Tag #108447 - Interview #88499 (Izaak Wacek Kornblum)

The decision about leaving was easier because of emigration psychosis and the anti-Semitic witch hunt. The atmosphere was awful, suffocating. People would leave with a travel document [a travel document took away Polish citizenship of the person leaving], you had to wait for a long time to get it. This document said that the person who had it had undeclared citizenship. We had a friend in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and she helped us obtain this document sooner. People used to take all their belongings and custom officers would steal them. We heard of a customs officer, Mr Piechotka, who, in exchange for money, would come to your home and do the customs clearance. He came to us, to Otwock, he even helped us pack, and we sent off those sealed boxes, they made it to Israel 4 months after we got there. We left from Dworzec Gdanski [the Gdanski Train Station], through Vienna to Genova. The Czechs didn’t want to let the train through, there were some problems, we waited for 24 hours with no food or drinks. In Genova we waited for a ship to Israel. And we arrived in Israel. At first we lived with Wladek, who was already married, in a basement apartment, in Ramat Gan.