Tag #109110 - Interview #78091 (jerzy pikielny)

In the workshop where I was employed most of the workers were intellectual youth, mostly leftist. Leftist ideas were attractive at the time, because they promised to solve all the problems which had led to us being in a ghetto and which we'd been more or less aware of before the war. I hadn't experienced anti-Semitism personally but I'd started to read the papers before the war and knew what was happening.

I soaked up those left-wing ideas in the ghetto. We arrived at work one morning and they wouldn't let us in. Apparently something was missing and they wouldn't let us in until it was found. After some time they pointed to the ones who could go in and the ones who could not. We told them none of us had stolen anything and there was no reason for some of us to be let in and some not. And so the fuss started, we were accused of mutiny and they wanted to fire us. That could be dangerous, because you had to work somewhere. I didn't tell anyone at home, especially in view of my father, who had typhoid fever, and I left home every morning as if nothing had happened. One of the foremen, a turner called Kolerszejn, accused us of propagating communist ideas, which according to him was unacceptable. Finally the argument was settled and we went back to work.