Tag #109103 - Interview #78091 (jerzy pikielny)

At the end of November or early in December 1939 the Germans told us to leave our house. There were just the three of us at the time - Grandma, Mom, and me. Suddenly around twenty SS men in black uniforms and some Volksdeutsche [19] entered our apartment. We had two hours to leave it. We were only allowed to take with us what the Germans threw out of the closets onto the floor. It later turned out a German doctor took our apartment, one of those so-called 'Baltdeutsche' [people from the Baltic states who voluntarily accepted German citizenship]. There was an agreement between Germany and the Baltic states that the Germans from those countries would be resettled on the territory of the Reich. Lodz was part of the Reich...

Before the ghetto was closed my father decided to go to our apartment. He spoke with the German, I think the German let him take some tools. There'd always been a picture of me on my father's desk and it was still standing there after we'd moved out of the apartment. That stuck in my mind because it was incredible.

We spent a night at my classmate Rutka's parents'; they were neighbors from the house opposite. They were called Zylberberg. Later we moved to my uncle Henryk's parents-in-law, who lived in Lodz on Pomorska Street. They were called Mazo. My uncle and his family moved in as well, from Zdunska Wola [50 km south of Lodz].