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They chased us out into the ghetto in May 1940. I remember that a good friend of my father’s, a German who worked in the factory with him, approached my father and told him that he’d take our furniture, because otherwise some stranger would. Better for some friend to do it. Well, we couldn’t even react to that, because he was the master of the world then. And I remember that moment when they were chasing us out. We had this hand-held cart. No horse, of course, we had to push this cart. We could only take a few things. All the most important things. Mother had even prepared for this. I know that she had bought sugar, if she could still get such things, so we’d have it for later. We suspected that it could get difficult with food. And indeed that’s what happened. I remember that in 1942 Mother took a suitcase from under the bed, because she wanted to take something out of it and she found 2 kilograms of sugar. There was such joy in the house as if we had found a treasure. Well, that was because you couldn’t get sugar in the ghetto.
I don’t remember who told us we had to move. I somehow don’t remember how it happened that we had to leave our house. We moved to 44 Wolborska Street. To that building where the Cytryns were living. And at first it wasn’t so bad. We lived in the cellar. It was really a basement, one room, small kitchen, even a kind of hall, we had a roof over our heads. There were beds, but I don’t remember if there were cupboards. I don’t think so, because we used to hang the clothes on the doors. It was a very small space, some 20 square meters. And there were 6 of us there: I, my brother, parents and my friend’s mother with her son [the Otelsbergs]. Liliana was not there with us. She had left with her father for Warsaw. I don’t remember why they went there. Such things happened during the war. I remember that at first we even had gas in this basement of ours, these Cytryns hooked it up. But when Father refused this halizah to that older woman, they cut the gas off. In early 1944 we had to move to Wolborska Street 36 and that was a normal apartment. We had to move, because our previous house was too close to the border of the ghetto and no one was allowed to live there. And that’s where we stayed until the end, until they deported us to Auschwitz.
At first life in the ghetto went on as usual. Mother was at home, she didn’t work before the war either. And Father was somehow helping uncle’s family [the Cytryns]. After some time we didn’t have anything to burn in the stove and the Cytryns had a lot of wood, so Father would leave at night and bring us some of that wood. He was always so scared, pale as a wall, and he kept repeating: ‘They didn’t see me, did they?’ I was more courageous than he was, so I’d say: ‘It’s as much yours as it is theirs. After all, you’re family. And they should give it to you, because they know we don’t have anything to burn in the stove.’ That’s how it is. In such harsh conditions, when everybody was being persecuted, they still harassed us. We weren’t getting any closer with them at all.
Life in the ghetto was very hard. We’d go out with my brother, but with time [we’d go out] less and less. When you went out on the street, you’d mostly see dead bodies. After a few months you could see how people’s food supplies had run out and some started dying. It’s not that I couldn’t go out, but I was afraid to. The corpses were everywhere, on the sidewalks. They were just covered with newspapers. These carts would later come and these bodies, without caskets, were packed one on top of another and taken to a cemetery. There was also this disease in the ghetto, it was called ‘cholerynka’ [infantile cholera], because it was similar to cholera and people died like flies. There were some doctors, but there were no medicines, so how were they supposed to treat people? My mother, she suffered from gallstones. She really suffered because of that. I remember how a nurse visited mother and probed her. She put this tube in her esophagus and got something out of her gallbladder. Mother would later throw up and she’d feel better. But she was ill with this until the end of her life. Also, there was great hunger. If someone had money, he could buy something on the black market, but we didn’t have money, no one was earning money by that time. We received food in exchange for food stamps. It was too much to die, but not enough to survive. Yes, it was very difficult.
Rumkowsky [Chaim Mordechai Rumkowsky (1887-1944), head of the Judenrat in the Lodz ghetto] was the leader of the ghetto. I’d see him sometimes, walking on the streets. I knew about his concept of transforming the ghetto into a labor camp. After all, I worked for him as well. But I never had any close contacts with him. I can’t really say a good word about him. He was this ‘king.’ And people would say that he really liked young girls, that he used to sneak up to windows at night and peep. The ghetto was horrible, indescribable. Firstly, hunger. Rumkowsky, when he felt like it, would give out rations, these coupons for potato peels. Oh yes, that would be a holiday. We’d be so happy then. I would first wash these peels under the faucet, although it was freezing, later Mother would fry them in horse fat and we’d stuff our stomachs with this. But Rumkowsky also died in Auschwitz. [He left the Radegast station for Auschwitz on 28th August 1944. It is not known how he died. There is a legend according to which Jews from Lodz recognized Rumkowsky and threw him into the crematorium oven alive.]
At home we didn’t talk about what was happening around us. I only remember that when they handed out these [food] rations, a piece of bread, or something. Because my brother was still a young boy, we shared what we had with him. In some families they’d steal from each other, but in ours it was the opposite, we’d give him some food, so that he’d survive. Well, unfortunately, he didn’t survive.
I didn’t go to school in the ghetto, but to work, and I took 2 shifts. At first I helped in the Otelsbergs’ library. It was on Wolborska Street, opposite our house. They used to run a library before the war. The Germans allowed them to take quite a lot of books into the ghetto, so the Otelsbergs opened a library. And I worked there. I simply exchanged books, because you couldn’t buy them anyway. Everyone who wanted to exchange a book, had to bring one of their own. The library was immensely popular. People didn’t have anything to do, so they would read to forget, to dull the pain, the disgrace. Finally, they started arguing with me, because they had read everything and we couldn’t get new books anywhere. So I’d say: ‘And where am I supposed to get these books for you? From heaven? Somehow I don’t see them falling from the sky.’ So it was a stressful and hard job, because I had to search these shelves, looking for books. In the summer I could somehow stand it, but in the winter? Horrible. I had to sit there wearing gloves and shivering. Yes, I had to sit there several hours a day and I was always very cold. And later, since 1942, everyone had to work [for the Germans]. I helped out in a so-called ‘shop’ [German forced labor factories]. I’d stitch around button holes, in uniforms, of course. But when I got back from work I’d go to this library.
Nobody from my closest family died in the ghetto, but I remember there were several moments when I thought it was the end. One day the Germans came and told everyone to leave the house [great szpera] [4]. Mother’s friend was really afraid and she hid in a cupboard. But she said she wouldn’t stay there alone, so Mother stayed with her. We were a bit worried about them, because they were up in years. Well, they weren’t that old, they weren’t even 50 yet, but it was a lot for the Germans. So, they stayed in those cupboards and we went downstairs. They gathered us in the courtyard and ordered to stand in a single file. But that wasn’t all, because the Germans started walking around the apartments. The son of this friend of my mother’s said he’d come by from time to time to check if everything was alright. And a German went in there and Mother thought it was him, so she stuck her head out and the German saw her. Luckily he didn’t open the second cupboard, because this other woman would not have survived. They led Mother downstairs. God, when I saw Mother, I felt faint. But, fortunately, she still survived that.
And later, I don’t remember, but Mother and Father weren’t home, I don’t know where they were. And the Germans were searching the house on Wolborska Street, where we were living. I was home alone. Two kripos [Kriminal Polizei (KriPo), criminal police] and I spoke German well, so we started talking. They questioned me what I was doing there, where I worked, I talked with them for almost half an hour. All our neighbors were sure I was already gone. But somehow we talked and talked and they didn’t do anything to me. They could see I spoke German very well, so perhaps they thought I was a servant in that house. And I didn’t straighten that out. There was a sheep-skin coat in the closet. It wasn’t ours, a friend of Mother’s had asked her to keep it. If they had found this fur coat, then I would be long gone from this world. Because you had to turn in all fur coats in the ghetto, the penalty was death. And somehow they kept talking with me and they didn’t open the closets. And after about half an hour they went away. And later all the neighbors crowded into the apartment: ‘Ah, you’re alive? Has anything happened to you?’, so I said: ‘No, we talked a while and they went away.’ But I was shaking all over.
So life in the ghetto was horrible, really horrible.
I don’t remember who told us we had to move. I somehow don’t remember how it happened that we had to leave our house. We moved to 44 Wolborska Street. To that building where the Cytryns were living. And at first it wasn’t so bad. We lived in the cellar. It was really a basement, one room, small kitchen, even a kind of hall, we had a roof over our heads. There were beds, but I don’t remember if there were cupboards. I don’t think so, because we used to hang the clothes on the doors. It was a very small space, some 20 square meters. And there were 6 of us there: I, my brother, parents and my friend’s mother with her son [the Otelsbergs]. Liliana was not there with us. She had left with her father for Warsaw. I don’t remember why they went there. Such things happened during the war. I remember that at first we even had gas in this basement of ours, these Cytryns hooked it up. But when Father refused this halizah to that older woman, they cut the gas off. In early 1944 we had to move to Wolborska Street 36 and that was a normal apartment. We had to move, because our previous house was too close to the border of the ghetto and no one was allowed to live there. And that’s where we stayed until the end, until they deported us to Auschwitz.
At first life in the ghetto went on as usual. Mother was at home, she didn’t work before the war either. And Father was somehow helping uncle’s family [the Cytryns]. After some time we didn’t have anything to burn in the stove and the Cytryns had a lot of wood, so Father would leave at night and bring us some of that wood. He was always so scared, pale as a wall, and he kept repeating: ‘They didn’t see me, did they?’ I was more courageous than he was, so I’d say: ‘It’s as much yours as it is theirs. After all, you’re family. And they should give it to you, because they know we don’t have anything to burn in the stove.’ That’s how it is. In such harsh conditions, when everybody was being persecuted, they still harassed us. We weren’t getting any closer with them at all.
Life in the ghetto was very hard. We’d go out with my brother, but with time [we’d go out] less and less. When you went out on the street, you’d mostly see dead bodies. After a few months you could see how people’s food supplies had run out and some started dying. It’s not that I couldn’t go out, but I was afraid to. The corpses were everywhere, on the sidewalks. They were just covered with newspapers. These carts would later come and these bodies, without caskets, were packed one on top of another and taken to a cemetery. There was also this disease in the ghetto, it was called ‘cholerynka’ [infantile cholera], because it was similar to cholera and people died like flies. There were some doctors, but there were no medicines, so how were they supposed to treat people? My mother, she suffered from gallstones. She really suffered because of that. I remember how a nurse visited mother and probed her. She put this tube in her esophagus and got something out of her gallbladder. Mother would later throw up and she’d feel better. But she was ill with this until the end of her life. Also, there was great hunger. If someone had money, he could buy something on the black market, but we didn’t have money, no one was earning money by that time. We received food in exchange for food stamps. It was too much to die, but not enough to survive. Yes, it was very difficult.
Rumkowsky [Chaim Mordechai Rumkowsky (1887-1944), head of the Judenrat in the Lodz ghetto] was the leader of the ghetto. I’d see him sometimes, walking on the streets. I knew about his concept of transforming the ghetto into a labor camp. After all, I worked for him as well. But I never had any close contacts with him. I can’t really say a good word about him. He was this ‘king.’ And people would say that he really liked young girls, that he used to sneak up to windows at night and peep. The ghetto was horrible, indescribable. Firstly, hunger. Rumkowsky, when he felt like it, would give out rations, these coupons for potato peels. Oh yes, that would be a holiday. We’d be so happy then. I would first wash these peels under the faucet, although it was freezing, later Mother would fry them in horse fat and we’d stuff our stomachs with this. But Rumkowsky also died in Auschwitz. [He left the Radegast station for Auschwitz on 28th August 1944. It is not known how he died. There is a legend according to which Jews from Lodz recognized Rumkowsky and threw him into the crematorium oven alive.]
At home we didn’t talk about what was happening around us. I only remember that when they handed out these [food] rations, a piece of bread, or something. Because my brother was still a young boy, we shared what we had with him. In some families they’d steal from each other, but in ours it was the opposite, we’d give him some food, so that he’d survive. Well, unfortunately, he didn’t survive.
I didn’t go to school in the ghetto, but to work, and I took 2 shifts. At first I helped in the Otelsbergs’ library. It was on Wolborska Street, opposite our house. They used to run a library before the war. The Germans allowed them to take quite a lot of books into the ghetto, so the Otelsbergs opened a library. And I worked there. I simply exchanged books, because you couldn’t buy them anyway. Everyone who wanted to exchange a book, had to bring one of their own. The library was immensely popular. People didn’t have anything to do, so they would read to forget, to dull the pain, the disgrace. Finally, they started arguing with me, because they had read everything and we couldn’t get new books anywhere. So I’d say: ‘And where am I supposed to get these books for you? From heaven? Somehow I don’t see them falling from the sky.’ So it was a stressful and hard job, because I had to search these shelves, looking for books. In the summer I could somehow stand it, but in the winter? Horrible. I had to sit there wearing gloves and shivering. Yes, I had to sit there several hours a day and I was always very cold. And later, since 1942, everyone had to work [for the Germans]. I helped out in a so-called ‘shop’ [German forced labor factories]. I’d stitch around button holes, in uniforms, of course. But when I got back from work I’d go to this library.
Nobody from my closest family died in the ghetto, but I remember there were several moments when I thought it was the end. One day the Germans came and told everyone to leave the house [great szpera] [4]. Mother’s friend was really afraid and she hid in a cupboard. But she said she wouldn’t stay there alone, so Mother stayed with her. We were a bit worried about them, because they were up in years. Well, they weren’t that old, they weren’t even 50 yet, but it was a lot for the Germans. So, they stayed in those cupboards and we went downstairs. They gathered us in the courtyard and ordered to stand in a single file. But that wasn’t all, because the Germans started walking around the apartments. The son of this friend of my mother’s said he’d come by from time to time to check if everything was alright. And a German went in there and Mother thought it was him, so she stuck her head out and the German saw her. Luckily he didn’t open the second cupboard, because this other woman would not have survived. They led Mother downstairs. God, when I saw Mother, I felt faint. But, fortunately, she still survived that.
And later, I don’t remember, but Mother and Father weren’t home, I don’t know where they were. And the Germans were searching the house on Wolborska Street, where we were living. I was home alone. Two kripos [Kriminal Polizei (KriPo), criminal police] and I spoke German well, so we started talking. They questioned me what I was doing there, where I worked, I talked with them for almost half an hour. All our neighbors were sure I was already gone. But somehow we talked and talked and they didn’t do anything to me. They could see I spoke German very well, so perhaps they thought I was a servant in that house. And I didn’t straighten that out. There was a sheep-skin coat in the closet. It wasn’t ours, a friend of Mother’s had asked her to keep it. If they had found this fur coat, then I would be long gone from this world. Because you had to turn in all fur coats in the ghetto, the penalty was death. And somehow they kept talking with me and they didn’t open the closets. And after about half an hour they went away. And later all the neighbors crowded into the apartment: ‘Ah, you’re alive? Has anything happened to you?’, so I said: ‘No, we talked a while and they went away.’ But I was shaking all over.
So life in the ghetto was horrible, really horrible.
Period
Location
Lodz
Poland
Interview
Helena Najberg
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