Tag #107618 - Interview #91682 (Halina Najduchowska )

The ghetto streets did not look the way they did in the Warsaw ghetto[8] – you can see in the films that they had dead bodies lying in the streets. I think that [in the Lodz ghetto] the organization was better. Everyone had to work, and everyone got stamps for food rations. A lot of people did die of hunger, but you could also survive. I suppose it depends on one’s condition.

I did not feel fear. Only once, during the ‘great szpera’ [9]. I was in the hospital then, I had jaundice. Suddenly, one morning, we heard they were removing people from two hospitals on Lagiewnicka Street. It was clear they were taking people away. A panic broke out. I was a person who calmed others down. It wasn’t clear where they were taking people, but in any case it meant parting with your family.

My mother, my father and my sister were standing in the street, like many other families of people who were in the hospital. I managed to jump out of a window on the ground floor. I wasn’t the only one, many others did the same thing. We knew by then that one hospital was already being emptied out, and that they would do the same with ours, so all those who could were running away. My parents caught me and we were walking home.