Tag #110385 - Interview #79258 (Leopold Sokolowski)

Later in Niepolomice I worked digging drainage ditches during the summer season. It was a semi-compulsory job. Some of the Jews didn't work. I'm not sure if they paid for it or what. One way or another, I did work, and was given some very lousy payment for that. It was a physical job, digging ditches. In the winter, when the weather didn't allow for digging in the ground, I worked at a sawmill in Klaj. Klaj is several kilometers from Niepolomice, on the Cracow-Bochnia-Tarnow-Lwow route. I had to get on a train going to Klaj, and walk 3 kilometers through the woods at night. I was terrified. Having finished at the sawmill, I went back home in the afternoon. Of course that was official. An armband with the star. Jews were not allowed to travel by train, but I had some sort of slip saying that I worked at the sawmill, so I could go by train. In the meantime, my father worked all the time in the woods.