Tag #108571 - Interview #88474 (Jakub Bromberg)

Someone advised me then that it’s good to live in Hrodna [80 km from Bialystok, in today’s Belarus]. Because Jews were very bad in Bialystok. They wouldn’t let any Jews, runaways into their houses. They called us ‘biezeniec’ [from the Russian word ‘bezhenetz’, refugee] – runaway. Sometimes, when they couldn’t pronounce this word properly they’d say ‘abeznik’ or ‘berznik’. They said that we were all thieves, that decent people wouldn’t run away, only prostitutes and thieves. The Germans surely can’t be that bad, they can’t be doing what we’re saying they’re doing. And they sold us grain coffee for 20 grosze a cup. They sold us the coffee on the street; they wouldn’t let us into their houses. They made a bad name for themselves, those Jews from Bialystok, very bad. When someone had a daughter and she was supposed to get married and her father or mother wanted to punish her, they’d shout: ‘Even a berznik won’t take you for a wife’. Even a berznik. It meant that we were the worst. Those weren’t humans there in Bialystok; they felt no sympathy for us. We cursed them: ‘if only you live to go through what we have been through.’ They didn’t want to believe us. [Editor’s note: this attitude of disbelief was typical of Poles and Jews living in territories occupied by the Soviets.