hit her and said, ‘You’re a married woman!’ But she didn’t even understand what getting married was all about; the doll meant more to her.
She told me that during her wedding she went out onto the threshold of the house and played with her doll, and when her father saw it, he hit her and said, ‘You’re a married woman!’ But she didn’t even understand what getting married was all about; the doll meant more to her.
,
Before WW2
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My mama came to Skryhiczyn from Lodz for the first time as my father’s fiancée in 1905. My parents’ marriage was definitely organized by a matchmaker. Mama might not have liked Father, and then she wouldn’t have married him, but she did like him.
,
Before WW2
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That was a big outlay. My family’s financial standing was average to low. We were never short of food, but it was very hard to buy clothes. Later on, they couldn’t keep me in Warsaw, and I had to pay my own way when I was studying.
,
Before WW2
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My baby and I lived in the room where I worked. Malgosia lay on the desk I worked at, and at night we slept on a mattress. I don’t know how my friend Marecki managed to get me an apartment in Bielany, on Zjednoczenia Avenue. I earned very little at ‘Ksiazka i Wiedza.
,
After WW2
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Our family lived on Pusta Street in Lodz, opposite the Ettigon’s factory. We were the only Jewish family in the building. There were just Germans living there. We played with the Germans in the courtyard, on the rug-beating stand.
The German women didn’t have anything against our playing with their children. But my mama never invited those children to our apartment, and those children never invited me in. We talked to them in Polish. The Germans had a German gymnasium just like we had a Hebrew one.
The German women didn’t have anything against our playing with their children. But my mama never invited those children to our apartment, and those children never invited me in. We talked to them in Polish. The Germans had a German gymnasium just like we had a Hebrew one.
I went to Professor Zebrowska and she gave me a job at Warsaw University. I taught a child psychology class and helped her to gather materials for her work, and conducted research in kindergartens.
,
After WW2
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Professor Baley from child psychology found me very good lessons at 2 zloty a lesson, teaching mentally handicapped children. Sometimes I would get lunch in return for a lesson, for instance from my aunt, for teaching my cousin math. I had to earn my meals, my rent and my fees. Sometimes my mama would send me a food parcel.
,
Before WW2
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