This is my brother Borus with Mom on vacation in Miedzieszyn, 1938.
Almost every year we used to go for holidays with the family, usually to the so called Linia - a row of tourist-health resort towns located on the line Warsaw-Otwock. We went to Otwock, Falenica, once to Swider, many times to Miedzeszyn, once to Jablonna - summer resort towns near Warsaw. And once to Kazimierz. We usually took a train to the Linia, but we took a ship to Kazimierz on the Vistula River, from Warsaw. And our things, because we used to bring everything, we used to send by a horse carriage. I remember we would load things up at 6am and the horse carriage would get to the destination by night.
Dad got married to Lonia some time around 1929. I knew Lonia wasn't my mom, but I didn't feel it. Mom was a very smart woman. But from the time perspective, I realize I didn't experience true motherly love. I was a bit browbeaten, always very shy. My brother Borus was born in 1932. Borus derives from Ber - Dov in Hebrew, which means a bear. Now he uses also his Polish name Wladek, or Wladzio - Wladyslaw.
When we wanted to escape from ghetto, there was a problem with Borus who had a very dark complexion. I don't know if he looked like a Jew as a child, but he surely stood out. And Dad also knew he had to save both his children, he knew he didn't have a lot of time. He was afraid that if I left first, he'd loose touch with Feld, Borus wouldn't leave. (Jehuda Feld used to come visit Dad from the Aryan side. He had something to do with the Bund underground)
It was easier to send me away at the last moment because of my looks. That's why Borus was to go first. Dad talked to Feld and Feld found on Gilarska Street, in Praga, a railway man, Polish, his name was Duriasz, who agreed to take in a Jewish boy from the ghetto, for money. It was the beginning of December 1942. We said our goodbyes and Dad took him to the gate and Feld moved him. On the Aryan side a woman was waiting for him, probably that Duriasz's wife. Duriasz, of course, was getting money only for some time, later he wasn't, but he was a very decent man, as opposed to his second wife. And Borus sat there in a shed and lived out his own, huge, story.
